What You Think Determines How You Spend Money

                                                                       

 

There are thousands books available that talk about how to save money, spend money wisely, get out of debt, increase your credit score or invest your money.  None of these books can help you if you don't take the time to realize how your thinking affects your spending habits.

Money can be used to help you achieve your dreams and improve your life for the better. How you spend money can help identify any painful or traumatic experiences you have had with money, overcome those and move on to have happy experiences with money. You must learn how to remove your negative emotional attachments to money such as fear, doubt, worthlessness, stress, depression, guilt, hurt, jealousy, envy and anger.

Negative thoughts become negative feelings. Negative feeling become negative words, negative words become negative actions.  If you continuously make negative statements about your financial situation you will manifest those statements into reality. To change the way you think about money you have to be willing to make sacrifices and be willing to do something different.

Financial Planner Vickie Champion has a quiz that determines if you need to change your relationship with money.  The quiz can be found at http://www.vickiechampion.com/money.php. The first step to change the way you think about money is to admit that there is a problem. By doing this you will be able to eliminate those negative thoughts, beliefs and emotions that are attached to money and be able to turn them into positive, reinforceable, thoughts that will manifest themselves into abundance.

You will continue to be poor if you:

1. Believe you will never have enough
2. Believe your situation will never improve
3. Believe you will always be poor or always be in debt
4. Spend money based on how you feel or peer pressure to have a certain lifestyle
5. Buy more needs vs. wants
6. Are unable to buy or pay for basic necessities
7. Live paycheck to paycheck
8. Don't have a monthly budget or don't stick to your budget
9. Don't have a saving or retirement account
10. Don't have health, life or disability insurance
11. Have creditors calling your house day and night or sending harassing letters
12. Are depressed and stressed out over your money situation
13. Are afraid to spend your money
14. Spend more than you earn
15. Have credit cards that are maxed out
16. Have bad credit
17. Use risky financial products such as payday loans
18. Buy things to fill a void

Here are 8 steps to change the way you think about money which will help you improve your financial situation:

1. Remove the following phrases from your vocabulary: I can't, I don't have, maybe, I hope, possibly, hopefully, I will never be able to, I am a loser, I am broke, I have nothing, I don't have any money, I will have to work until I am 65, I will never be able to buy a house, the more I make the more I will spend, money is the root of all evil, money just causes you to have more problems, I am not good with money, etc.
2. Be thankful and responsible with what the money you have now. If you cannot be thankful and responsible for what the money you have now, how will you be able to handle your finances if you gain more money in the future?
3. Think about your childhood and identify any traumatic or painful experiences or beliefs you had about money and write them down.
4. Write down why you felt that way.
5. Next write down how those thoughts have affected you as an adult.
6. Ask yourself if you truly believe those thoughts, have they just become habits or someone else's thoughts projected on you. If they are someone else's thoughts projected onto you then you can easily eliminate those. If they are your own thoughts, then you had to make a hard decision and commitment to yourself that you will stop having negative thoughts about money.
7. Each time you have a negative thought or make a negative statement about money or your current financial situation and immediately write down why you feel that way. Then write down a positive statement that is the exact opposite of that negative thought.  If you need additional reinforcement buy some books on positive affirmations. You can also put an empty jar or water bottle somewhere where you will see it often and place $5 in the jar every time you think or speak a negative thought about money.  Repeat this for 30 days. By the end of 30 days you will have begun to change your thoughts about money. Whatever money you have in the jar after the 30 days use that money to pay a bill, put in a savings account or investment account.
8. Set a monetary goal that you wish to accomplish and a deadline for that goal, i.e. I will pay off my Visa credit card by June 30, 2015. Once you accomplish your first goal continue to make additional financial goals and continue this throughout your life and you will see your financial situation improve and your negative thoughts turn into positive ones.

You must know and believe that money does not make you smarter, nicer, more successful, more intelligent or a better person.  Your character determines all these things not money.  If you were a mean person when you had a few dollars you will continue to be a mean person when you have more money.  Once you start changing your thoughts about money you will start to see a change in your financial situation. It may not be right away but things will change for the better.

I leave you one of my quotes, "Money has the ability to generate debt or generate wealth, you make the choice".