Is Your Money Affecting Your Relationships?: 3 Tips to Cultivate A Healthier Money Relationship

How we interact with our money can affect how we interact with others, and ourselves. So it’s important to tend to our relationship with money, in order to keep things clear in our other relationships! Today, I’m talking about three different ways that money may be affecting your relationships, and how you can begin to cultivate a healthier relationships with your money. I’ll be referencing The Soul of Money, an amazing book by Lynne Twist, throughout. Check out my book review if you’d like to learn more!

1. Dissolve the Competition

“Money has become a playing field where we measure our competence and worth as people. We worry that if we stop striving for more, we’ll… lose our advantage.” – Lynne Twist, The Soul of Money

As this quote highlights, money in our society is a high-stakes game. The competition and the need to always be getting more, buying more, earning more, and doing more can creep in and take over our lives. This can and does affect our social relationships. The phrase “keeping up with Joneses” is direct proof of how competition around money can affect how we interact with our neighbors, friends, and community members. At the same time, it’s also evidence of how we tend to measure ourselves and our efforts – against our earnings.

To cultivate a healthier relationship with money, and in turn, healthier social relationships, I suggest beginning by removing this element of competition. Work with affirmations or turn to mindset work or journal prompts to find ways to uproot this tendency. Talk openly with other people about your money. That’s a perfect segue into my next point!

2. Practice Transparency

“Our behavior around money has damaged relationships when money has been used as an instrument of control or punishment, emotional escape or manipulation, or as a replacement for love.” – Lynne Twist, The Soul of Money

Find some people who you can really trust to talk to about money. I call this process building a Money Team. In particular, it’s great to have a friend or two who you can open up to about finances.

 

Having a Money Buddy can give you a space to practice financial transparency, and get more comfortable bringing up money in your social relationships. This can be a great way to work on the feelings that come up around money in this arena. Eventually, you might find yourself feeling more comfortable sharing about your financial situation in general!

3. Create a Spiritual Connection to Your Money

“Your relationship with money can be a place where you bring your strengths and skills, your highest aspirations, and your deepest and most profound qualities.”  – Lynne Twist, The Soul of Money

The Soul of Money is definitely an excellent resource in this area. Lynne Twist writes about how money is like water, it’s a resource that’s meant to flow. She encourages us to recognize that money itself is not problematic, and that it is instead the interpretation of money that brings up so many issues.

Doing some personal work around our connections with money can be a great way to prevent it from interrupting our connections with ourselves and others. If you’d like some resources for this pursuit, I have a couple suggestions:

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This post was originally published in 2022. 

Why You Need a Money Buddy

Why You Need a Money Buddy: At Peace with Money

Who do you go to for financial advice? We don’t talk about money that much in our society, but we should! Talking about our finances, our incomes, and exchanging financial advice can bring in helpful new perspectives to our financial lives. That’s why I believe everyone needs a go-to person for financial advice or perspective.

Not unsurprisingly, I am that person for a few people in my life. When my sister and I were young adults, we had a conversation about what roles or specialties we would take on in our lives. I have always been a “numbers person,” and volunteered myself to be the financial sounding board between the two of us. My sister calls me any time she needs financial advices, another perspective, or an extra set of eyes on her finances.A few weeks ago, she asked me for my advice about buying a new car, which I wrote about here.

Why It’s Important

Having a go-to person for financial advice is crucial for a few reasons. First, using someone else as a sounding board can lend clarity or new ideas to any financial situation. You can also share tools, tips, and ideas with each other. I enjoy talking with other financial coaches about their favorite strategies, and also get some good book recommendations!

Most importantly, having someone you trust to talk about money with can make your finances less intimidating. If you hear about someone else’s financial situation, it can put yours in perspective. Having a “money-buddy” is likely to keep you more accountable to your financial goals and also help you feel more comfortable thinking about money as it becomes a more regular topic of conversation in your life.

Solopreneurs may also appreciate having someone to bounce financial ideas off of, because they can benefit from outside perspectives. When you’re running your business all by yourself, it can be easy to develop financial blind-spots. Having someone to talk to about your business finances can help you avoid that.

Find Your Person

Try approaching a trusted friend or family member with the idea of sharing financial advice with each other. Make sure it’s someone you feel comfortable with so that your conversations are solely helpful. Once you’ve found someone, figure out how you want to structure your financial mentorship. You could review Why You Need a Money Buddy: At Peace With Moneyyour finances together every month, share your financial goals and progress, start a mini financial book club, or simply plan to call on each other when you need to make financial decisions. Keep it as simple or involved as you like.

I hope that finding a go-to person for financial advice will help you make better financial decisions and reach your financial goals. Of course, if you ever need professional help, you know where to find me.


Angela

Image Sources: Thought Catalog, Tyler Nix

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