In this article, we review a few books about the psychology of money.
Happy money: the Japanese art of making peace with your money by Ken Honda
Author website: https://kenhonda.com/
Amazon link https://www.amazon.com/Happy-Money-Japanese-Making-Peace/dp/1501188372
In this book, Ken shares the Zen like approach to money, teachings he received from a Japanese billionaire. We can cultivate a happy and healthy relationship with money rather than a stressful and anxiety filled one. The idea is to be thankful to money, say “arigato” to it and let it flow i.e. to be generous with money to other people who need it and not try to hoard it for ourselves. Maro up is the attitude of cultivating traits like kindness, generosity, gratitude, mindfulness and appreciation for money can enable it to multiply, since we would then have a mentality of abundance with money and this energy would reflect on us and people around us. If we have a positive attitude towards money, more of it would be attracted to us.
Work, Sex, Money: Real Life on the Path of Mindfulness by Chogyam Trungpa
Amazon link https://www.amazon.com/Work-Sex-Money-Real-Mindfulness-ebook/dp/B00HZ374DG
Seminar link where the author gave teachings of the book https://www.chronicleproject.com/work-sex-money-seminar-three/
This book is by the famous Tibetan meditation teacher Chogyam Trungpa, based on the teachings he gave to his students in the west. In this book, he covers how we can have a mindful and genuine approach to money. We should not be attached or be obsessed with money, but cultivate a spirit of generosity and giving. Money is a kind of energy. Its neither good nor bad, but depends on our attitude to it. Its a part of our spiritual practice. We should manage our finances in such a way as to cultivatre a balanced life, with mindful earning, spending and consumption of money.
Mind over money: Why understanding your money behaviour will improve your financial freedom by Evan Lucas
Author website https://www.evan-lucas.com/book
Amazon link https://www.amazon.com/Mind-over-Money-understanding-behaviour/dp/1922611484
In this book, the author Evan Lucas delves into the psychology of money and why people behave the way they do about money. The author urges the reader to reflect on what money really means to them, what are the personal experiences they had with money and and what drives their behavior and attitudes towards money. The book discusses a few kinds of short and long term biases that affect the way people deal with money, such as an aversion to risk, attitude to delayed returns and discounts, loss aversion, availability bias, anchoring, cutting corners, confirmation bias, short term greed etc, how this is affected by culture and illustrates the concepts with various examples. It advises the reader to identify their and their partner’s money personality: spender or saver or investor or one who ignores it. Finally, it urges the reader to keep track of one’s finances, budgeting, discusses loans, and insurance, and gives an overview of different asset classes such as property and shares and how to have realistic expectations of each.
The Psychology of Money: Timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness by Morgan Housel
Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Money-Timeless-lessons-happiness/dp/0857197681
Author website https://www.morganhousel.com/
In this book, the author goes through different aspects of the psychology of money. The book points out that financial success is not about what knowledge we have of money, but how we put it into practice, and at times of crisis such as financial crashes we will know our actual behavior. It emphasizes long term thinking and patience which are essential to grow our money, and discusses the power of compounding and the role of time. Saving money is essential to deal with uncertainties in life. Some people will always have more money than us, so it is important to know when to be satisfied. Different people have different levels of tolerance to risk, and we are often influenced by emotions when making financial decisions. We often like to tell ourselves stories about money, partly influenced by our past, that governs our behaviours.
Conclusion
In this article, we have briefly discussed a few books related to psychology and money, and how our psychology influences how we make moneya dn use money.
