Financiation: Understanding The Way You Think About Finance
Finance and Your Values
“Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.”
-- Woody Allen
A big part of understanding finance is understanding how you think about money. Knowing your financial philosophy can help you gain a clearer awareness of how money fits into your lifestyle. Below are some beliefs and values that will help you sort out how your thoughts affect your finances.
Core Beliefs~ are strong integral values that you would not give up under any circumstances. These concepts are a way of thinking, they create ideals that guide you through your life, your decision making, and your beliefs. Core values often come from influences that have impacted you growing up and events, people and experiences that have helped to form a way of thinking that you believe works for you.
Ask yourself what are your core finance beliefs about your career, your spending and saving habits, your moral values about money, about giving to charities?
Your Beliefs About Finance Are Important
Your Attitudes Affect Your Financial Thinking
approaches work with a positive approach to being reliable, responsible, and diligence, taking intiative, and doing your best. Work ethics are applied to anyone, whether you work for someone, are self employed, are a student, a writer, or even doing chores around your house. A good work ethic breeds responsibility, and a sense of self empowerment. It is knowing you did your job with all of your ability and you can feel good about it. Someone who doesn’t have as a good a work ethic, may just go through the motions, waiting for their next paycheck, being non commital to their work, may seem unprofessional, and have too laid back an attitude, or not even care how their work is done. Some people are diligent and others may be haphazard towards their work. Some people are waiting for financial success to just happen to them. It is your work ethic that will help you succeed with your finances.
Ask yourself, where on the work ethic spectrum do you fit?
Personal Sacrifices ~ involve giving something up of yourself. People who make personal sacrifices are
usually willing to give up their short term need for a greater good or for the bigger picture. People who are impulsive, or feel deprived may have a harder time giving up things in the present for the gain they may see in the future. Individuals who have a low frustration tolerance may also have difficulty with personal sacrifices, because they don’t like feeling uncomfortable at any time. People have individual reasons for giving up what they feel is important. Personal sacrifices very often make people work harder, because they have a direction and can see the bigger picture. Your work ethic, and your core values are tied with your personal sacrifices. It takes discipline to give up what you want now and forego for something that has not, and may not even occur. It takes a belief in yourself, that you will get what you want even if you can’t have it right now. Sacrifices might be in time, or might be in delaying a purchase for the sake of the bigger finance picture you see. Sacrifices might feel like deprivation, and some people are afraid to deprive themselves.What personal sacrifices are you willing to make to gain financially?
How Prosperous Do You Feel?
characteristics you assign personally based on the internal traits you believe about yourself Your master status comes from your self identity. If you believe you are a leader, your behavior, actions, attitudes, and life story will generally play out to promote this feeling. If you believe you are good at your job, you will create “internal rules” that you will follow so that your life roles match your master status. You can have more than one master status. Although one will be primary.; You can choose to be a good parent, that is your primary master status, with that would come being a good role model for your children and so your master status may also be to be a good provider. Master status is a label you give yourself and you live your life by. It is a significant part of your identity and how you feel about yourself. All things you do will be because of this guiding factor in your life. It will impact many of the choices you make, and influence your decisions, your lifestyle and your thinking about finance.
How does your master status connect to your financial decisions?
Prosperity Potential ~ is creating a lifestyle that attracts good or bad financial opportunites for yourself. It is a way of thinking about money and your own wealth. It is your emotional barometer about finance and how it makes you feel. It is the messages you give yourself and the thoughts about how money fits into your life. For some people, all they can do is worry about money and so money is a problem for them. For others, they feel contented as long as they have what they need. It is a way of thinking about how money fits into your lifestyle. It is envisioning what money does for you. Good and positive thoughts will help you feel more prosperous. Knowing your own prosperity potential separate your own values from what you observe as other people’s values. Knowing your prosperity potential will help you deal realistically with what you have and what you want, and match it to who you are. It will also help you become aware to your openness to opportunities as they happen. How prosperous do you feel?
What is your personal prosperity potential?
Your Money Zone Affects Your Finances
Money Zone ~ is looking at a scale and which part your finances fit into. It is your personal economic
indicator of where you are at this present moment. Your money zone may put you in a range you fit into based on your net worth, how well you pay your bills, and your disposable income. On one end of the range, there are people who are overburdened with debt. On the other range there are people who are millionaires. In between are the people the savers, and the spenders, and those who want to save more and spend less. Wealth accumulation begins when you look at what your income is and what your expenses are. Gaining conrol over your expenses is the single best thng you can do to save money.
Disposable income allows you to spend on things you can afford to have. Net worth is calculated by a adding your assets and subtracting your liabilities. Evaluating your money zone will help you make promises to yourself to develop good monetary habits. Your money zone also has to do with your own perception about where you are on this scale.
Where are you in the money zone?
We have a lot of thoughts about money. We spend a lot of time earning money. Life requires money. People struggle to make money, to save money, to deal with money. Finance has emotional aspects to it. The more aware you are of your financial self the more you can achieve what you want. The thoughts we have about money impact how we treat our finances, and how it affects our lives. Understand yourself better, and you will understand your finances better.