My relationship with money today is very different from the one I had when I first started earning and managing my own money.
That transformation didn’t happen because I reached a particular income level or figured out how to make perfect financial decisions. It happened gradually as I learned from my mistakes, became more aware of the beliefs influencing my decisions, and started thinking differently about what I wanted money to make possible in my life.
Early in my career, I was extremely focused on saving. I remember one particular payday when I only had one dollar available to put toward my savings goal. I could easily have decided that one dollar wasn’t worth saving and that I would make up for it with my next paycheck.
Instead, I drove to my credit union and deposited that dollar.
Financially, one dollar wasn’t going to dramatically change my future. But the action mattered to me because I was reinforcing a habit I wanted to maintain. I had made a commitment to save from every paycheck, and I wanted to keep that commitment even when the amount was small.
How my relationship with money has evolved
Over the years, my relationship with money has continued to evolve. I’ve made mistakes and learned from them. Very often, I’ve had to examine the ways scarcity thinking can influence my decisions, and I still assess this because I don’t believe changing your money mindset is something you do once and never think about again.
I’ve also learned to think beyond what money can help me accumulate and consider what it can help me create, including opportunities, choices, security, generosity, and impact.
If you want to transform your own relationship with money, I don’t think the goal should be to become someone who never worries about money or never makes another financial mistake. A healthier relationship with money is about understanding what drives your financial decisions and becoming more intentional about the beliefs, habits, and priorities you want to carry forward.
Here are seven steps that can help you do that.
What does your relationship with money actually mean?
Your relationship with money is about much more than how much you earn, how much you have saved, or whether you have debt.
It’s the combination of beliefs, emotions, expectations, habits, and behaviors that influence how you interact with money.
For example, two people could have the exact same amount of money in savings and feel completely differently about it. One may see that money as security and feel comfortable knowing it’s available. The other may constantly worry that it isn’t enough and feel afraid to spend any of it.
Your relationship with money can influence whether you avoid looking at your accounts, spend impulsively when you’re stressed, feel guilty whenever you buy something for yourself, constantly compare your finances to someone else’s, or feel afraid to invest because losing money feels unbearable.
It can also influence your career. You may hesitate to negotiate your salary, pursue an opportunity, start a business, or invest in something that could help you grow because protecting what you currently have feels safer than taking a calculated risk.
This is why I believe understanding your relationship with money is an important part of building wealth. You can learn every budgeting formula and investing term available, but you still have to understand the person making the financial decisions.
Step 1: Pay attention to what you think and feel about money
Before trying to change your relationship with money, start noticing what is already happening.
How do you feel when you check your bank account? What happens internally when you receive an unexpected bill? How do you feel when you spend money on yourself?
What thoughts come up when someone you know earns more money, buys something expensive, or reaches a financial milestone you haven’t reached yet?
How do you react when an opportunity requires you to spend money before you know exactly what the return will be?
You may notice fear, guilt, anxiety, resentment, excitement, embarrassment, or even a desire to avoid thinking about money altogether. None of those emotions automatically makes you bad with money.
What matters is whether you’re aware of how those emotions affect your decisions.
I still assess my own thinking around scarcity. Even after years of building wealth, I don’t assume that because my financial circumstances have changed, every belief or instinct I developed earlier in life automatically disappeared with them.
Sometimes a decision that looks financially responsible on the surface can actually be driven by fear. There is a difference between deciding not to spend money because something isn’t worth the cost and refusing to spend because you’re afraid there will never be enough.
Learning to recognize that difference has been an important part of transforming my own relationship with money.
Step 2: Understand where your money beliefs came from
None of us develops our relationship with money in isolation. Long before you earned your first paycheck, you were learning about money from the people and circumstances around you. Think about what money looked like in your household growing up.
Was it discussed openly or never mentioned? Was there always enough, or did money frequently feel scarce? When it came to spending, was it celebrated or criticized? Was saving considered important? Did you see people around you using money to help family members? Did money create conflict? Were wealthy people admired, distrusted, or both?
Then think beyond your immediate family. Culture, community, religion, friendships, relationships, social media, and your own financial experiences can all contribute to what you believe money means.
You may have absorbed beliefs such as, “There will never be enough,” “People like me don’t become wealthy,” “Talking about money is inappropriate,” “I have to help everyone who asks me for money,” or “If I spend money on myself, I’m being irresponsible.”
Understanding where a belief came from doesn’t mean blaming the person who taught it to you. It simply gives you the opportunity to examine whether that belief still deserves a place in your financial life.
Step 3: Decide which beliefs you want to keep and which ones you need to challenge
You don’t have to reject everything you learned about money growing up. Some of those lessons may have served you incredibly well.
But you also don’t have to continue living by a financial belief simply because you’ve carried it for a long time. This has been particularly important for me when it comes to scarcity.
Being careful with money can be a strength. Planning ahead can be a strength. Saving consistently can absolutely be a strength. But there is a point where being careful can become being afraid.
Scarcity thinking can convince you that protecting every dollar is always safer than considering what that dollar could help you create. It can cause you to turn down an opportunity simply because there is a cost attached to it, even when you have carefully evaluated the potential benefit and can afford to take the risk.
This doesn’t mean swinging to the opposite extreme and spending recklessly in the name of having an abundance mindset. I still want the numbers to make sense.
What has changed is that I increasingly ask myself whether a financial decision is being made from a thoughtful assessment of the facts or from an old fear that there won’t be enough.
That is a question worth asking throughout your financial life because your circumstances may change faster than your beliefs do.
Step 4: Decide what you want money to make possible
One of the biggest shifts in my relationship with money has been thinking beyond accumulation. Saving and investing are still incredibly important to me. Building wealth creates security and gives you options.
But I also think about impact. What can I build with the resources I have? Who can I help? Are there opportunities can I create? What work can I support? What experiences can I have with the people I love? Are there choices can money give me that I wouldn’t otherwise have?
These questions don’t require you to be wealthy. You can start thinking about the purpose of your money at any income level.
Maybe money represents the ability to leave a job that is making you miserable. Perhaps it means helping your children graduate without enormous debt, taking care of an aging parent, starting a business, traveling, giving generously, buying a home, or simply being able to handle an emergency without panic.
Once you understand what you want money to make possible, your financial goals can become more meaningful.
You’re no longer saving just because someone told you that responsible adults should save.
You’re saving because the money represents something you value.
Step 5: Embrace small opportunities instead of dismissing them
I think about that one-dollar deposit from early in my career because it reminds me that small financial actions can matter even when the immediate financial impact seems insignificant.
It would have been perfectly reasonable to look at that dollar and think, “What’s the point?” But the point wasn’t the dollar.
The point was maintaining my saving habit.
This is something I think we can easily lose sight of when we’re constantly exposed to dramatic financial numbers. You hear about someone investing thousands of dollars every month, paying off six figures of debt, or reaching a million-dollar net worth, and suddenly the $10 or $25 you can put toward your own goal feels insignificant.
It isn’t. If you can save $5, save $5. And if you can add $20 to your debt payment, add $20.
If you can increase your retirement contribution by 1%, consider doing that. And an opportunity to earn a little more money is worth your time and makes sense for your life, don’t automatically dismiss it because it isn’t going to transform your finances overnight.
Small actions won’t always stay small. More importantly, they can reinforce the financial habits that will matter when you have more money available to work with.
I don’t believe you need to wait for the perfect salary, the perfect budget, or the perfect opportunity before you start behaving in ways that support the financial life you want.
Step 6: Learn from your money mistakes without allowing them to define you
I have made financial mistakes. Anyone who manages money for long enough will.
The goal isn’t to create a financial life where you never make another decision you regret. The goal is to become better at learning from those decisions.
When something goes wrong, I think it’s much more useful to ask what happened than to immediately judge yourself.
Did you make a decision without enough information? Did emotion influence you? Or perhaps you underestimated the risk? Did you ignore something you knew wasn’t right? Or did you have a plan that simply didn’t work the way you expected? What would you do differently if you encountered the same situation again?
A mistake becomes much more expensive when you refuse to learn from it. It can also become more damaging when you turn it into an identity.
There is a significant difference between saying, “I made a bad financial decision,” and deciding, “I’m terrible with money.”
The first statement gives you something to evaluate and improve. The second can convince you that there is no point in trying.
A healthier relationship with money leaves room for mistakes, adjustments, and growth.
Step 7: Build habits that support the relationship you want
Changing what you believe about money matters, but eventually those beliefs need to show up in what you do.
If you want to become someone who saves consistently, create a system for saving.
Ready to stop avoiding your finances? Establish a regular time to review your accounts.
Is impulsive spending is creating problems? Introduce some distance between wanting something and purchasing it.
If investing feels intimidating, start educating yourself rather than allowing fear to keep you out of it indefinitely.
If you want to use your money to create impact, decide what that means to you and make room for it in your financial plan.
I also believe automation can be incredibly helpful. Automating savings, investing, or bill payments can reduce the number of decisions you have to make repeatedly and help your financial habits continue even when life gets busy.
But systems aren’t meant to put your financial life permanently on autopilot. And this is because your priorities, income, family, and goals may all change.
That’s why I believe in regularly checking in with your money and asking whether the way you’re using it still reflects what matters to you.
A healthy relationship with money does not require perfect finances
I want to make an important distinction because conversations about money mindset can sometimes imply that if you simply develop the right beliefs, your financial problems will disappear. That’s not true.
You can have a healthy relationship with money and still have a low income. You can have a healthy relationship with money and be paying off debt. And you can have a healthy relationship with money while navigating unemployment, medical expenses, caregiving responsibilities, divorce, rising living costs, or another difficult financial season.
Mindset cannot manufacture money that isn’t there. At the same time, the way you think about money can influence how you respond to the circumstances you’re facing.
Can you: look at the numbers even when they’re uncomfortable? Ask for help? Adjust your plan? Recognize when something isn’t working? Make the best decision available to you without expecting that decision to be perfect?
Those are signs of a healthier relationship with money even if your bank account isn’t currently where you want it to be.
How to tell if your relationship with money is improving
I don’t think you need to wait until you reach a particular net worth to know you’re making progress.
You may notice that you can check your accounts without immediately feeling anxious or wanting to avoid them.
You may become more intentional about what you buy instead of spending automatically. Or you might be able to say no to a purchase without feeling deprived or say yes to something you genuinely value without spending the next three days feeling guilty.
A financial mistake may still frustrate you, but it doesn’t convince you that you’ve ruined everything.
You may become more comfortable asking questions about money, negotiating your compensation, learning about investing, or admitting when you don’t understand something.
And perhaps most importantly, your financial decisions begin to reflect your priorities more often than they reflect comparison, fear, guilt, or someone else’s expectations.
That is meaningful progress.
Do you need professional help to change your relationship with money?
Sometimes changing your financial habits requires support, and the type of support you need depends on the problem you’re trying to solve.
A financial advisor or planner may help you develop a broader strategy for your money. A nonprofit credit counselor may be useful if you’re struggling with debt. And a tax professional can help with tax questions.
And sometimes the problem isn’t primarily about financial knowledge.
If your relationship with money is deeply connected to anxiety, trauma, compulsive spending, relationships, or other emotional issues, a qualified mental health professional may be better equipped to help you work through those underlying patterns.
There is nothing wrong with recognizing that a problem requires expertise you don’t have.
Part of having a healthier relationship with money is being willing to get the right information and support when you need it.
Frequently asked questions about transforming your relationship with money
What does it mean to have a healthy relationship with money?
A healthy relationship with money means you’re able to engage with your finances and make reasonably intentional decisions without allowing fear, shame, guilt, comparison, or avoidance to consistently control what you do. It doesn’t mean having perfect finances, never worrying about money, or never making mistakes.
How can I stop feeling anxious about money?
Start by identifying what specifically is causing the anxiety. Sometimes anxiety comes from uncertainty, and getting clear on your income, expenses, savings, and debt can help you identify what needs attention. If your financial anxiety is persistent, overwhelming, or affecting other areas of your life, consider seeking support from an appropriate financial or mental health professional.
Can childhood affect your relationship with money?
Absolutely. Many of your earliest beliefs about spending, saving, debt, wealth, generosity, and financial security may come from what you observed or experienced growing up. Understanding those influences can help you decide which lessons you want to carry forward and which beliefs you want to change.
Can I have a healthy relationship with money while I’m in debt?
Yes. Your financial circumstances and your relationship with money are not the same thing. You can be paying off debt while developing healthier habits, facing your finances directly, making intentional spending decisions, building savings, and learning from past choices.
How do I change negative beliefs about money?
Start by identifying the belief rather than simply trying to replace it with a positive statement. Ask where it came from, whether it is actually true, how it affects your decisions, and what evidence might challenge it. Then begin reinforcing a healthier belief through your actions. Changing a long-held belief usually happens through repeated awareness and experience rather than one motivational statement.
My relationship with money is still evolving
I don’t think transforming your relationship with money has a finish line.
Mine has changed tremendously over the years, and I expect it will continue to change as my life, responsibilities, opportunities, and priorities change.
I still think about the lessons I’ve learned from financial mistakes. And I still assess whether scarcity is influencing a decision more than it should. I also still believe in embracing small opportunities rather than assuming something isn’t worthwhile because the immediate payoff isn’t impressive.
And I continue to think more deeply about what I can create and the impact I can have with the resources I’ve worked to build.
That’s very different from believing the goal of money is simply to accumulate as much of it as possible. Your own transformation may look completely different from mine. But I would encourage you to start by paying attention.
Notice what you believe about money, where those beliefs came from, and how they’re showing up in your decisions today. Decide which ones still serve you and which ones need to change. Then start building habits that reflect the relationship with money you actually want.
And don’t dismiss the small actions.
Sometimes the financial amount isn’t the most important part of the decision; depositing one dollar is really about becoming the person who keeps showing up for her financial goals.
