Happy New Year!

Welcome to another year and another chance to get your financial life in order (or keep it there). Whether you make resolutions or not, this is a great time to work on the foundations of your financial plan. Even if you have a thorough, professional plan you may not have spent a lot of time thinking about your orientation toward money. What do you think, feel, and believe about money? 

Some folks in the psychological community call these thoughts, feelings, and beliefs Money Scripts. These Scripts are handed down through the generations and we generally learn them as kids. Often, we’re not even aware of them and couldn’t articulate them if we tried. 

So now is your chance to take these Scripts out of the dark, dust them off, examine them, and decide if you want to keep them or not. It’s time to clear out that mental clutter and get your brain ready to work on your financial life. Here is a link to a short quiz about Money Scripts, brought to you by Dr. Brad Klontz of Your Mental Wealth Advisors, the Financial Psychology Institute, and Creighton University. His website has been updated to require some personal information before you take the quiz, so if you don't want to do that you can just read about Money Scripts here.

Go do it right now! Yes, now. It only takes a few minutes. 

Great, I hope you learned a few things just by taking the quiz. I promise you will learn more once they email you the results. I learned that I’m high on Money Avoidance, which means I believe at some level that money is bad. Excellent news for a financial pro, right? But now that I’m clear about this belief, I can address it and question it. Trust me, I’m working on it.

Once you have your results, I challenge you to really look at the areas where you score high and think them through. Where did I get this Script? What is valuable about this Script, and what do I reject about it? How does this Script explain my feelings and behaviors around money? How do my Scripts underlie disagreements I have with the people in my life? What am I going to do about this high score, if anything? Who else in my life should take the quiz, and when can we have a delicious dinner together to share our results?  

This exercise can form the foundation for your own financial life plan, whether you’ve started it or not. If you have a financial life plan, look at the areas where you’re procrastinating or not happy with your results. You may find that a Money Script is lurking there. If you don’t have a financial life plan, getting those Scripts out in the open can help you avoid some of the pitfalls and challenges you will face as you work on it. At a minimum, if you and the people in your life know your Scripts maybe you can understand each other a little better and cut each other some slack. 

I hope you took the opportunity to do the quiz and share it with people close to you.