Financial Independence For Everyday People

This is a continuation of a series of exercises designed to help you and your family better understand your attitudes about money.

• Part I: Get In Touch With Your Money Mindset (Fear v. Ambivalence v. Opportunity)
• Part II: List Common Phrases Use You About Money (Scarcity v. Abundance)
• Part III: Inventory Your Financial Influencers

→ Exercise: Inventory Your Financial Influencers

• In Part I, you considered how you and your family feel about money in terms of fear versus opportunity.
• In Part II, you discovered what you say about money, which may be different that what you feel.

Directions:

1. Take a closer look at who around you has had and is having the most influence on your attitudes towards money. These influencers could be parents, friends, children, acquaintances, heroes, mentors, or celebrities. They may be actively participating in your life now, or be a distant memory and still having ghostly influence.
   • Take a moment to reflect: who put the sense of fear, ambivalence, or opportunity into your attitude?
   • Where did those catch phrases about money come from that you listed in Part II?
2. On a piece of paper, list the names of three people who have shaped your attitudes about money.
3. To the right of each name, indicate whether you think that they had an money mindset of fear, ambivalence or opportunity.
4. Write your name on the line marked “YOU.” Indicate your predominant attitude about money. From where did it come? Did you follow in your influencers’ footsteps, or did you do exactly opposite of what they believe?
5. Who do you know who has a healthy attitude of opportunity? Write their names on the last line. If you don’t already have a lot of these people in your life, how can you add more?