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Beyond the Numbers: How Money Beliefs Shape Your Financial Life
"It's more than just numbers. There's an emotional component, a psychological component there, that money has meaning to us, that we ascribe to it,” says Ashley Quamme. “And when we make financial decisions, it's not just making financial decisions from a number standpoint, but it's also making it from an emotional place as well.”
A therapist and Certified Financial Behavior Specialist®, Ashley is the founder of Beyond the Plan, which connects firms with financial behavior officers (FBO) so they can navigate sensitive client financial decisions. In this conversation with host Shane Tenny, CFP®, Ashley suggests that financial decisions aren't driven solely by logic; they're deeply intertwined with our emotions, beliefs, and past experiences.
“Financial psychology,” she explains, is about “understanding how people or how clients, how their emotions, their thoughts, their experiences, their behaviors, their attitudes, beliefs – how all of that impacts their financial decisions.” In working with advisory firms to help advisors and clients, Ashley focuses on how trauma and deeply held beliefs shape money behaviors. Past experiences create patterns – from scarcity and abundance mindsets to financial trauma and comfort spending – that either help or hinder our financial success.
The discussion delves into the fundamental dynamics at play in couple relationships around money, with Ashley describing how anger often masks deeper fears and how financial arguments are rarely about the money itself. She also shares practical strategies for identifying personal money beliefs, including her "money timeline" exercise for self-discovery and her "think, feel, do" framework for understanding financial decision-making patterns.
For medical and dental professionals juggling high-stress careers with complex financial decisions, Ashley's insights offer a pathway to better understand the emotional undercurrents that drive financial behavior and ultimately achieve greater financial wellness aligned with personal values.
💡 Featured Guest 💡Name: Ashley Quamme, LMFT, CFBS
What she does: Ashley is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Certified Financial Behavior Specialist who serves as a fractional financial behavior officer for advisory firms. As the founder of Beyond the Plan, she helps financial advisors understand how their clients think, feel, and behave with money. She specializes in uncovering the psychological and emotional factors that drive financial decisions, working with individual clients and couples to navigate complex money-related challenges.
Company: Beyond the Plan
Words of wisdom: "Although it may not logically make sense, comfort shopping – to the extent that we are depleting resources, no, that doesn't make logical sense – but to our brain, comfort shopping is serving a purpose there, and it's serving us well … Ultimately, those that are engaging in shopping or spending to this extent, there's a pleasure component there that they're receiving. And while that might make sense, we need to, or my job really then, is to understand: ‘Okay, well, we're receiving pleasure from this, but what are we lacking?’”
Connect: LinkedIn | Planning & Beyond Podcast | Instagram
💰 On the Money 💰Top takeaways from this episode
- Financial decisions are 90% emotional. Research shows that our financial choices are largely driven by emotions rather than logic. Understanding what emotions we're experiencing—fear, joy, worry, or pleasure—and how they inform our actions is crucial for making better financial decisions.
- Money arguments aren't about money. When couples fight about finances, they're actually fighting about deeper issues like meaning, purpose, identity, connection, and belonging. Money becomes the content issue, but the real conflict stems from underlying emotional needs and attachment patterns.
- Scarcity and abundance mindsets drive behavior. Those with scarcity mindsets may save excessively and avoid spending on quality-of-life improvements due to fear of not having enough. Conversely, abundance mindsets can lead to overspending with the belief that everything will work out. Both extremes can be financially harmful.
- Financial trauma shapes current behavior. Life events like divorce, job loss, bankruptcy, or childhood financial instability create lasting patterns in how we think about and handle money. These experiences become the lens through which we view financial security and make decisions, often years later.
⚡ Prosperous Insights ⚡
[02:10] Financial psychology defined: Understanding how emotions, thoughts, experiences, behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs impact financial decisions, allowing both advisors and clients to take more ownership in how they make financial choices and feel about their relationship with money.
[04:52] Scarcity vs. Abundance: Ashley describes two common financial beliefs: the scarcity mindset, which creates fear of not having enough, leads to excessive saving and avoiding spending on quality-of-life improvements, and the abundance mindset, which can result in overspending with the belief that everything always works out.
[08:42] Internal vs. external locus of control: Highly successful professionals often have strong internal control over their careers but may struggle to apply that same mindset to their finances, sometimes placing too much emphasis on external factors like markets or policies.
[13:45] Why do you comfort-spend? Shopping and spending behaviors often address underlying needs for stress relief, pleasure, connection, or meaning. Understanding the purpose of the spending is key to addressing problematic financial behaviors.
[18:04] Content, not cash: Financial conflicts among couples are rarely about the actual money but about deeper content issues like identity, connection, belonging, and purpose.
[23:05] The think-feel-do framework: Ashley's methodology for understanding financial decisions involves examining the thoughts (cognitions), emotions (feelings), and actions (behaviors) that work together when making financial choices.
[27:35] Anger masks fear: When people express anger about financial situations, it's often a secondary emotion protecting them from showing vulnerability around deeper fears about financial security or respect.
[25:41] Justifying that purchase: Most of us are masters at justifying the things we want. “Being able to understand ‘What am I feeling in this moment?’’ or ‘What feeling am I trying to achieve by making this decision?’ is a great starting place,” Ashley says.
[30:05] Avoidance vs. hypervigilance: “For some, there can be an avoidance piece to at least paying attention to finances – avoidance or a hypervigilance to it – and those are maybe two ends of the spectrum.” Stress and burnout can lead to either avoiding financial decisions or obsessively controlling those decisions when other areas of life feel chaotic, Ashley explains.
[41:06] What are your money attitudes? To find out, Ashley suggests creating your own “money timeline” in which you track your earliest money memory all the way to the present, then identify patterns of beliefs and behaviors. “Doing that exercise in and of itself will create, hopefully, a lot of awareness around how you've come to make meaning of money and why you think, feel, do the way that you do.”
💵 Financial Wellness Tip 💵Understanding where your cash flow is going every month is essential to creating an actionable plan for your financial goals. Use our monthly cash flow worksheet to gain clarity on where your money is going and create a budget.
- Get our Personal Cash Flow Worksheet.
Disclaimer: The Prosperous Doc podcast by Spaugh Dameron Tenny highlights real-life stories from doctors and dentists to encourage and inspire listeners through discussions of professional successes and failures in addition to personal stories and financial wellness advice. Spaugh Dameron Tenny is a comprehensive financial planning firm serving executives, business owners, physicians, dentists, and retirees in Charlotte, NC. To find out more about Spaugh Dameron Tenny, visit our website at www.sdtplanning.com. You can also connect with our host, Shane Tenny, CFP, at [email protected].
Compliance code: CRN202808-9288422
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By Spaugh Dameron Tenny
5
1717 ratings
"It's more than just numbers. There's an emotional component, a psychological component there, that money has meaning to us, that we ascribe to it,” says Ashley Quamme. “And when we make financial decisions, it's not just making financial decisions from a number standpoint, but it's also making it from an emotional place as well.”
A therapist and Certified Financial Behavior Specialist®, Ashley is the founder of Beyond the Plan, which connects firms with financial behavior officers (FBO) so they can navigate sensitive client financial decisions. In this conversation with host Shane Tenny, CFP®, Ashley suggests that financial decisions aren't driven solely by logic; they're deeply intertwined with our emotions, beliefs, and past experiences.
“Financial psychology,” she explains, is about “understanding how people or how clients, how their emotions, their thoughts, their experiences, their behaviors, their attitudes, beliefs – how all of that impacts their financial decisions.” In working with advisory firms to help advisors and clients, Ashley focuses on how trauma and deeply held beliefs shape money behaviors. Past experiences create patterns – from scarcity and abundance mindsets to financial trauma and comfort spending – that either help or hinder our financial success.
The discussion delves into the fundamental dynamics at play in couple relationships around money, with Ashley describing how anger often masks deeper fears and how financial arguments are rarely about the money itself. She also shares practical strategies for identifying personal money beliefs, including her "money timeline" exercise for self-discovery and her "think, feel, do" framework for understanding financial decision-making patterns.
For medical and dental professionals juggling high-stress careers with complex financial decisions, Ashley's insights offer a pathway to better understand the emotional undercurrents that drive financial behavior and ultimately achieve greater financial wellness aligned with personal values.
💡 Featured Guest 💡Name: Ashley Quamme, LMFT, CFBS
What she does: Ashley is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Certified Financial Behavior Specialist who serves as a fractional financial behavior officer for advisory firms. As the founder of Beyond the Plan, she helps financial advisors understand how their clients think, feel, and behave with money. She specializes in uncovering the psychological and emotional factors that drive financial decisions, working with individual clients and couples to navigate complex money-related challenges.
Company: Beyond the Plan
Words of wisdom: "Although it may not logically make sense, comfort shopping – to the extent that we are depleting resources, no, that doesn't make logical sense – but to our brain, comfort shopping is serving a purpose there, and it's serving us well … Ultimately, those that are engaging in shopping or spending to this extent, there's a pleasure component there that they're receiving. And while that might make sense, we need to, or my job really then, is to understand: ‘Okay, well, we're receiving pleasure from this, but what are we lacking?’”
Connect: LinkedIn | Planning & Beyond Podcast | Instagram
💰 On the Money 💰Top takeaways from this episode
- Financial decisions are 90% emotional. Research shows that our financial choices are largely driven by emotions rather than logic. Understanding what emotions we're experiencing—fear, joy, worry, or pleasure—and how they inform our actions is crucial for making better financial decisions.
- Money arguments aren't about money. When couples fight about finances, they're actually fighting about deeper issues like meaning, purpose, identity, connection, and belonging. Money becomes the content issue, but the real conflict stems from underlying emotional needs and attachment patterns.
- Scarcity and abundance mindsets drive behavior. Those with scarcity mindsets may save excessively and avoid spending on quality-of-life improvements due to fear of not having enough. Conversely, abundance mindsets can lead to overspending with the belief that everything will work out. Both extremes can be financially harmful.
- Financial trauma shapes current behavior. Life events like divorce, job loss, bankruptcy, or childhood financial instability create lasting patterns in how we think about and handle money. These experiences become the lens through which we view financial security and make decisions, often years later.
⚡ Prosperous Insights ⚡
[02:10] Financial psychology defined: Understanding how emotions, thoughts, experiences, behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs impact financial decisions, allowing both advisors and clients to take more ownership in how they make financial choices and feel about their relationship with money.
[04:52] Scarcity vs. Abundance: Ashley describes two common financial beliefs: the scarcity mindset, which creates fear of not having enough, leads to excessive saving and avoiding spending on quality-of-life improvements, and the abundance mindset, which can result in overspending with the belief that everything always works out.
[08:42] Internal vs. external locus of control: Highly successful professionals often have strong internal control over their careers but may struggle to apply that same mindset to their finances, sometimes placing too much emphasis on external factors like markets or policies.
[13:45] Why do you comfort-spend? Shopping and spending behaviors often address underlying needs for stress relief, pleasure, connection, or meaning. Understanding the purpose of the spending is key to addressing problematic financial behaviors.
[18:04] Content, not cash: Financial conflicts among couples are rarely about the actual money but about deeper content issues like identity, connection, belonging, and purpose.
[23:05] The think-feel-do framework: Ashley's methodology for understanding financial decisions involves examining the thoughts (cognitions), emotions (feelings), and actions (behaviors) that work together when making financial choices.
[27:35] Anger masks fear: When people express anger about financial situations, it's often a secondary emotion protecting them from showing vulnerability around deeper fears about financial security or respect.
[25:41] Justifying that purchase: Most of us are masters at justifying the things we want. “Being able to understand ‘What am I feeling in this moment?’’ or ‘What feeling am I trying to achieve by making this decision?’ is a great starting place,” Ashley says.
[30:05] Avoidance vs. hypervigilance: “For some, there can be an avoidance piece to at least paying attention to finances – avoidance or a hypervigilance to it – and those are maybe two ends of the spectrum.” Stress and burnout can lead to either avoiding financial decisions or obsessively controlling those decisions when other areas of life feel chaotic, Ashley explains.
[41:06] What are your money attitudes? To find out, Ashley suggests creating your own “money timeline” in which you track your earliest money memory all the way to the present, then identify patterns of beliefs and behaviors. “Doing that exercise in and of itself will create, hopefully, a lot of awareness around how you've come to make meaning of money and why you think, feel, do the way that you do.”
💵 Financial Wellness Tip 💵Understanding where your cash flow is going every month is essential to creating an actionable plan for your financial goals. Use our monthly cash flow worksheet to gain clarity on where your money is going and create a budget.
- Get our Personal Cash Flow Worksheet.
Disclaimer: The Prosperous Doc podcast by Spaugh Dameron Tenny highlights real-life stories from doctors and dentists to encourage and inspire listeners through discussions of professional successes and failures in addition to personal stories and financial wellness advice. Spaugh Dameron Tenny is a comprehensive financial planning firm serving executives, business owners, physicians, dentists, and retirees in Charlotte, NC. To find out more about Spaugh Dameron Tenny, visit our website at www.sdtplanning.com. You can also connect with our host, Shane Tenny, CFP, at [email protected].
Compliance code: CRN202808-9288422