“There’s a link between your emotions and financial behaviour”

“There’s a link between your emotions and financial behaviour”

In today’s Money Mistakes interview, Vangile Makwakwa tells us that our family relationships can affect our relationship with money.

Vangile also talks about what we use money for, for instance to seek validation. Sjoe!

The personal finance blogger is the owner of wealthy-money.com.

She’s also an author and runs online personal finance courses.

Anyway, let’s hear more from Vangile through this Q&A. Enjoy!

Here’s the Q&A:

Where are you from, Vangile?
I am from South Africa.

Tell me a bit about yourself.
I am a full time suitcase entrepreneur, which means I live out of a suitcase and run my company wealthy-money.com on the road as I travel.

I have an apartment in Cape Town but I don’t have a permanent base – I spend anywhere from one month to two years in a country. I just follow my heart and move wherever my spirit is tells me to move.

Currently I am living in Chiang Mai, Thailand and will be working form here for a year and hosting retreats for my Creating Money Magic students.

I’m the author of Heart, Mind & Money: Using Emotional Intelligence for Financial Success. I’m a personal finance blogger and I run online personal finance courses, where I teach my students to create money magic.

What are the worst mistakes you’ve made when it comes to your finances?
The worst money mistake I made was accumulating US$60,000 in debt before I even turned 30 years old in the form of student loans, credit cards and loans from friends and family.

I racked up this debt between 2005 and 2010 and I finally decided to get my s*** together in the first quarter of 2011 when my depression finally reached its height and the only thing that I could think of was ending my life. I thought to myself: “There must be more to life than this and I have to find what it is.”

The second mistake was spending years pretending it didn’t exist, because I felt too overwhelmed and scared to deal with it. Also I didn’t have the tools and had no clue to start, until I discovered vipassana meditation and yoga.

As soon as I understood the importance of managing my emotions and allowing myself to feel all my feelings about money, my life changed.

The third mistake I made was not investing and not saving from an early age. I always believed I needed lots of money to start saving and investing. Funny enough when I did start investing and saving, I started with R200 a month because I was so heavily in debt.

The final mistake has been not paying off my mortgage when I could have. I regret that a lot because I had all the money I needed to pay it all off and decided to invest it in my business, but the business is the reason I can travel and continue to live right now so there is that.

money mistakes

What other lessons have you learned regarding money?
The lessons I’ve learned are:

1. There’s a link between your emotions and financial behaviour.
2. Our family relationships affect our relationship with money.
3. We make a lot of decisions about how we’re going to behave with money in our childhood and teen years and in order to move forward we have to spend time healing the inner child and the inner teen.
4. Our mother wound and father wounds are real and they bleed into our finances.
5. We use money to seek validation and to feel worthy and this affects the way we save, spend and invest money.
6. We need to love our bank accounts and be present with money if we want to change our finances.

Who taught you about making good money decisions?
I’ve had to do my own inner work around money. I got coaching and then my coach helped me understand that I could change my relationship with money.

I started sharing what I learned with others and also created a series of guided meditations around this.

Please share your blog URL and social media handles.
Website: http://www.wealthy-money.com
Facebook: wealthymoney
Twitter: @vangilemakwakwa
Instagram: @vangilemakwakwa

Thank you Vangile!
Did you enjoy this interview? Let me know which part you found interesting. Also, let me know what lessons you’ve learned when it comes to personal finance.

11 Comments

  1. Wow, I love this. You really made me think about a lot and you’re so right! I racked up 60k in student loans trying to prove myself to me and my family after my second divorce. I watched my parents waste money as a child and live off of family for a long time. Healing and knowing your worth really does make the difference I how you choose to spend your money.

  2. This was all great advice. I definitely agree that there is a strong connection to our emotions and money as well as how our relationships affect our view on money as well as the other way around. I’m also using this year to get my s**t together too…financially.

  3. Interesting interview! It’s tough to imagine investing or saving when life is paycheck to paycheck and your student loans are hovering over your head, but this is a nice reminder that it CAN be done!

  4. So true. Relationship with money runs deep. My money habits are very poor and it takes a lot of restraint to keep it together. All I want to do is buy stuff. I never learnt how to work with money as a child. There wasn’t that much and now I struggle to contain spending. My husband is very conservative which helps and I steer clear of debt (besides car/ home). I had a lot of debt in my early twenties but I sacrificed a lot to clear it. We pretty much live within our means. Example last year we sacrificed holidays in defember, we did nothing but we paid our daughter’s school fees upfront for the year. That took so much control but we did it. We didn’t have a fancy holiday season but I was okay !We live quite small and I prefer it that way. I constantly tell myself stay away from debt! My goal in 2018-2019 is to open up extra income stream for myself.

    Love your series!!

  5. I know 100% there is a link between my emotions and my spending. i am 100 percent impulsive. i know that now, and am really trying to change it.

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