{"id":42952,"date":"2010-09-06T04:00:10","date_gmt":"2010-09-06T11:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/getrichslowly.org\/blog\/?p=42952"},"modified":"2023-10-02T15:47:25","modified_gmt":"2023-10-02T21:47:25","slug":"mind-over-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/mind-over-money\/","title":{"rendered":"Book review: Mind Over Money"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mind<\/a>“Financial success is more about mastering the mental<\/em> game of money than about understanding the numbers.” That’s the first tenet<\/a> of the Get Rich Slowly philosophy<\/a>. That math of personal finance is simple; it’s controlling your habits and emotions that’s difficult.<\/p>\n

In Mind Over Money<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, the father-son team of Ted and Brad Klontz provide a thorough discussion of the psychology of personal finance. They argue that our relationships with money are complex and not wholly rational. Our financial behavior is influenced by psychology and emotion and, especially, our personal history. We’ve all developed money blueprints<\/strong><\/a> (or “money scripts”, as the authors call them) that shape how we deal with money. These are “the slow accumulation of the lessons we learn from the adults around us.”<\/p>\n

<\/span>Money Blueprints<\/span><\/h2>\n

Some of our money blueprints are accurate; some aren’t. But:<\/p>\n

Whether or not these interpretations are accurate or rational is not the point; the source of money scripts’ power is the fact that the beliefs made sense<\/em><\/strong> in their original context, in our childhood minds.<\/p>\n[…]\n

And that’s where problems arise. Even if our money scripts were very useful when they were formed, they can become destructive if we cling to them and act on them unthinkingly throughout our lives.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What sorts of things make up a money script (or money blueprint)? Let’s use me as an example.<\/p>\n

My own money blueprint was built from my family’s poverty when I was a child, and from the way my parents fought and obsessed about money, and immediately spent any money they received. In my family, money was never saved for the future; it was spent on immediate wants and needs. This example became part of my own money blueprint. For years \u2014 and even today, actually \u2014 whenever I received a chunk of money (through a paycheck or a windfall or anything), my initial impulse was to spend it. It’s taken lots of hard work to overwrite my old ways of thought with something more constructive.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Money Mantras<\/span><\/h2>\n

Mind Over Money<\/em> is divided into three sections.<\/p>\n