What on earth have ghosts got to do with money?  Maybe you need a visit from your Ghosts of Money past to make you look more closely at your money behaviour?  How those decisions have impacted your present and what will happen in your future if you don’t make changes.

As the year draws to a close, it tends to be a time of reflection; looking back on how the year has gone and looking forward to the next one. It’s also the time of year that the Charles Dickens story, A Christmas Carol, and Ebenezer Scrooge pops up in one form or another on our TVs.

I love that story. The old miser gets a visit from three ghosts, the Ghost of the Past takes him back to his past and looks at his miserable behaviour. The Ghost of the Present reminds him that this has led to the sorry state he is in now; lots of money and no-one to share it with. Then the Ghost of the Future shows what his life could be like if he made changes and started to be more open and sharing.

We make financial decisions about 90 per cent of the time based on our emotions. Now our emotions aren’t always wrong, so it doesn’t mean we make bad financial decisions 90 per cent of the time. What it does means is that we don’t often check in with our logical brain when we make those decisions.

Logical brain, emotional brain

Our logical brain will tell us things like spend less, save more. But our emotional brain wants to have fun, spend now and worry later.

Our logical brain can see very clearly the behaviours we need to change, but for many people implementing that change is hard. The reason for this is quite simple; it’s because our logical and emotional brains are out of sync with each other.

How do you get into sync? For Ebenezer Scrooge, it was a visit from the Ghost of the Past - as well as the other two.  He could clearly see the emotions that had brought him to his present state and once he saw that it became much easier for him to be present to what he needed to do to change his future.

Sorry, but I can’t conjure up a ghost to whisk you back in time (I don’t know whether you’d like that). Instead, I suggest you find a quiet spot and take some time out to think back over your own past and be completely honest with yourself.

What decisions have you made based on emotions that have led to where you are now?  I hope many of them will be good; some may not be so great.

Is this where you want to be financially?

If the answer is “no”, then you need learn how to integrate your logical and emotional brain to move you forward into a more positive and rosy financial future.

If you would like some help on how to do that, then book a call with me here and let’s get your new year off to a positive start.