Advice on How to Control Your Finance Brain

Self Reflection, Plan, and Then Action

This post will walk though advice on how to control your Finance Brain that I have picked up over the years. After countless hallway conversations at work, my best advice to control your Finance Brain circles back to: realization your brain isn’t a calculator, slow down, self reflection and planning, and then action.

Your Brain is Not a Calculator (Yes even you!)

Yes you can probably answer some math problems in your head (maybe even really complicated ones like I can) but the vast majority of your brain doesn’t understand finance – it understands the simple stuff: food, sleep, play/toys, sex, and rock and roll (and/or rap). Your brain is going to always tilt towards immediate gratification and safety which are not good things when it comes to finance!

The top 10 searches on google show how distracted we all are. None of these are finance terms! Finance isn’t top of mind! Fidget Spinners are though!

Given the non natural but personal (and boring to some) topic of finances – a lot of people need financial advisors or they talk (or blog) about finances with friends and families to vet ideas. You and your brain want to make the right decision so it begins to socialize the topic since it isn’t top of mind for most people. I encourage everyone at work to ask when they have questions on our benefits or finance questions in general as there is nothing more paralyzing than having to make financial decisions by yourself.

Northwestern mutual did a survey last year and found that 80% of everyone is financially anxious BUT when those individuals talked with an advisor they were less anxious and understood the big picture better. Their infographic is below which boiled down their findings.

Link to Northwestern (not an affiliate – just giving them credit if you want to read more)

Control That Brain – Slow Down and One Topic at a Time!

Every financial decision doesn’t have to be made immediately and frankly when you start listing all the financial decisions you need to make there are ALOT of them! Slow down. Focus on one topic at a time. The bigger the financial decision the more time you should probably put into thinking through anything.

This is counter intuitive I know as one of the top search words that get people to my site is “get rich quick.” I get it we all want money now and quick but true wealth building takes time – but it doesn’t have to take decades!

What’s helped me over the years is just organizing the routine items so I wasn’t as stressed on day to day finance decisions: Managing Your Finances – De-stressing With Some Organization

Self Reflection and Planning – The Hard Part

Whatever your current financial conundrum is (there’s always a new one) – what are you hung up on or what are you struggling with? Typically if you take the time to think through or write out what you are really stuck on it helps isolate the issue or near term item you are focused on.

Once you have focused on the issue you are trying solve – reflect on that issue and plan out your course of action. That reflection might be reading about the topic on the internet for different points of view, talking with friends, or simply making a decision if it’s not a big decision.

If it’s a bigger decision I find it best to come up with a few scenarios and vet through them over a couple of days to see if I come up with the same answer.

Once you have reflected and come up with a game plan – it is time to chart out a plan. This could be a one step action or a series of actions to get to your end financial goal for that topic.

Action

After you have made a plan – it’s time to act on it. For some reason we all naturally have a bias not to act when it comes to financial decisions (especially bigger ones).

Execute just follow through with opening that new savings account or paying off the debt in the method you decided on as examples. If you constantly fail to act it is time to revisit your game plan again and come up with a new one.

And don’t forget when the caveman or woman Brain comes out again to try to ruin your finial future – slow down!