Understanding our money archetypes

Thank you to everyone who joined us for group session 3 of our financial coaching program where we learnt about our money personalities.

In this session we discussed the 8 money archetypes that are referred to in the  Quiz – What’s your ‘money type’?.   The use of archetypes to represent specific behaviours was created by Carl Jung who was a Swiss psychiatrist in the early 1900’s. These archetypes were then adapted to relate to money by the founder of The Money Coaching Institute, Deborah Price, in 2001. This system is a simple way to identify specific patterns, attitudes, tendencies and beliefs when evaluating our relationship with money.

Each individual has all 8 archetypes, however certain experiences, beliefs, stressors and fears can bring them out at different times in our lives. This means that the results can change, depending on what is going on for us in our lives at the time we take the test. By addressing our limiting beliefs and using specific strategies for how we manage and think about money, we can move to the archetypes that represent the most empowering money behaviours.

None of the archetypes are “good” or “bad”. The purpose of this exercise is to create awareness because when we have awareness, we have more control.

We can shift what we are aware of. We cannot shift what we are unaware of.

For a more detailed look at your specific quiz results and to discuss strategies that you can use to create more empowering money behaviours as an individual and/or as a couple, please book a private coaching session with Sarah via the below link.

Book private session

Money archetypes

The Innocent

Most people begin as this archetype as a child because our parents take care of all of our needs. As we become adults some will continue on with Innocent archetype behaviours. They do this by not taking full responsibility for their financial situation or downplaying the power that they have to manage their own finances. An Innocent can tend to hand it over to a partner to manage or avoid it all together.

The Innocent can reclaim their own power through continued education and taking the steps that they need to prove to themselves that they are more than capable of managing their own money.

The Victim

The Victim can sometimes be the Innocent who was once taken advantage of and is also known as the “wounded”. They can tend to live in the past and use past wounds to dictate what their behaviour is today. A Victim tends to blame external influences, rather than understanding that they are the ones who have control over their lives.

Forgiveness is a key part of healing the Victim archetype. Forgive past events, forgive themselves for past mistakes and forgive others so that they can make peace with it. The most power for the Victim archetype comes when they realise that instead of using the past as an excuse for behaviour that doesn’t serve them, they can use their past experiences as a powerful tool and be a catalyst for change, for themselves and also for others.

The Warrior

The Warrior has great focus. Their behaviour is grounded in logic and they are very resourceful. This archetype is the master of the material world in our relationship with money, our left brain, so they are the logical ones.

To make good financial decisions it’s important to have the Warrior as one of our main drivers, so for anyone who doesn’t have this archetype at the moment, you need to focus your attention on cultivating the Warrior within yourself. This can be done by getting clear on exactly what you are seeking to achieve and setting boundaries around what is truly important to you.

The Warrior can sometimes experience self-sabotaging behaviour by an underlying archetype that affects their ability to make good decisions. They need the assistance of the Magician to tap into their intuition and the Creator to have creativity with their money behaviour to achieve overall financial wellbeing.

The Martyr

This archetype is the giver. They are the generous one with their time, energy and money. The Martyr can however lack boundaries, so they can over-give of themselves and become resentful. Some people can also default into this archetype when they’re in a partnership, or if they’re a mum, dad or a carer for example. The key to healing the Martyr is by creating a consistent routine of self-care, both for their health and their finances. They must take care of their own situation before giving of themselves to support others in terms of time, energy and money, by setting better boundaries. If they say yes, they must mean it. Learning to say no with confidence and trusting that it’s the right thing for themselves personally, and being okay with that, is essential. Giving from an “overflowing cup” is how we give without depleting ourselves.

The Fool

The Fool is the fun and spontaneous one! They are the one to take with you on a holiday as they tend to live for now and focus on having fun in the moment. Money management is not usually their focus though so when considering where to spend their money they don’t always do the research or consider the consequences. This can lead to some money decisions that leave them in challenging circumstances in the future. They are “freedom focused” which means having fun for today, which is great, however it can sometimes mean that they have trouble with seeing how it will affect their future.

The key to this archetype is learning how to balance having fun with still providing for their future selves. They must learn how to slow things down. Making sure that they make conscious and rational decisions and consider the consequences of those decisions. The Fool archetype is naturally a high-risk taker who acts now and thinks later so developing a good step-by-step process for how they make financial decisions is key.

The Creator

The Creator (or Creator/Artist) is the most conflicted with money. They are the spiritual/creative ones in us who can tend to live by the term “starving artist” or that “it’s not spiritual to have money” so there is inner conflict. They want money and love money for the freedom it gives them, but don’t want to be diluted by it. They don’t want it to impact their authenticity or be seen as “unspiritual” because they have money.

The Creator needs to make peace with money and start to see it as a tool. Understanding that money is energy. It is neutral – neither good nor bad. Money is an amplifier of the current energy you have as a person so having it will only increase that, not create a new energy within you. The Creator must redefine what money means to them to have a healthy relationship with it. 

The Tyrant

The Tyrant likes to control their money and protects their money fiercely. They also tend to use money to control others’ behaviour and the results that they want. A Tyrant is afraid that they will lose their money which can affect their financial decisions. They can be secretive and judgemental, and although being judgemental of others can cause issues, the judgement of themselves is a very common problem that the Tyrant can experience. They’re very hard on themselves and can have a harsh inner dialogue that reinforces their belief that they are “not enough”.

We all have the “self-tyrant” within us and with the increase of marketing messages that we see on a daily basis trying to convince us that if we buy more stuff we will be happy, it can be difficult to manage. When our self-tyrant starts to control our relationship with money it has the tendency to reinforce the belief that we will never have enough, so we’re always on the hunt for more and never content with what we have.

The Tyrant must grow to understand that there is enough abundance for everyone to have what they need. If they can learn how to transform their fear of “not enough” into feeling safe, there won’t be a need for so much control.

The Magician

The Magician is the master of the internal world, the right brain – our creative side. The Magician, or the manifestor, is the archetype that holds our vision. They understand what kind of life they want to live and the role that money has in achieving it. They strongly believe in their dreams and know that they’re going to get there. This archetype has the most self-belief, so to have a balanced relationship with money, we need to call on both the logical one, the Warrior, and the self-belief in the vision, which is the Magician. Our left and right brain.

To be more like the Magician, we must trust that all of our needs will be met, all of the time. The Magician has full trust that they can manifest whatever they need whenever they need it. Some people with this archetype have a good level of trust but have underlying archetypes that affect their behaviour and prevent the Magician from showing up fully in their lives.

The power is in our awareness

The purpose of this exercise is to create awareness around our own archetypes. When we have an awareness of what our archetypes are, we can begin to learn what is driving the behaviours, which are the specific beliefs, thoughts, feelings and patterns that we’ve created over our lifetime. So if we have 25, 30, 40 or more years of patterning that we need to uncover, we must learn to be compassionate with ourselves and say “I’ve done the best I can with the knowledge that I had up to this point, but now I’m learning some new ways to make even better choices moving forward.”

This is what understanding your money archetypes will help you do.

If you’d like to discover more about your money archetypes and the strategies that will help you move forward, please book a private coaching session with Sarah.