Money Beliefs and Behaviors Assessment
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This free money beliefs and behaviors assessment helps therapists focus on increasing client awareness of their money beliefs and financial behaviors.
As a therapist, you are likely well aware of the impact financial stress can have on your clients’ mental health. Financial burdens can cause relationship difficulties, anxiety, depression, and insomnia.
This is where a money beliefs and behaviors assessment can be a helpful tool.
Whether you’re providing marriage and family therapy or sessions for individual clients, reviewing money beliefs and financial behaviors can help clients better understand their relationship with money.
In this article, we’ll review money beliefs and behaviors, and provide a free money beliefs and behaviors assessment that you can save to your electronic health record (EHR) for repeated use.
What are money beliefs and financial behaviors?
It’s not only therapists who provide specialized money management therapy to support clients in understanding their money beliefs and financial behaviors.
In fact, most mental health therapists will likely address the topic of financial stress in their clients’ lives from time-to-time.
Our role as therapists is to uncover the sources of that financial stress by examining core beliefs around money.
Money beliefs are the ways people think about and relate to money in their lives. Like our core values, money beliefs and behaviors are usually learned in childhood and are often inherited from parental figures.
These beliefs shape our relationship with money in adulthood. For instance, if a family experienced money difficulties during a person’s childhood, the person may experience money worries or have limiting beliefs about financial resources as an adult.
What are some money attitudes?
Some core money beliefs, or attitudes toward finances, may show up with statements like:
- “Money equates to status and power.”
- “Money will make everything OK.”
- “I should be secretive about my money.”
- “My partner doesn’t need to know how much I earn, or what I spent on X.”
- “I need X and it will improve my life/make me happy.”
- “I must not spend my money, just in case.”
- “There will always be financial challenges, so I need to hold on to money.”
- “I’ll never be able to afford X.”
- “Money is something to be ashamed of.”
- “There isn’t enough money.”
- “I need more money and must work harder.”
- “We don’t eat out to save money.”
- “It’s not OK to have more than you need.”
- “Rich people are greedy.”
- “Rich people have no reason to be unhappy.”
- “Money gives life meaning.”
- “It’s wrong to ask others how much money they make.”
- “I do not need to buy X.”
- “You can have money or love, but not both.”
- “You can never have enough money.”
Download the free money beliefs and behaviors assessment at the top of this article, which includes a list of these statements to help clients identify their money beliefs.
What are the different money behaviors?
Researchers from Kansas State University categorized core money beliefs into four “money scripts.”
These scripts form part of the Klontz-Money Script Inventory (KMSI), a scale for measuring money beliefs that can impact financial and mental health.
We’ve highlighted how these core beliefs influence financial behaviors in the table below.
| Money Script | Financial Behaviors |
| 1. Money avoidance: The beliefs “money is bad” or “I don't deserve money.” | Anxiety, fear, disgust. May worry about money, avoid spending on reasonable items, experience risk aversion, or give away money to have little money in their control. |
| 2. Accumulation of money: The belief “money will make things better.” | Compulsive behaviors, like hoarding, risk-taking, gambling, overspending, and overworking to accumulate money. |
| 3. Money status: The belief “money is status” and that money defines socioeconomic class. | Competitively seeking to acquire financial wealth and more than their peers, overly concerned with financial stress, materialism, and higher levels of anxiety. Individuals may also mislead others to believe they have more money than they do. |
| 4. Financial vigilance: “Money is shameful,” “it’s important to save," and “I need to keep money secret.” | Lying about purchases to loved ones, minimizing spending, not sharing financial information, secretive behaviors, hiding money, alertness or watchfulness, excessive wariness, frugality, and anxiety. |
Source: The Klontz-Money Script Inventory (KMSI)
Benefits of assessing money beliefs and financial behaviors
As we’ve illustrated, money beliefs and financial behaviors influence individuals' outlook, perception of money, how they spend or don’t spend their resources, and how they relate to money.
Discussing your clients’ relationship with money is helpful in all types of therapy—including marriage and family therapy, couples therapy, or individual therapy—because of the impact it has on how people live their lives individually and together.
For instance, a family therapist may uncover how a financially vigilant parent is restricting their child’s access to certain recreational activities, which may impact their social relationships.
Or, in couple’s therapy, a partner’s gambling may be contributing to anxiety and depression in their loved one.
And, in sessions with individual clients, a therapist may uncover how money beliefs are causing overwork and a lack of fulfillment as their clients are overly focused on acquiring money rather than enjoying their lives outside of work.
How to use the money beliefs and behaviors assessment
Therapists can use the money beliefs and behaviors assessment in several ways:
- During an in-person or virtual session as a money beliefs and behaviors assessment template.
- As a psychoeducation tool to illustrate core money beliefs and financial behaviors.
- As a handout to remind your client of what you discussed/assessed in session.
- For clients to remind themselves of key behaviors and core beliefs they noticed in between sessions.
- To identify financial worries and challenges impacting your client’s emotional well-being.
- To increase awareness about how money beliefs and financial behaviors may be impacting your client’s life.
Sources
- Klontz, B., Britt, S. L., Mentzer, J., & Klontz, T. (2011). Money Beliefs and Financial Behaviors: Development of the Klontz Money Script Inventory. https://doi.org/10.4148/jft.v2i1.451
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