What is a Relationship with your Money?

Do you have a relationship with your money?

If not, it’s time for you to build one. A relationship with your money is very important, but it’s one of the things not many of us learn when we are growing up. I know I surely didn’t learn about a relationship with money growing up. Did you?

Many more people are starting to talk about building a relationship with your money today because it’s just that important to have a relationship with your money. 

This relationship can help you improve your money situation, but it also helps you improve other relationships in your life as well, especially the one you have with yourself, which in turn makes it easier to have relationships with others. 

In this episode, we dive into what a money relationship is, why you need one, ways you can build one and the first thing you can start doing right now to build this relationship. 

Tune in to today’s episode, then in the comments below tell me what your current relationship with money looks like. 

Transcript for Episode 5 – What is a relationship with your money?

This is Episode 5 of the Prosper + Profit Podcast.
This is the Prosper + Profit Podcast where women talk about money and transformations because being independent with money is sexy and profitable, and money transformations are how you prosper with your money daily. Now, for your host Clarissa Wilson.
Today, we are talking about money relationships and having a relationship with your money, because as you know I talk a lot about relationships with money and that’s a big part of what this podcast is. I’ve even been seeing a lot more people talking about money relationships lately as well. When I see others talk about things that I have been talking about, I know that it is finally become a much more important topic.
What really is a relationship with your money? Dr. Sarah Newcomb explains that a money relationship is about the stories that we tell ourselves because of the numbers behind what is or isn’t in our bank accounts in her book loaded, we’ve all come to believe certain stories based on our upbringing and our experiences with money. This is where relationship with money is rooted, and this is where Sound Money Management begins.
To break that down a little bit more, a relationship with your money is the way that you talk about money, the way that you’d think about money, the way that you act with money, your habits with money, and the way that you talk to money. Yes, a relationship is important to be able to have that back and forth while your money can’t directly talk to you indirectly talks to you by how it shows up in your life and how you so easily get rid of it.
A relationship with your money is very similar to a relationship with another human being, because money is a form of energy just like humans are. That’s why you can build the relationship with your money because they’re both forms of energy and we can just have that back and forth together to be able to have a real relationship. It takes that open communication and positive thinking and love to be able to build the relationship, and whether it’d be with another human being or with your money.
Why do you actually need to have a relationship with your money? People have always had a relationship with your money if you look back at that definition by Dr. Newcomb it’s the stories that we tell ourselves it’s the stories that we have learned from childhood. Like she said it’s stories. It’s stuff that we tell ourselves whether it’s good or bad and we tend to remember the bad stuff more than we remember the good stuff, just because we’re humans. That’s how our mind works. We tend to remember the negative more than we remember the positive because it’s just a last more of a lasting experience on us by having that negative experience really be reflected over and over.
That’s where our money fears also come up because we have this fear of the worst possible situation happening, when rarely does that last ever. Rarely does that worst case scenario ever happen, and while people have always had a relationship with their money they didn’t always classify it that way because it wasn’t just something that we learned. This wasn’t the way that people talks about their money they didn’t talk about having this relationship because money was something that came in and something that went out.
That’s all there was to it but it’s really not, there’s so much more to our money than what comes in and what goes out. This is why each person acts a certain way with their money that is their relationship with their money. This relationship helps money either stay in your life or leave your wallet and your bank account faster than you can even blink your eyes.
Have you ever wondered when someone can win the lottery and then 3 years later they file for bankruptcy? This has a lot to do with their money relationship. The habits of this person that has won the lottery dictates that they need to spend all of their money plus on. Sometimes it can take 3 years to spend all of these money or sometimes it can take just a couple days to spend all of your money. That’s just part of what your current money relationship is, and you can change this relationship by rewriting the story.
Someone who wins the lottery their story is somewhere along the lines for someone who makes a lot of money but they never seem to have any. They see the money that’s there so they have to spend it all, that’s part of their money relationship or their money story. They just have to spend all of the money that they make. There are people that have to save all the money they make that’s just part of their story.
You have to figure out what your story is and make it work for you. Most of our habits around money or our money story and all of their stories that we tell ourselves around money are learned when we grow up. Most of these stuff is already in our system before we turn 18. We do learn more stuff as we continue to age but most of it has already been learned and once you passed 18, 19, and getting to your 20s, you’re really just acting on all of these stories that you have learned.
That’s when you can start to change these stories, and it’s not always easy to change the habits that you have with money or even build a better relationship with your money. Once you do, the rewards just keep on coming. I have already mentioned in Episode 2, My Journey with Student Loans, and if I’ve had a relationship with my money at the time that I was getting my second and third college degrees I probably want to have gone for as much student loans or even gone for the second and third college degree. Since I didn’t have that relationship with my money, I just kept going and taking out more money and taking out more money.
Because it was so much easier for me to just keep borrowing the money that I didn’t have than it was to stop and face the facts that I didn’t have the money, I shouldn’t be doing this. Most of what we learned, we learned the hard way. We learned that we shouldn’t have done it but we can’t change the past, we can only change the future.
Having a relationship with your money means that you don’t always do as many stupid things with your money, I’m not saying you’re not going to do them, I still do stupid things with my money and I feel like I have a pretty good relationship with my money today. It means that you can have money for your future self while still earning as your present self, it means that you can give your money respect and gratitude for being there for you. It means that you know money is going to be there for you.
What can you do to start building your relationship with your money today, the very first time that you can do to start building your relationship with your money is commit that you want to build your relationship and make the change to experience something new, because from most of us having a relationship with our money is something new. We have to define it in a new way and that is having a relationship with our money is not something that we just receive everyday because of doing work or offering services. Then we use what we earn to pay for the services that we need.
It’s not just that there is a relationship that you need to have with your money. Then after making that decision to make the change there are 2 other things that you can start to do today. The first 1 is starting a daily gratitude practice for your money, and the second is tracking your money. If you would take just 2 minutes a day and express the gratitude for the things that you have in your life right now and then take another 2 minutes and express the gratitude for everything that you want to come into your life right now, you’ll start to see some big changes, because that’s something that I really started doing was expressing my gratitude.
It changed the way that I look at life, it changed the way that I look at money, because when you express your gratitude you’re feeling the energy for what it feels like to have an abundance of all the amazing that you have in life. Because you’re not just expressing gratitude for money, you’re expressing gratitude for belongings, you’re expressing gratitude for feelings. Then you feel all of these energy of the gratitude filling your entire body and you’re allowing that energy to just spread throughout your body so that you can continue to feel that energy. That is the good thing about gratitude.
You can write your gratitude down and you can say it out loud, you can type it into a Word document on your computer. Just spend a couple minutes a day expressing your gratitude and watch how things change. Then the next thing is tracking your money. This is 1 of the first steps that I always have everyone started doing when they start working with me as tracking your money, because most of us don’t track our money. You want to track every single penny that comes in and every single penny that you spent and just write it down.
You don’t have to analyze it, you don’t have to think about it, you don’t have to stop what you were going to buy just because you have to write it down. Just write it down. I track what I’m seeing so that I earn what I’m making and what I’m spending so that I can see where my money is going and where it’s coming from. When I started doing this that’s when my money relationship really started to change and I started to see that I was spending money on completely random stuff that I didn’t need to spend it on simply because I had a believe that I never have enough money. To spend money on completely random stuff and just empty out my bank account every month, yeah I don’t have enough money.
Now, that I track my money regularly I see where it is and where it’s going, where it’s coming from all the time. This makes it easy to notice if I need to make a change. I can notice when I’m spending money on something that I don’t need to just because I think I need to spend money. Knowing where your money is is a big part of your money relationship, it’s a big part of helping you build your money relationship. These are the first 3 steps to begin to build your money relationship make a commitments to make a change, expressing gratitude on a daily basis, and tracking your money every day.
In future episodes I will go a little bit more in depth into building your relationship, but right now you can’t build your money relationship if you don’t have the foundation first. These 3 steps are the foundation to beginning your money relationship. If you use the meditation in Episode 4, you will find more parts of your money story so that you can build your money relationship as well. When you really start to build this money relationship you will start having more money in your life.
It’s usually because you’re making more money not spending less. This is exactly what happened to me, I started working on my money relationship and then I went to the job that was double my previous salary. I didn’t cut any of my spending, I just started making more. Ultimately, it’s your decision to build a relationship with your money or not, but having a relationship with your money will help you begin to build that financial independence that you have always been longing for.
Are you ready to start building your relationship with your money today?
To shown on for this episode and all other episodes can be found on prosperprofitpodcast.com. I hope you would leave a comment on the shown on page for this episode and let us know what your biggest takeaway was for today. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast so that you never missed an episode.