A fool and his money are soon parted. The love of money is the root of all evil. You have to spend money to make money. In addition to the abundance of such proverbial wisdom, there are also thousands of books dealing with the subject of money. With all this available information, why do so many struggle with money?

In today’s society, we must have money to survive. Long gone are the days of being able to trade a few chickens for a doctor’s visit or barter goods for services. Oddly enough, most of us don’t even use money to pay for things anymore. Instead, we use plastic that represents the money we have stored in a bank. It turns out that our emotional connection to money—be it the paper and coin kind or the plastic version—can actually determine how much of it we have. Changing the way we relate to money can actually have an effect on the amount we have.

Money or abundance coaching can teach us how. By enlightening us to our current relationship with money, a coach or mentor can help us spot our strengths and weaknesses. They can spotlight our current ideologies around money and abundance or how much we deserve and how hard we need to work to have it.

“Most people have a lot of emotions surrounding money, and specifically lack or abundance of money,” says Bill Donaldson, a certified financial planner and money coach in Fairfield County. “As a certified money coach, I help people look into their inner workings around money so that they can change their relationship with it.”

Donaldson explains that a certified money coaching program is not just better budgets and financial planning, although it may incorporate that. It is an integrative approach to understanding how people see and approach money to help them achieve their financial goals.

“We have given money so much power in our lives,” explains Donaldson. “Money has become a survival mechanism; since we can’t leave money like we leave people, we have to change our relationship with it.” A certified money coach like Donaldson has been trained at the Money Coaching Institute to help people understand their patterns and energies around money by identifying their “money archetype”.

Money Coaching Institute founder Deborah Price has identified eight archetypes, or money types.

The Innocent can be overwhelmed by financial information and relies heavily on the advice and opinions of others. Innocents tend to “bury their heads in the sand” so as not to see what’s going on around them and can be the most trusting of all money types.

The Victim is prone to living in the past and generally has a litany of excuses for why they are not more successful. They have typically been abused, betrayed or suffered a great loss. They usually have not processed the pain, thereby feeling as though they “have paid their dues” and needn’t pay anymore.

The Warrior is generally seen as successful in the business and financial worlds. They can be adept investors, focused, decisive and in control. While they listen to advisors, they make their own decisions and rely on instincts and resources to guide them.

The Martyr is often so busy taking care of others that they frequently neglect their own needs. In terms of finances, they generally do more for others than they do for themselves; they can be found rescuing others from one circumstance or another. Often, they have formed an unconscious attachment to their own suffering.

The Fool is a gambler by nature and can always be looking for a windfall of money by taking financial shortcuts. Until The Fool becomes enlightened, they can continue to attract money easily, yet it will quickly slip through their fingers because they are not paying attention.

The Creator/Artist is on a spiritual or artistic path and frequently has a conflicted love/hate relationship with money. They love the freedom it provides them, but have little to no desire to be a part of the material world and often find they struggle with financial security.

The Tyrant uses whatever means necessary to win at all costs. They can be a master manipulator of people and money. However, in spite of their apparent success, they can be fearful and lack a sense of fulfillment.

The Magician is the ideal money type and knows how to transform and manifest their own financial reality by using an ever-changing set of dynamics.

After identifying our active and passive money types, a certified money coach may then take us through our background with money, looking at our first memories of money, and our parents’ attitudes and behaviors towards money. Based in the neuroscience that hardwiring happens between the ages of 2 and 12, many of our thoughts, attitudes and habits towards finances can be traced back to our childhood. These deeply implanted patterns help determine how we relate to money as adults.

Upon identification of the money type and exploration of childhood experiences, a journey of discovery can begin. With the help of the certified money coach, we can detach from existing, unwanted patterns and reprogram new patterns that establish a different perspective and attitude toward abundance. This can help us go from a place of feeling undeserving to one of being enough and deserving. It can bring us from thinking we have to step on people to be successful to believing that we can be a good person and succeed without causing harm to others or ourselves.

Jacqueline M. Kane, owner of the Bowen Healing Center in Litchfield County and creator of the Money Magnet Manifestation program, uses a combination of early family paradigm work, Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), visualization work and soul clearing to help her clients change their relationship with money. Her program is built on believing that we are responsible for everything in life; if finances aren’t where we want them to be, we need to explore ourselves.

“Everything we have learned, experienced or what our parents taught us is in our nervous system and energy field,” Kane says. “Therefore we are going to constantly prove those true. My program helps release old vows and clear away everything at a deeper, energetic level.”

Kane identifies some typical blocks and patterns that her clients experience as pain and financial trauma. Pain is an event that we haven’t been able to let go of. Financial trauma—such as being laid off or unexpected debt—often causes a person to harbor anger and negative energy.

“We have to ask ourselves: ‘Do you want to let it go or do you want to be right?’ The answer to that is the path to happiness and abundance,” Kane explains. She says most of us punish ourselves for our past and that we have mean inner critics that are really tough. The more we listen to them, the more we hold ourselves back in all areas.

Like Kane, Donaldson notes that becoming successful and learning to have abundance requires a lot of internal work. “Forgiveness is a big one for clients,” he says. “They need to forgive themselves and others otherwise they can’t move forward.”

Whether it comes from our parents, our religious beliefs or societal experiences, our relationship with money determines our level of abundance. Until we address that relationship, it is difficult to shift anything else.

Sheri Hatfield is a freelance writer and marketing professional who lives in Shelton with her son and frequently contributes to Natural Awakenings. She can be reached at [email protected].