6 Ways To Build a Healthy Relationship With Money

Want a better relationship with money? Treat your finances like you treat yourself. We explore psychologically tested concepts you can apply to your money relationship (and yourself!).

by Joel Fink

Healthy relationships don’t just happen. They are built and maintained. This is true not only for your relationships with people but with money too.

So, how do you build a healthy relationship with money? A good starting point is to build a good relationship with yourself.

Margarita Tartakovsky, M.S., Associate Editor at Psych Central, wrote an article entitled “6 Ways You Can Have a Healthy Relationship with Yourself.”

Let’s look at the topics she discusses in her article and apply them to six ways to improve your relationship with money.

How To Build a Healthy Relationship With Money: 6 Ways

Make the following task a part of your regular financial self-care routine:

1. Care for your needs.

Taking care of your physical needs includes things like getting enough sleep, eating nutritious meals, brushing your teeth, and exercising.

Taking care of your fiscal needs includes understanding the difference in the money you spend on your true “needs” like food, housing, childcare, healthcare, etc., from your “wants” like entertainment, restaurants, premium channels, and gourmet coffee.

2. Joy is important.

Engaging in activities that bring you joy, like taking a walk, eating chocolate, volunteering at the food bank, reading, or taking an exercise class, helps you recharge your emotional well-being.

Small purchases that bring you great joy, like buying a good book, an occasional gourmet chocolate or coffee, or buying your child a special treat, are money well spent. Set aside money in your budget for those things that bring you joy.

Similarly, giving money to causes in which you believe (within your budget), like nonprofit charities, religious organizations, medical and scientific research, or the arts, helps to remind us that money is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

3. Focus on your inner world.

Focusing on your inner world of thoughts and emotion can help you become more self-aware. Self-awareness enables you to understand what you feel and why you feel that way. Self-awareness also helps you understand your actions and reactions to various situations.

Financial self-awareness is essential as well. Knowing yourself and your financial condition is critical when you are faced with questions about changing jobs, working more or fewer hours, buying a new car, taking a vacation, or buying a house.

4. Regularly make time for yourself.

You can’t become more self-aware if you don’t set aside time for yourself. Even a few quiet minutes in the morning enjoying a cup of coffee or reading a good book or article can be beneficial to your self-awareness.

Likewise, you can’t become financially self-aware if you don’t set aside time. You need to designate a regular time (e.g., like monthly) to review your financial situation.

5. Meditate.

Meditation is a method that many people use to gain peace of mind and perspective during that time that they have set aside to focus on their inner world.

Use your regular financial review time to think about your financial situation and to set some goals, even small ones. Think about how good you will feel next month when your credit card balance goes down by that extra $100 payment that you decided to make.

6. Be your own best friend.

When you are hard on yourself for some perceived shortcoming, think about how you would treat your best friend or a close family member. The chances are that you would be supportive and forgiving. Do the same for yourself.

Be a best friend to your financial self, too. Don’t be overly critical if you stumble, but be honest with yourself. Spend time understanding your financial condition and setting goals to improve your situation.

Start Taking These Steps To a Healthy Relationship With Money

A healthy relationship with yourself, your friends, family and money requires time and effort. Improve your relationship with money and the reward is a happier, healthier and more fulfilling life for you.

Related:

• Do You Have a Relationship With Debt?
• Could Your Money Beliefs Make You Wealthy? Or Poor?
• How To Break Bad Financial Habits
• A Guide to Avoiding the High Cost of Financial Illiteracy

Reviewed September 2024

About the Author

Joel Fink is a retired CPA and financial services executive living in Dallas, Texas. He enjoys writing articles that help real people with simple ideas to manage their money and improve their lives.