Financing Sarah

Four Tendencies and How Personality Impacts Your Money

If you’re making money online through investing, or thinking about how to make money online investing then there are a few things to consider. It’s important to consider your intention and plan your investments before you start. The best way to answer the important questions is by looking inside ourselves to determine who we are and what our personality type can tell us about what investing methods will work for us. Gretchen Rubin has an amusing explanation of important personality factors in the Four Tendencies section of her book Better than Before.

Let’s consider our personality types when answering these investment questions: how involved do you want to be, are you interested in passive income, or active, how much money do you want to make, how much money are you willing to lose, what are you willing to trade to get what you want? The best way to answer these questions is by looking inside ourselves to determine who we are and what our personality type can tell us about what we really want from investing.

People are different, personalities are a large part of these differences. Our personalities can be determined by upbringing, experiences and a variety of other contributors. Personalities can even contribute to our differences regarding our relationship with money. I enjoy reading books, a lot of books, I read 100 books a year, a lot of them are about what makes us the way we are. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about who I am in regard to my relationship with money.

Gretchen Rubin’s personality explanations in the Four Tendencies section in her book Better than Before can help, you can take the quiz to determine yours.

Are you a high-risk person who likes the excitement of seeing big gains and big drops, or the more conservative type who prefers to see gradual inclines with fewer declines, maybe you’re the person who wants to be in the middle where you have a bit of both?

Let’s explore the Gretchen Rubin Four Tendencies Personality types.

Obligers meet outer expectations, but struggle to meet expectations they impose on themselves

Questioners question all expectations; they’ll meet an expectation if they think it makes sense–essentially, they make all expectations into inner expectations

Upholders respond readily to outer and inner expectations

Rebels resist all expectations, outer and inner alike

Everyone needs to be careful about advice from others, especially friends and family. When it comes to investing and business- everyone has an opinion, my mother would always say “consider the source.” I love this saying, if someone doesn’t have a long successful track record- I’m not listening, unless they want to warn me about their failures… then maybe.

 Obligers and Upholders will be more risk adverse while Rebels and Questioners might be more risk tolerant. The two former personalities need to be careful about taking advice, your personality can motivate you to follow what others are doing.

There are some fantastic attributes to all four types, we need to find those positives and focus on them, take advantage of your strengths.

Don’t spend all your time trying to fix what you don’t have, or being what you aren’t.

Obligers Your ability to meet expecations is unparalleled, you know what you want, you want praise, attention and admiration and you know how to get it. Follow the best investors by knowing their actions while they are doing it. Keep track of what the bests do and follow their lead. Engage your work ethic for outer expectations and keep that focus on what you know works. Use that drive for external approval to motivate you to work hard to research and choose good investments.

Rebels take advantage of your grit and independence to find what everyone isn’t doing. You are comfortable taking risks and happy to take chances so make it happen.

Questioners focus your strength of curiosity to do research to find good deals, they can still be found these days. Question what’s happening in the market and find those deals under the stones of answered questions.

Upholders You know the rules and you love them! Use the strength of upholding the rules to find overpriced investments and stay away from them, keep your focus on finding deals and keeping to the rules of not overpaying for what you know is overpriced.

I hope this bit of information from a book I enjoyed is a helpful to you while you’re on your investing journey. Have fun and be greatful for the best aspects of who you are, we are all a work in progress, cherish your strengths. Subscribe for more tips on investing, sales and business. Have a lovely day.