Money worship
The belief that more money would solve one’s problems and bring lasting happiness, paired with a sense that there will never be enough. The target number keeps moving as income rises.
What drives it
It turns every unhappiness into a money problem with a money solution, which is easier to face than a lonely marriage or work that bores you. Useful for identification because the person talks about the number that will fix it, and the number keeps changing.
How it shows
Work
Takes the higher-paid job regardless of hours or fit, works every weekend for the bonus, talks about ‘once I hit X’. After a raise, a few weeks of relief, then a new target.
Relationships
Promises the family time together after the next deal, gives gifts in place of time, or resents a partner for not earning more. May carry card debt while believing a windfall will clear it.
Self
Notice the fantasy you run when tired or low: the lottery win, the exit, the sum that would let you stop. Notice what you think would change.
What tells it apart
Status motive: The status motive is about rank among people. Money worship is about money as the solution, and may show in someone who doesn’t care who sees what they have.
Hedonic adaptation: Hedonic adaptation is the fading of pleasure from any gain, which happens to everyone. Money worship is more likely when the person keeps believing the next sum will be different despite the fading.
Money and happiness: Money and happiness is the research on what income does for wellbeing. Money worship is a personal belief that may run far ahead of what that research shows.
A test
Ask what amount would be enough and what would change once they had it, then ask what they said the last time their income rose. A moving target and vague changes may point to money worship.
Questions to carry
- Asked what would change with the next pay rise, what does the person name, and is it something money could buy?
- What number did I think would be enough five years ago, and what did I do when I reached it?
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. In the Klontz studies money worship went with lower income, carrying credit card debt, and higher scores for compulsive buying, hoarding, workaholism and financial dependence, all cross-sectional. Killingsworth (2021) found that equating money with success was linked to lower day-to-day wellbeing at every income level, while valuing money in general was not.
Where it comes from
Brad Klontz and Ted Klontz, Mind Over Money, 2009. Klontz, Britt, Mentzer and Klontz, 2011