Abstract

While the process of setting financial goals is an individual one, investment advisors who offer more than factual advice may be able to help clients avoid some counter-productive strategies and actions. Experienced advisors can guide clients on a journey to their core values and beliefs—with this deeper awareness of themselves, clients are equipped with a clarity that will help them make financial and life decisions that match who they truly are.

 

One of the reasons financial plans may fail is that people look at how much they spend and need rather than how they spend and need. Plans based on external goals are often inconsistent with internal intentions and are doomed in the long run. If we can look within and find internal balance, our goals and actions are more likely to play out successfully.

It’s common to mistakenly associate money with self-worth, which can block the attainment we crave. Equating money to self-image will distort the real meaning and evaporate the true focus. Wealth is made from within. The healthy individual, by having a strong self-definition, has the attributes that can lead to wealth and success. Cultivating one’s inner values becomes the path; wealth and success, while important, are secondary.

Money in the Emotional Realm

If we view money and our emotional responses to it as a hierarchy, we must begin at the base. Money dysfunction can be rooted in our upbringing as well as in our reactions to and perceptions of money. These patterns may resemble other addictions in that they can relate to such things as eating disorders or being "money drunk" [Cameron and Bryan, 1992]. We often are responding to external cues that can trigger a regressive pattern.

Next, a downward spiral emerges, which begins with mounting debt and ignoring bill payments, leading to repossessions and eventually to periods of homelessness and joblessness [McCall, 1998, and Cameron and Bryan, 1992]. The emotional side of this equation shows a pattern similar to other addictive behaviors—individuals may exhibit denial and deprivation, possibly extending to severe depression or despair. To break this pattern, it is necessary to get out of denial and obtain stability—in this case, this may be done by strictly tracking all income and expenses.

Other symptoms of money dysfunction can be seen in money addiction, compulsive shopping, overspending, hoarding and gambling. We may surround ourselves with deprivation, making it routine to have feelings of scarcity. For the compulsive shopper, there may be a sense of entitlement that because of what we are going through, we deserve to buy ourselves something special. We feel we have to look our best for a party or a job interview. In reality, the purchase is only a temporary relief, and guilt and shame will likely follow.

These symptoms may be attributed to autonomy struggles. An emotional pattern may emerge where some external event triggers a symptom. The action is a way of controlling the emptiness and anxiety or showing ourselves self-worth [Krueger, 1992]. For example, a spouse ends up at the mall following an argument. This can be a form of trying to regain control, possibly a sense of "winning" the argument, or even a motive of revenge toward the other spouse. George Kinder proposes that at this level, the individual is vacillating between the childhood stages of pain and innocence. We have attached certain thoughts and behaviors to our feelings and will be condemned to keep up this pattern unless we move toward the stage of adulthood [Kinder, 1999].

Examining Our Work

Dysfunctional patterns can influence our work lives and interpretation of success. Rather than receiving support and encouragement in childhood, our parents may have been overly restrictive, done things for us, or controlled how we played or competed. We may have come to associate success with such things as aggression or loss of love. This can have a profound effect on our self-image, independence and work ethic. [Krueger, 1992].

Should all workaholics be considered unhealthy? One can make a healthy and conscious choice to spend many hours at work that is consistent with their inner being and passion. Work addiction, on the other hand, is not done for the work itself but to feel effective and control self-esteem [Krueger, 1992]. This type of driven behavior can be a way to avoid confronting the real issues.

The same conceptual hierarchy of money can be applied to work. At its base would be work addiction, fear of success or work phobias, for example, with similar lack of fulfillment, mood regulation and self-worth issues. Desire for power or fame may have unresolved emotional elements attached.

Moving a step up from dysfunction on the model, it may just be that we haven’t learned to love what we do, but it also may be that we are in an occupation that does not match our internal motivations. We also find at this level that there are those of us caught up in everyday life who dislike our jobs. Or we use work just for the sake of making money, in order that we can enjoy the other activities we really care about. Therefore, we spend many of our waking hours at work without the joy that we experience in our leisure time. Shouldn’t work, as all other things, be rewarding and enjoyable?

At the top of the hierarchy, we have discovered something we are passionate about. We have matched our values with not only what we want to be like, but with what we do.

Wise to Look Within

For those of us not suffering from these money and work symptoms, or even for those struggling with safety and security around money, there may occur a more insidious form of wealth disconnection. Across the spectrum, we find varying degrees of lack of goal setting, projection, stress or denial that manifest outwardly to reflect one’s own personal money assumptions.

At the top of the hierarchy, we find those with a healthy outlook and money assumptions. For those of us who are clear on our money future, we most likely have set goals and specific objectives. Linked to our inner selves, we have expanded our vision to our hopes, aspirations and dreams. Further, we can subdivide our money awareness into such areas as inherited wealth, sudden wealth, gender issues and mid-life issues. Even though these are all special situations, we all can flourish by examining how we currently behave around money and by looking back at our upbringing. We can bring a consciousness and understanding to our present assumptions as we see the methods we have for handling these emotional issues.

Moving toward the middle of our hierarchy, we find the outward-looking individual who is reacting to those outside daily needs and wants, rather than being in balance and control. To obtain balance, we can examine the emotional attachments we have to money as well as work, and come to an understanding of our perceptions of others and ourselves.

For those of us who pay more attention to the ends and not the means (the lower part of the hierarchy), life seems to spin by us as we fit work and family into our busy day. We seem to "fly by the seat of our pants" and rarely have a disciplined plan and goals for the future. If we do have goals, they are more general. For retirement, we might rationalize that "we’ll make due since we’re putting the maximum amount that we can into a 401(k)."

Stuck in the Doldrums

Failure to set goals is a way to opt out of never having to reach any goals. For some, a feeling that destiny controls our path or that someone will discover our worth is a common way to treat goals. Magically, they will be transformed into reality as in a fairy tale or movie. For others, the validation of unrealistic goals of perfection keeps our self-image where we expect it to be. In other words, we set our standards so high that we sabotage ourselves and failure is our only option.

We may convince ourselves that the part of us we show to the world is our true nature. Yet our true core is not a reaction to how our parents, friends and workmates see us. Nor is it the way we react outwardly by handling every situation with conformity, rebellion or comparison to others. At our core resides the wisdom to know what we are truly living for. It is what inspires us, our true intentions of our dreams and what our true goals are. At our core are the standards that we find admirable to have. Looking inward provides the guidance to who we really are.

By making a deeper examination of who we are in relation to our standards and values—our essence—we can then apply a direction to a plan for now and the future. For many of us, however, our earning and spending usually have not been viewed in this broader perspective. As an exercise, we can start by imagining ourselves as older and looking back on our lives or even looking at our own death, which can elicit this type of viewpoint. We can only do this introspection when we are in firm control of our inner lives. Our self-esteem needs to be at a level where our internal values match where the heart and mind want to go. That is why we need to be conscious of our money attitudes. With this awareness, we can obtain a balance by matching our direction with our core.

Change often causes pain. True growth begins with an inner voice of resistance to an old assumption that we never questioned before. Why stir up confusion and doubt, we wonder. But if we’re in constant stress over money or we’re afraid to confront an issue, we can be no worse off than we are now. Our choice is to move forward in order to grow, or to stay where we are and avoid making a mistake.

Vitality

From a holistic point of view, money is often thought of as energy. As energy, it is not a thing to be possessed but an action, as in a transaction, transfer or exchange. As the growth resulting from change comes into focus, a new energy forms—a feeling that positive things can come when we’re aligned and balanced with our values and our goals. We are no longer looking for the means to an end but to the process—the journey. The reward at the end will be the result of our actions. As the journey and the reward become clearer, we can now achieve the vitality needed for change.

From childhood onward, we have made a basic assumption of who we are, which continues to shape our emotions and behavior and the way we see the world. Passing into adulthood, we must give up our dependence and postulation that someone else is responsible for our ideas and actions. By looking inward, we can reinterpret and recreate this image of reference and liberate a flow of energy as our world view becomes consistent with who we are.

Not only must we be true to our nature but act with integrity while undergoing this transformation. Acting incongruously, without integrity, will only sap the very energy we need [Nemeth, 1997].

Above this level on our hierarchy, Kinder speaks of an awakening into "vision" and a stage he calls "aloha," which can be thought of as a semi-nirvana stage filled with goodwill and the passing of a blessing [Kinder, 1999]. It is our American psyche that seems to value our rugged individualism. Bombarded by consumerism, we become egocentric and play the never-ending game of comparing ourselves with others. We reward our left-brain success stories while steering our right-brain imagery outward rather then inward. There are scores of books on self-help and investing. Some individuals seem to be addicted to following the next awareness trend. Somewhere along the line, we need to come to the realization that there are higher goals—not only for ourselves, but goals that are set with a sense of community and helping others, or out of respect for this fragile planet for which we are responsible.

The darker sides of money can be reshaped into the most uplifting parts of our lives. As in a motion picture, we can see that there is a plot and a hero or heroine. Like the film editor and film director, we must take the tons of raw film footage and create the masterpiece. We control the resulting images. We can make the film like someone else would have done or we can be true to what we want to see on the screen.

References

1. Julia Cameron and Mark Bryan, Money Drunk/Money Sober (New York: Ballentine Wellspring, 1992).

2. George Kinder, The Seven Stages Of Money Maturity (New York: Delacorte Press, 1999).

3. David W. Krueger, Emotional Business: The Meaning and Mastery of Work, Money, and Success (San Marcos, California: Avant Books, 1992).

4. Karen McCall, Financial Recovery Workbook (San Anselmo, California: Financial Recovery, 1998).

5. Maria Nemeth, The Energy of Money (New York: Ballantine Wellspring, 1997).

Ronnie Kahn, CFP, of Accumulation Strategies, practices in Woodland Hills, California.