Knowing and doing
The headlines are well known: spend less than you earn, keep something back for emergencies, and don't run a balance on a card at 29.9%.
Prochaska and DiClemente's stages-of-change model estimates that, for any given change, roughly one person in five is ready to act on advice at any moment. The others are running a belief that makes their current behaviour logical, and until that belief is named, more information has little effect. This page asks about your beliefs before your budget for that reason.
Where the four types come from
The four patterns are drawn from the published work of Dr Brad Klontz and Rick Kahler, who spent a decade cataloguing the money beliefs of clients and then tested them across large samples. Four clusters kept reappearing, and they were linked to real outcomes: income, net worth, whether someone carried revolving credit card debt, whether they were likely to bail out an adult child.
We have written our own statements, our own wording and our own scoring, and given the four types plain English names. We are not reproducing anyone's instrument. What we have taken is the underlying finding.
What a money belief is
We absorb our money beliefs as children. We watched which parent handled it, whether it got discussed at the table or never mentioned at all, what the atmosphere in the house was like at the end of a bad month, and how the people who had money were spoken about. Out of that we each built a set of rules, using the reasoning of a child, and then almost never went back to check them.
Those rules were often accurate at the time. "Don't spend on anything that isn't essential" is right in a household where the money runs out. It does not switch itself off when the circumstances change, so a rule built for a hard childhood is still quietly running the finances of a comfortable fifty-year-old — who cannot work out why they feel guilty booking a holiday they can easily afford.
The thing to listen forMoney beliefs tend to arrive with the words always, never, should, ought and only attached. One sign of a money belief is that it feels like how things are, rather than a belief.
The same numbers, read four ways
An illustrative example, not a real client: a household with £2,400 sitting in a current account, £4,100 on a credit card at 24.9% APR, and £280 a month spare after everything is paid.
- The Avoider has not opened the card statement. The balance has been “about three grand” in their head for a year. At 24.9% that card costs roughly £80 a month in interest — close to £950 a year for a decision they do not feel they have made.
- The Chaser puts the £280 into an investment app instead of the card, because paying down debt feels like standing still. To be the better call, that money has to beat 24.9% a year after tax, reliably.
- The Scorekeeper clears the whole balance in one go because the number is embarrassing, tells nobody, and has rebuilt it to £1,800 within four months — because the balance was the symptom and the spending was never discussed.
- The Guard keeps the £2,400 and services the card anyway, because moving savings out feels like exposure. Putting £2,400 against the balance saves around £600 a year in interest, and at £280 a month the buffer rebuilds in roughly nine months.
Write down what you are about to do, and next to it the belief it is protecting. If the belief is “I can't look at it”, “I need a win”, “nobody can know” or “I can't be caught short”, the money is going on the feeling rather than the maths.
How the scoring works
Twenty statements, five for each of the four types, shuffled so that consecutive questions belong to different types. Each is answered on a six-point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree — six points, so there is no neutral middle.
Each type therefore scores between 5 and 30 raw, which we express as a percentage of the available range. Your loudest type is the highest of the four. Where the top two are within a few points we show both. Scores are not weighted or compared with a population.
What this cannot tell you
- It is not a clinical instrument. It has not been validated, it does not diagnose anything, and a high score is not a condition. If a question here has touched something that feels bigger than money, take it to your GP or a qualified therapist.
- It cannot see your circumstances. Beliefs are one input into financial behaviour. Income, health, caring responsibilities, redundancy and plain bad luck are others, and they are frequently the bigger ones.
- It is a starting point. Each result ends with a question to think about.
- It is not advice. We do not recommend products and we do not tell you what to do about debt. Both are regulated activities and neither is what coaching is.
What to do with the answer
Read your type, then think about the question at the end of it for a day. Then take the smallest version of the thing you have been avoiding: one direct debit, or one statement opened.
To do that with a coach, see the financial healthcheck. If money is a worry right now, go to the free specialists first — our money worries page lists who to call today.