Understanding past financial beliefs is the key to changing behaviors.
Charles Dickens’s celebrated fable can teach us a lot about money – specifically how to change our views on how we deal with it. Our beliefs tend to run deep, and come from the way we were raised, the culture we grew up in, social conventions, and our own personal experiences.
The holiday season is stressful, and our relationship with money is especially exacerbated during this time. How appropriate, then, that what Dickens unveils is a powerful process for financial transformation.
If you find yourself repeating negative phrases in your mind when it comes to money, you certainly aren’t alone. Does the ghost of your financial past tell you the following?
- Avoid money – talking about it, thinking about it, managing it.
- You’ll never have enough saved for retirement.
- You’re not smart when it comes to money.
A negative money mindset can spiral into bad financial decisions and curtail the prospect of positive change.
The first and most important step toward transformation is a personal realization that it is you who wants to change. Scrooge takes to heart Marley’s warning to change his ways, and opens himself up to improving. Meaningful and sustainable change comes only from within.
Once you take that difficult, but transformational journey into the past, you are ready to see reality with new clarity. You can replace limiting beliefs with accurate information. This is the time to focus on learning about budgeting, debt reduction, investments and other financial skills. Scrooge’s guide, the Ghost of Christmas Present, helped him negotiate his current situation. Our real-world guides may include financial planners, accountants, attorneys, and educational resources. There’s no need to understand every single topic or make radical shifts. The journey begins with a commitment to invest in yourself, and for others to better comprehend your financial state of affairs.
The vision the Ghost of Christmas Future unveiled to Scrooge, showed him that the trajectory of his current path led to an eventual failure. The lesson we can glean from Scrooge’s vision is, with a different perspective and a shift to a positive mindset, you also can take action towards the financially confident life you deserve.
Many try to shortcut the transformation process. Sadly, without first taking the critical steps of viewing the past and learning in the present, you often lose heart. This is why resolutions for financial change tend to fail, not because the goal is bad or unattainable, but because you are unprepared to go into action.
At Biondo Investment Advisors, we want to understand your apprehensions around investing and risk, to keep you motivated on your financial journey. Let go of past beliefs and behaviors, and rely on your wealth advisor as your guide.
The end-product of Scrooge’s difficult night was a transformed person, full of joy, generosity, and spirit. He experienced this change because he had the courage and conviction to start the process. You can begin to create a future that is consciously and deliberately planned. You can take control of your money rather than your money controlling you. Give yourself the gift of a financial transformation.
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