Unlearning What Your Parents Taught You About Money

What your parents taught you about money tends to stick. It shapes your financial life, long after you’ve moved away from home, and often in subconscious ways that impact your earning, spending and saving in ways you don’t realize.

If you came from a wealthy family you may not need to read this, but then again, you might. Coming from a wealthy family doesn’t mean your parents actively taught you to manage money. In fact it might mean that what you learned about money as a child is that it was always easily available, and not something you really needed to worry about or make plans around, which won’t necessarily lead to prudent decision making as an adult.

What We Learn About Money, Emotionally Speaking

This article recently landed in my inbox. In it, the author talks about how she learned, very early in life, not to trust money. She unpacks her history with money to reach the realization that she is actually scared to get wealthy, and even scared to get out of debt. As she eloquently expresses it:

“I don’t want to be wealthy, because the wealthy people I knew early in my life were mean and made me miserable.

I’ve internalized the idea that I’m good at being poor and that there’s some virtue in it.”

Our negative feelings about money, rooted deep in our upbringing and other parts of our childhood, can be far more complicated than our conscious mind can know.

• If your parents divorced and fought over money, having money can be associated with anger and aggression.
• If rich kids were mean to you, having money can be associated with nasty people.
• If your parents had to sacrifice to provide for you, spending money can be associated with guilt.
• If you ever had to hide the fact that you couldn’t afford something, lacking money can be associated with shame.
• If you ever lost a lot of money and had your life badly impacted, having money again can be associated with uncertainty and instability.
• If you feel there is virtue in being “good at being poor”, lacking money can be associated with pride.

Much financial coaching helps us focus on the fact that money is just money. It’s not inherently good or bad, and having or not having it is not a reflection on our moral character.

Whatever your parents taught you that has impacted your emotions around money, it’s worth unpacking that and unlearning it.

When we look at money dispassionately, it becomes much easier to make good decisions around it.

What We Learn About Money, Practically Speaking

The article above landed in my inbox right next to an email from money guru, Dr Brad Klonz, who started his email with the following observation:

What if you parents taught you to invest 20% of every dollar you received from when you were 5 years old?

Birthday money, your first job, all the way until today?

Klonz goes on to point out how at attitude like that, combined with a very average wage, would still make you a multi-millionaire by retirement. I haven’t included the numbers, because given what I’m covering today, they’re not important.

The important phrase here is “What if your parents had taught you…”

What our parents taught us, on a practical level, might have us investing 20% of every single paycheck, or not. It might see us speculating to accumulate, or putting all our money into a nice safe, low-interest bank account. It might see us using credit cards responsibly (and even profiting from them) or not at all.

Unpacking It All and Unlearning It

It’s time to look at what we’ve learned about money, see if it’s serving us (or if parts of it are), and unlearn what isn’t.

Here’s one way to do that.

• Journal out what you’ve learned about money and why (you could use the article mentioned above as a guide in terms of what you should be thinking about). Be aware that you’re not really looking at surface level stuff, but rather your subconscious beliefs about money gleaned from your upbringing.
• Unpack what parts of it work for you and which really don’t. Be specific. Does what you’ve learned stop you from over-spending? Taking a better-paying job? Saving for the future?
• Assess how you could ‘unlearn’ the things that aren’t serving you. Or change the way you respond to them.
• Consider financial coaching, if you can afford it, to really dig deep into your own hang-ups around money.

What your parents taught you about money at a surface level may be inherently wrong, or it may be fairly sound. What they taught you to believe at a subconscious level is potentially just as important, maybe more so. So make sure you dig deep to unearth, and unlearn, the money beliefs that are holding you back.

Have an anecdote about how your childhood shaped your money mindset? Feel free to share.

Karen Banes is a freelance writer specializing in entrepreneurship, parenting and lifestyle. She writes articles, website content, ebooks and the occasional award winning short story. Her work has appeared in a range of publications both online and off, including The Washington Post, Life Info Magazine, Transitions Abroad, Brave New Traveler, Natural Parenting Group, and Copia Magazine. Learn More About Karen