At the start of the year, I did what most people do. I set my new year resolutions and even created a vision board for the first time. Stay with me.
But whenever I went through my calendar or board to review my goals for the month, there was this feeling I couldn’t shake off. I felt somehow disconnected from some of my goals. Five months in, and I now know why I felt disconnected from all the goals that had anything to do with money.
This is not the first time. Ever since I started working in junior high school whether that was helping out an Aunt and earning some coins, or starting a print on demand business after high school, or freelancing in university, I have always had this back and forth relationship with making money.
It was frustrating because I never shied away from hard work and I had the skills to monetise even back in high school. But I never got to secure my bag, as the saying goes.
Then I sat in an economic psychology class in undergrad and something clicked. Long story short, the reason why I felt dissociated from my money related goals was because it gave me a glimpse of my economic prospects . And it wasn’t a pretty profile.
I checked far too many of the low-income risk boxes and this had nothing to do with my sex, ethnicity, age, education, or the inner workings of some shadowy institution.
But everything to do with my personality.
When we talk about financial assets, hardly anyone thinks of innate characteristics. I know I didn’t. Yet, the very thing that shapes how we behave, think, feel, relate, and respond to the world is also one of the things that could quietly annihilate our financial prospects.
This was all the wake up call I needed to get to work on me. I went down the financial literacy hole for weeks, combing through finance books (that was a hard one for me), articles and youtube videos.
To sum it all up, psychologist Brent W. Roberts and researchers in the field of personality and economic psychology, have identified one particular overlooked trait linked to poorer financial outcomes and building wealth long-term.
In predicting these real-life outcomes, researchers use a framework called the Big Five model, often abbreviated as OCEAN: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.
The Big Five traits influence the decisions and actions we take regarding our health, finances, relationships, and even habits. It's not an all or nothing affair though. The traits are said to exist on a spectrum, and how high or low one falls determines their character strengths and weaknesses in said areas of life.
However, when it comes to money, financial outcomes, or building wealth long-term, one trait consistently stands out.
That unsub is neuroticism.
What is neuroticism?
Neuroticism simply refers to our inclination to experience negative emotions.
Sure everyone gets the blues once in a while, however people high in neuroticism are said to be more sensitive to perceived threats. Meaning they experience frequent anxiety, have heightened stress responses, and ruminate a lot.
By no means are people high in neuroticism less capable of living fulfilling financial lives than anyone else, because at the core, these individuals are very perceptive, creative thinkers, and conscientious.
So what really distinguishes them, according to psychologist Brent’s research, is how their nervous system responds to uncertainty.
The findings also show that individuals who score high in neuroticism tend to earn less over their lifetime. They also accumulate less wealth and experience greater financial stress even with a relatively stable income. Not because they don't understand money but simply because making financial decisions comes at a heavier emotional cost.
This is attributed to the fact that wealth creation requires repeated exposure to uncertainty, risk tolerance, openness to high-stakes decisions, and accepting short-term losses in exchange for long-term gains.
But for the highly anxious person, these financial uncertainties trigger the same stress responses as danger and all of a sudden, these financial decisions feel anything but normal.
Over time, the brain learns to associate money decisions with emotional pain where every decision and risk costs more emotionally. This behaviour then manifests not just as an abundance of caution but also avoidance.
Which show up in subtle ways such as:
• Endless research and planning before launching, saving, negotiating, or investing.
• Waiting for certainty in situations that rarely offer it.
• Choosing financially safer options even when it limits growth.
• Carrying unnecessary financial guilt from linking self-worth to money.
• Emotional spending instead of strategic budgeting.
• Micromanaging money due to hypervigilance about unforeseen future events.
On their own, these choices seem like the responsible or even rational thing to do, but together, they stall one’s financial progress in what is called a stagnation loop.
Now, if you are working towards any financial or life goal for that matter, you probably share the belief that slow motion is better than no motion so for most of us, being stuck in this suffocating limbo of inaction will simply not do.
Not if the goal is to be financially free. Whatever that may look like for each of us.
What can we do then?
What neuroticism does is, it stops you from taking timely action. So it’s recommended that instead of just powering through every money-related decision and pretending that you’re not scared to death by all the many ways things could go wrong, create cognitive and situational conditions where these decisions don't feel like a constant threat or an emotional burden.