Week 3: Money philosophy
The main thing we want you to get out of week 3 is the importance of uncovering what you believe about money, finances and wealth. You then need to examine these beliefs. Are they true? How might the opposite be true? Is believing this giving you the results you want in your life? What might be a more empowering belief about yourself and money? Read on to the homework section below for more guidance on how to do this.
This is such a powerful exercise and once you've done it for money feel free to extend it to other areas of your life... relationships, work, body and health, whatever you like!
Alan has written a blog article covering your relationship with money
It's not just about the numbers
Katie here.... you know me, I LOVE spreadsheets and numbers and the geeky tactics for how to get to financial independence. But these won't get you anywhere if you have disempowering beliefs around money. For example, if you believe you don't deserve to be wealthy (this was one of mine), you never will be because you won't try or if you do accumulate some wealth you will subconsciously do what you can to get rid of it! Looking at your beliefs and identity around money and wealth is SO important. It was the main obstacle I had to overcome to get to financial independence. We would have got there quicker if I'd dealt with this earlier.
This is such a powerful exercise and once you've done it for money feel free to extend it to other areas of your life... relationships, work, body and health, whatever you like!
Alan has written a blog article covering your relationship with money
It's not just about the numbers
Katie here.... you know me, I LOVE spreadsheets and numbers and the geeky tactics for how to get to financial independence. But these won't get you anywhere if you have disempowering beliefs around money. For example, if you believe you don't deserve to be wealthy (this was one of mine), you never will be because you won't try or if you do accumulate some wealth you will subconsciously do what you can to get rid of it! Looking at your beliefs and identity around money and wealth is SO important. It was the main obstacle I had to overcome to get to financial independence. We would have got there quicker if I'd dealt with this earlier.
Week 3 homework
To get the most out of this course you must do the homework! Remember that this course is a refrigerator course... you only get out what you put in....
So here is the homework for week 3... Remember this is a process. This won't be a one and done. It will take time to uncover, reprogramme and develop your money beliefs, identity and philosophy. Sit down for an hour and think about it. Then come back in a few days and add to it. Keep coming back and different things will come to you at different times. It takes time for this stuff to percolate too!
1. Write a letter to money
What is your relationship with money? Write a letter to money telling it how you feel about it. What do you want to say to it? Are you angry with it for the way it's shown up (or not!) in your life? Do you feel grateful towards it? What has it taught you? What joy has it brought you? What anguish has it brought you?
2. Uncover your money beliefs
This is an exercise where you will be journaling about money. By "journal" we mean use the prompts below, start writing and see what comes out. This is stream of consciousness kind of stuff, don't censor yourself, just keep writing. If you dry up start with the prompt again or move onto the next one.
WARNING: some emotions might come up during this exercise! You might uncover things you didn't realise you thought or believed. You might remember incidents you haven't thought about in years. This is to be expected and is part of the process. Let's flush out all the old crap to make room for new empowering beliefs that will help get your finances where you want them to be. Once you've done the journaling and got it out on paper, you'll be able to decide these beliefs are serving you or you can choose new ones!
You don't have to answer all of these. These are prompts to get the juices going!
Journalling prompts
3. What are your values?
This is another journaling exercise! Yay!
This also links back to week 2 where one of the exercises was to look at whether your spending is in line with your values. You now have a list of your values to be able to do this!
4. What is your money philosophy?
Start to pull together your money philosophy. Alan has written a blog post about this with all the details. What is your financial philosophy?
Here's Alan's money philosophy. Feel free to use for inspiration and ideas!
To get the most out of this course you must do the homework! Remember that this course is a refrigerator course... you only get out what you put in....
So here is the homework for week 3... Remember this is a process. This won't be a one and done. It will take time to uncover, reprogramme and develop your money beliefs, identity and philosophy. Sit down for an hour and think about it. Then come back in a few days and add to it. Keep coming back and different things will come to you at different times. It takes time for this stuff to percolate too!
1. Write a letter to money
What is your relationship with money? Write a letter to money telling it how you feel about it. What do you want to say to it? Are you angry with it for the way it's shown up (or not!) in your life? Do you feel grateful towards it? What has it taught you? What joy has it brought you? What anguish has it brought you?
2. Uncover your money beliefs
This is an exercise where you will be journaling about money. By "journal" we mean use the prompts below, start writing and see what comes out. This is stream of consciousness kind of stuff, don't censor yourself, just keep writing. If you dry up start with the prompt again or move onto the next one.
WARNING: some emotions might come up during this exercise! You might uncover things you didn't realise you thought or believed. You might remember incidents you haven't thought about in years. This is to be expected and is part of the process. Let's flush out all the old crap to make room for new empowering beliefs that will help get your finances where you want them to be. Once you've done the journaling and got it out on paper, you'll be able to decide these beliefs are serving you or you can choose new ones!
You don't have to answer all of these. These are prompts to get the juices going!
Journalling prompts
- Money is…….
- Money isn’t……..
- Money can…..
- Money can’t…..
- I can…….
- I can’t………..
- What was your money story growing up?
- What does it mean to you to not have enough money?
- What does it mean to have too much money?
- What is the purpose of money?
- How do you feel about money?
- What’s your biggest fear in relation to money?
- How does money bring you joy?
- What is a good amount of money to earn?
- What would you do if you ran out of money tomorrow?
- What’s the best or most helpful piece of advice you have heard about money?
- What’s the worst or least helpful advice you have learnt about money?
- How do you talk about money with friends or family? (Do you?)
3. What are your values?
This is another journaling exercise! Yay!
- Journal about what is important to you. Just free form writing. Write down what comes to you. If you dry up just keep asking yourself "what else is important to me". The other cool question to ask is "what do I WANT to be important to me"
- You'll notice the same words/themes keep coming up. Highlight these. These are your values. Sometimes it's themes that you could group together e.g. Katie grouped being healthy and strong and being fit into one called "Body". You can also use a word count tool to see what same words keep coming up.
- Use this online tool to rank them in order
- It also might be helpful to journal about your "away from" values. What are my moving away from values? What do I want to avoid? What pain do I want to avoid? See what comes up from this. The idea is to help come up with the moving towards values and what you DO want but sometimes it's helpful to come up with what you don't want
- You now have a summarised list of what your values are in order of priority
- I wrote a sentence or two about what each value/word means to me
This also links back to week 2 where one of the exercises was to look at whether your spending is in line with your values. You now have a list of your values to be able to do this!
4. What is your money philosophy?
Start to pull together your money philosophy. Alan has written a blog post about this with all the details. What is your financial philosophy?
Here's Alan's money philosophy. Feel free to use for inspiration and ideas!
5. Share what you've discovered with the people closest to you
What have you learned about yourself? Have you had any a-ha moments? Start a discussion with your partner, children or friends about what you've discovered and ask them what they believe about money. Go gently! Maybe start by asking them what their parents taught them about money and see where the conversation goes from there.
Discussion questions
So that you have them all in one place, here are the questions we discussed during week 3's call.
What beliefs did your parents (or whoever raised you) give you?
Ask for help
Remember to reach out in the Facebook group with any questions you have or if you get stuck. Don't let confusion be an excuse for not progressing with this stuff. We are here to support you!
What have you learned about yourself? Have you had any a-ha moments? Start a discussion with your partner, children or friends about what you've discovered and ask them what they believe about money. Go gently! Maybe start by asking them what their parents taught them about money and see where the conversation goes from there.
Discussion questions
So that you have them all in one place, here are the questions we discussed during week 3's call.
What beliefs did your parents (or whoever raised you) give you?
- What expressions did they repeat?
- What lessons did they give you about money?
- Did they give you pocket money/allowance?
- Did you have to work for your money?
- Did they argue about money?
- Helpful or unhelpful beliefs, doesn’t matter. Just what programming did you receive?
- Have you ever taken the time to examine and discuss your beliefs?
- What are some of your strongest money beliefs?
- If there was one belief you could change, what would it be?
- What beliefs are strongest for you? Which do you want to tackle?
- What is the impact of believing this? What are the long term consequences? How might the opposite be true?
- What are the alternative beliefs you want to foster and try out?
Ask for help
Remember to reach out in the Facebook group with any questions you have or if you get stuck. Don't let confusion be an excuse for not progressing with this stuff. We are here to support you!
