What’s Your Financial Personality?
Melissa, MBTI Marketing Manager
From everyday spending to retirement planning and goal setting, everyone manages their finances differently.
That’s why The Myers-Briggs Company and Marcus by Goldman Sachs® (which offers products and tools designed to help people achieve financial well-being) have co-created a Financial Personality Quiz to help uncover how your financial personality could affect your financial management ideas and behaviors.
“Knowing about your financial personality type helps you understand strengths and helps you recognize potential blind spots about how you manage your money,” says Rich Thompson, Sr. Director of Research at The Myers-Briggs Company.
We already know that self-awareness around your personality type could help you better understand what stresses you out, what careers you might be drawn to, and how you might care for others. But how we manage our money could also benefit from self-awareness of personality type. It could even help you reach your financial goals.
For example, introverted types and extraverted types will likely face different challenges when figuring out and sticking to their money management strategies. Extraverts are more likely to discuss their ideas with others, even if they’re still in the brainstorming stages. Which also means they’re more likely to get feedback from family and friends on their finances.
On the other hand, Introverts are likely to analyze (and overanalyze) and delay making spending decisions. They tend to look at a lot of information before moving forward with big decisions and may only discuss with a few close family members or friends after deliberating on their own.
While neither of these money management strategies are better or worse than the other, they both could be seen as having pros and cons. The key here is if you KNOW you have a preference, For example, let’s say you’re an Extravert. You’re more likely to know that talking to people is your go-to but may not delve into research or your own analysis as thoroughly. So, you can minimize that blind spot by specifically flexing to the opposite preference and actively pursuing the behavior that’s not your strength.
“Everyone works in their own way,” says Sherrie Haynie, MBTI expert at The Myers-Briggs Company. “As long as an individual is aware of the reasons why aspects of financial planning, goal setting or sticking to a budget might be difficult, they will be better set up for overcoming these obstacles and achieving success in their money management goals.”
Or take the differences between two people who have preference for Judging and Perceiving, which tells you how you prefer organize your world.
“People who prefer judging like closure,” says Michael Segovia, psychologist, MBTI Master Practitioner at The Myers-Briggs Company. “They like to make decisions. They like to check things off. If they complete something that’s not on their checklist, they’ll add it in with a check mark [in order to get that] sense of satisfaction,” he adds.
Those preferring perceiving don’t rush into decisions the way a person preferring Judging might. They like to keep their options open and prefer things spontaneous and open-ended.
How might these affect financial management? Those who prefer Judging could jump the gun when it comes to making money moves because they want joy of closure. “One of the blind spots is they might decide too soon before they have all the information, they need to make that [financial] decision,” says Michael. In this case, a second opinion or waiting a few extra days to see what new information pops up could help those with Judging tendencies keep their options open. And maybe even see a few better options pop up.
Those preferring Perceiving would benefit from more boundaries because they tend to drag their feet wanting to keep at their options open. “The preference to keep your options open may mean you wait too long to make those important financial decisions,” Michael says. “If you prefer Perceiving, I suggest setting reasonable goals and hard dates you can stick to.”
The co-created quiz from The Myers-Briggs Company and Marcus by Goldman Sachs describes four different financial personality types, summarized below:
Confident Money Manager
As the name suggests, you are assured in your financial capabilities and you’re a long-term thinker and planner (especially when it comes to your money). You are more likely to not only create a financial plan, but also keep up with it over time.
Short-term Strategist
You’re a careful planner that takes a vested interest in your finances, but you may have challenges delving into detailed planning or long-term goals. You may create budgets and plans that are broad in nature, leaving the details to be filled in later, but that doesn’t stop you from being confident in your financial abilities.
Value-Based Planner
You tend to make financial decisions based on what’s important to you, viewing money as a tool to help the people and causes you care about versus solely accruing personal wealth.
Laid-Back Balancer
You likely aren’t that focused on making financial plans and instead let your heart take the lead. You generally find long-term financial considerations less important than other aspects of your life and instead view your money in terms of the application – how it can be used and who it can be used for.
Interested in learning which financial personality type you are? Take the quiz here to find out! Then let us know your financial personality on our Facebook or Instagram pages to share your findings.
Don’t know your four-letter Myers-Briggs personality type? You can find out here.