supporting the values that you want to support.
So how do we gain these values?
How do they become part of us?
Well really they evolve over time.
Probably the first place that we are influenced is with our family and
as we're growing up.
But then they can change as we meet new people, we make new friends,
our friends also have an influence on our value.
If you think about it, the things around us in our environment like our own
society, maybe our spiritual beliefs, these also come into play with our values.
And then of course, media, how could we forget media in today's world?
We're always hearing things on different forms of media and
often it's in advertising.
Telling us, typically to buy, buy, buy.
These things all come into play and
start to influence our values and perhaps our financial decisions.
So if you think about it, as we mature and we have more practice in spending and
saving and handling money, we develop habits and
attitudes about finances and these things affect our decision.
Sometimes these habits and attitudes, actually they're good, and
they help us achieve our goals and they're very efficient, and
other times they might hold us back.
So it's good to be conscious of these habits and attitudes and
to think about them at the conscious level and not just react.
Let me give you an example of this.
Let's say that your attitude, or somebody you know,
might be that they think that taking on debt is really a very bad thing.
Maybe it's even almost to the point it's extreme or it's evil.
So when an opportunity comes to take on debt, to maybe take a loan of some type,
that person's first reaction would be no, I don't want that, I'm not doing that.
Well, that could be good in a lot of situations.
It probably means that somebody who's avoiding debt doesn't have a lot of credit
card debt and
they're not going to be paying out a lot in interest fees over their lifetime.
So that's an advantage to it.
But it could also be a disadvantage in other situations.
If you think about it, maybe that person thinks they would like to start their
own business, or go back to school and get more education.
But that would require a lump sum of money and involve taking on debt.
If that person just reacts and uses their developed habits and
attitudes without thinking it through,
that attitude of avoiding debt could be a negative in that situation.
Maybe taking on that debt's a good idea, maybe not, but thinking about it and
thinking through it is probably a good idea.
So, much research and discussion has taken place over time about this idea of habits
and attitudes and how they affect our financial decision making.
And to help people really think about this,
people start talking about money personalities.
And they categorize these different personalities so
to help us kind of think what are these personalities like?
Is this something that I recognize?
So we're going to talk about those personality types today and
we're going to use some categories that have been developed by Olivia Mellan,
who's a really well-known professional who works in the area of money and
relationships and helps people with conflicts that come up or
might come up because of money personalities.
So the money personalities we're going to move on to here, they're titled to show
the extreme and typically undesirable qualities of these money personalities.
And this is really done to help us understand how these attitudes could
negatively affect someone or people that they're involved with,
people that they care about and interact.
But remember, most people aren't one of these extremes,
we're usually a mix of money personalities.
But this is just used as a way to help us understand a bit and to think about it.
So let's take a look at what some of these money personalities might look like.