I just read the new book “Money Mammoth”, by Brad Klontz, Edward Horwitz, and Ted Klontz. I’ve attended educational presentations for financial planners by Dr. Brad Klontz before, and been impressed, so I was looking forward to reading this book, which I was able to get through Inter-Library Loan (ILL) via the Rochester Public Library. Dr. Brad Klontz is a financial psychologist, so he helps people get past being stuck through their own evolutionary biology and psychology to being successful with money. I think it’s a greatly needed intersection of the two fields.

The First Half

The first half of the book was material I hadn’t seen generally well documented and presented for consumer reading before. Definitely recommended, if you haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about the evolutionary context of why humans are bad at saving. I wish they’d talked a bit more about how/why humans are bad at exponential growth rates and just assume everything is linear, but other than that lack, there’s a lot of really good information in the first half of the book.

If you have time for nothing else, read the Introduction and Chapter 1. It will give you insights into why as a species humans are bad with money. Once you have that evolutionary biology background, you may be able to puzzle out a lot of the rest on your own, if you had to.

Fortunately you don’t have to. The book doesn’t end with Chapter 1.

In Chapter 2, the authors give you a list of questions for you to interview your family members, to get some insights into why those family members did what they did with money. Even if you can’t interview them, like maybe your grandparents that grew up during the Great Depression and have since died, think about what you knew about the time and place they grew up in. See if you can then puzzle out why you saw them say or do things they did. For those who you can interview, after you interview them, do this same exercise. And remember, even when two people have the same inputs, they can still come to different conclusions, but they should all be conclusions that make sense when we understand the big picture.

Chapter 3’s big punch in the gut for me was that not only are children building their money perspectives from birth, that much of that is fixed by age 7. Seven! That means I’m already too late to consciously be laying that foundation for my kids; I have to hope that what groundwork I’ve laid semi-conciously (I’m a teacher by training and instinct, I’m always educating) is a firm enough foundation. And it reminded me, as always, that teaching by example is some of the most influential – it’s not so much what you say, compared to what you model. It also talked about how humans aren’t good at executive functioning until adulthood and managing money requires executive functioning (not in exactly those words); this re-enforced my own conclusion for our family that since my kids struggle so much with executive functioning, that’s where our efforts need to focus right now. Not having them earn an allowance, not having them divide it into 4 categories, not having them practice spending; just us as the parents continuing to model, and them as the kids building their executive functioning skills in general.

Chapter 4 has a great dialogue facilitation question list for spouses/partners. Once again, what we understand, we can empathize with or compensate for. Where as getting blindsided by a spouse’s behavior with money likely isn’t going to go over well.

Chapter 9 was all about the Klontz Money Script(R), for which you can take a quiz online or on paper via the book. It helps you figure out which category your Money Script(R) falls into, and again what you already recognized you can then more easily compensate for. While they don’t tell us the proportions for each of the four main categories, only one lends itself to building long term wealth.

Chapter 12 had some useful tips on how to help you accomplish your financial goals. The one I don’t see implemented nearly enough is creating sub accounts, and putting exciting names on them. They gave a great example in a “2022 Family European Vacation” subaccount. That sounds a lot more motivating, and less like something you’re likely to raid for yet another coffee run on a bad work day when it’s co-mingled in your general checking account.

The Second Half

The second half of the book is more standard financial literacy material. If you’ve already consumed a number of financial education books then you can probably skim through much of this. If, however it’s all new to you, then by all means, read away.

Conclusion

Knowing the math isn’t enough for most people. Unless you’re an engineer-type (engineer, mathematician, statistician, computer scientist, etc), you should read this book. And even if you are an engineer-type, likely someone in your family (parent, sibling, spouse, child) or friend group isn’t, and you’ll have a lot better chance of understanding where they’re coming from, if you read this book.