Your Money Story Started Before You Did: Build a Money Genogram
In this personal finance column, the author shares how creating a Money Genogram, a visual family tree of money messages, revealed that a childhood assumption, that an expensive car means wealth, was inherited rather than learned. The piece explains how learned behaviors like overdrafts and spending on emotion take root in families, offers questions for tracing your own family’s financial beliefs, and encourages readers to honor their family’s sacrifices while choosing which lessons to carry forward and which to end.
Before we ever opened a bank account, received our first paycheck or paid our first bill, many of us were already learning about money.
We learned by listening to our parents, watching our grandparents and observing how adults responded when money was tight, when someone received a raise or when a neighbor bought something we could not afford.
The challenge is that we don’t always realize we’re learning.
I recently created my own Money Genogram, a visual family tree that traces the money messages, beliefs and behaviors passed from one generation to the next. The exercise made me realize something important: my relationship with money didn’t begin with me.
Growing up, I remember riding in the car with my dad and seeing someone driving a Mercedes or BMW. My dad would say, “That person must be rich.”
Years later, I found myself repeating those exact words whenever I saw someone driving an expensive car.
I had inherited a financial assumption without anyone formally teaching it to me: An expensive car equaled wealth.
As I became more financially literate, I learned something my younger self didn’t understand: almost anyone who wants something can find a way to finance it.
The more important question isn’t, “Can I get it?” The question is, “How much am I willing to pay to make this dream come true?”
Lenders are happy to help consumers answer that question because financing is one of the ways they make money. A person’s desire can become a loan, a monthly payment and, ultimately, interest income for the lender.
That’s why understanding the financial messages we inherit matters.
Consider another example: overdrafts.
For some people, regularly spending more money than they have available may be a learned behavior. Perhaps they grew up watching a parent use a checking account as though the balance were simply a suggestion. Maybe an overdraft was treated as an inconvenience rather than a signal that something needed to change.
When people fail to count their money, banks can count it for them and charge accordingly.
Personally, I’d rather see someone opt out of overdraft coverage and spend only what is actually available in their account. Having a transaction declined may be uncomfortable, but that discomfort can force us to pause and do the math before making another financial decision.
That may seem strange to someone who learned to make financial decisions based primarily on emotion rather than logic.
But that’s precisely the point: financial behavior is often learned before it is questioned.
A Money Genogram can help us identify those lessons.
You might discover that your family had a strong culture of saving. Perhaps you watched your parents put money aside for emergencies, avoid unnecessary debt or pay cash for major purchases. Those are financial messages worth recognizing and carrying forward.
You may also discover messages that deserve to be challenged.
Maybe you heard, “Money doesn’t grow on trees.” Maybe you heard, “We’re just not good with money.” Perhaps you were taught that investing was only for wealthy people or that debt was simply a normal part of adult life.
None of this means our parents or grandparents intentionally taught us bad financial habits. Most people were doing the best they could with what they knew and the opportunities available to them at the time.
Creating a Money Genogram isn’t about blaming our families. It’s about becoming curious about our financial history.
Ask yourself:
What did my family believe about money?
How did the adults in my family make financial decisions?
How did they respond to debt, saving, investing and spending?
What did they say when money was tight?
Which lessons do I want to keep, and which ones do I want to change?
We don’t have to reject our family’s financial story to create a different financial future. We can honor the sacrifices our parents and grandparents made while recognizing that some financial strategies that worked for one generation may not work for the next.
My father’s comment about the person driving the Mercedes or BMW was a simple observation, but it became a lesson about wealth that I carried with me.
Today, I look at an expensive car differently. I don’t know whether the driver is wealthy. I don’t know whether the car is paid off, leased or financed. I don’t know whether the monthly payment fits comfortably within that person’s financial plan or represents a financial burden.
In other words, I no longer confuse what someone owns with what someone is worth financially.
That’s one of the lessons financial literacy can provide: the ability to question the assumptions we inherited.
Your financial future doesn’t have to be a carbon copy of your financial past.
Start by creating your own Money Genogram. Talk to your parents, grandparents or other family members if you can. Listen to the stories. Identify the money messages. Look for patterns.
Then decide what deserves to continue.
Some lessons may be worth passing to the next generation. Others may need to end with you.
The goal isn’t to judge where you came from. The goal is to understand it well enough to make more intentional decisions about where you’re going.
Al Riddick is President of Game Time Budgeting, an award-winning financial fitness firm that helps employees develop simple, easy-to-duplicate systems for making their money behave.