We have a lot of ideas about money, most of them untrue. We learn about money by listening to what people say about it and watching how they use it. We learned to save or spend depending on what our parents did and by our own experiences buying things with our pennies when we were young. And we learned even more about money as we went through our early adulthood, with various levels of ease.
Our clients are often stymied by their money situations. They don’t ever seem to have enough, or they didn’t plan on the expensive contingencies, or they have no idea what their money situation is because they don’t want to look at. In fact, we’ve probably all been in every one of these situations at one time or another. And, while these problems may arise from not having enough money, that isn’t usually the case. More often, our money troubles hinge on outdated beliefs about money and about what money can or can’t do for us.
We all know that money can’t buy us happiness or love, but that doesn’t mean we don’t try to make it so. We buy things so that we look good or because the advertising made it look so much more appealing than it actually is or because we feel we are lacking something and this will fill the void. Or we don’t buy things we need because we believe there isn’t going to be enough money for the other things we will need later and feel deprived. Or we spend and spend on credit because we deserve the good things in life and want to keep up with our friends or just really feel like a frappachino instead of making coffee at home.
When we examine our accounts and our beliefs about money and how they fit in to our value systems, we can debunk some of our personal money myths and create a financial situation that reflects who we are today and who we want to be tomorrow. Coaching is a great way to get started on your journey towards using your money instead of allow it to continue to use you.
