If you’re an Accumulator Money Habit Archetype, it means that you always manage to put a little bit of money aside. Your general pattern is that more money comes in than money flows out.
To be honest… other people get pretty jealous of that. They envy it.
People who are not Accumulators see that as the holy grail, being able to always hold on to some of your money and have it grow and multiply.
The thing is, even though that’s the pattern and that’s very desirable, it’s not always coming from a really healthy place and doesn’t always feel good for you.
A lot of Accumulators are actually driven by fear and lack.
So what happens is, it’s never enough and it never feels like you’re done. It never feels like you’re safe. It always feels like you’ve got to go accumulate more, you’ve got to keep going, you’ve got to keep saving, keep scrimping… JUST – IN – CASE.
I know all about it, because I was raised by an Accumulator.
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My mum is an amazing, amazing Accumulator who can make a dollar stretch a mile. It’s absolutely incredible. I watched that, and I saw that pattern, and the thing is that was very much a pattern driven and motivated by fear.
In fact, my mum, after my parents split up, went through a really rough time where she had to work for an hourly rate of $5 in a really tough job, and even though that wouldn’t be enough for most people to live off, what she managed to do is: buy a little unit, pay it off, and then buy another much nicer townhouse and pay that off as well!
She’s an amazing Accumulator, and unfortunately it was very much driven from a sense of fear and a place of lack. It wasn’t just that after she went through the break-up with my dad that she suddenly became an Accumulator, it had always been her pattern and when they were together, she’s the one who kept us with a roof over our heads because my dad was certainly NOT an Accumulator!
So, let’s talk about what the strengths and weaknesses of the Accumulator are:
First of all, you know how to save money to actually achieve your long term goals.
Things actually get accomplished because you’re good at planning for the future and knowing what to do in the now, and that’s fantastic.
The second thing that’s a really big strength of being an Accumulator is that you’re a good money manager, not just in terms of planning for the future, but in terms of managing what needs to be dealt with right now. This means your bills always get paid on time, every dollar is accounted for, you know what your money’s doing and you’re on top of it all.
The third thing that’s very beneficial of being an Accumulator is that you can really help your partner, especially if they’re not an Accumulator and they’re not very good with money. It tends to really balance things out and keep the family on track.
The Accumulator also does have some potential weaknesses.
If you’re coming from a place of fear and lack, which a lot of Accumulators are, they’ve got an underlying story and a limiting belief that it’s never enough. So then it is never enough and so you tend to delay gratification.
You tend to delay taking care of yourself.
You delay treating yourself to something, delay having that massage, buying that new outfit, or going on that holiday. Whatever it is you tend to always put it off because, you know… you better just put a little bit more money aside, maybe pay off the mortgage a bit more, accumulate some more in savings, because you don’t want to “waste it” on you, so you delay gratification and sometimes (often) it never comes!
The second weakness that comes with being an Accumulator is that you tend to obsess and stress about money, even when it’s coming in!
You don’t actually get to enjoy the fruits of your labor.
You don’t get to enjoy or really celebrate that money that’s coming in because the feeling you’ve got underneath, is that it’s still not enough and there’s a worry that, “What if it doesn’t last? What if something bad happens?” That’s what I’m talking about, that is that underlying story of fear and lack that’s actually driving that accumulating style behavior.
So you never feel good about the money – even though it’s coming in and other people are looking at you and going, “I wish I could be like you.”
Meanwhile you’re actually sitting in a pool of stress and worry and you’re not having a very good time.
The third weakness is, as far as your family and maybe your partner are concerned sometimes you’re seen as Uncle or Auntie Scrooge. You can be seen as a bit of a killjoy because you’re the one who says, “No no no, we’re not going to splurge on that expensive holiday or that expensive restaurant. Let’s just go to this one, they’ve got a two for one special, or this one where kids eat free, or this resort where kids stay for free.”
You tend to kind of downgrade your life all the time because you’re trying to be sensible and you’re trying to preserve as much money as possible. And the rest of the family who are not wired like you are will be saying, “But can’t we just have some fun with our money???”
That can cause a lot of stress and disharmony in families and relationships as well.
So there are some of the pros and cons that come with being an Accumulator.
Now, ideally, the Accumulator habit pattern itself is obviously where everybody wants to be. We want to be accumulating money so that it can grow and multiply – so that we can set ourselves up for financial stability, set up our financial future, and achieve that level of financial freedom that we’re looking for.
However, if it’s coming from that underlying place of fear and lack, then that’s not a good healthy thing.
You need to find a way to strike a balance between the two, and the easiest way to do that is to actually look at what that underlying story is and start to shift it.
What I recommend you do is jump on my quiz which will confirm that you are an Accumulator.
(To be honest a lot of Accumulators don’t think they are one, because they feel like they still haven’t got enough money in the bank to qualify as one 🙂 )
So, do the quiz. It’ll confirm for you that you are indeed an Accumulator Money Habit Archetype, that that’s your pattern.
And then I’ll send you a series of emails from there that will help you dive deeper into what is driving that pattern, so that you can find that beautiful sense of balance where lots of money’s coming in, plenty of it stays around for you and you actually enjoy it and get to relax about it, which is what we all want at the end of the day… to have our cake, eat it, and love it, right?
So hop to it, you know what to do!
READY TO GO DEEPER?
Take the Money Habit Archetype Quiz so you can clear your biggest money block.
