Have you ever taken the Love Language Test? It’s a fun quiz that helps you understand how you like to receive love from the people in your life. The quiz is broken down into five primary categories: Quality Time, Words of Affirmation, Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch. While we each have some affinity for all of these categories, some of them are more dominant than others. For me, Quality Time ranks #1 followed by Words of Affirmation. Understanding how you like to receive love in your relationships can be incredibly helpful for both you and your loved ones. 

The quiz covers our relationships with people, but what about our relationship with money? What does that love language look like? How do our love languages show up when it comes to the money in our lives? We can think about both what’s important to us for our own self-love and how we express that with money itself. Let’s take a look at how each love language shapes your relationship with money:

Quality Time

For those of us that rank highly for this one, we can think about it as investing in time. We might look at how our work is preventing us from spending more quality time with people we care about. This could help us understand how much money we truly need versus how much we think we need.

We also might consider how we’re using some of our income to give us space for more quality time. In practical terms, that may look like paying for meal prep kits or laundry, ubers or a cleaning service. Some people may balk about spending money on an uber or meal prep kit when there’s “no need”; it may feel reckless and unnecessary. But this perspective could cause us to pull back from using money on things that generally help our quality of life and give us more time. We need to reframe this perspective as a way to “buy more time,” a concept Elizabeth Dunn, author of Happy Money, talks about as one of the best uses of money. 

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In terms of our direct relationship with money: How much time are we spending taking care of the money in our lives? Are we dedicating uninterrupted time to nurturing the relationship? This could look like making sure we are saving money for our goals, checking in with our investments, and, of course, making time to talk to your financial planner! When we give money the attention it needs, we can forget about it for a while and focus on what really matters: quality time!

Words of Affirmation

Words of affirmation usually means needing to hear and tell people how valued and important they are. When it comes to the realm of money, affirming words make a big difference. Money is still a taboo subject in our culture – we’re not supposed to talk about it! And when we do, the conversations are usually full of stress. What if we changed the narrative and gave ourselves permission to hear encouragement, praise, and hopefulness in our conversations about money. Imagine what it would be like to have someone — like your financial advisor perhaps —  tell you about the great progress you’ve made with managing your money, staying on budget, or making decisions that align with your values? I bet you’d find there’s a lot more to love about your relationship with money than you thought.

Gifts

Well, this is an easy one. If we like to get or give gifts as an expression of love, the use of money here is obvious. We like to use our resources to give or receive. But when it comes to using money to give, it comes with a cost (literally). Is the cost something reasonable for you or is the money you’re using for gifting causing you some financial harm. It’s good to check in either way! 

If gift giving is important to us, we may be more charitably inclined to give money as the gift itself. Financial planning side note: Gifting money comes with a lot of financial benefits based on your situation and the amounts you give. You might be able to get a deduction on your taxes.  Or there might be a more complex, but beneficial, giving strategy that may make sense for you financially. Either way, that’s just an added bonus of giving. Dunn also points out that how much money you give doesn’t matter but rather the act of giving itself.

Acts of Service

Speaking of acts of giving, if your love language is Acts of Service, you’re probably inclined to use money to help others or yourself. Maybe you buy yourself a small, but meaningful, service like a massage when you need to relax or take out when you don’t have time to cook (or simply don’t want to). These acts of service are ways you can treat yourself – and the cost is worth it!. 

Conversely, how can you use your money to provide acts of service or kindness toward others? Is there a family member or friend who is struggling and could use extra help? Or perhaps you lead by example and show someone that using money specifically to make life easier can be really powerful. Using money to help yourself and others is almost always a wise use of the resource!

Physical Touch

Someone who’s love language is physical touch prefers physical affection. They want accessibility and a sense of security. Translated to money, it might mean that actually seeing a robust savings account is part of your financial plan. Or, that you have another account of “fun money” that you can access any time, for any reason. Someone who loves physical touch might want to have items they cherish in their home. If you want to see your investment, or your money in action, you could collect beautiful art pieces you enjoy or invest money in home renovation.

Whatever your love language, identifying yours can open up new ways of thinking about your money. If this exercise sparked some ideas, keep building your awareness of your love language to help transform your relationship with money.

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