Allan Oulate shares a presentation discussing how personality types may affect your financial management.

1. How Does Your
Personality Type
Affect Your
Financial
Management?
by Allan Oulate

2. When you’re managing your finances,
you’re likely to come across some
bumps in the road. Part of the reason
people struggle with money related
tasks is because they don’t understand
their specific personality type and how
it interacts with their financial
decisions.

3. If you want to shift your habits, the best
way to gain success is work in line with
your natural tendencies. Author
Gretchen Rubin created four major
personality types, which she based on
the way people meet or resist inner and
outer expectations

4. You can gain a lot more success in your
financial life if you understand where
you fall within Rubin’s framework.
Below are the four personality types
and how they should handle their
finances:

5. Upholders

6. Upholders are people who tend to
respond to both inner and outer
expectations. They have to easiest time
keeping commitments to both
themselves and others, as well as
forming new habits. Upholders don’t
have difficulty filing taxes by the
deadline or paying bills on time, which
are both outer expectations.

7. They also have an easy time
implementing a new financial strategy,
such as setting a monthly budget or
diversifying an investment portfolio. It
is not stressful for upholders to do these
tasks because they accept the fact that
they must meet expectations to achieve
a bigger goal.

8. Obligers

9. Obligers don’t have difficulty accepting
rules imposed from the outside. They
do, however, struggle to meet
expectations that come from within.
Obligers will meet conventional
expectations such as paying their bills
and buying lunch for a coworker

10. But self-created goals like saving in an
employer-sponsored plan are hard for
obligers to implement. If you are an
obliger, you need to create systems
focused on accountability. It is a good
idea to automate savings as a direct
deposit so you can gather up an
emergency fund.

11. You may also want to seek the ongoing
help of a family member, friend,
coworker or professional advisor in
order to establish and maintain a
system.

12. Questioners

13. Questioners only meet expectations,
both inner and outer, when they feel
that the rules make sense. They do not
take conventional rules of thumb at
face value, but instead do research and
evaluate the pros and cons of various
decisions prior to making them.

14. If a rule does not make sense to a
questioner’s specific situation, the
individual will not follow the rules.
Questioners are likely to complete
financial tasks alone and forge their
own path toward certain goals.

15. They do get things done, but the process
can be lengthy due to their tendency to
overanalyze.

16. Rebels

17. Rebels avoid the rules whether they are
from outside sources or from within.
They consistently resist expectations,
thus having difficulty forming new,
healthy habits over time.

18. They do not like control and therefore
avoid tasks like implementing investment
strategies or maintaining a monthly
budget. Rebels may seem dangerous when
it comes to financial management, but
there are a number of successful business
owners who fall into this category.

19. Rebels need to establish limits that
provide ample leeway if they want to
succeed in the realm of personal
finance. It is also a good idea to have
outside accountability partners.

20. There are strengths and weaknesses
within each personality type.
Understanding your personality type
and how it functions will allow you to
take the crucial steps toward
successful personal financial
management.