As the head of money wellness with Ally Financial, Jack Howard is dedicated to helping the Black community improve their financial health and create a better relationship with money. Howard was present at SelectCon Atlanta where she talked on a panel about financial health and wellness, and how certain habits in your life are costing you a better relationship with your money.
Howard spoke with rolling out about money wellness and how people can have a better relationship with money.
What should the younger generation know about money wellness?
Money wellness makes you look at money in two ways. One is the skills, which is what we typically learn when you think of financial literacy. How do you save, how do you budget, pay off debt and invest? Those are skills that I want everybody to have. For a lot of people, they have a hard time implementing those skills because they have behaviors that stop them from doing it. That’s where financial health, wellness and money psychology come in: to help you to understand the things you may have learned from your parents and the things you learned from society.
We just recovered from COVID-19; how did that impact your relationship with money? Oftentimes people don’t realize how big of an impact it does have, so it shows up for you in subconscious beliefs and poor behaviors that stop you from implementing those skills.
How can people have a better relationship with money?
I have one question I want everybody to think about in their financial health and wellness journey, and that is really around your money story. What is your first memory of money and how does it impact you today? We have a workshop on this very topic, and I love teaching it because you get so many different answers. Some people have good memories, and some people have bad memories and a lot of trauma that has now impacted them with having a scarcity mindset where they may overspend or hoard money.
I love that question also because most people have never heard it. It helps the wheels to get going of what are your behaviors with money? What did you learn? How was it showing up for you today? The great thing about getting that question sometimes is that you get to decide: do those behaviors, and do those memories still serve me today? If they don’t, let’s create new mantras and new beliefs that can help us better reach our financial goals today and implement those tools for you and your role.
