Your Financial Blueprint

22 min readDec 25, 2022

Your Financial Blueprint: How Your Relationship with Money Dictates Your Life Choices!

The Power of Your Subconscious Mind!

It’s no secret that money plays a major role in our lives on a daily basis, but not in obvious ways! From the socks we wear to the type of work we do, even down to the brand of car we drive, money guides countless decisions that shape our lives. The ubiquity of money sets the stage for the vital importance of financial literacy, which is precisely the knowledgebase that we need to navigate through this money-driven world! Unfortunately, strategic financial-driven decisions are a critical skill set that is in short supply, especially in our academic programs.

Financial literacy encompasses a range of money management knowledge and skills that help you manage your money from budgeting, debt, investing, credit, and much more that all fall under this umbrella. Personally, I haven’t appreciated the importance of financial literacy until I started my company, DarTec Engineering, because the survival of the company depended on my ability to financially plan its future. In fact, before starting my company, I couldn’t read financial statements and made decisions based on gut feeling instead of financial foresight.

I find it kind of funny how most, if not all, of our life decisions are based on money; yet very few of us can articulate the rationale behind their financial decisions! What drives us sometimes to behave irrationally with money when we know better? Think back to all of your major decisions that you’ve ever taken in your life, I’ll bet you top dollar that money was involved in your decisions! So, in what ways can we better understand our relationship with money, which influences our behavior, so that we could make better life decisions?

Our brains are built to reinforce and regulate our lives, but what many of us don’t realize is that just as our brains are built to regulate our physical and motor skills, it tries to regulate our mental wellbeing as well! Our minds are constantly filtering-out information and bringing to our attention information that affirms with our preexisting beliefs (Confirmation Bias). The lies we tell ourselves present us with repeated thoughts and impulses that mimic what we’ve done in the past. That’s because our brains have a high tendency of wanting to fill-in the gaps in what we experience!

In fact, when in doubt about what we see, our brains fill-in the gaps for us by first drawing-out the outlines and then coloring-in the area within the boundaries of the outlines. That’s why your subconscious mind is the gatekeeper of your Comfort Zone and what could be holding you back from reaching your full potential! Put simply, we don’t see with our eyes, we see with our brains!

So, what does all this have to do with finance and your ability to accumulate wealth? Since your subconscious mind directly influences your decisions, it also includes your financial decisions! That’s why if your subconscious mind is not setup for financial success, nothing you learn, do, or know will ever make much of a difference! Our relationship with money is one of the most underrated subjects that I’ve ever come across in my entire life, and that’s why I felt compelled to develop this article. Our relationship with money draws its information from our childhood experience, especially the traumatic ones, which shapes what’s known as our Financial Blueprint!

What’s A Financial Blueprint?

A Financial Blueprint is a plan that guides your actions in a particular direction to achieve a predetermined goal, where it draws information from your past experience that are reflected in your thoughts and actions. For most of us, me included, our actions may be out of alignment with our goals either because our goals aren’t clear to us or we haven’t dealt with past traumatic experiences during crucial moments in our lives! It’s prudent to mention that our limiting thoughts affect the Blueprint we develop for ourselves!

Without a Financial Blueprint, we could end-up going through life without realizing that we’re stuck in a vicious cycle of living paycheck-to-paycheck in an everlasting debt because we can’t figure-out why we’re voluntarily choosing to live beyond our means. We all need Financial Blueprints that are custom designed for us in ways that best suits our personal strengths, weaknesses, likes and dislikes, wants and needs.

When you have a Financial Blueprint that guides your financial decisions, you set yourself on a trajectory towards achieving your life goals using money as the vehicle to achieve it. Just like nobody buys a car to fill it with gas, money should not be the end goal that governs your actions. Money is just the means to the end to help you achieve your personal goals out of life. If you are like me, your Financial Blueprint may even add to your life satisfaction because you’ll feel that money is working for you instead of the other way around. You must have both the goal and the plan for your Financial Blueprint to serve your best interests.

You would never build your house without a blueprint, so why would you do the same with your financial future? You need a Financial Blueprint to build Your Financial House! Whether we’d like to admit it or not, money influences our daily decisions! We can approach those decisions as informed people by equipping ourselves with the proper knowledge or suffer the consequences of ill-informed decisions.

How Did Your Financial Blueprint Come to Be?

It’s not enough to be in the right place at the right time, you have to be the right person in the right place at the right time! Think about it this way, who you know isn’t as important as who knows you! The sad reality about financial prospects is that most people do not reach their full potential because they live in a surface-level based reality only on what they see in the visible world. Consequently, their income becomes tethered to the extent that they’re able to grow into.

Ironically, what’s invisible to the naked eye is what creates what’s visible in the real world. If you’re serious about changing your reality, you must first start by altering what’s invisible. If you want to change the fruits of your life, you’ll have to first change the roots of your thoughts! That’s why you can’t change the fruits that are already hanging on the tree, but you can change tomorrow’s fruits by digging below the surface to strengthen your roots.

What you can’t see in the real world is far more powerful and impactful than anything you can see with your naked eyes. What makes change in our lives so complex is that we don’t live in a single dimension. In fact, we all live in four different and interconnected realms:

Physical realm
Mental realm
Emotional realm
Spiritual realm

What I find fascinating is that the physical world that we’re all familiar with is nothing but a reflection of the three realms that are invisible to most people including ourselves! In other words, the real problem cannot be changed by altering the physical world, rather, it can only be altered in either the mental, emotional, or spiritual worlds. All three invisible realms of reality constitutes the formation of your Financial Blueprint, which we’re all trying so hard to understand. The best effective way to change your outer world is to first change your inner world! That’s because your external world is merely a reflection of your inner thoughts and ideas. That’s why when things aren’t going well in your physical world, there’s a very likely chance that there is too much clutter and conflict in your inner world.

Life has taught me that what I hear; I can forget, what I see; I can’t always remember, but what I do; I can understand! Life has also taught me that when I fail, my skills & knowledge grow, and when I succeed, my ego grows! Think about it this way, thoughts lead to feelings, feelings lead to actions, and actions lead to results! Your Financial Blueprint consists of a combination of your thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Basically, what constitutes your Financial Blueprint is what happens inside your head, which is invisible to everyone around you. So, where does the information that forms your Financial Blueprint come from? It comes from your past memories and experience; especially the ones during your childhood! These thoughts become your conditioning, which turns them into habits that govern your actions for the rest of your life without you even realizing it. That’s why you’re hardwired programming, habits, and behaviors lead to your thoughts, your thoughts lead to your feelings, your feelings lead to your actions, and your actions lead to your results!

Sources of Financial Influence

We were all born with no preconceived notions about money. Everything we think, feel, and do about money was taught to us and conditioned during our childhood years. Can our financial conditioning play a vital role in the reality in which we live in, and can there be any hope for us to change our conditioning? There are three primary ways that directly influence our conditioning, which then forms our Financial Blueprint:

Verbal Conditioning: What did you Hear as a child?
Behavioral Conditioning: What did you See as a child?
Crucial Moments: What did you Experience as a child?

It’s crucial for us to understand these three aspects of mental conditioning, which seems to be controlling our lives without us noticing. Now, let’s examine each of these three mental conditioning and explore ways to change each of them to adjust our Financial Blueprint in ways that serves our best interests!

1. Verbal Conditioning: What did you Hear as a child?

What did you hear about money, wealth, and riches when you were growing-up? Did you hear phrases like these:

Money is the root of all evil
Save your money for a rainy day
Rich people are corrupt
Rich people are greedy
You have to work hard for your money
Money doesn’t grow on trees
Money doesn’t buy you happiness
Money talks and BS walks
The rich get richer and the poor get poorer
Not everyone can be rich
Did your parents repeatedly say: “we can’t afford it!”

All of the statements you’ve heard about money when you were a child remain in your subconscious mind as part of the Blueprint that is running your financial life! When the subconscious mind has to choose between deeply rooted emotions or logic, emotions we’ll always win! That’s because your subconscious mind conditions you in a way that determines your thinking, then your thoughts determine your decisions, and your choices dictate your actions, which inevitably determines your reality.

To counter these invisible forces that are working against you, consider the following four key elements that could help you change your Mindset in order to help influence your behavior in more desirable ways:

Awareness: You can’t change something unless you know that it exists, so write down all the statements that you’ve heard about money, wealth, and riches as a child to evaluate how you feel about them, then analyze how they’re connected to your current behavior.
Understanding: When you understand where you stand today, you can start to understand the sources of influence that are governing your behavior, so reflect on how you believe these preconceived notions have affected your financial life so far; in good or bad ways.
Disassociation: When you decide to break the connection between your negative behavior and your identity, you can start to understand what has been causing you to go down a rabbit hole because who you are today is merely a reflection of your past choices, so try to understand that past thoughts represent only what you’ve learned and is not part of who you really are. That’s because you have a choice to make today that could make a difference in your life.
Reconditioning: Being financially literate will allow you to start mapping-out how to move forward from where you stand today, so invest some time in understanding the preliminary financial jargon, which will allow you to contextualize some of the elements of your Financial Blueprint that are governing your behavior, and consequently affecting your choices that are then creating your reality.

2. Behavioral Conditioning: What did you See as a child?

What were your parents like when it came to money as you were growing-up? Think about the following questions and identify which ones resonate the most with you:

Do you believe that either one of your parents managed their money well, or did they squander it?
Would you consider your parents spenders or savers?
Were your parents shrewd investors or were they living paycheck-to-paycheck?
Were your parents risk takers or conservative when it came to money?
Was money an issue as you were growing-up or was it abundantly available?
Were there moments that your family ran-out of money and couldn’t buy groceries?
Was money a source of joy in your family or was it a cause of constant arguments?
Was your parents’ attitude towards money: “spend it while you have it” or “save it for a rainy day?”

Fascinatingly enough, if your motivation to acquire money stems from feelings of fear, anger, or the need to prove yourself to others, money will never bring you happiness. That’s because you’ll end-up in a vicious cycle of trying to achieve something that is unattainable.

For example, my father always doubted me while I was growing-up, which forced me to always want to prove him wrong! What I didn’t realize at the time is that this drive was running my life and squandering my financials. I used to mask this behavior by proclaiming to be a high-achiever, self-driven, determined, and a hard working son of a gun. What I’ve failed to ask myself at the time was: Why? Why was it so important for me to prove my dad wrong? Why was I willing to risk it all at the expense of winning the approval of my father? What is the root cause behind my behavior?

Unbeknown to me at the time, my inner thoughts reflected my outer world because I falsely believed that I was never good enough for my father and nothing could please him. I wanted to validate that belief, and as a result, I’ve ended-up creating my own perception about reality, but even then, it was never enough. It didn’t help that I was extremely stubborn as a child, where I’d confront anyone who challenged me with a fearless attitude.

As I’ve come of age, I’ve learned how to decouple my financial motivations from my negative emotions; such as, fear, anger, and frustration of wanting to prove my dad wrong. Nowadays, I’ve learned how to develop new connections between my financial goals and my “Why Statement”, which is purpose-driven and tethered with both my contributions and the impact I’m seeking to achieve. I can tell you with confidence that there is a night-and-day difference between the outcomes that I used to have just ten-years ago and today, and it all started with changing my relationship with money!

Being a rebel, like I was, isn’t always a bad thing! In fact, if you were a rebel (often the case with a second-born child like myself), and your parents managed their financials poorly, it’s probably a good thing that you were their opposite. On the other hand, if your parents were well-off and you rebelled against them, you might end-up being in serious financial ruins. Either way, what’s important for you to recognize is that your way of thinking is directly related to how both your parents dealt with money.

To recondition yourself to adjust your drive, so that your actions could be purpose-driven instead of reactive-driven behavior, consider the following four key elements that could help you change your Mindset in order to help influence your behavior in more desirable ways:

Awareness: Most of us aren’t even aware of why we behave the way we do, but if you examine your past carefully, you’ll realize the role of your parents have on your behavior and your preconceived notions about money, so consider the different ways your behavior is being influenced by your parents’ relationship with money because whatever their relationship with money is, it’s more than likely that it would extend onto you.
Understanding: Most of us fail at understanding the relationship between our behavior and that of our parents when it comes to money, and that’s why it’s important to understand the associations that are currently persisting in our lives that are affecting our financial decisions, which are all stemming back from how we’ve perceived our parents’ relationship with money.
Disassociation: To change your future, you need to first change your perception about reality and challenge your convictions that govern your relationship with money, and disassociate yourself from your parents’ behavior when it comes to money in ways that would serve your best interest.
Reconditioning: Once you’ve shortlisted the contributing factors that are triggering your undesirable relationship with money; stemming back from what you’ve observed your parents do, you can then start developing desirable behaviors to enable you to establish a healthier relationship with money.

3. Crucial Moments: What did you Experience as a child?

Most of what shapes our character today isn’t the accumulated effect of what we’ve experienced in the past, rather, it’s how we’ve reacted during crucial moments that helped shape our worldview. So, what was your experience when it came to money, wealth, and rich people around you as a child because these experiences are what helped shape your perception about money.

To recondition your behavioral response during crucial moments, consider the following four key elements that could help you change your Mindset in order to help influence your behavior in more desirable ways:

Awareness: Most of us are unaware of our crucial moments when we’re at our most vulnerable emotional state of mind, so being aware of when we are at our weakest has a lot to do with how we behave financially.
Understanding: Most of us don’t understand the impulsive financial reactions that we have during crucial moments because they’re repetitive mindless habits that we’ve developed over the years, so analyzing our own behavior during these inflection points holds the key to better understanding our financial Mindset.
Disassociation: Just because you’ve been hardwired to behave in a certain way, doesn’t mean that’s who you need to be permanently, so explore ways where you have better choices during crucial moments in order for your outcome to sway more towards your financial goals.
Reconditioning: Since the first element of all change plans is awareness, carefully examine yourself during crucial moments by observing your thoughts, fears, anxieties, elements of depression, habits, and most importantly your results.

It’s funny how we sometimes behave like robots, where it seems that we’re always running on autopilot ruled by our past programming and conditioning of old habits that seem to govern our reality. The biggest reason behind people fighting over money isn’t the money itself, rather, it’s the misalignment between there Financial Blueprints. That’s why it’s important to realize that you’re dealing with blueprint mismatch instead of money when getting into an argument with someone about financial matters. The only sustainable way for you to change your level of financial success is to reset your Financial Blueprint.

The whole point behind redrawing your Financial Blueprint is to surface key elements of your past from your subconscious mind into your conscious awareness. This could be done by carefully examining your behavior during crucial moments, so that you can live a more fulfilled life based on true choices instead of being governed by past programming that for all intents and purposes isn’t serving your best interest based on past outcomes. When you elevate your preconceived notions from your subconscious mind into your conscious awareness, you can make more informed decisions based on the reality of who you are today instead of who you were yesterday.

I have to give credit where credit is due, a good chunk of the source material used to develop my understanding about Financial Blueprint came from “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Ecker.” The reason why I haven’t summarized the entire book as I usually do is because I had strong reservations against the author’s style of writing, where he tended to promote his paid workshops at every section of the book, which I found appalling and wrote it off as a sleazy marketing gimmick. It’s important to note that the author of this book did not develop the concept of Financial Blueprints himself, rather, he just used it as the foundation to build the narrative of his book.

Your Financial Blueprint

No thoughts live in our heads “rent-free”, where each thought will either act as an investment or a cost that starts in our heads but then manifests in our reality. Nothing has meaning except for the meaning you assign to it. That’s why everything begins with your thoughts, which are produced in your mind based on your worldview and your perception about reality, which might or might not be true. We make our choices based on what we believe is logical, sensible, and appropriate for us at the time we’re making the decision. Strangely enough, what makes perfect sense to you, may seem ludicrous to someone else!

I’m a strong advocate of simplicity, and I truly believe that the greatest sophistication can be accomplished when we’re able to articulate our goals and plans clearly! Consciously developing your new and improved Financial Blueprint can be broken down into five key elements that are as follows:

Identity & Self-Image: This represents your values, mission, definitions of success, 5-year impression about the future, and purpose-driven objectives. These serve as the guiding principles for your financial decision-making process and how you intend on using money to serve your interests. Nobody seeks money for the sake of hording money, rather, people seek money because they want to do something with it once they have it. When these elements are explicitly stated, it becomes possible to deliberately link your financial-decisions to desirable behavior, which will directly drive the outcomes you most desire.
Strategy & Action: This is about identifying your risk tolerance, performance expectations, forecasted likelihood of success, and annual goals. The strategy and action sets guiding parameters to help execute your financial plan.
Cash Flow Diversification, Debt Management, and Taxes: This helps identify your strategy and actions that are related to optimizing and diversifying your cash flow, managing your debt, and minimizing unnecessary taxes that you have to pay.
Risk Management: This part addresses your level of tolerance when it comes to managing financial risks because when it’s all set and done, you need to predetermine the pain that is worth the gain in order for you to know when to stop and when to persist.
Asset Management: It’s always wise to be asset rich and convert your cash into appreciating assets that over its lifetime would increase in value.

Our Financial Blueprints don’t just shape how we interact with money, they also define how we relate to other people when money is involved. Unfortunately, most of our Financial Blueprints have flaws, which prevents us from having a healthy relationship with money. I’ve learned that a huge part of building wealth comes by developing a Financial Blueprint that allows us to build a sound financial foundation for today and tomorrow; despite what we’ve experienced in the past!

If after all this, you still feel unsure about your Financial Blueprint, consider asking yourself the following questions to help cluster your thoughts around the invisible forces that are working against you:

Are you a spender or a saver? Why do you think you behave the way you do? If you’re a spender, do you think you could become a saver? If you’re a saver, should you become a spender or is that something to be avoided? Were your parents spenders or savers? Is your spouse a spender or saver? How do you feel about people who have a different attitude towards money than you? How do you feel about people who have more financial resources than you, especially when you believe that these people are inferior to your credentials?
When can you talk about money? Is it OK to lend to family or friends? How do you feel about borrowing money from friends or family? If a friend offered you a business deal, would you take it or pass on the opportunity?
When is debt acceptable? Is it ever acceptable to be in debt? Is having a couple of credit cards a wise decision to make? If so, how should it be handled?
How do you feel about saving and investing? Have you begun saving for retirement? Does the stock market interest you, and if so, does it scare you? Do you go out of your way to learn how money works, or is it all just a mystery to you?
How much does the economy affect you? How do you feel about taxes, the stock market, unemployment, and interest rates? Are government’s social and relief programs a necessary evil or are they just evil masked in acts of charity? To what extent is your own financial fate subject to the fate of the world around you?
How do you feel about work? Are you willing to take two jobs in order to achieve your goals? Are you unwilling to work overtime because it’s more important to be with your family? Are certain jobs beneath you? Are some of the jobs unattainable because you don’t have the education, experience, or the right social background to execute the job?
What does it mean to be rich? In your opinion, how much money would make you rich? How do you feel about rich people? Are they admirable or are most of them Machiavellians?
How willing are you to take financial risks? Do you invest in the stock market? Do you prefer investing in yourself or others? What do you consider when investing in yourself or others?
What must you have and what can you live without? How many online streaming subscriptions are necessary for you? What about transportation and housing? Can you live without a car? Do you need a home with a backyard? Is renting a house or apartment considered money down the drain? Is homeownership the path towards wealth? Do you plan to pay-off your mortgage before maturity to reduce interest rates?
How does money make you feel? Does thinking about money make you stressed, anxious, depressed, or optimistic? Does thinking about money ever make you happy?
What should money be used for? In your opinion, what’s the purpose of money? Do you consider money to be the goal or a means to an end? If you had all the money in the world, how would you spend it? Does the purpose of money change over time for you or does it remain constant? In what ways do your spending habits change? Do they depend on where you live or whom you’re with?

Whether you like it or not, your Financial Blueprint defines who you are and how much money you will have in the years to come. If you’re unhappy with your financial situation, things will not improve if you continue to do the same things and think the same thoughts. For things to get better, you must first make deep and lasting changes in your mind, and then develop an attitude for continuous improvement. Remember, when you change your thoughts, you change your world!