Rapid City financial advisor Rick Kahler: Part two on navigating your journey to financial wellbeing.
Continuing last week’s exploration of characteristics that define financial wellbeing, this week we’ll look at eight positive C’s and their negative counterparts. Again, I suggest considering where you see yourself along the spectrum between each pair.
1. Calm/Turbulence. Calm allows you to navigate the ebbs and flows of monetary concerns without being overwhelmed by anxiety. It often comes with knowing you have enough to comfortably cover your basic needs, and calm can also serve you well during times of financial uncertainty. Turbulence (exemplified by the public domain image of a stock exchange trading floor above, posted in wikimedia commons) is an internal financial system filled with constant anxiety and perpetual stress, regardless of the external realities of your net worth or financial security.
2. Clarity/Ambiguity. Clarity includes knowing your future needs—including an awareness that life and financial blows can be uncertain—and acting with foresight to build financial and emotional resources to help you meet those needs. Ambiguity is a lack of awareness of present and future financial realities, a sense of uncertainty that leaves you navigating financial events with no clear direction or destination.
3. Compassion/Indifference. Compassion for yourself and others allows you to provide for your current needs without the weight of obligation, shame, or guilt. Your giving comes from a place of abundance rather than from emotional burdens of “ought” and “should.” Indifference may include neglecting your current and future financial needs, ignoring financial responsibilities, or giving out of obligation, shame, or guilt. There is a disconnect between your emotional and financial realms.
4. Connectedness/Detachment. When you feel safe, supported, and connected to money, you allow it to support your physical and emotional needs without parts of you feeling conflicted and polarized. You are aware of and able to express your thoughts, feelings, and beliefs around money, and you generally live in a state of financial harmony. Being detached from your finances means living with significant internal conflict and polarization. This often leads to anxiety or avoidance around finances.
5. Courage/Conformity. Uncovering those vulnerable parts of yourself with money-related wounds takes courage. With it, you are able to address hard financial realities like creating self-nurturing boundaries or making and following a plan to pay off debt. Conformity means protecting your internal system's status quo around financial issues rather than addressing vulnerabilities or hard financial realities. This provides an illusion of safety that hinders your ability to grow and prosper.
6. Creativity/Sterility. Creativity is essential for using resources to find financial solutions that meet your particular needs, and it also helps you use your money joyfully to enrich life for yourself and others. Sterility is a stifling of any innovation and adaptability in finding financial solutions or using resources to support your dreams.
7. Curiosity/Apathy. Curiosity is an eagerness to learn and grow in the financial realm. It also supports seeking to discover and modify unhelpful money scripts and behaviors, then acquiring the knowledge, skills, and support needed to make sound financial decisions. Apathy is a disinterest in acknowledging money scripts or hurtful financial behaviors and a lack of effort in acquiring necessary knowledge and skills. This indifference inhibits growth and development in financial literacy.
8. Confidence/Doubt. When you are confident, you trust yourself to use your resources in making sound financial decisions. You feel secure in your ability to collaborate, learn, and meet financial obligations and goals. Doubt includes distrust of your own ability to manage your financial resources, as well as distrust of potential advisors or mentors who could support you in reaching your goals.
Understanding this spectrum from financial dysfunction to financial wellness can help you find a more holistic approach and give you a clearer, more balanced perspective as you navigate your journey toward financial wellbeing.
Rick Kahler, CFP, is a fee-only financial planner and financial therapist with a nationwide practice, Kahler Financial Group, based in Rapid City. His co-authored books include Coupleship Inc. and The Financial Wisdom of Ebenezer Scrooge.
