Jagoinvestor
June 15, 2011
What is your Money Personality ?
Do you know what your money personality is? Now you must be thinking what is the meaning of “Money Personality”? Let me give you a hint! . Ajay earns a lot of money, but his financial life is not that great, the main reason is that he is too conservative with his investments and all his money lies in Fixed Deposits and Cash in the Bank, that’s all. This happens due to his internal design of being a “Saver”. His life is all about saving and only saving and there comes his money personality. Let’s explore more on this.
Money Personality
We have identified that each one of us have a money personality which we develop during our life and all our actions are driven by our money personality, even our financial life is driven by it and the product we choose, the way we look at each and every aspect is result of what money personality we have. Over the last few years, when we interacted with dozens of clients and thousands of readers like you, we identified that each one of us can be categorised in following money personalities which we will discuss today.
- Spenders
- Savers
- Avoiders
- Saints
Watch the following video which Me and Nandish has recoreded for you all .
1. Spenders
The first money personality is “Spenders”. People who fall in this category have an attitude that “Life happens now”. They will spend their money all over which makes them feel that they are “living” the life. They will buy expensive gadgets, eat out at expensive places and will make sure that they are not at all compromising on enjoyment. The behaviour also affects their financial life; their savings are not as much as it can be because most of the leftover money at the end of the month is saved. The simple rule of Savings = Income – Expenses is applicable for these people. Most of these people dont have much left in their bank account by the end of the month and they wonder “Where does it all go? ” .
2. Savers
The next personality is that of the “Savers”. These people believe that life is all about saving and for being prepared for the future. They are not exactly misers, but they appear like misers to others. Whatever can save money for them looks attractive to them. This behaviour also enters their financial life and they invest in anything which claims to save money to them. You can also attach the word “Safety” with these people. They invest in Fixed Deposits , Reccuring deposits , bonds , debentures and other investments which are safe avenues. These people like to buy stuff if it claims to save money to them .
3. Avoiders
The third and an interesting category are of “Avoiders”. These people are great avoiders, when it comes to taking actions, they will not spend or save, and instead they will just avoid the situation and find all the reasons in life for delaying things and avoiding it. They read, talk and learn about everything, but don’t apply it to their life in any way. I personally think that a lot of us are like that. There are even many readers here who are learning things from months/years, but still they have not done anything with their learnings, they just read and feel happy that they know something good, but where is the action?
4. Saints
The last category is really a different one and often forgotten, that is of “Saints”. A person who belongs to this category feels that money is an unimportant thing in life. His beliefs would be “Money is not important thing in life”, “More money is more trouble”, “Life is all about being Happy and content” and “You just need bare minimum and satisfaction to lead a happy life”. While that all is fine, these people over react and don’t give much importance to money in life. Most of the people who talk like this are those who really can’t make a lot of money and deep down they themselves are worrying for money, but they make sure they show themselves as not-interested-in-money kind of individuals.
Conclusion
So which money personality is better than the other and how to make change in your personality? First thing is that there is nothing bad or good about having one of these money personalities. These personalities get into us because of various reasons in life and it’s not that easy to change them. What’s important is that you need to be aware about your personality and how it’s affecting your financial life. Try to find out how your money personality can help in having a financial life which you desire.
What do you think about these personalities and which one are you ?
“they just read and feel happy that they know something good (and do nothing about it)”
hahaha! that’s precisely me!
So what you are going to do about it ?
Just took the first step. Contacted Nandish. 🙂
Great
Hi Manish,
I fall into savers category…i found it interesting as i could relate it wid my self..sometimes it hapns that u try to save ur money from unnecesary expenses n ppl think dat u r miser.
Kshamangi
Yup, saving money on places which you feel is not being miser 🙂 . everyone does that , I do that 🙂
Hi Manish,
Personally I have moved through different stages, except Saint where I don’t think I will reach soon.
Thanks for
Cheers
Atul
Atul
Thats good to know , if you want to reach Saint , become a real Saint and not the one who just show themselves as Saint
Manish
I also felt like these are stages in personal finance.
Every person must be going through these phases in the order of
Spenders -> Avoiders -> Savers -> Saints
🙂
Hi Manish,
I would like to translate some of your posts and display on my blog which I feel would cascade the knowledge, learning and benefit more people.
Revert to me with your comments.
Regards….Sriram
Sri
Which language is it ? some of the websites have already requested that , I am still thinking of that .
manish
Manish / Nandish,
Good post.
I come under “Savers” category.
Rakesh
Rakesh
thanks , how did you like the video which we did ?
Manish
Each category can have atleast 2-3 sub categories..
Savers can be subdivided into Savers/Investors. Investors can be devided into Beginners, Masters, High Rich etc…
Spenders ( Spenders, Leverages )
Think about this : You Dont alter what you know in your financial life, you alter your financial life the way you know it. Try it out and see the difference .
can you elaborate with an example ? Not sure what is the context
knowing about these personalities is not a BIG deal,what will actually alter things is the way you know about YOUR personality. Many people realize very late in their financial life who was the driver of their financial life. We can name many personalities with various combinations and permutation, but the point is not in naming categories the real thing is individual finding ones personality and than work on it for results.Hope I am clear to you MG
me , you and Ambani falls in Savers category. unless you have some more category in Saver , you don’t even have an option to work toward anything
Question here is , Mr X is Saver and he invest 100% of his savings in FD and PostOffice. Mr Y is also Save and he invest 50% of his savings in MF/Stocks/Real Estate. Mr Z is also a Save and he leverages his Savings+Venture Capital Fund/Bank Loan to build Companies. If I am Y and I want to become Z, i need a reference or category or a model….
firstly I am not a saver, I dont know about ambani also.
To have more you need to BE More, to be Z you need to make a personal internal commitment which will help you choose the right reference, category and model.
One incident in your life and you change, one insight you see in any blog or book and you are not the same person.
Manish insists me to take out time and reply you. We like your commitment to getting answers and going deep into the matter
enjoy , have a great financial life
nandish
An interesting video “Bachat, Niesh and Badhat” by IDFC Mutual fund which shows glimpses of different kind of money personality-Saver, Spender and Investor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu-W5Mdj93I&feature=related
Bemoneyaware
Thanks for the small film link .
Manish
Hello,
An interesting article which made me think yes we really do have a money personality! Reminded me of the book Linda Goodman’s Zodiac Signs book when we tried to see if we have the traits mentioned according to our Zodiac sign. so spent time in finding where do I fit in. As pointed out the investor category seems to be missing 🙁
On googling found similar posts, which classifies money personality into 5 categories. Mentioning one which also ties up money personality with investment styles. As per the article there are 5 different money personalities:
-Trendy spenders, Great shoppers, Savers, Wise Investors and Debtors(Ref:
http://www.rediff.com/getahead/slide-show/slide-show-1-money-find-out-your-money-personality/20110419.htm)
Bemoneyaware
Thanks for the link , there are different way of categorising people , we used our own way , Saint is something we came up with .
Manish
Grrrr.. Li’l disappointed. Since you used the sentence “each one of us can be categorised in following money personalities which we will discuss today” i expected a little wider categorization. I believe there are more types. Don’t you think, you have left out almost all of the more positive attribute types of the ‘Money Personality’ ?
I can understand if the post if meant to elicit more positive responses from your readers having few of the negative attributes 🙂
Regards
Raja
Raja
There can be different way of categorisation , We might not have used the categories which you might have in mind, but this is how we would like to define the money personalities . Can you suggest some of them ?
Also dont you find yourself in one of the categories which we mentioned or a mix of them ?
Manish
Ya, my gut feel is you have missed lot of positive money personality types. I mean, i seen lot of people around me who have done really well for themselves monetarily with some very positive attitude towards money. They may not have done it by investing in equities or mf’s but they have done it in their own way’s and within their knowledge limitations. I think such doers will probably not be falling into any of these above mentioned categories 🙂
Even, as per my judgement, i do not see myself falling into any of these categories
Regards
Raja
Manish,
After reading your the topic “Simplest Money Management System” in your blog, no one can be in the above categories..I have a Question..In which category, investers will come..Because, pesons like me are not saving much but investing in huge..Will i come in Saver side??
TS Ashok
When we “savers” , we mean people who are always looking at “saving money” , not exactly investing it. Dont look it from investing point of view. Think about going to market , what you do after getting salary . What is your focus … Spending it on various things for enjoyment (like going for expensive restaurent , movies and parties and buying things for yourself) . Or not spending it and keeping it at bank or investing it for future .
Manish
Fine but what about those people who are investors, who are smart with money?
Swapnil
Thats a different way of looking at it , The above categorzation was not from investment point of view , it was a general categorization if you look at 🙂 . Dint you find yourself in one of those categories ?
Manish
Topic is good.
An improved interpretation can be seeing these 4 as traits of personality and not personality per say. Now in financil life, these traits can be represented by four verticies of a square. (Mathematically there can be many other traits and all of them can be denoted as vertices of a polygon).
Now idea is to identify where one lies(getting sensitised to the fact) and take a conscious decision as to stay there are move in a desired direction. When one gets sensitised to the fact, it will be easier to move, if he desires stronglt. Also identification of this initial position will help as a refernce to check the progress in movement(provided one wants and tries to move).
Interesting insight all the same. Thanks Manish and Nandish.
Stop stereotyping people. 🙂
Srinivas
Yes ,these are triats of personality , Overall one has to just fit himself as one of those .
Manish