What Is Your Relationship With Money? Do You Even Have One?

What is your definition of money? How high can you aim? At which financial mark are you exhausting the list of your big goals? How does it effect your giving and receiving perception?

Every time I walk into a finance-related course for the first time in the academic term and stand in front of eager, analytical, and often frustrated students, I feel a sensation rising in the pit of my stomach. I am vulnerable and aware. I am about to pivot their psyches into unchartered waters of financial sea. I have no way of knowing whether they will survive. I take full responsibility for the journey, but the dash of tension is always there. I know some won’t make the turn inward.

The students will ask about investments, markets, calculations, risk analysis, financial players, funding, interest rates, and tips on how to avoid mundane data entry under a microscopic accounting lens. Some will share all acquired knowledge about the new developments in the fintech and crypto world. It’s remarkable how much information and education is available outside of the standard educational environment. Others will tune out before the class will begin because they feel intimidated by the subject itself. It’s an interesting challenge to pull them out of their limbo state.

All of the students have one thing in common, though. Finance and accounting subjects have very little kinesthetic connections with actual money in their pockets. The theory and knowledge are supposed to make you rich on their own. I was brainwashed the same way: I was an accounting and finance student in my first two degrees and afterward spent over twelve years consulting on these matters. It took me another few years to acknowledge my personal attitude toward money and to accept the fact that I haven’t held cash in my hand for almost a decade and no theories can make money a physical matter.

I will have to shift students’ focus to the romance between debits and credits, the correlation between human shock, anxiety, depression, and their proverbial twins in the markets, and all underground and cloud activity that happens as a result of it. I will have to explain the elusiveness of financial projections for investors and banks and the utilization of the financial statements as a “medical history” of the organization. I will mention the psychological twists that unravel in our brains by plastic and electronic banking activity. But before all of this, we will have to define the relationship with money and how it can be improved, layering it in the subsequent parts with the handful of suggested conditions that may actually make them rich.

“What is your dream?” I ask the students in a round of introductions. A lot of them want to be financially stable, successful, and happy. Very few can expand on what it really means for them.

Next, I start a brief intro crash course on the money. It consists of two exercises and carries the traces of perspiration and worry about my unorthodox approach from my academic superiors, shall the conservative students complain about the relevance of coaching in a finance class.

In the first exercise, I ask one of the students to give me a twenty-euro bill. Most of them don’t have any cash in the wallets. Those that do are cautious and look at me with suspicion trying to avoid direct eye contact. They just met me. They have no idea whether I will run away with it or tear it apart. Logically, I have a status and a reputation to lose, and they can even take me to court if I don’t return it. But logic is not always present in our dealings with money. We tend to get emotional about it at the moment. Eventually, someone negotiates for a smaller bill and puts it in my hand. It is mesmerizing to watch how much mental and physical effort it takes them to release it. A lot of them don’t earn any money yet, they live on their parent’s allowances. I am not sure if this makes the sharing process easier or harder for them.

Next, I ask the permission of the giver to transfer the bill to someone else in the same class. There is no proof that the fellow student will return the money. The giver hides perspiration and worry and reminds me a tad of my academic superiors in their natural and valid process of embracing uncertainty. More often than not, the giver allows the transaction. In this case, I either ask for a volunteer who wants to take the money or put the money in front of someone randomly.

The receiver takes the time to accept the bill, hiding a shadow of anxiety. They didn’t do anything spectacular to get it. Moreover, everyone is watching diligently what their next step will be. These two factors can turn any gift into a shaming object of resistance. Even if the receiver takes the money, they often sit with it in their hand not sure what to do or expect next. They treat money as a temporary matter.

“This is all you need to know about how investors and entrepreneurs feel when the transaction shifts from the talks to the actions,” I conclude.

For the second exercise, I invite the students to a self-reflection in a series of questions.

· What is your definition of money in ONE word?

· How would you describe your relationship with money in THREE words?

· On a scale of 1 to 10, how do you rate your relationship with money? Why?

· If you had 100 euros today, what would you do with it?

· If you had 1.000 euros today, what would you do with it?

· If you had 10.000 euros today, what would you do with it?

· If you had 100.000 euros today, what would you do with it?

· If you had 1.000.000 euros today, what would you do with it?

· If you had 100.000.000 euros today, what would you do with it?

· What is your real dream?

· How is your real dream different from the dream which you mentioned at the beginning of the class? What changed?

The purpose of the first three questions is to simplify the meaning of money and to acknowledge the connection with it. Most of us are not taught that we have a relationship with money and that we control the way it evolves. Think of siblings. When we are little, we just have siblings and interactions with them. It’s part of our daily existence, but there is little awareness, associated with it. It is not until much later in our lives that we realize that we have a “relationship” with them and this relationship can be modified and enhanced.

The purpose of the next six questions is to see at which point our brain hits the financial ceiling. How high can we aim? At which financial mark are we exhausting the list of our big goals? We all have a mental financial ceiling and until we can tie it with the specific objective, the ceiling will loom over our heads.

The last two questions are meant to test the validity of our dreams. If anything was financially possible, would we retain the original dreams or re-frame them? Many students stall at these two questions because they realize that their dreams were too vague and driven by the desire for stability for themselves and their families. They were never taught to dream for real.

The crash course in money is over. I ask for student reflection. Half of the group shares skepticism. Another half is silent. Something has shifted for them. They can’t pinpoint it other than the sensation in the pit of their stomachs.

Toward the end, a student usually asks about my definition of money.

“In one word, it’s an instrument,” I say. “It’s an energetic instrument to build my dreams.”

“Why didn’t you ask about a billion euros?” Someone else asks.

“I am not there yet. One hundred million euros is my financial ceiling,” I reply with a smile.