If Someone Gave You $100,000 Today
- Team Konseye
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
Hello Friends,
Happy Monday, and welcome to August.
This month, we are having the money conversation that most of us never had. Not the one about budgeting apps or savings rates, though we will get there. We’re having the conversation that happens before any of that - the one about how we actually think about money when no one is testing us.
So let us start with a question. A simple one (or so it seems).
If someone transferred $100,000 into your account today, no strings attached, what is the very first thing you would do with it?
Not what you think you should do. Not the responsible answer. We want to talk about the actual first thought that landed when you read that sentence. Hold onto it, because we are going to come back to it.
Why the Question Matters More Than the Answer
Behavioural economists and financial psychologists have spent decades studying how people respond to unexpected money, and the findings are consistently surprising. A landmark study from the National Endowment for Financial Education found that roughly 70 percent of people who receive a financial windfall, whether from an inheritance, a legal settlement, or a lottery win, lose it within a few years. This is not because they were careless or unintelligent. Rather, it was due to the fact that they approached the unexpected windfall with the same unconscious habits and beliefs they had always had.
What does that tell us? It tells us that the amount of money is rarely the determining factor in what happens to it. The determining factor is the money mindset of the person holding it.
Dr. Brad Klontz, a financial psychologist and researcher at Kansas State University, has spent over two decades studying what he calls money scripts: the core beliefs about money that drive our financial behaviour, most of which were formed in childhood and operate below our conscious awareness. His research, published in the Journal of Financial Therapy, identifies four dominant money scripts that shape how people earn, spend, save, and relate to wealth.
Source: Klontz, B., Britt, S. L., Mentzer, J. & Klontz, T., (2011) “Money Beliefs and Financial Behaviors: Development of the Klontz Money Script Inventory”, Journal of Financial Therapy 2(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.4148/jft.v2i1.451
The Four Money Scripts
Money Avoidance
This is the belief that money is inherently bad, that wealthy people are corrupt or undeserving, or that wanting more money is somehow morally suspect. People operating from this script often unconsciously self-sabotage financial growth, giving money away faster than they earn it or avoiding financial planning altogether because it feels uncomfortable or shameful.
Money Worship
This is the opposite extreme. It is the belief that more money will solve all problems and that happiness is just one income increase away. People unconsciously applying this script tend to overspend, chase income without building assets, and find that each new financial milestone arrives without the satisfaction they expected. Sadly, the goalpost keeps moving.
Money Status
This script ties financial worth to personal worth. It drives spending on visible markers of success such as cars, clothes, postcodes, and schools because money is understood as a signal of status rather than a tool for security or freedom. It also makes it difficult to admit financial struggles, because doing so feels like admitting personal failure.
Money Vigilance
This script is the most functional of the four, but it has its own shadow side. People with this script tend to be savers and careful planners, but the anxiety that drives the caution can make it difficult to enjoy what they have built or to spend on things that genuinely improve their quality of life.
It is important to note that most people do not follow a single script throughout their lives. We all carry combinations of these, and they shift depending on context. But recognizing the dominant one in yourself is the beginning of being able to make conscious choices rather than repeating unconscious patterns.
What Your Answer to the $100,000 Question Tells You
Let us go back to your first instinct.
If your first thought was to pay off debt, that is a Money Vigilance or Money Avoidance response, and there is nothing wrong with it. Clearing debt is financially prudent. However, it is worth asking whether the relief you felt at that thought was about financial clarity or about escaping the anxiety that debt carries.
Key Tip: If money primarily represents relief from pressure rather than a resource for building something, that is useful information.
If your first thought was to invest it, Morgan Housel, whose book The Psychology of Money has sold over four million copies and is one of the most accessible explorations of financial behaviour available, makes the point that knowing you should invest and knowing how to invest in a way that matches your actual risk tolerance and timeline are two very different things. The instinct to invest is sound. The execution requires honesty about what you are actually comfortable with.
If your first thought was to spend it on something you have always wanted, this is not a failure of financial discipline, but it is worth examining what that instinct represents to you. Is it joy? Security? Status? A sense of having arrived?
Key Tip: Understanding what money is supposed to provide for you emotionally is as important as understanding what to do with it practically.
If your first thought was to give it away to family, to a cause, or to your community, this is also useful information for you to consider about which script you may be unconsciously applying. Many professionals, particularly those who grew up watching people around them struggle, feel a strong pull to redistribute any financial gain immediately. Dr. Klontz's research notes that this pattern often comes from environments where scarcity was shared communally and where holding onto more than others felt unsafe or disloyal. It is generous, but it is worth examining whether it is also costing you a foundation of your own.
A Starting Point, Not a Verdict
None of these answers are inherently wrong. This exercise is not a diagnosis; rather, it is a mirror. It is an invitation to consider which unconscious scripts may be dominant in your life right now and if there are any implications of that dominance. The point of a mirror is not to judge what you see but to give you information that is useful.
Financial intelligence does not begin with knowing which stocks to buy or how to structure a savings portfolio. It begins with understanding the relationship you already have with money, where it came from, what it was shaped by, and whether it is still serving you or simply running the way it always has.
Next week, we will go deeper into exactly that: the money beliefs most of us absorbed before we were old enough to question them, and what it looks like to examine them as adults.
In the meantime, we would love to know: what was your first answer to the $100,000 question? Drop it in the comments. There are no wrong answers here, only honest ones.
Further Reading
Fiyin
Team Konseye
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