You might be familiar with the 16 Myers-Briggs Type Indicators (MBTI). These are general guides to help us identify our personality traits and why we do what we do. There are also Money Personality types. There are a handful of books that go over different money personality types as written in: Ken Honda´s Happy Money, Rachel Cruze´s Know yourself, Know Your Money, and Taylor and Megan Kovar´s The Five Money Personalities. For now, we will look into Ken Honda´s and Rachel Cruze´s Money Personalities.
Knowing your money personality type is another tool that can help you identify your own habits and your relationship with money. Knowledge is power and with knowledge you can improve and make changes in your life. You can take the money personality quiz here. Below I will compare Rachel Cruze´s 7 Money Tendencies and Ken Honda´s Money Personalities side-by-side.
Ken Honda´s 7 money personality types are below and I´ve numbered them. I believe it´s possible there could be more money types in the future after more research is done between human behavioral psychology and money.
I have written Rachel Cruze´s 7 tendencies as 14 and lettered them A-N. Please visit her website to have a clear understanding of these tendencies. Considering humans are very complex emotional beings, 14 seemed more accurate to explain how complex we can be with our money. Please visit her website to have a clear understanding of these tendencies to help you understand why I categorized them this way below.
To illustrate a point, this is a general example of how 1 money tendency can be associated with more than 1 money type and vice versa. I´d like to say that we are all on a financial spectrum during the course of our lives. We teeter-totter between them all depending on what events (physically and emotionally) are happening in our lives at the time. I have been a Compulsive Saver, a Compulsive Money Maker A Worrier AND a Free Spirit just to give a fluctuating example of how we, as humans, are temperamental. This is why it is important for you to understand your own attitude and emotions towards money so that you can make beneficial changes to your habits to reach your goals. When you know what you do and how you react, you can know how to build better habits around your money and life. Everything depends on you. You won´t always be a spender if you are now. You might be more of a Saver in the future or Saver-Splurger.
Now that we know the money types, here is a general checklist based on both tendencies and money types you can use as a guide to make sure you are on the right track towards wealth and happiness:
☐ Moderation = Just like drinking alcohol or eating sweets, too much of a good thing is a bad thing. Maintain the balance
☐ Make a budget plan
☐ Find new hobbies, experience life and maintain the balance between things and experiences
☐ Stay financially responsible. Check-in on your financial accounts
☐ Imagine you already bought the item and how you would feel. Stay focused on your goals
☐ Create security = have a savings and be strict about it
☐ Soul search and find out where your feelings about money come from. You can seek help from a financial coach, advisor or therapist.
☐ Being afraid and fearful is natural but don´t live in it. Embrace it, understand it and learn from it; Too much fear hinders your greatness
☐ Be strategic about how you spend your money and give yourself some flexibility to spend on what you care about
☐ The material things you have ≠ a good person or a successful person; Balance money and heart
☐ Check for less expensive options of the same high-quality things.
☐ Take responsibility and accountability. This is your money life. You can choose what you do and don´t do with your money.