It is possible for an individual to have a high financial I.Q., but if they possess a weak monetary emotional consciousness, then the odds of that individual reaching financial goals without any assistance will prove to be a constant internal struggle. What I call monetary emotional consciousness (m.e.c.), is the practice in which an individual is mentally aware of how their emotions are affecting a financial decision. The importance of a strong m.e.c. can mean the difference between someone building wealth and prosperity or remaining in a state of feeling financially “trapped” and impoverished.
Is Your Financial Intellect Just a Product of Your Environment?
Becoming aware of how your emotions affect your financial decisions will help you filter through decisions to find ones that will coincide with aiding you in reaching your financial goals. Impulsive people have poor m.e.c., they are the reason why there are items placed at the checkout lane in stores and defined as the impulse buyer. When acting on impulse, you’re essentially handing the wheel over to your emotions to steer your finances. This is a common behavior of people who think that they are “trapped” in the rat race. It may not actually be that they don’t make enough money to make a difference for their situation. It’s usually just poor financial planning accompanied by a poor m.e.c. that keeps them in the repetitive cycle, or that they have just reached their financial thinking cap.
Throughout our lives, I believe we all develop a financial thinking cap. This is our money management limit. Some people can think in terms of hundreds or thousands of dollars off the top of their head without so much as batting an eye at the figures, whereas some people wouldn’t be able to contain themselves when dealing with that much cash because their financial thinking caps out at handling tens and twenties. People with low monetary emotional consciousness typically have a financial thinking cap that coincides. This could be a product of one’s environment, because most people born in an impoverished neighborhood will usually inhibit the same financial behavior they were influenced by growing up. This is why poor people who come into possession of a large lump sum of cash (say lotto winnings) at some point or another, end up right back to the financial state they were in before. Their low financial thinking cap says to them that they have way more money than they have any knowledge of how to use in order to bring them to a new level of class. This individual will emulate whatever financial class they grew up around if they haven’t received any further education or had gained any experience from those of a higher financial class.
From a Sippy Cup to a Big Gulp
Imagine your mind is a like a liquidity container and money is poured in this container (you have money on your mind). Everybody’s container comes in different sizes. As more money is added to the container, your financial thinking cap will be reached at some point and the liquidity container will begin to overflow. This overflow is money that your mind subconsciously deems as “disposable” income. Disposable income is how we justify making purchases on things and stuff that are considered less than practical or desirable unnecessary accessories. So what if someone has a strong m.e.c. but has a low financial thinking cap? You get a middle class citizen, who’s concerned with “keeping up with the Joneses”.
Increasing your monetary emotional consciousness will only aid you in deciphering whether or not a purchase/investment is based on emotion or rational thought, but if you have reached your financial thinking cap and your liquidity container is overflowing, you may see no issue feeding into those emotions, especially if you have no aspirations to reach a higher financial class. The only way to increase the size of your “liquidity container” and raise your financial thinking cap is to further your education in finance and investing. Those who belong to a class of extremely wealthy have financial thinking caps of epic proportion, and an extremely disciplined monetary emotional consciousness. You may see someone ride in on the private helicopter and think to yourself “that’s a waste of money”, because to you, thinking about the amount of money required to have that kind of transportation is beyond the realm of possibility for your financial thinking cap to comprehend. To put things in perspective, people in mega poverty, who commonly think in terms of ones and fives or less, would probably think the same thing about someone who rides around in a suv. To the wealthy individual that travels via helicopter, it’s just another product of their “disposable income” that overflowed from their much larger “liquidity container”, which is evidence of a much higher financial thinking cap, but the m.e.c. could be debatable.
You aren’t the Rat, You’re the Trap
The point to all of this is that if you have a financial goal you would like to reach, but you are having a lot of difficulty visualizing the reasoning behind what’s holding you back from getting to that next level, start by evaluating the strength of your monetary emotional consciousness. How many times a day, week, month do you make purchases based solely on emotion, regardless of how it may affect the financial goals you desire to reach? If you are sitting here reading this and are able to come up with a list of emotional purchases you made this past month that made you feel good at the time but produced no result towards reaching your true financial goals, then you shouldn’t be surprised as to why you are still in the rat race, and probably living paycheck to paycheck. If you want change, then you are going to have to make some changes in yourself. You’ve probably heard someone say that before, but this is how it’s done for financial changes.
How to Make the Transformation!
First you want to work on strengthening your monetary emotional consciousness, by creating a financial plan for your “disposable income” and practice the discipline to follow through with that plan. If your goal is to reach a new financial class and get out of the “trap”, then you need to increase your financial thinking cap, and learn how to allocate/invest larger lumps sums of cash to reach financial goals. You will increase the size of your mental “liquidity container”, by knowing what options are available for larger lump sums of cash and how to turn those options into an opportunity to help you reach your goals. You will know when you have successfully increased your financial thinking cap, because you will begin to feel like you never have any “disposable income”, that is just part of the growing pains of reaching a new cap level. The moment your income has caught up with your financial thinking cap, is when you will begin to feel like you have money to blow again, but that’s only if your monetary emotional consciousness is high enough to get you to that point. If you raise your financial thinking cap to a comprehension level of thousands to tens of thousands but you have a low monetary emotional consciousness, then you may find yourself impulsively spending five hundred to five thousand here or there, because you may have a “glass is half full or empty” demeanor towards reaching your long term goals. If you continue to exercise your m.e.c. your discipline will strengthen and you should be able to follow your plan to reach your financial goals.
Becoming aware of how your emotions affect your financial decisions will help you filter through decisions to find ones that will coincide with aiding you in reaching your financial goals. Impulsive people have poor m.e.c., they are the reason why there are items placed at the checkout lane in stores and defined as the impulse buyer. When acting on impulse, you’re essentially handing the wheel over to your emotions to steer your finances. This is a common behavior of people who think that they are “trapped” in the rat race. It may not actually be that they don’t make enough money to make a difference for their situation. It’s usually just poor financial planning accompanied by a poor m.e.c. that keeps them in the repetitive cycle, or that they have just reached their financial thinking cap.
Throughout our lives, I believe we all develop a financial thinking cap. This is our money management limit. Some people can think in terms of hundreds or thousands of dollars off the top of their head without so much as batting an eye at the figures, whereas some people wouldn’t be able to contain themselves when dealing with that much cash because their financial thinking caps out at handling tens and twenties. People with low monetary emotional consciousness typically have a financial thinking cap that coincides. This could be a product of one’s environment, because most people born in an impoverished neighborhood will usually inhibit the same financial behavior they were influenced by growing up. This is why poor people who come into possession of a large lump sum of cash (say lotto winnings) at some point or another, end up right back to the financial state they were in before. Their low financial thinking cap says to them that they have way more money than they have any knowledge of how to use in order to bring them to a new level of class. This individual will emulate whatever financial class they grew up around if they haven’t received any further education or had gained any experience from those of a higher financial class.
From a Sippy Cup to a Big Gulp
Imagine your mind is a like a liquidity container and money is poured in this container (you have money on your mind). Everybody’s container comes in different sizes. As more money is added to the container, your financial thinking cap will be reached at some point and the liquidity container will begin to overflow. This overflow is money that your mind subconsciously deems as “disposable” income. Disposable income is how we justify making purchases on things and stuff that are considered less than practical or desirable unnecessary accessories. So what if someone has a strong m.e.c. but has a low financial thinking cap? You get a middle class citizen, who’s concerned with “keeping up with the Joneses”.
Increasing your monetary emotional consciousness will only aid you in deciphering whether or not a purchase/investment is based on emotion or rational thought, but if you have reached your financial thinking cap and your liquidity container is overflowing, you may see no issue feeding into those emotions, especially if you have no aspirations to reach a higher financial class. The only way to increase the size of your “liquidity container” and raise your financial thinking cap is to further your education in finance and investing. Those who belong to a class of extremely wealthy have financial thinking caps of epic proportion, and an extremely disciplined monetary emotional consciousness. You may see someone ride in on the private helicopter and think to yourself “that’s a waste of money”, because to you, thinking about the amount of money required to have that kind of transportation is beyond the realm of possibility for your financial thinking cap to comprehend. To put things in perspective, people in mega poverty, who commonly think in terms of ones and fives or less, would probably think the same thing about someone who rides around in a suv. To the wealthy individual that travels via helicopter, it’s just another product of their “disposable income” that overflowed from their much larger “liquidity container”, which is evidence of a much higher financial thinking cap, but the m.e.c. could be debatable.
You aren’t the Rat, You’re the Trap
The point to all of this is that if you have a financial goal you would like to reach, but you are having a lot of difficulty visualizing the reasoning behind what’s holding you back from getting to that next level, start by evaluating the strength of your monetary emotional consciousness. How many times a day, week, month do you make purchases based solely on emotion, regardless of how it may affect the financial goals you desire to reach? If you are sitting here reading this and are able to come up with a list of emotional purchases you made this past month that made you feel good at the time but produced no result towards reaching your true financial goals, then you shouldn’t be surprised as to why you are still in the rat race, and probably living paycheck to paycheck. If you want change, then you are going to have to make some changes in yourself. You’ve probably heard someone say that before, but this is how it’s done for financial changes.
How to Make the Transformation!
First you want to work on strengthening your monetary emotional consciousness, by creating a financial plan for your “disposable income” and practice the discipline to follow through with that plan. If your goal is to reach a new financial class and get out of the “trap”, then you need to increase your financial thinking cap, and learn how to allocate/invest larger lumps sums of cash to reach financial goals. You will increase the size of your mental “liquidity container”, by knowing what options are available for larger lump sums of cash and how to turn those options into an opportunity to help you reach your goals. You will know when you have successfully increased your financial thinking cap, because you will begin to feel like you never have any “disposable income”, that is just part of the growing pains of reaching a new cap level. The moment your income has caught up with your financial thinking cap, is when you will begin to feel like you have money to blow again, but that’s only if your monetary emotional consciousness is high enough to get you to that point. If you raise your financial thinking cap to a comprehension level of thousands to tens of thousands but you have a low monetary emotional consciousness, then you may find yourself impulsively spending five hundred to five thousand here or there, because you may have a “glass is half full or empty” demeanor towards reaching your long term goals. If you continue to exercise your m.e.c. your discipline will strengthen and you should be able to follow your plan to reach your financial goals.
