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Welcome to today’s episode where we have the pleasure of hosting Dr. Patty Ann Tublin,
a globally recognized expert in emotional intelligence, relationships, and the psychology of money. Dr. Patty Ann holds an impressive background with two master’s degrees and a doctorate in clinical psychology, bringing a wealth of knowledge and insights to our conversation.
In this engaging episode, Dr. Patty Ann delves into the intricate dynamics of money and legacy, unpacking how monetary decisions impact personal, marital, and family relations. She emphasizes that wealth should transcend beyond mere financial inheritance, focusing instead on passing down core values and financial stewardship to future generations.
One of the highlights of our discussion is Dr. Patty Ann’s perspective on how early inheritance might dampen children’s ambition. She underscores the significance of structuring inheritances thoughtfully to foster drive and independence in future generations.
Join us as Dr. Patty Ann shares her expertise on understanding various money personalities and how they shape our financial decisions and relationships. She offers invaluable insights into recognizing these traits in ourselves and our loved ones to make better financial choices and establish a stronger, healthier relationship with money.
By the end of this episode, you will walk away with a deeper understanding of the psychological aspects of wealth and practical tips for fostering financial awareness and education.
In This Episode
- The role of money in personal and family dynamics
- Identifying and understanding different money personalities
- Structuring inheritance to encourage ambition
- The psychological aspect of investing and financial decision-making
Whatever the dynamic is surrounding money and how it directly influences you is what creates your money personality without us even knowing it. It’s absolutely fascinating. Welcome to the Wealth Strategy Secrets of the Ultra Wealthy podcast where we help entrepreneurs like you exponentially build wealth through passive income to live a life of freedom and prosperity. Are you tired of paying too much in tax, gambling your future on the stock market, and want to learn about hidden strategies for making your money work for you? And now your host, Dave Wolcott, serial entrepreneur and author of the best selling book, the Holistic Wealth Strategy.
Hey, everyone. Welcome to today’s show on wealth strategy secrets. I’m your host, Dave Wolcott, and today we have an incredibly insightful and empowering episode lined up for you. Joining us is the brilliant Dr. Patty Ann Tublin, a globally renowned expert in emotional intelligence, relationships, and the psychology of money. You might know her from her work as the real life Wendy from the hit show Billions. In this episode, we’ll dive deep into the emotional and psychological underpinnings of our relationship with money. Dr.
Patty Ann will reveal the five bunny personalities she’s identified, how they impact our financial decisions, and what we can do to course correct for a more fulfilling and successful relationship with wealth. Whether you’re a compulsive saver, a money maker, or somewhere in between, this conversation is packed with actionable insights for anyone looking to unlock financial freedom and build a lasting legacy. Make sure to stay tuned until the end as Dr. Patty Ann shares powerful strategies for improving not only your financial future, but also your relationships, family dynamics, and personal fulfillment. Let’s get started. Dr. Patty Ann, welcome to the show.
Dave, I am so excited to be here. I was literally waiting for this all week. I know I need to get a life, but it’s true.
No, I have been as well and I know the audience is going to extract so much value out of this conversation because I think you bring this dimension and insights into how we view money, how we view wealth that most of us just don’t really see. Right, and you have an amazing background with which, you know, you’ve studied this, you understand the psychology, the emotional intelligence, and how this really kind of ties into money and what really drives our decisions, which I think is what, you know, a lot of us are really trying to figure out. So why don’t we really jump in and talk about a little bit about your origin story and really, you know, how did you get into clinical psychology and kind of studying this as your passion?
Okay, so thank you for all those kind words and I feel very strongly that everything is about relationships and what I always tell people is it’s all success. All success in every area of your life is predicated upon the, the ability to create, nurture and sustain healthy relationships. But we also have a relationship with money. And that’s where the psychology comes in. So I always wanted, I’ve always wanted to help people. I hope your audience hears this the right way. But my joke is I’m just as smart as the guys on Wall Street.
I wasn’t about making money. I could have gone to Wall street and made money. I wanted to always help people. So I’ve been able to, so I went to school and I have two masters, then I have my doctorate in clinical psychology and then that my work as a clinical psychologist many, many years ago morphed into coaching and consulting. And I really like that a lot more because it’s much more forward focused as opposed to banging your head against the wall like, okay, I get the pattern now what do I do about it? I’ve been very fortunate where I work with people in all different fields, but I do a lot of work with wealth management firms like your own, also accounting a lot with money. And what I’ve realized is our relationship to money determines the decisions we make about money.
And people, especially the quant guys and the actuaries, they love to tell me that’s nonsense. We have all this data, we have charts, we have numbers, we have, you know, all these beautiful different colored things. And my response is always, well, if it’s all about data analysis, then why do you really smart guys on Wall street make some really dumb decisions?
And of course it’s a little bit more complicated, but many times our emotions get in the way of buy, sell, hold, invest, whatever. But on a micro level, when we look at money in our life, it really is the driver for so many things. And it’s not really about how much money we have or don’t have. It’s about the attributes that we attribute to money. So it’s, it’s sort of kind of fascinating. Am I answering your question?
100%. Keep going.
Okay, so, because I can go off, like I could go off. So basically my very, very skinny background that’s related to the money conversation, because I have so many stories is when I was very young, I’m one of five, my father literally dropped out of a, of a massive heart attack. And he left my mother widowed with five children at 36 years old with no education. And my mother was an only child. So she had no family. She had no education. She wasn’t formally educated.
We didn’t find out till much later that she didn’t even finish high school. But so she and so she had no support, emotional, financial, social, nothing. Although she did have a great group of friends. It’s not the same as your family. So I remember saying to my mother, well, why don’t. It’s not like we were living so high on the hog before my dad died. But when he died, there really wasn’t any life insurance.
Everything came to a screeching halt. So I said to my mom, “why don’t you become a teacher? You love history, you love to read.” And she said, “no, that’s not really for me.” And then I found out later she wasn’t qualified to be a teacher, Right? And then she, what she did, though, social. All the social programs, all the social welfare programs were designed for my mother, right? A young widow, five children. Like, these are the people that welfare were designed for. Did my mother take welfare? Not a dime.
And I remember saying to her later in life, “mom, why didn’t you, you know, go.” Not that I knew it was welfare. Like, why didn’t you take that? She said, “why?” And this will tell you a lot about me, Dave. She said, “why? There’s nothing wrong with me. There’s no reason. I can’t work.” And she went out and got a job. Now, my siblings and I, later in life are like, well, we can think of five reasons why you didn’t need to go work.
So I spent my entire childhood watching my mother, who, by the way, never once complained about having to go to work, never once said life wasn’t fair, never once said she was tired. So I spent my childhood watching my mother get up. I thought she never slept because she was gone by the time we woke up. We were the original latchkey children. You know what that is, right?
Yeah.
Your audience knows. Yeah.
Yes.
And she stayed up at night when we went to bed, and somebody had gifted her a sewing machine or gave her a used one. And I can remember her, the sound of this Singer sewing machine going, because she made her own clothes, which were beautiful, but when you’re a kid, you want what everybody else wears. So I was determined that I was never going to be my mom in that regard. I was never going to allow myself to be put in a situation where I had to work like a dog because I didn’t have money and. Sidebar, Dave. The job that my mother got was. She worked for CBS International News in New York City as she started as a secretary and worked her way up. Because my mother was brilliant and she was gorgeous until the day she died.
Like, I mean, you know, she could stop a clock when she walked into a room without. She never went for a massage or a facial or anything. And I was just so determined that that wasn’t going to be me. And that really started my journey on being an entrepreneur because I didn’t want to rely on anybody else from my financial security. So are you. Sorry you asked?
Yeah, no, that’s. No, it’s really interesting and, you know, it’s reminding me, you know, kind of reflecting back on my childhood and, you know, just. It was definitely a scarcity household. I mean, you know, we had plenty, but that was just the mindset. Right. So, you know, that creates this environment where there’s just never enough, right?
So, and I think, you know, to your point. Yeah, that definitely shapes you and you mentioned how early does it actually start that you start to begin this relationship with money?
Well, we thought that it was formed. We used to think by 12. Now we believe it starts. It’s formed by 7. It doesn’t start to get developed. It’s absolutely formed. And if you think about it, that makes sense because that’s around age when a child realizes they’re separate from their parents, they’re their own person. And if you think about a kid, their real personality starts to come out around seven.
So everything that they’ve been around as it relates to money, whether your parents or your family or whatever your situation is, people are fighting about money. They’re not fighting about money. They’re talking about money. They’re not talking about money. Whatever the dynamic is surrounding money and how it directly influences you is what creates your money personality without us even knowing it. It’s absolutely fascinating.
Interesting. So, and I know you have a whole framework around money personalities, so maybe. Why don’t we jump in there?
Okay, so this is fun. So I created five different money personalities. Now, I’m sure there’s other money personalities, information out there, but this is the material that I created. So the very first person that I wanted to discuss is. It’s the compulsive saver. So do you want to guess, Dave, what fictional character would represent the compulsive saver?
I wouldn’t have any idea.
Okay, as soon as I say, I didn’t need to put you on the spot, but I thought we could have some fun. So as soon as I say it it will make sense. Ebenezer Scrooge.
Okay, Right.
So Ebenezer Scrooge is somebody that he like hoards all the money. Like you can see the picture of him. He’s got it under the mattress, you open up the closet, the money comes out. And the emotion that drives the compulsive saver is usually fear. And it’s fear of scarcity or an insecurity. The sad thing about the compulsive saver is regardless of how much money they save, they don’t allow themselves to spend it. So no matter how much they have, they can’t enjoy the fruits of their labor, if you will, because it’s not about money as a vehicle, which really that’s all it is. Right.
But it’s about money representing, I’m afraid something’s almost a paranoia, like I’m going to lose it and then where will I be? So, their identity is wrapped up in just hoarding. Hoarding and saving. Let me see what else I wrote down to share with you.
Yeah.
So usually like, usually this person grew up in a home where there was a lot of financial instability or they experienced economic hardship. So to say that they’re saving for a rainy day is an understatement.
Yeah.
So any questions on that?
No, it makes sense and I’ve met many, I’ve met entrepreneurs that have had eight figure exits and they still act that way. Yeah.
Isn’t it crazy?
Yes.
So that makes sense.
They don’t necessarily see it for what it is. They just really will give you the mantra, just save them for a rainy day.
Right. And they don’t want to lose. And then, they don’t want to lose a penny. Right. So it becomes, you know, and then they’re using their lizard brain, Right? All around scarcity, just because what if, what if, what if you know something, it’s almost like worse.
Right, because the whole, if you can’t enjoy what you’ve built and what you’ve created, really what’s the point? At least that’s my perspective. Right. I mean, make it, save it. Right. You know how to save it and spend it and you help people and have your money make money for you. If it’s sitting under your mat, you know, you’re really losing money, which is a little bizarre when you think about it.
Yeah.
So, okay, so hopefully nobody listening can see themselves as the compulsive saver, but I bet you they know people that are.
Yeah.
So the second Personality that I created. I love this one. She’s called the compulsive shopper, and I call her Shopaholic Sally. So we already have a picture of that woman with all the bags. And usually the emotion tied into the shopaholic is someone with euphoria and emotional relief through spending.
So let me lay the groundwork for you. And again, this is. It’s a gross simplification. Right, there’s always exceptions. You have anomalies. Usually the shopaholic is the person that grew up in a home where maybe they didn’t feel well or they were anxious or they were depressed, or they would experience any type of uncomfortable feeling. And their parent or their caretaker would say, would say, when they’re younger, oh, let’s go get a toy, or oh, have something to eat.
Is also a little bit of overeating in there. Or let’s go clothes shopping. So what happens is at the moment of the purchase, whether it’s in the store where you take it off the rack, or you’re online and you hit send, by the time you get home with the product and. Or by the time that the product is delivered to your house, it’s irrelevant to you because the relief from the uncomfortable emotion that the shopping is predicated upon is no longer relieved anymore. So you need to repeat the behavior. Does that make sense?
Makes perfect sense. And I know some of those types as well.
Exactly. Now, I hate to throw women under the bus, but we do tend to think of women as the shopaholics. And in a lot of ways, there’s, you know, there’s degrees to everything. But if you go into somebody’s closet, I happen to know somebody like this, you open up their closet and you see all the tags are still on the clothes. They never even wore the clothes because the purchase wasn’t about the clothes. The purchase was about relieving the distress that they were feeling. And they didn’t learn any of the tools to manage that.
It’s sort of kind of really not cool. So what did I write down? Usually they talk about somebody like this would come from a home where love and attention were either inconsistent or conditional. So again, shopping becomes a way to self soothe or fill emotional voids that provide a fleeting sense of joy and validation. So you can see how the behavior needs to consistently be repeated.
Got it.
Do you want to comment on that?
No, I think that’s perfect. Let’s go into the other ones.
Okay.
So the next thinking about my kids, you know what’s interesting about this, too, is I want to go through all five, and then I do want to talk about. Okay, once we’ve identified ourselves with which personality we’re tied to. Right, how can we make corrective actions to, you know, try to reframe that? And the other thing that’s going through my mind right now, which is interesting, I want to talk to you and for the audience out there, Dr. Patty Ann actually has twins as well, and I have triplets. Right. So, you know.
Yeah.
Watching the kids. This is also super important for our kids, right? Because I’m watching my triplets who have completely different money personalities. And they were grown up in the same household, the same values. We talk about all these, you know, things around, you know, building wealth, and they’re having different, you know, mindsets around money and personality. So I want to cover that as well. But let’s finish.
Okay, hang on. Let me comment on that. That’s a great thing. Right, because and you have four altogether. And I have four altogether. Right? Yeah. So we didn’t even learn.
But anyway, I do want to comment on what you said about. So when we grow up, like, we think about your own siblings, right. If you have siblings, you might have different personalities for this, for the listeners and how people are different with money and thinking about our own children, even though our children grew up with the same set of parents and the parents value towards money. This is an interesting psychology of. But everybody’s truth can be different. So one child’s perception of money might look very different than the other child’s perception of money because of the emotional label that the individual child puts on the money. Is that interesting? Did that make sense?
Very interesting. Yeah.
Right, It also explains. You talk to your children, and three of them will, you know, they will. They might have all have a very different perception of their childhood and how they were raised. And if their parents were strict or lenient or liked them or didn’t like them, and it was the same home. It’s unbelievable.
Yeah, right.
So there’s always that individual pull, that innateness that speaks to so many different things. Because even though you had triplets. I had twins. They still had different life experiences within and outside the home that helped shape our attitudes towards everything.
Yeah.
Including what their talents are. So anyway, so I had to jump on that as a different sidebar. Okay. So then the third personality. Okay. So if I give a workshop on this, I have a great video for this, and it’s called the Compulsive money maker. And I will not put you on the spot this time, but think about the Wolf of Wall street. And you had Jordan Belfort.
Remember that cat, that character? That was Caprio.
Yeah.
Leonard DiCaprio.
Yeah.
Right, and this is for someone who all of their pride is wrapped up in money. Now, what’s different about the compulsive moneymaker is that they don’t have to hold it. It’s actually very important for them to spend it because their validation comes from an external validation. Meaning. So let’s say everybody’s going out to dinner, right and it’s your birthday, Dave.
Right. So it’s all about you. It’s all about you. And then I decide to pay the check and I insist and I sort of, kind of grandstand about it. That could be the compulsive money maker. Because now what I’ve done is I’ve made it all about me instead of about you. And I’m the hero. Right? So the compulsive money maker, you know, creates this aura of they will spend it and they will make it, and they’re not worried about spending it because they’re confident that they’ll make it again.
So these people are incredible risk takers. As long as the return on the investment is making it, they will gamble all day, every day. It’s really, it’s really interesting, but it becomes pathological. Right. So usually this person grows up in a home where success and achievement is tied to the parents approval. Right. So you have to demonstrate your success so that your parents will approve of you. So you demonstrate your success by spending so that the people will approve of you.
You have to make it to be able to spend it. And they also see the money as a measure of their value and their power. And I and again, there’s degrees, but I think we all know people like this, Dave.
Yeah, definitely.
Right. You want to comment on that or no?
Yeah, no, I definitely know people in this category as well. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. So that’s the compulsive money maker again. It’s, I think about Jordan Belfort and everything just comes to life with that one. Okay, so the fourth money personality, I would say, and I can’t show you research, but I would say it’s the least popular personality, but it’s there anyway.
We might see it in our kids a lot when they’re younger, but it’s called the indifference to money personality. And I call that person laissez faire Laura. So that’s the person that doesn’t even look at the price tag, doesn’t even consider the cost. It’s like when my daughter was growing up, mom, can I have this? I’m like, well, how much is it? I don’t know. Like, well, I need to know how much it costs to see if it’s worth it. Right? And then there’s. There’s degrees to that. And usually the emotion attached to the laissez faire laure personality is they’re detached or there’s a total, total indifference.
Usually, not always, but usually these people come from pretty affluent and privileged households where money was abundant and not a sort, Not a source of stress. However, it can also be the opposite, where money was a constant source of stress, anxiety, and conflict. And the person has decided that they’re going to avoid that at all costs and not be realistic with money. I tend to, I wanted to cover both bases, but I tend to think the indifference to money and in my experience has been the person that grew up in a very affluent home and just spends the money as if it’s water. And I think it’s a very, very unhealthy attitude because you’re not really grounded in reality and the value of what the money is and how it could be different for different people.
Makes sense
What do you think?
Yeah, makes perfect sense. Okay, I can, I know plenty of people in each category so far, so you’ve been. You’ve nailed all four of them so far.
Okay. So the last one, this last one just cracks me up. I don’t know why. And this money personality is the worrier, and I call him William the worrier. And we all know people like this. And the emotion that drives this personality is anxiety and a persistent, unrelenting fear of losing everything. So usually this is the person that grew up in a home where they. They had a certain level of financial success, for lack of a better word.
And then something happened. Either somebody lost the job, a job, or they went into bankruptcy, or their home was foreclosed upon. So they had money at any different level, and then all of a sudden, it was suddenly taken away from them. So William the warrior is the type of person that is. He could be really successful, she could be really successful. She’s rocking on all cylinders, making a fortune. And yet no matter how much they have, no matter how much they make, no matter how much they literally are successful financially, all the end or the world shows sees that they’re successful financially, they’re in constant fear of losing that money. So.
So again, they don’t get pleasure in the money they have because they’re ready to lose it at any moment. So I actually work with a client. It’s all remote, but her husband happens to be on Wall street. And they just bought a second home, a beach home, and up at the Cape. And they. He buys the home. He’s like, “that’s it. I’m going to lose my job.”
I just know it. But in the past, when they would buy a car, that’s it. Now I’m going to lose my job. So there’s this constant fear and anxiety, and they are riddled with anxiety, and no rational explanation will ease that anxiety. I think I covered that all.
Yeah.
Yeah. So it’s sort of kind of sad.
Yeah, that’s super fascinating. So what do you think? Is there an ideal money personality that we want to have? How should our relationship with money be focused?
So of course I don’t have the ideal personality. I was just giving the extremes. But I think if we look at money as it’s just another commodity in life that will enrich us in terms of our relationships and take stress out of us and give us choices, that’s the healthy personality. So, like, my second book was Money can buy you happiness Secrets women need to know to get paid what they’re worth. And it was about negotiating. But I got scathing emails from people. You don’t know how you call yourself a clinical psychologist. You don’t know anything about happiness.
Money has nothing to do with happiness. And I think Zig Ziglar once said, money is like oxygen. Like, try living without it or something like that. So I look at money as it gives you choices and opportunities that you otherwise would not have. So if you have a personality where you work, and I believe in working hard for anything you have, like, I’m sorry, nobody promised you a rose garden. You heard my story with my mom. So it all goes back to her. So my family is, you know, have money, create money, create wealth so that you can lead a lifestyle that allows you to buy stress out of your life, if you will, Meaning you can take a vacation that you enjoy.
You don’t have to take a vacation at the Ritz, but it’s really nice to get away. It’s really nice to be able to afford going out to dinner or to even get taken. I’ll tell you this personal story, Dave. About two summers, okay, so we downsized, right? We had the big house. We downsized finally after the kids were grown. And at one point, I’m embarrassed to tell you how many cars we had. So I said to my husband, “we got to get rid of these cars. We don’t need them.”
We can each only buy one, drive one at a time. So ever since we had our twins that are our oldest, we had bought. My husband always drove a Volvo station wagon, always. Because at the time, years ago, they were the safest that they had the steel on the side. And so my family joked because we lived in Connecticut and they were in New York and they said, “oh, is that your passport?” When you move to Connecticut, you have to have a Volvo. You know, they were ragging on me for this status anyway. So 34 year later, 34 years later, it’s time to get rid of the Vol. And we kept our Volvos forever because you buy it, you drive it, you get a new one.
So this couple comes to buy the Volvo. Now, we maintained our cars. It was in great shape. It was just time to go. To this day, people are not used to my husband not being in a Volvo station wagon. And this young woman came, young, middle aged woman, whatever she was, came to the house, gave me money for the car, kept the car at my house. I’m like, “dude, don’t do that with anybody else. Like people will rob you blind.”
She came back the next day with her husband. The husband gets in the car, starts the car. The car is 14 years old, Dave, and it has like 243,000 miles in it. And he said, “oh, we are so blessed. Thank you.” I was so. I was so touched by that. And the point of the story is it’s all relative, right? But you need money to be able to purchase things that enrich your life or make your life easier.
And they told me this whole story that she had to drive his truck. And they’d been looking, they couldn’t find anything. So the moral of the story is you don’t need to have fancy stuff, but you do need the money to help you at least have the necessities maybe and then some. Did that make sense? Do you want to cut this?
Yeah, no, that makes, that makes perfect sense. I totally, you know, see that and everything. And again, I. To me it really seems like this journey around self actualization, right? And you know, going back to Maslow’s hierarchy, right? And you’ve got your financial security as one of the basic levels, right? Just to provide, you know, for your family, right? So you kind of start there and then as you’re able to move up right into having more abundance, you know, you can do more for Other people, yes, you can, you know, you can buy some of those pleasantries, right, that we’re all looking for, but you can also start to impact others, right?
Have more purpose in your life and really the other thing that I find fascinating after talking to thousands of investors and entrepreneurs over the past 20 years is really that I think deep down when you look beyond the money, in my estimation, what people are really driving for is freedom in their lives. So if they’re looking for freedom of time, for instance, maybe they’re working 60, 70 hours of work in a week and they want to spend more time with their family or they want to just go on that vacation, right, and they’re not able to, or yeah, man, you know, you have a growing family, you have four kids and you don’t have enough money to go on vacation, right? Except going camping, you know, is maybe.
All would not be a vacation for me, for the record.
Exactly, right, so it’s kind of that freedom of money, it’s having freedom of time, it’s having freedom of purpose, you know, to wake up and do, you know, the things that you want to do. And a lot of us, you know, follow this trap, right? We get maybe these educational degrees, we work down a Pacific, a specific track and you know, 10, 15 years later, you’re like, you know, you’ve got all this debt racked up, plus your living expenses, raising a family.
You’ve, you know, you’ve got, you know, basically lifestyle creep and you’re just trying to keep up with it, right? And I think a lot of people can get stuck there and it’s really hard to figure out the way out. Which is why, you know, we focus a lot on the passive income investing theory where you can create assets, right, where your money is working for you and then start to really create some options in your life to free that up. But, but what are your thoughts really around that?
May I comment on that? Yeah, on what you said. Well, actually that, that is part of the question. So I am a die hard capitalist and I, you know, capitalism thrives in a democracy like the states and we represent freedom. We are the bill, we are the beacon of freedom, I believe, to the world. Right, so what I love about capitalism is what you just said. You can be philanthropic, right. I love the fact that some of the people that we meet that are incredibly wealthy are incredibly generous and I am so grateful to be in a country.
I’m not sure how international this is. I’m sure your podcast is international, but in the States there are so many people that are so philanthropic, some are quiet about it, others are not as quiet. I don’t care. But when you make money, you can enrich everybody. It’s really, to me, it’s so wonderful. I just love that. And I feel, to answer your question about the freedom, I use the word freedom and I guess choice interchangeably, right? If you have the freedom to do something, you have the choice to do something. If you’re just living paycheck to paycheck, and unless you’re, you know, nose to the grind, you’re not making money, then you might have a lot of money, but you don’t have the freedom of time, which really is the most valuable commodity.
Because you can make money, you can lose money, you can make it again, right? And you have the compounded interest time. You and I and your listeners are listening to this podcast now at the end of our life, we are never getting this time back. So if money acts as a catalyst to save time or enhance your time, to me that’s golden.
Absolutely love that. That’s really good. So, Patty Ann, what can listeners do, right, if they’ve recon maybe one of those money personalities in themselves and their spouse or frankly, even their kids, right? As we’re raising kids and we’re starting to see that money personality kind of develop, what are some kind of tools or tactics that they could use to maybe course correct some of those things or be more self aware of that to make better choices and ultimately be a better, you know, become better investors.
Okay, so I will answer that question, but I want to say this before I go there, if I may. So you know the quickest way to lose 50% of your asset and your wealth is to get divorced. Quickest way and when I asked that of investors, they’ve given me all these other answers. I gave the answer right away for the sake of time. But no, I’m like, no, it’s not to make a bad investment. Well, to make a bad. To not make the best choice for your life partner.
And I bring that up because it is so important for couples to be aware of the personality of the other. Right? So, and just to simplify it, is one a saver and is one a spender? And if you’re different, that’s great because the saver might never enjoy the money. The spender will help them spend it to enjoy. And the spender, left to their own devices, might spend everything and the saver will rein them in.
Right? So I don’t see it as polar opposites being negative. I see it as the differences accentuating the value so you can come together. And I bring that up because as you’re raising children, it’s very important to have a sense and an awareness of what is the message you’re giving your children and as an adult, what is the message your parents sent you. And many times it’s done without a word.
So what I’m encouraging people to do is to have the conversation, right? To be aware, for example, and it’s decision making, right? You have two kids. Well, even this is a privileged conversation. Okay, so it’s February, one wants to go skiing and one wants to go to the Caribbean, right? So you have a conversation. Well, we’re not going to do both because we’re not. And then you go through the exercise. Well, you know, depending upon the age, you would bring the money into the conversation. But it’s about choices. The same is about what we do with the money we have and why do we choose the path that we choose.
Money isn’t the goal-it’s a tool to create freedom and choices
Many times if people are honest, they will say that they chose a career. Look, I never met a private equity guy that told me they chose private equity because they want to make the world a better place. They will say it’s because they want to make money. There’s nothing wrong with that. God bless capitalism. This is a free country, right? But we need to be honest with ourselves. And then we need to check in and just make sure that we’re not making money. Our God, like the third personality, the money maker.
Right? So, that’s part of the conversation that can help us bring awareness. Because money isn’t a four letter word. It’s not a dirty word. But we don’t talk about it. So one of the ways we can identify what our money personality is, I want everybody. I wished I had it with me. I want everybody to close their eyes for a moment. You too, Dave, and picture me holding a $1 bill in front of you.
And I want you to just feel that emotion, okay? So you can come back to me, Dave. Everybody can come back to me. I’m not going to ask you or anybody the emotion attached to that, but that’s the start of understanding what emotion you attach to money. And I will tell you something. I did that once at a seminar and this one person started crying, hysterical. And this was an incredibly wealthy person. And I would, I was shocked. This is years ago before I had all these lines on my face.
I said, what’s the emotion? He said, I don’t believe I deserve this. Right. So There’s a self worth, perspective. Does the money make you anxious? Does it exhilarate you? Does it make you fearful? So think about money and the emotion you attach to it and then think about what’s the value you place on money.
Like I told you my story earlier, I remember this years ago, we used to walk to the grocery store because I grew up in Brooklyn. I know everybody’s shocked with my accent, Brooklyn, New York. And I remember once my mother gave me $20 to go to what was called the A and P, which is a grocery store, right? I don’t know, is that regional? You know the amp, Dave?
Oh, yeah, I do. There was one in Connecticut. Yeah, right.
Okay, so the amp, this is in Brooklyn. I don’t know what happened. I lost the $20, no idea what happened to it. And now look, I wasn’t dumb. I knew we didn’t have a lot of money. I didn’t realize how little we had, but I knew we weren’t the 1%. Honestly, I didn’t even know what the 1% was. So it’s not like oh woe was me.
I just didn’t know. It was before reality tv. But I do remember being petrified to go home to tell my mom I lost the money. Not because I would get in trouble, but because I know she didn’t have $20 bills coming out of her pocket. So I remember, I’ll never forget this. I went home, I said, “ma.” Cause I’m from Brooklyn, ma. And she goes, “what’s the matter?” I said, “I lost the $20.”
She said, “oh, is that all here?” And she went somewhere and she gave me another 20, and that had stayed with me because there wasn’t. She didn’t value money in a way where it was the be all and end all. It was just the end to a means. It was actually quite healthy, I think. Whereas, I don’t know, I think I would have been more pissed off at my kid. And I got a lot more 20s than she ever had. You mean you lost them?
Yeah.
You know, so you have to look at what, what the emotion you attach to the money and then the value you attach to that and how that developed. Right? So the story I just told you, my money story is based on fear of I don’t want to ever be in a position where I’m dependent on anybody for money because they could leave, right, drop dead, whatever, get divorced.
Plenty of things could happen. But it wasn’t the be all and end all. But I like, but to me, money is it serves and ends to a mean, it’s a purpose, but it’s okay. Like I always joke and say, ah, you know, my kids aren’t the smartest, my husband’s not the best looking, we’re not the richest, but I’m good. Like I’m good, you know, And I mean that sincerely.
The ultimate goal is fulfillment-being able to have what you need while focusing on relationships and purpose.
And so you have to think about how you value money and where that came from. Some people will tell you about their grandmothers, but many times people will tell you about their parents fighting or their parents not fighting about money. And either way you’re getting a message. So once you can uncover where your story started, if there’s a piece of your story that you’d like to change, you now know where to go. So we did a little bit of an archeological dig. Does that make sense?
Yeah, 100%. Yeah, really? That’s so insightful, right? To go back and really kind of understand the source of that and then how we can really course correct right now because I do believe around investing well over 50% of it, you know, probably even closer to 80%. It’s all the psychology of it. It’s all this money, personality, the story with it. Right and is that really helping you in your life, getting to you where you want to be and the things that you want to do? Right. What you want to actually be, do or have in life.
Right. Or is it pulling like that?
Be, do I have, I’m going to.
Be do or have. I’ve got a, we have a 100 list of BE, do and have and life. So that’s, that’s a cool thing to practice on, but I think that, you know, too often, again. Well, first of all, like, I really appreciate your time and insight here. It’s, it’s been amazing because we’re not taught this anywhere. And this is the biggest, you know, this is the biggest, you know, challenge that I see with, you know, money and wealth is like, it used to be taboo. It was taboo in my household. We didn’t talk about it, you know, how much we had, you know, we just never had enough.
Right, you know, we didn’t talk about it. And I think it’s important for us to understand it. It’s important for us to have self awareness and what is our personality. And we need to do that for our kids and try to change the script so that our kids can have a good story about money as they, you know, become producers right in the world. And ultimately I think this is all about just being much more fulfilled you know, like you just, you just eloquently stated, you know, you have enough, you know, you have enough with your relationships with, you know, the things that you do have with who you are. Right. But some people are always kind of, no matter how much they do have, they’re not able to get there.
Right. Because there’s things holding them back. And I think this is the unlock for that.
Yeah and honestly, the and what’s sad about that is they don’t even know where there is. So they will never get there. But you said they’ll never get that because they don’t know what there is. But may I say one other thing about. With wealth managers that might be helpful, and you probably already know this though, but I think it’s worth repeating or hearing again, is that when you are creating a wealth plan for your clients, it’s really valuable, I think, to work with, if there’s a couple, and it’s a traditional couple, a man and a woman, to work with both of them to really understand, understand what the values are around money, what they need, what they want. And if you hear that, it will really help you customize what they’re looking for and you will be golden to them.
Righ?, rather than you telling them or having your, your opinion, which of course you do, you’re the professional. But you know, many wealth managers just work if we go traditional with just the husband, but there’s value to make sure that the woman, and of course this can be complicated, but to let the woman know what’s going on just so she feels empowered.
And it will help you do the best job that you can do for that particular person and, or couple. And I think that’s important. I think it’s silly in general that women don’t know this stuff. It’s like it’s absolutely inexcusable in my book. Not that I feel strongly about it.
Yeah, yeah, no, that’s really great. And I always, you know, encourage people to just think about if you’re making an investment, the first question to really ask yourself is really like, why am I making investment? Or what do you want out of it? Right. Because if it is to create passive income, what are you doing that for? Maybe you’re creating that time that you want in your life and that’s important to one of the spouses.
Right? But what is that key driver? Because that should then influence your investment decisions over what you’re looking for. You know, if you’re going to lock money up into retirement until you’re into your later years. Is it that you’re looking for security in your later years and a lot of people aren’t. They’re looking for freedom now.
So why lock up your money, you know, later on? Right? So true.
So true.
A lot of, a lot of thoughts there. Patty Ann, I have to ask you. So for the audience out there, Dr. Patty Ann is commonly referred to as the Wendy on Billions. So if you guys have enjoyed.
Without the S M, without the snm.
Oh, okay. Yeah.
Much more boring.
Yeah, great.
Don’t get excited, guys.
Great clarification. But the, you know, such an interesting show, if anyone has seen it. Are there any, you know, any insights or anything you can share, having observed even a couple of episodes of that right. On the, you know, strategies or psychology that Wendy, you know, helped with acts, you know, making some of these massive decisions that he was doing or maybe insights into, into his money personality.
So Ax was definitely a risk taker. I wouldn’t say that he was a compulsive saver. By the way. That’s a great question. Nobody has actually asked me that. So thank you for asking. But it’s just coming to me quickly.
So it’s not like we rehearse the questions. So a little bit of a compulsive moneymaker like Jordan Belfort Fort. Right. Because as that show unfolded, there was a real pathology there. And if I recall correctly, now as a native New Yorker, you know, 9 11, to all of us it was personal. But you know, my brothers went to 70 funerals after 9 11. And if I recall correctly, Ace made his money shady, attached to something with 9 11. I don’t, I don’t quite remember what that was.
Right. So already there’s like, what’s with. I understand people make profits in war. I can still have feelings about that. Right, we can have feelings about that. So I would say Ace was the compulsive moneymaker because he made it. But he also lived a very lavish lifestyle, I believe. Believe, to answer your question about him, because he was extreme.
Whereas if you think about Warren Buffett, my understanding of him, and I don’t know him personally, is that for all the money he makes, I think he still owns his three bedroom ranch in Omaha, Nebraska.
Yeah.
Now I’m sure he probably has other homes, but until recently, what I understand, because I know people from his town, he didn’t have security. You could drive by his home, you know, very different than a Jordan Belfort. Right? and I won’t get into modern day people because it’s so loaded today. But Elon Musk doesn’t, you know, he doesn’t seem to be. He has more of a passion to save the world, I sense than to just make the money. So, so that’s my comment on Ace in terms of what Wendy’s role was.
And I do this work as well. So she, I would call her like a high performance coach. Right. So for me as a human behavior, human motivation expert, it’s in my, my area of expertise and I work with these people really to really dig down to the very basic funding block, building blocks of what she did is she helped the traders get out of their own way to quiet their self doubt and to realize that their fear is the acronym false evidence appearing real.
Because as a trader, especially if you’re a high frequency trader, I believe, I’m not sure if they were there or not. You gotta pull the trigger, right? But you’re not being impulsive. There’s years of experience, there’s data, there’s studying. But when you become paralyzed, that’s when you lose opportunities and, or then you make mistakes not based on what you need to know, but on your own insecurities.
Does that, does that sound like what she did?
Yeah, definitely.
And she was a character and those characters like I’m like, oh my, I’m like, yeah. People would say to me all the time, you’re like Wendy, I’m like without the sn. Yeah, I’m a lot more boring.
No, that’s great, no, definitely a good one there. A classic for sure. But it’s been such a pleasure having you on the show. Dr. Patty Ann. I really can’t thank you enough for this. It’s just invaluable for us to be thinking about these things.
Right, what is the relationship we have with money? How does it play its role for us as individuals, for our marriages, for our families? Right. And also actually this ties into legacy wealth as well. Right and how, you know, what is it that you want to pass on to future generations? Right? Because it’s not just the money. It’s are they going to be good fiduciaries of the money? Are they going to have the values? Right. Because the statistics are in generation two, right. They’re going to lose 80% of it.
Right and yeah, the third, it’s gone. Right, so, this is really incredibly important. And again, I think a lot of this is all around your own fulfillment, right. And so you could achieve that likely with less money, but by having more intention around it. Yeah.
I mean, you know, money can help make choices, give you freedom. But unfortunately, we know very many miserable people that are very wealthy. So if your focus is only on the money, you’re really doing yourself a disservice. And I do want to say something about legacy and inheritance. I have so much to say about that. Maybe we could do another podcast.
We’re going to have to do another one for sure.
You are doing your children a disservice if you do not set up the appropriate way for the disbursements. The inheritance, however you want to say it, it. And if you want the number one way to kill your children’s ambition is to let them know when they’re young that they’re inheriting money. It is the kiss of death for their ambition. Just think about it. I don’t know if I would have been working this hard if I knew I was coming into a couple of millions at 30. Well, clearly that didn’t happen. But if you think about it, it’s very important.
So, yeah, just. Absolutely. Dr. Pattayan, if people would like to connect with you, maybe get your books or learn more about your coaching, what is the best place they can reach out?
Okay, so hopefully you have the links in your notes notes section because I’m not great at doing this, but I’m on LinkedIn is really the best way for people to connect with me. It really gives you a sense of what I do. But I’m also on Instagram, I’m on Twitter, I’m on Facebook. But LinkedIn is really the best way to reach out to me. And then there’s all different ways that you can work with me. And it’s all about your relationship with yourself, with your partner, with your business, 80% of businesses, all relationships. So I’ll help you with your business, but not your business, but team building and coaching and it’s really exciting.
I love it. I’m lucky.
Amazing. Well, we’re really grateful to have you on the show today. So thanks again and looking forward to doing this again. I know we’ve got a lot of topics we could continue running on.
Great. Thank you so much. I guess I should say drpattian.com right? I guess I should say that it’s easy.
Okay, super. We’ll make sure we get it. Show notes as well.
Okay, thank you, Dave.
Thanks so much.
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