Financial dependence
Reliance on money one didn’t earn, from parents, a partner, an inheritance or a trust, that comes with fear of being cut off, resentment of the giver and a loss of drive. Being supported is not the problem: the fear, resentment and stalling are.
What drives it
The arrangement removes the risk of failing on one’s own, and keeps the giver close. For identification, the giveaway is the mix of comfort and resentment: the person depends on the money and dislikes the hand it comes from.
How it shows
Work
Jobs started and dropped when they get hard, ambitions talked about but never tested, earnings that cover little of how they live, and embarrassment when colleagues talk about rent or mortgages.
Relationships
Where to live, who to marry or what to study decided with one eye on the giver’s approval, anger at a parent who attaches conditions, a partner who resents the in-laws’ say, and panic when a payment is late.
Self
Your stomach drops when the transfer is late, you resent the person paying for your life, and you are not sure what you could earn on your own.
What tells it apart
Dependence/incompetence schema: The dependence schema is a belief that one can’t cope with daily life without help. Financial dependence may sit in a capable person whose money comes from someone else and who fears losing it.
Economic abuse: If a partner created the dependence on purpose, by stopping them working, taking wages or blocking accounts, it is more likely economic abuse than financial dependence.
Financial enabling: Dependence is the receiving side of enabling. Look at both: the giver who can’t say no and the receiver who can’t stop asking.
A test
Ask what they would do if the money stopped next month, and how they feel about the person who sends it. Fear plus resentment plus little movement towards earning may be financial dependence rather than ordinary support.
Questions to carry
- When the money arrives each month, what does the person say about the one who sends it?
- What would I try if I knew the money would stop in a year?
Go deeper
- Read: Mind over Money, Brad Klontz and Ted Klontz, 2009. Written for readers by a father and son who work in financial psychology. It sets out the money scripts and the money disorders they lead to, among them money avoidance, financial infidelity, enabling and dependence.
- Listen: The Money Scripts That Are Holding Back Your Financial Future, The Art of Manliness podcast, episode 529, 2019. Brad Klontz on how money scripts form in childhood, on money avoidance and money worship, on the pull back to the class you grew up in, and on secrecy, enabling and dependence in families. Free to play, with a full transcript.
How strong the research is
clinical. A Klontz money disorder measured as a subscale of the Klontz Money Behavior Inventory (2012), the least internally consistent of its eight scales, from a narrow convenience sample. Research on parental support shows trade-offs rather than plain harm: money from parents during college was linked to lower grades but higher graduation rates (Hamilton, 2013).
Where it comes from
Brad Klontz, Rick Kahler and Ted Klontz, 2008 (Facilitating Financial Health). Klontz, Britt, Archuleta and Klontz, 2012 (Klontz Money Behavior Inventory).