Money avoidance
The belief that money is bad, that rich people are greedy, or that one doesn’t deserve money. Money avoiders may refuse to look at accounts, give money away, underspend on necessities or undercut their own earnings.
What drives it
Keeping money at a distance protects a moral self-image (‘I’m not one of those people’) and spares the anxiety of dealing with it. In the 2011 study people who did not know their own net worth scored highest, which makes not knowing a useful clue.
How it shows
Work
Doesn’t ask for a raise, undercharges clients, leaves expense claims unsubmitted for months, feels uneasy around the sales team or anyone who talks openly about targets. May turn down a promotion because it ‘isn’t about the money’.
Relationships
Hands all the finances to a partner and doesn’t want to know, lends money they can’t spare, sneers at friends who buy nice things, or goes silent when a windfall comes in and then spends it fast.
Self
Notice the urge to close the banking app, the letters left unopened on the side, and the small relief when money leaves your hands.
What tells it apart
Ostrich effect: The ostrich effect is not looking at bad financial news, which most people do sometimes. Money avoidance is more likely when the person avoids money even when the news is good, and holds a belief that money itself is tainted.
Experiential avoidance: Experiential avoidance is avoiding any unwanted feeling. Money avoidance may be the issue when the avoidance is specific to money and comes with a moral view about wealth.
Underearning: Underearning describes the outcome, earning below what one needs or could. Money avoidance is one belief that may produce it, alongside low confidence, caring duties or a tight job market.
A test
Ask what they think of people who have a lot of money and whether they know roughly what they have now. Contempt for wealth plus not knowing may point to money avoidance.
Questions to carry
- When the person last received an unexpected sum, how long did it stay in their account, and where did it go?
- What would I have to admit about myself if I had more money than the people I grew up with?
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.
- Study: Money Beliefs and Financial Behaviors: Development of the Klontz Money Script Inventory, Bradley Klontz, Sonya Britt, Jennifer Mentzer and Ted Klontz, Journal of Financial Therapy, 2011. The paper behind the four money scripts. 422 people answered an online survey on 72 beliefs. Avoidance, worship and status went with lower income or net worth. The sample was mostly white, married and highly educated, and the authors say it can’t show which came first. Free to read.
How strong the research is
clinical. Measured as a subscale of the Klontz Money Script Inventory, where it went with lower or unknown income and net worth and, in a 2012 follow-up, predicted compulsive buying, hoarding, workaholism and financial denial. All the data were cross-sectional self-report from convenience samples, so whether avoidance lowers income or low income breeds avoidance is unknown.
Where it comes from
Brad Klontz and Ted Klontz, Mind Over Money, 2009. Klontz, Britt, Mentzer and Klontz, 2011