Making Meaning of Our Money Habits
Episode 35 with Dr. Sonya Lutter and Wes Brown
In this recap episode of Analog Advisor, hosts Wes Brown and Dr. Sonya Lutter explore two of their most recent episodes with financial psychologist Dr. Daniel Crosby and Money Habitudes expert Cara Macksound. The conversation explores how our personal beliefs, attitudes, and habits around money form our Money Habitudes that shape our finances and overall well-being and life satisfaction.
Wes and Sonya explore the limiting beliefs they've held around money and the importance of self-awareness and reflection in financial decisions.
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Dr. Daniel Crosby 00:00
Money by itself, is not all that interesting. But since money touches every part of our lives, figuring out your financial life has the ability to elevate every other part of your life.
Cara Macksound 00:13
There's not a right or wrong if you have these habitudes, everything's going to work out for you. It's based on your life. So your family system, your cultural system, your community system, how you play into that and how your money works for you in that system, are these habitudes supporting your financial goals and health, or are they sabotaging you or causing you a challenge?
Wes Brown 00:40
Hello and welcome to analog advisor, where we explore how money shapes our lives, futures, families and communities. I'm Wes Brown and I'm Sonia muder, whether you're managing your own family's wealth or just curious about the world of wealth management, this conversation will enlighten and inform. Thanks for being here and for tuning in. Let's get analog All right, hey, Sonia, hey, Wes how are you?
Dr. Sonya Lutter 01:04
I'm great. How are you?
Wes Brown 01:06
I'm okay. I'm okay. It's Halloween.
Dr. Sonya Lutter 01:08
It's my favorite holiday. So much fun. So
Wes Brown 01:12
the excitement for me centers around the candy. Obviously, I'm sure yours as well, or is yours the costumes, I'm curious.
Dr. Sonya Lutter 01:22
I love everything about it. There's zero expectations of anything you can do and be whoever you want to be, and you get a good
Wes Brown 01:31
point for being whoever you want to be. So it doesn't matter. You can't really do anything wrong.
Dr. Sonya Lutter 01:37
That's exactly right, yeah. I mean, just
Wes Brown 01:41
run fast. That's right. Okay. We are not promoting that today,
Dr. Sonya Lutter 01:47
but we are promoting individualization. We are and being your own person. So look at that, tying it all together.
Wes Brown 01:57
Well done. Well done, yes, and the rewards that come from that, right? I know. Okay, yeah, I like where
Dr. Sonya Lutter 02:03
we're going, Yes, health and wellness. Yeah, getting that exercise running.
Wes Brown 02:12
So this episode, we're recapping discussions with Daniel and Kara. It's been a little while since we talked with Kara. What are the themes that kind of jump out at you from those those two episodes,
Dr. Sonya Lutter 02:26
both of them, I loved how positive and energetic they both were, and excited about the future of financial planning, if you will, and how we are really moving in this direction of what money means versus what money does. So I loved that about both of them. I really liked that while Kara was talking about the money habitudes, the assessment, she was also talking about it's not meant to put people in a box, and it's really meant to help people understand multiple ways of looking at things. So that was kind of interesting to hear how she was talking about what those different categories meant within the money habitudes. Daniel makes me laugh so much every time
Wes Brown 03:20
I talked to him, agreed, yeah,
Dr. Sonya Lutter 03:21
he's such a funny guy, and I like the simplicity of what he's trying to communicate to where there's these general statements. And if we sit back and think about what these common things are that we hear about money, maybe they make sense for us, but maybe we can also make our own story and live by what's true for us. How about you?
Wes Brown 03:51
Well, the same, yeah, I love the you know, again, just sort of being in the practice of financial planning every day. And I think you and I are kind of in a little bit different worlds yours, maybe more in the theoretical side, academic side. Mine more in the practice with individual clients. I think it's definitely spot on as a practitioner, right? Like we definitely the steer clients towards the meaning aspect, as you said, what money means versus what money does. And I love that they're promoting that, you know, I think for the two of them, and you're, you're in the same the same group, it's fun to talk to people who are sort of pushing the profession in that direction, if, if you will. Right? So, anyways, I thought that was great. Well,
Dr. Sonya Lutter 04:34
did you feel like Kara was pushing it maybe a little too far? I'm curious what your thoughts are on the actual card game and what that would look like for you. It's a big leap from traditional financial planning into, hey, let's sort these cards together.
Wes Brown 04:53
I mean, I think it's a good practice, right? There's an element of, I think, where I see a huge amount of values in the. Self Awareness, right? That that helps people develop and and then really what happens after that, I think, is really where the real work is. So this idea that you might go through the game and have an outcome, I don't know your stack of habitudes or rankings. I can't remember exactly how it worked, right? It was a, yeah, you sort of categorize yourself, I guess, based on
Dr. Sonya Lutter 05:21
right, and you could have more than one category that you're high in, right.
Wes Brown 05:25
And again, I'm saying this in the absence of actually having used it, but based on what she described, I would imagine there's a process after the fact of, like, how do I feel about that? That's sort of like taking any sort of personality, you know, assessment, like, does that feel like it's true? And if it is true, and I've never realized it, what does that mean? And what are the implications of that? And I you know, there are other tools that we use that are similar, maybe not games, necessarily, but assessments, specifically in the financial planning space, like, like money quotient, or any tools like that would have people thinking about their life, you know, if you've used the wheel of life and the money quotient tools, this idea that you sort of look at your life absent of a specific sort of financial lens, and you assess, like, how are your relationships, or how are you, you know, whatever, these various areas of life. And then tying that back to Money and understanding like, Oh, my, you know, my, I might be making more money than ever, but my life satisfaction is really low, or my wheel of life is really lopsided or flat on one side. And what does that mean? How do you tie those things together? So I think any of those tools that cause people to reflect are good are great. So again, Kara's was was fairly novel to me, but I liked it. Yeah,
Dr. Sonya Lutter 06:44
I definitely like that self reflection piece. And one of the things she talked about is, if I have more money, I'll be happier, right? Kind of that belief that people have, but then how does that show through in their actual behaviors? So the habitudes. How do my habits, my beliefs, translate into my behavior? So people are work, work, working, and they get to whatever that magical number is that they're shooting for, and then they realize they're no less happy than what they were when they were at a different number. And I definitely see that value in the habitudes of helping people think through what those beliefs mean. And maybe there's more to that belief of what else would make them happy, or is that the right dollar amount, or do we need to shift how that dollar is used? So I thought that was pretty fun,
Wes Brown 07:40
yeah. What did you think? I'm curious, specifically with Kara, like, what did you think about how subjective the habitudes approach is?
Dr. Sonya Lutter 07:49
Oh, it's very subjective in a lot of ways.
Wes Brown 07:52
But do you mean, to what degree do you feel like we're all different versus we're kind of all the same? Yeah,
Dr. Sonya Lutter 07:59
yeah. Isn't that true?
Wes Brown 08:00
Yeah, I mean, just because she was she used that analogy of like food, some food might bother you, it doesn't bother me, and vice versa.
Cara Macksound 08:10
But really, what we're measuring is just where are you on the habitudes? Unlike other financial assessments that are out there, we're not putting you in a quadrant. We're not saying you're a spender or you're an avoider. Or what we're saying is, here's these six habitudes. You're on a spectrum of each of the habitudes. How far up or down Are you on these spectrums? And remember, just like food, where the three of us can each eat the exact same two hamburgers, but they're going to affect us differently. You're a runner. You're not going to gain any weight. I'm totally somebody who never goes out of the house tomorrow. I weigh five pounds extra. You have a gluten intolerance. The bun bothered your stomach. Those kind of ideas. That's the same idea with habitudes everybody. There's not a right or wrong. If you have these habitudes, everything's going to work out for you. It's based on your life. So your family system, your cultural system, your community system, how you play into that and how your money works for you in that system, are these habitudes supporting your financial goals and health, or are they sabotaging you or causing you a challenge?
Wes Brown 09:15
Which is true, yeah, so I am really prone to buyer's remorse. I'm gonna share this with you. So I, like, I used to buy and return things all the time, and now I just don't buy them. I just have that, like, 72 hour rule, like, I just don't buy it. If I still want it three days later, then maybe I'll revisit it. But, like, other people have no problem with that. So that's right, that's very different, but there are so many ways that we're the same. So I thought that was interesting. I haven't really worked my thinking through that necessarily. Yeah,
Dr. Sonya Lutter 09:47
I think that is absolutely true, and that does show up in the habitude in some ways, because there are only so many categories. I think she's. There five? Sure
Wes Brown 10:00
that's great point.
Dr. Sonya Lutter 10:02
Yep. So in some way, everyone can identify on a spectrum with each of those five categories. That doesn't mean that there's maybe not a sixth one that should be in there. But I think for the most part, we all generally have the same needs and wants, if you will. So I'm imagining Maslow's hierarchy of need needs in my mind, and how at the baseline we all just want to survive. We we need food, we need shelter. And yeah, sure, maybe we have different preferences within that category of the type of house that I like or the type of region that I like, but shelter, shelter, ultimately, and I think that's kind of what's showing up in the money aptitudes as well, is we all probably desire success at Some point, but how we show that success and and feel that level of success could be significantly different. Yeah, I'm even thinking about when we were talking with now you're gonna have to remind me money. Monk, oh yeah, Doug, Doug, and how he had such a different visions of what life meant as a child, growing up wealthy and then in complete poverty as a monk and now as a financial advisor. So even within our spectrum of money habitudes. I think those could definitely change over time. And just thinking about how we group ourselves into those ideas of what is good for us changes depending on our circumstances and maybe the relationships that we're in, the stage of life that we're in,
Wes Brown 12:00
all of it community that you're in, yeah, absolutely. That was great. How about some key takeaways from from Daniel? What stood out to you with him?
Dr. Sonya Lutter 12:07
I liked a lot that he was using science within his book to a certain degree to where he was talking about things like the confirmation bias. There's a lot that we know about the confirmation bias, and he was really trying to show what that means like in real life, and maybe how we might challenge ourselves and challenge our perceptions and beliefs about the things that we're seeing around US. So it had a bit of that research element. But, yeah, it's so practical. And what was it 50 or 55 money lessons we all need to know, and that's kind of fun too to think about. Let's just focus on small, little pieces of information and see where that takes us.
Wes Brown 13:01
Yeah, I thought his was really, really masterful. I think in sort of displacing some things, you know, this, there's this idea that, you know, he kind of talked a little bit about getting your money right, so you can kind of focus on the things in in your life that are really important, right? And you and I were talking earlier about tying that to or relating that to that sort of $75,000 threshold, right? This idea that like money increases your overall happiness is once up to that point and beyond that. It really, really doesn't and, and I've heard that before. I had just read it somewhere else, and he sort of debunked that. He sort of, or he put a different spin on that, which was a little I just like how he framed it. It was just like, maybe there is a threshold, right? We all need to get to a minimum income threshold, but that threshold then just sort of makes money. A non issue, like the way it's framed, I've seen it framed is that there's sort of diminishing returns beyond $75,000 and I liked how he framed it, I guess a little bit better. I don't know if I'm saying that clearly. Does it make sense? Clearly. Does it make sense? Like he just kind of said, like, once you get to that place, now you can just not worry about it and worry about all the other stuff that actually makes
Dr. Daniel Crosby 14:11
your life better. Money, by itself, is not all that interesting. But since money touches every part of our lives, figuring out your financial life has the ability to elevate every other part of your life, you know, and Gandhi, I'm paraphrasing, but Gandhi has this idea that to a poor person, bread is God, right? If you have no money, and all you can think about is where your next meal is coming from. But when those bottom rungs of of Maslow's hierarchy start to get squared away with with adequate material resources and adequate wealth, that's when the good stuff kicks in, right? You can start to worry about love and friendship and God and purpose and, you know, whatever else. So I'm highly motivated to help people get their money right, not because it is interesting, per se, I think it's quite boring, but because it opens up a pathway to what really matters, which is, frankly, everything but money.
Dr. Sonya Lutter 15:17
Let's remember that Daniel is a trained therapist, first and foremost, that's true. And so that's his lens of viewing things, that it's not about the money, it's about everything that money does or doesn't do. And for me, that was really interesting. And I think we talked about the Harvard happiness study, or at the very least, we talked about this idea of social support and how those social relationships are the most important things in predicting a life well lived, according to this research that Harvard has been doing for over 100 years. So I think that's pretty significant to think that money changes a lot over the course of 100 years. But what doesn't change is the relationships that are there want them or not, parent, child, siblings, all of those things that are present in our lives that maybe we take for granted for the sake of building this other thing that we think is going to matter. We just have more money, then people will love me, or then we can take these grand vacations and do all of these things, when in reality, it is the that time in the relationships and the quality of those relationships that seem to matter most. We
Wes Brown 16:39
also talked a little bit about the I think, I think we had also talked about this with Nathan. It came up with Daniel, the post traumatic growth, the difference between post traumatic stress and post traumatic growth, yeah, and its relationships, right? It's, it's, it's purpose and and support, but it's relationships that are critical to a happy life.
Dr. Daniel Crosby 16:59
And you've got people in Italy smoking unfiltered cigarettes, eating cheese and pasta, and, you know, processed heat all day, living to be 100 years old, because they have such strong social networks. And, you know, you see the same thing with post traumatic growth a lot of times, the dividing line between whether a hardship breaks you or whether it makes you is who's in your corner and who's surrounding you, walking through the fire with you through that tough time.
Dr. Sonya Lutter 17:34
Absolutely and I do think this is something that financial advisors can promote and address in their everyday work by looking at how clients, how people, can allocate resources in a way that allows them to spend the time in the relationships that they want to spend and rather than foregoing all time right Now, maybe we can shift some of those resources to spend more time now and build those relationships and not lose track of the future. But also, let's pay attention to what's in front of us right now.
18:13
Yeah, I love that.
Dr. Sonya Lutter 18:14
What else did you like about Daniel? I've heard a lot of people say how much they loved his interview and just the little insights and the way that he talked, and a lot of that is his communication training. He's an excellent interviewer. So
Wes Brown 18:29
good, yeah, no, he, I mean, I think the thing was, he really sort of wove life wisdom into that. It really wasn't about money, and I think it really brought it right down to the important things he just did. I just think it was, I think it was great. I wanted to ask you and sort of put you on the spot a little bit, because, you know, when we talk about, like, our beliefs around money, and, you know, I was thinking like, what are, what are the some of the things that each one of us has that we individually bring to that equation, right? So could be how you grew up. Could be the community you were in. Any of the things we talked about. We might believe that money is bad, or that pursuing financial wealth or material wealth is bad, or I have more I'll be happier those types of things. So I just want to put you on the spot. I wanted to ask you, what are some like? What are some beliefs that you have had or had in the past, have or have had and had it needed to challenge. You know,
Dr. Sonya Lutter 19:27
I do think about this a lot, and I feel like I've said this before, and I strongly believe that if I do what I do best and what I believe is best for me, then the rest will take care of itself. And I've seen that play through in my life to where, when we were talking about my story, how I received the life insurance proceeds, and within months, it was gone. And not because I was spending it poorly, just because I got rid of it, donated it, because I I didn't want that money holding me back, because I knew that from that point, I was in charge of me, and I needed to take care of myself and be responsible, and I felt confident that I could do that, and a whole series of events happened from them, but I think it was an opportunity for me to live by what I was saying. I could have done something totally different, but I didn't, because I felt confident that I could be financially stable and even in a better position now than what I ever could have imagined being in, and I think that's because I keep following what I think is best and most authentic to me.
Wes Brown 20:54
Have you always done that? No,
Dr. Sonya Lutter 21:00
no, I would say there's definitely been points in my life where it's easier to take the highest financial payout, even if it doesn't feel right, and that's no good for anyone. It's it's bad for the mental health. It's bad for social relationships, like this whole idea of well being that I come back to every single time to where it's all related. You can't prioritize one area of well being and expect everything else to work out. It all goes together.
Wes Brown 21:30
Thanks. Really put you on the spot. Appreciate that.
Dr. Sonya Lutter 21:37
Entertaining. No, it
Wes Brown 21:38
was great. It was great. No, that's a great answer. I think it's fantastic. You know, I will just, just to even it out a little bit, I would say, for me, like one of the things that we grew up with, it's just a money belief, well, kind of along the lines of the poverty ethic. We were never really poor, but just this idea that pursuing material wealth is bad. Yeah, and I don't really think that, but we can unpack that for another day. But I it took me a long time to get past it.
Dr. Sonya Lutter 22:05
I think, do you remember when you got past it? I
Wes Brown 22:09
think once I had money, yeah, you know, it was, like, all of a sudden I had money, and I was like, Oh, this isn't that bad. I don't feel like a terrible person. Suddenly, you know, like, just because I now have more than and then all of the all the opportunity it opened up to actually live out some other values that I had right so the opportunity to be generous, or the opportunity to choose not to buy something, even if I could afford it, like I'm, oh, I'm I've always wanted that, but I don't really need it anymore. I'm not going to buy even though I could. It's just an interesting experience to be on the other side of Right,
Dr. Sonya Lutter 22:43
yeah, I love that. And it's kind of getting out of this scarcity mindset and, right, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it is a mindset shift. Yeah,
Wes Brown 22:54
I was reading the ruthless elimination of hurry, which Nathan mentioned in our discussion with him, and it's a great book. If you haven't read it, you should read it. He spends a little bit of time talking about money and our relationship to money, and the things that we believe around it. And, you know, poverty is hard, but it's funny. And again, I don't know that I was ever really technically poor. We were kind of, you know, my parents were teachers, kind of average existence. But when I certainly have exceeded that standard of living now, and it's funny how like, just how different it is, and how my perspective today is so different from where it was previously, where it was, like, I would have thought that to have money, you had to cut corners. Only the people that had, you know, compromised on their values are the ones who accumulated wealth. And I don't know it's just, it's, it's interesting. I like
Dr. Sonya Lutter 23:46
that. And there's another book that I'll recommend, the myth of this silver spoon. Kristen keffler,
Wes Brown 23:51
yes, it's on my reading list. Yeah, yes.
Dr. Sonya Lutter 23:54
The title says it all to where we have these beliefs that are not true at all. There might be some truth in some of the the things that get said, but in reality, you can't make those broad generalizations based off of how much money a person has. Right?
Wes Brown 24:12
Agreed? Well, I know you need to run because you have some trick or treating to do. Yeah, costumes, painting
Dr. Sonya Lutter 24:17
costumes. The whole Yeah, what's,
Wes Brown 24:19
what's your costume.
Dr. Sonya Lutter 24:20
I am not dressing up though,
Wes Brown 24:25
you can't do that.
Dr. Sonya Lutter 24:27
No, I love dressing up the kids, though it's so much fun. Yeah, no, and one of them, for an entire year, has wanted to be the little kid that the alien carries around. Oh,
Wes Brown 24:37
like just
Dr. Sonya Lutter 24:39
a blow up costume. Yes,
Wes Brown 24:40
I know exactly what you're talking
Dr. Sonya Lutter 24:41
about. Yeah, yes. And I wouldn't buy it for him last year because it's kind of expensive. And I was like, No, I'm not buying that. And for an entire year, he stuck to it. And so I was like, Okay, I'll buy it this year, and he's been having so much fun
Wes Brown 24:59
that might outlive. Halloween, he may be wearing that till he outgrows it.
Dr. Sonya Lutter 25:07
Yeah. So it makes me very happy to see them happy.
Wes Brown 25:09
Oh, that's good. Well, I will let you get to the trick or treating. Great. All right. Stuck with you. Me too. You.