Definition
Money Scripts
Money scripts are the often-unconscious beliefs about money, formed early in life, that drive a person's financial behaviour as an adult.
Psychologists describe patterns such as money avoidance (believing money is bad or that one does not deserve it), money worship (believing more money will solve everything), money status (equating self-worth with wealth) and money vigilance (anxious frugality). These scripts shape saving, spending, risk-taking and even how openly people discuss finances.
Becoming aware of your own money scripts — perhaps inherited from how your family treated money — helps explain otherwise puzzling behaviour, like chronic overspending or an inability to enjoy hard-earned wealth. Recognising the script is the first step to rewriting unhelpful financial habits.
Related terms
- Loss AversionLoss aversion is the well-documented tendency for the pain of a loss to feel roughly twice as powerful as the pleasure of an equivalent gain.
- Mental AccountingMental accounting is the tendency to treat money differently depending on its source or label, instead of recognising that all money is fungible.
- Behavioral FinanceBehavioral finance is the field that studies how psychology and cognitive biases affect the financial decisions of investors and markets, departing from the assumption of perfectly rational actors.
Plain-English explainer from The Dispatch Investors Encyclopedia. General information, not financial advice.