Your Stressed Brain on Money: 3 Steps to Make Better Financial Decisions

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Your Stressed Brain on Money: 3 Steps to Make Better Financial Decisions

Your brain on money. We women in business love to believe that our logical brain is in charge when it comes to making decisions about money. If we're not in stress or fight or flight, this is true. But, when stressed, it's the emotional brain that's running the show. The research of Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, founder of the Trauma Center in Brookline, Massachusetts, shows that even people with no trauma history, but who are undergoingespecially strong emotional stimulation, we shift into the right-brain (emotional) processing which shuts off logic.  

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More Money Will Make You Happier?

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More Money Will Make You How Much Happier?  There is so much pressure in our society to always go after MORE, more, more money. Addictive, anyone?  

But, research shows that after someone’s earning $75,000 a year, more money, even a lot more, doesn’t make them any happier. Well, a little bit happier – about 9% happier.

So, if it’s not true that MORE money will make you happier, what is the truth? According to Happy Money authors Elizabeth Dunn & Michael Norton, (two Harvard professors), there are 3 keys to being happier with your money: 

1) Buy experiences vs. stuff. When students were asked to think about 4 material purchases and 4 experiential purchases and to draw circles and place those circles around a larger circle called SELF - depending on how closely linked each purchase was to their sense of self, the experiential purchases won hands down as being more important.

2)  Make it a treat & SAVE money. If you go to Starbucks every day and spend $5.00 it’s expensive and it’s less of a treat than 1x a week. Try this:  Try limiting your visits to 3x a week or 1x a week for that special latte. and drink regular coffee the other days.  I tell my 5 year old granddaughter Shelby that she can have 2 Hershey kisses after her nap – she looks forward to those and enjoys them thoroughly and rarely asks for more.  Treats have Value. Bonus: How much $$ can you SAVE a week with just that simple adjustment?

3) Buy Time:  One stressed, over-working mother of two children, hamsters and hubby bought a Roomba to help with housework. The $300.00 purchase saved this household time in cleaning and stress. 

Time Affluence: Everyone feels overly busy and you may be shocked, as I was, to hear this bit of research, but the time crunch is due in good part to financial prosperity. In general America is wealthier now than 50 years ago. “Wealthier individuals spend more of their time on higher stress activities shopping, working and commuting." 

”TIME SCARCITY”: increases the value of what’s perceived as scarce: As incomes rise, time seems more valuable!!

The authors recommend not using money to get more time, but to value happier time as an end in itself. Switch the focus from making more money to having more time. Ah...feel better?

 

The Secret Language of Money

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If you've been reading this blog you know I've been expanding my study of the subject of "money" this year. We need to know how to manage our money beyond the nuts and bolts of budgets and retirement planning. Do you know why you have trouble getting past certain life long money patterns? To understand what's drives the bus of your challenging money behavior here's a story from "The Secret Language of Money" by David Kreuger MD.  Two anthropologists went to two separate yet identical ape colonies to live and observe for a year. After the anthropologists finished their year they compared notes. One had been accepted and assimilated into the colony, the other never was. They couldn't understand why - until one anthropologist admitted he had kept a gun with him. He never used it or showed it, but at some level, he knew it was there. The gun kept him from fully committing - it was his out.

Now, how does the anthropologists hidden gun relate to the story we make up and play out with money. Dr. Kreuger says our money stories are "the subconscious tale you tell yourself about who you are, what money means to you and what it says about you. Our money story isn't only about money. It's about everything." (Kreuger)

What does your money story say about you? Ask yourselves these questions:  1) What's the greatest annual income I can reasonably expect to earn?  $_____   2) What is the greatest annual income my money story will allow me to have?  $_____   Until you become aware of the story that lives underneath the way you operate with money, nothing will really change. Oh, you can create a budget, or tinker with affirmations, but I know from experience that until there's a deep inner shift created with awareness and new behaviors and practiced over time, your money story can't really change.  

 

Guilt About Too Much Money?

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I know it seems bizarre, but there are people who have a lot of money and feel GUILTY about it. According to Brad & Ted Klontz, Mind Over Money, "financial rejection" is a fairly common money problem. I know what they're talking about. I had a friend who received a large inheritance and within 3 years it was all gone. Why? She didn't feel she deserved it or had earned it. Having money rather than "working" and struggling for it was out of her comfort zone. There were issues with her parents tied up in the guilt she felt, but she didn't know how to access that unfinished business.
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Money Disorders Rooted in Unfinished $$ Business

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Unfinished money business often gets expressed as money disorders such as financial denial, financial rejection, underspending (not that common) and money fear (risk aversion - Klontz - Mind Over Money) I understand the territory of denial, a trait that Deborah Price (Money Magic) says reflects the stance of the money archetypes "The Innocent," or The Creator-Artist." (I'll write about The Archetypes soon.)
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Financial Trauma - Can you Relate?

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Have you gone through a bankruptcy, had to short-sale your home or have it foreclosed? How about a job loss or downsizing? Been re-hired at vastly lower pay and had to adjust your lifestyle drastically? Lost retirement savings or had to use to survive? How about the current global financial situation? If so, you may be feeling financially traumatized. Trauma can be defined as any event that "...causes emotional distress and pain." (Klontz, Mind Over Money)
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Greed or Fear Driving Money Decisions?

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Is it greed or fear that drives most money decisions? Most automatically think it's greed. But is that true? What's the last big financial decision you had to make? Was fear or greed driving it? My guess would be fear. As a Certified Money Coach I talk to people every week who are making financial decisions out of fear - fear they will lose their home, fear they will lose the respect of others (or themselves) if they "short sale," fear about being able to pay the bills, the taxes they're behind on, fear, fear, fear. Of course, fear generates more of the same and stress
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Money is Like Any Other Addiction

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My friend Marianne Peck, therapist and writer says, "People are dumber than rats." Let me explain. She’s referring to the experimental rats that go through a maze once and, when they don’t get food, change directions or stop. Not so for people. We will keep doing the same behavior, over and over, expecting a different result. Twelve step programs call this very human behavior insanity.
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Change Your $$ Story, Your Life & The World

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We're in a pickle of an economic crisis in this world. Every day I talk to people who have lost their homes, their jobs, their self-esteem and are floundering to find footing. First they have to restabilize their lives and once that's happened I challenge them to understand HOW they ended up where they did, without blaming or judging themselves. Take responsibility for YOUR part in what happened in your life because it is empowering and keeps you out of the victim role.
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