Painless Financial Advice for People Who Hate Dealing With Money
How “money avoiders” can overcome their aversion
Let’s say an old friend comes to town and is dying to visit some new cool restaurant. You check out the menu ahead of time and see that plates start at $20. You have exactly $7.43 in your bank account but say yes anyway. You know you’ve blown your budget, but you don’t want to know how bad it is, so you avoid looking at your online transactions for a while. If you can’t see the problem, it’s almost like it doesn’t exist, right?
Or maybe you can relate to a different scenario: You’ve been at your job for five years, your boss loves you, but you’ve never received a raise. Not once. You know you should research salary information for your industry and initiate the conversation, but you really don’t feel like dealing with all that. You’re a hard worker, you tell yourself, and that’s what really matters. Besides, you get along fine on your current salary.
Both of these are examples of classic money avoidance. According to financial psychologist Brad Klontz, it’s one of the four scripts, or behavioral patterns, most of us follow when it comes to money. (The others are vigilance, status, and worship.) On his website, Klontz explains, “Money avoidance can be associated with trying to not think about money…
