How to Use Your Money “Archetype” to Address Your Biggest Financial Burdens

Mindy:
Hello, hello, hello and welcome to the BiggerPockets Money Podcast, my dear listeners. On today’s episode we talk about the five money archetypes. These archetypes are similar to the five love languages and can be just as powerful a tool in starting great money conversations with yourself, your spouse, your friends, and your family.

Scott:
Yeah, these five archetypes are the result of a quiz put together by Jean Chatzky, who has extensive experience in finance journalism, and who is the founder of hermoney.com. She’s also a repeat guest here on BiggerPockets Money. She partnered with a PhD in sociology to put this quiz together. The output of this test really spoke to Mindy and it nailed who I am. Mindy says that she doesn’t usually like these tests. This one was different and that’s why we’re going to talk about it today.

Mindy:
Yeah, I really, really felt that this encaptured my entire money soul. My name is Mindy Jensen and with me as always is my producer co-host Scott Trench.

Scott:
Great to be here. Mindy, always like being a connoisseur of finance knowledge alongside you. By the way, those are two of the archetypes. All right, we’re here to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else, introduce you to every money story because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you’re starting or what your archetype is.

Mindy:
Jean Chatzky, welcome back to the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. I am so excited to talk to you today.

Jean:
Thank you. I’m really excited to be here. I think this is going to be fun, just saying.

Mindy:
This is going to be so much fun. You created a quiz that people can use to figure out their MoneyType. And before we dig into the MoneyType specifically, I’d love to hear from you what are the benefits of categorizing ourselves into a specific personality architect?

Jean:
So as fans of the love languages, and there are many, will know, we are all made up of some factors that are wired in, that are totally nature and some factors that are totally nurtured, that are based on the way that we were raised usually when we were really, really young children. And understanding these things about ourselves and even about our partners, if we can get our partners to go through the diagnostic as well, understanding these factors gives us a tool in our toolbox that helps us understand why we behave in particular ways that may frustrate us or perplex us or excite us. It helps us change our behavior in ways that can actually help us get where we want to go. And particularly in important fields like money or like relationships that can be so frustrating, having this level of understanding is really key.

Mindy:
I always have a little bit of skepticism when I take these quizzes and I was shocked at how spot on you were when it revealed my truth. I’m like, “I can’t argue with this even one little bit.”

Jean:
Yeah, I hear this all the time, and this is where I take a step back and say, thank you for giving me credit for MoneyType, but I’m not the brains behind MoneyType. The MoneyType is at hermoney.com, we worked with a PhD who specializes in archetypes to develop this and she spent a really, really long time not just developing the questionnaire and the test, but then testing it on hundreds of people to make sure that people would get the kind of results that you got. I mean, it went through a lot of testing to make sure that actually it worked, so it does.

Scott:
Are there any risks associated with this? Do people believe or take their archetype too far and allow that to infuse in their identity? Or are there things you should be aware of when you take a test like this?

Jean:
I think the risk is, and I think that’s a great question by the way, Scott, I think the risk is that you say, “Well, that’s just the way I am. I can’t do anything about it. That’s just the way I am.” And that is something that you can fall back on in a lot of different situations, right? I mean, I am thinking of a woman that I know who was raised by a mom who was very, very critical of her, particularly when it came to her weight, and now she is very critical of her daughter when it comes to her weight. And I’ve said to her, “You hated when your mother did that to you. Why do you keep doing this?” And she says, “I can’t help it.” And I think that’s the risk. The risk is that we learn something about ourselves and then we think we can’t help it. But actually the point of MoneyType is to enable you to help it. The point is to give you insight into the way that you naturally tend to be so that if those tendencies aren’t benefiting you when it comes to seeking the financial future that you want, you have the wherewithal to understand and some changes.

Mindy:
And now we’re going to take a quick break. When we’re back, Jean will go through each of the MoneyTypes for us and we’ll each determine where we fall within the archetypes.

Scott:
And we’re back with Jean Chatzky. Before the break we talked about why identifying your type is important, and now we’re going to dig into the strengths and risks of each type.

Mindy:
Well, let’s go through the MoneyTypes. What are they? Let’s quickly first list them, then we’ll get into each one.

Jean:
So there are five MoneyTypes. There’s the nurturer, the producer, the visionary, the connoisseur, and the independent. Do you have an order that you’d like to talk about them in?

Scott:
Let’s start with producer, because Mindy and I are both producers and I have a suspicion that people who are spending their time listening to money podcasts might skew heavily towards producer.

Jean:
I suspect that you’re right. So producers are grounded, they’re diligent, they’re consistent when it comes to their money. They like having money, they like watching their money grow. And I relate to this because I often will talk about visiting my accounts, that I think that that’s an important part of the money process. It’s an important part for me just to visit my accounts and notice that the amounts are moving in the right direction. They are methodical, they tend to be conservative, they want to minimize their exposure to risk and sometimes they have to push themselves to take enough risks.
We talk in the MoneyType diagnostic about strengths and weaknesses and pleasures and fears. So if it’s helpful, I can sort of talk about those. So the pleasure when it comes to a producer is really racking it up, but also managing it, like figuring out, “Am I getting the best yield on this high yield savings account?” that for a producer that is the idea of a really good day. The big fear is losing money and not just losing money itself, although that is fearful, but losing control of your money to somebody else. They sabotage themselves by saving compulsively or, as I said, sometimes becoming overly conservative and their gift, their money gift is the ability to teach us the value in planning for the future. So those are your producers.

Scott:
So I felt like Jean was almost reading my diary except for the fact that I fear not optimizing my portfolio more than I fear loss or loss of control around that. And that may be because I am very high visionary in addition to the producer, I have 93 producer and 87 visionary. So can we do visionary next and see if that-

Jean:
We absolutely can. But before we do it, let me just ask you a question. When you’re thinking about optimizing your portfolio, is being able to do that a key part of how you see yourself, somebody who is able to optimize their portfolio, somebody who’s really good-

Scott:
Oh yeah.

Jean:
Right? Yeah, then that’s the visionary side of you. Visionaries see money as a tool for self-expression and as a way to follow their passion. And clearly that is a passion point for you. They are driven to do what they love for work, and I think we can probably all relate to this, but they’re also really, really excited when something that they are working on turns out to be a financial success. So it’s about doing work they love, but also about getting compensated for doing that work that they love in any way, shape or form.
The the visionary’s money pleasure is when others recognize their worth and their value, maybe others invest in their product, in their projects. Their fear is that that element that somebody else might recognize is stuck inside of them and that others don’t get a chance to see it. Visionaries fear dying while still holding onto that one amazing idea and not letting that amazing idea see daylight. Sometimes when we talk about sabotage patterns, visionaries can take excessive risks that may make them financially vulnerable, but when it comes to their gifts, they also have the ability to encourage other people to take necessary risks, risks that they might not otherwise take. And they’re your friend that you’re going to call when you want a solution to a complex problem. When you want somebody to sit on the phone with you or sit on Zoom with you and really brainstorm the hell out of some idea to get you to a solution, you’re calling the visionary.

Scott:
Yeah, I think that the combination there is a good… Yeah, I think that nails at least how I see myself.

Mindy:
I want to go to nurturer next because that’s my next one. I’m 52% nurturer.

Jean:
Okay, so nurturers just like it sounds, they see money as a tool to help others. So Mindy, this is why you are sitting behind this podcast microphone, right? Because you’re a nurturer and you’re putting all of this out there in the world to help other people. But sometimes it’s partners, sometimes it’s children, sometimes families, coworkers, employees or communities. And relationships are paramount for nurturers. They are just at the top of the list and sometimes they are aware that the financial decisions that they make help other people more than they help themselves and may even hurt themselves. So as we get into what we need to know about ourselves if we’re nurturers, that’s big. Nurturers just love taking care of other people, they love providing for other people, giving material things to other people, making sure that the people that they care about are safe. That’s 100% nurture. And on the fear side, they fear letting people down and not having enough in the way of resources to support the people that they love and they care about.
In terms of sabotage, they give too much. Sometimes they give too much. And I relate to this a lot when I talk to people on my podcast on HerMoney who are parents who are still supporting adult children or who stepped out of the workforce to care for parents and have not found a way back in and wanted to do it, desperately, desperately wanted to do it, but realized they probably were not doing the best thing for themselves at the same time. Money gifts, the nurturer has a lot of money gifts, they teach us the value of giving, they teach us the value of using money to give and to protect other people.

Mindy:
I keep looking for fault in this, but you keep hitting it.

Scott:
Well, let’s do an independent next, which by the way, I think is not really the financial independent definition that most people think about. I would almost categorize it more as adventurer to a certain degree. But yeah, go ahead. I’d love to hear your thoughts on that one.

Jean:
Yeah, so I think that you’re right. I mean when you guys talk about independence, you talk about the FI definition of independent and that’s not where we’re going here. Here we’re really talking, although there are some close parallels, independents really value freedom and autonomy, right? So if we’re talking fire, but we’re putting the retire early part of it to the side, you do get to a similar definition of independence of wanting to be able to live life on your own terms, to have the freedom to follow their own path. And they do resist having money sort of dictate their choices in life. And for many people who are true independents, they also have had to acknowledge that the way that they behave around money may not make sense to other people, that other people may look at it and think, “This just doesn’t register with me.”
So independents get pleasure in adventures and experiences. They’re definitely the get happiness from spending money on experiences type of people. They fear giving up more than they have to have more money. And I think that’s a very FI sort of a concept. So that’s sort of where they sit. In terms of their sabotage pattern, they can sometimes fail to pay enough attention to their money overall, and by doing so, by living so much in the moment, they create financial hurdles for themselves down the road, which can be difficult to come back from. But their gift is that they challenge us to really think about how important money is in the scheme of life and in the scheme of all things.

Mindy:
Scott, what percentage of connoisseur are you? I’m 2%, which is shocking to me only that it’s all the way up to 2%. I thought I’d be zero.

Scott:
I’m five times more connoisseur than you at 10%.

Mindy:
Okay, Jean, I know that the connoisseur is spending. Tell us more about that one.

Jean:
Yeah, connoisseur is largely spending, I mean they love money and there is really nothing wrong with that. They love having money, but they also love spending it on things and experiences and they love saving it too, but they like saving it with a specific goal in mind. So when connoisseurs are saving, they have a picture in their mind of what comes next, what follows it. Like independents, their money pleasure is investing in enjoyable experiences and nice quality products. And I think it’s important to remember no matter how you score on the connoisseur side that there are some people who are experience people and there are other people who are throw pillow people.
I think it’s important when we are going to get the most happiness out of our utility of money to kind of understand if you’re an experience person or if you’re a throw pillow person, because that should sort of dictate using your money in a way that lines up with your values and your priorities. Connoisseurs fear never being able to have the lifestyle that they want. There’s a little FOMO with our connoisseurs. Their sabotage pattern, no surprise, is that they can fall into overspending and that can compromise their financial futures. And their money gift is that connoisseurs are the ones who show us that money actually can be fun and I think we have to thank them for that.

Scott:
Mindy and I are Costco connoisseurs. Jean, what is your archetype?

Jean:
So I am primarily producer, but connoisseur is actually my second type, which is a combination that Jennifer Selig, the researcher who developed the MoneyType, said she doesn’t see a ton of, but I find it sort of yin and yang for me. It sort of balances me out. I like that I enjoy saving as much if not more as I enjoy spending, but that I have the ability to sort of do both.

Scott:
Awesome. It seems like a great combination. You’re going to work hard and amass the money and then spend it.

Jean:
Work hard, play hard. There you go.

Scott:
Love it. Are there any trends you’ve seen on how women categorize into these archetypes as opposed to men?

Jean:
I think more women tend to be nurturers, and that’s just back to again, hunter-gatherer kind of roots, right? Just like women tend to really value safety and security for ourselves, we tend to value safety and security, particularly for our children and the other people that we love and that we care about.

Scott:
Stay with us. We’ll be back after a quick break and when we’re back, Jean will be telling us what to do after we figure out our MoneyType.

Mindy:
All right, we’re back and we’re talking with Jean Chatzky about MoneyTypes, what they are and how you can use them to enhance your understanding of your financial situation. Okay, so we take the quiz and we find out what our MoneyType is, how can we use this information to enhance our financial situation or our lives in general or alter our relationship with money?

Jean:
When you take the quiz, it comes with a diagnostic. I should point out it’s a free tool. We want everybody to know their MoneyType. We think it’s really, really helpful. When you take it, you get a diagnostic which tells you the things that I’ve just told you about the type, but you also sort of get a playbook of what you might want to do to help yourself next to think about making your life better. So let’s say you are a nurturer and you know that you are likely to use too many of your resources to help other people, or you’re likely to actually notice yourself doing that, you can put some guardrails up. You can decide that, “Yes, I will help people with my free cash, but I’m not going to go into debt to help other people.” You can create a slush fund for helping other people, a separate pile of money and decide just like you might have a separate giving budget, “This is the money that I am allocating to help other people over here and my retirement money is over here.” So you know that you’re sort of setting up those rules for yourself.
Similarly with the connoisseur, I think it’s important to again understand, “This is where I’m likely to fail. I am likely to overspend, I’m particularly likely to overspend when I am using a credit card rather than a debit card.” So put up a guardrail where you decide, “Okay, for these discretionary expenses, I’m either going to put the money in a separate account, I’m only going to use debit, I’m going to impose a 24-hour rule or a 72-hour rule for these particular type of purchases to try to reign myself in.” And these are real tactical solutions that work because you understand where you’re likely to falter, right? It’s like being a runner and understanding that you have to buy the shoes for pronators because you are a pronator rather than the shoes that are for people who just run in neutral all the time.
Let’s see. If you’re a visionary, and a lot of visionaries interestingly are entrepreneurs and they’re entrepreneurs who put all of their energy and all of their money into their businesses or into their side gigs, but they tend to think that their businesses or even their side gigs are their retirement plan and they don’t necessarily need a retirement plan on the side. They can open up an IRA, they can open up a SEP and they can make sure that they are putting money into that automatically just like you would with a 401k so that it actually gets funded and you don’t have to make a good and smart decision every time you want to make a contribution. And same deal with taxes. Sometimes visionaries get so enamored with what they’re doing and with the money that’s coming in, they forget that, “Oh, this is 1099 income, nobody’s taken anything out. I have to pay taxes when tax time rolls around, aggregate and separate that money.”
For producers, like all of us, target-date funds, if you know that you are not the kind of person who’s going to take enough risk, get yourself into a solution that’s going to take enough risk for you. It could be a managed account, it could be a target-date fund. It could be a balanced fund, it could be a robo-advisor or a financial advisor. Put yourself in a situation where you know that the risk that you need to take is actually going to get taken. And for those independents, we know that for a lot of independents, investing, it feels a little too corporate, it doesn’t feel in touch with their values. These are the kind of folks who might be attracted to an ESG kind of fund or to values-based investing. And there’s a lot of research on how to do that in a way that you don’t compromise on return. So these are just a few thoughts, but there are a lot more out there in our diagnostic tools.

Scott:
So I’ve noticed that with these personality tests that I’ve done in the past, the Myers-Briggs or whatever, that I’ll be like right on the bubble for whether I’m an extrovert or introvert or whatever. And I think I got that on this one, but that they slowly shift over time. I used to be an I and now I’m more of an E, for example, extrovert instead of introvert on that. Do you think that that changes, that people’s archetypes in this area will also change over time as their wealth increases or their life progresses?

Jean:
I think so. And it’s not just as their wealth increases or their life progresses, but I think it’s as they learn the tools that this test has the ability to teach. So just to go back to my little me search easiest to sort of talk about this in terms of what I’ve learned, but I have had to push myself to take risk. It’s now easier to take risk because I’ve learned that by taking risk, nothing terribly bad has happened. So over time it is still hard to do, but I’m able to do more of it. And I think that’s the kind of shift that you start to see.

Scott:
Should we be trying to change our archetype in any categories?

Jean:
No, I mean, you are the one who said, these are neutral. These are not judgy because everybody is made up… I think the most frustrating thing, and you guys didn’t mention it, which is interesting to me, but I think that the most frustrating thing about our test is that your values add up to more than 100. Initially I was just like, “Why? Why can’t it add up to 100? I want nice round numbers.” And it just doesn’t work that way because your parts create a sum that’s greater than a whole.
So sometimes you’ll lean into certain parts of your personality and sometimes you’ll lean into certain other parts of your personality. And I think it’s nice to be able to understand that you’re comprised of various facets that you can draw on when you need them. I mean, I think we all know sort of introverted extroverts or extroverted introverts who when they are going out to a party draw on that part of them that allows them to be sociable and have a good time before they get home and then collapse and have to sort of recover from that kind of an event. You are able to tap into these different parts of you, and that’s kind of nice.

Mindy:
Yeah, I thought the amounts were, I’m 89% producer. I thought it was, I have 89% of the traits of producer and I have 52% of the traits of nurturer.

Jean:
No, that’s right. But a lot of times people see it and they’re like, “Well, what do you mean it’s not 100?”

Mindy:
And it adds up to 188%, which I take to mean I am 188% awesome.

Jean:
Yes, absolutely.

Mindy:
So how can people use this quiz to understand their loved ones better?

Jean:
Well, first of all, you should take it. Your loved ones should take it. You should exchange reports. And then I think you just use it to open up and have a conversation. Because let’s say you are somebody for whom taking risk is not just easy, but really, really pleasurable. You’re a jump out of the airplane kind of a person and you’re married or you’re with somebody who could never see themselves doing that and who’s petrified. Having this sort of insight into them, a deeper kind of an insight into them enables you to say, “Okay, I kind of get this about you and maybe even I kind of accept it about you and I can learn to work with this in a different way. I can understand this is important to you so that even if it’s not super important to me, I can give you this.”
And I come back to the love languages for a second because I think a lot of people are by this point so familiar with that bestselling book, The Five Love Languages, and that some people their love language is words of affirmation. They need to be told over and over again, “I love you, you’re amazing.” And even if you are not that person, if you are with that kind of a person, if you can get yourself to be a sayer of those things, then your life is going to go more smoothly. So you learn what makes your partner tick money-wise from our diagnostic, and then you can give them more of that and maybe they can give you more of what you need. And then maybe your financial life isn’t as fraught as it might otherwise be.

Scott:
Awesome. Love it. And this is such a powerful tool. I thought it really nailed who I am or how I at least think of myself with regards to money. Where can people find this quiz to go and take it if they’re interested?

Jean:
Moneytype.hermoney.com.

Scott:
Moneytype.hermoney.com, and we will link to that of course in the share notes here at BiggerPockets Money. Jean, thank you so much for coming on the show today. We really appreciate it. And yeah, thank you.

Jean:
Oh, thank you guys for having me. I am so glad that it worked for you and I appreciate the interest in the conversation.

Mindy:
Jean, this was a lot of fun and thank you for creating such a spot on tool. I really had a good time taking the quiz and going through all the results, and I am excited to go back and click on all those little things and find more about the different archetypes that I have. And I’m going to make my husband take this quiz too and see how we match up. I’m guessing we’re going to be pretty close.

Jean:
Awesome.

Mindy:
All right, thank you, Jean, and we will talk to you soon.
Scott, that was a lot of fun. And I have to tell you, I was a little bit leery or skeptical of taking that test when I first got the link when we were preparing for the show. But I took it, I answered the questions, the questions made sense, unlike some of the other personality tests that I have taken in the past. And when I got the answers, I was like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Nailed it 100%.” I really was surprised by how well it captured my money soul.

Scott:
Yeah, and let’s be real, if you’re listening to BiggerPockets Money, you already have done all the work to research yourself around these other personality tests. Take this one too. It’s a good other primer, and I think will nail how you feel about money pretty accurately.

Mindy:
All right, Scott, should we get out of here?

Scott:
Let’s do it.

Mindy:
That wraps up this episode of the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. He is Scott Trench, and I am Mindy Jensen saying, see you soon, future tycoon.

Scott:
If you enjoyed today’s episode, please give us a five star review on Spotify or Apple. And if you’re looking for even more money content, feel free to visit our YouTube channel at youtube.com/biggerpocketsmoney.

Mindy:
BiggerPockets Money was created by Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench, produced by Kaylin Bennett, editing by Exodus Media, copywriting by Nate Weintraub. Lastly, a big thank you to the BiggerPockets team for making this show possible.