What intergeneration financial trauma (habits, triggers, beliefs) did you inherit from your parents or guardians? What fiscal trauma (bank balances, properties, debts) did you inherit from them?

What did they inherit from their parents or guardians that they unwittingly passed onto you?

What are you passing onto your children? What are you going to choose to pass onto them?

I inherited, among other things:

• Anxieties around tracking balances (too often negative)
• Irrational impulse spending as a stress response (especially financial stress, ironically enough)
• And an assumption that money issues will cause fights (and that money solutions never resolved them on their own)

I won’t work through these issues on my own, not even with greater financial success than my parents’. Addressing these will require a therapist as much or more than a financial planner. And so help me if I let any of these pass on to any potential children of mine.