Money mind-shift

If your goal for 2026 is getting into better financial shape, one of Canada’s most renowned personal finance experts is throwing you a self-rescue line.

Kelley Keehn has recently published her 12th personal finance book in the last 20 years, Save Yourself: a New Approach to Thinking About Money and Taking Control of Your Financial Future. She spoke with the Free Press about taking a different tact to helping Canadians to make positive financial change.

Her new book comes at the right time, released in January when many make resolutions about being better with money.

As with past efforts, Keehn has sought to provide advice on the behavioural aspects of finance. But with Save Yourself, she upped the ante with neuroscience to help readers understand how human brains handle the subject of money. “My first book was over 20 years ago on the psychology of money, but it was anecdotal because there was little research on the psychology of money.”

Today, behavioural finance is a large field of research and her new book leverages the scientific progress made.“If I can sum up the book in one quote, it’s that ‘You don’t get what you want; you get who you are.’”

As Keehn explains, making changes to how we approach money — be it saving more, cutting debt or investing for retirement — requires an identity shift because our current mindset about who we believe ourselves to be often does not encompass the qualities necessary to change behaviour successfully.

“How long is change going to last if you haven’t built an identity of someone who embodies these new characteristics?” she says. “If you say, ‘I want to have a better financial life,’ but your self-talk is, ‘My family didn’t have any money; I grew up poor, and who am I really to save?’ it will be very hard to change.”

Keehn speaks from experience; she was that person. Born in Edmonton, she didn’t grow up with wealth and did not naturally have the mindset for a healthy relationship with money.

A common occurrence is self-blame: “I am just not good with money” people tell themselves, she says.

Keehn says the science suggests none of us are ‘good with money’ naturally. Our brains aren’t designed to be long-term savers.

“Evolutionary-wise, we’re wired for instant gratification,” she says.“Our brains want us to do one thing — and that’s to stay alive.”

We avoid what we perceive as “dangerous or scary, and so if asking for a raise or investing in the stock market feels that way, we naturally try to find ways to avoid dealing with those situations.”

Those mechanisms to avoid danger are not helpful when trying to change financial behaviour. What’s more, neuroscience shows when we feel these stresses, our focus narrows.

“When stressed, you’re narrowing in on one thing, so if you don’t have enough money at the end of the month, it’s hard to see other opportunities to address the shortfall,” she says.

In Save Yourself, she cites one study to illustrate this idea. Involving two groups at a restaurant looking at a menu, one had $20 to spend and the other had $100. The former would often only scan the top of the menu with appetizers that were then most affordable. The other group would look through the entire menu.

“The salient part is that at the bottom of the menu, it said, ‘If you ask for a discount, you will receive it.’”

So the concern about not having enough money narrowed the focus of the participants with $20 to their detriment.

“It’s unfortunate, like the old saying, ‘The rich get richer and the poor get poorer,’ because amid financial stress, it’s hard to see possibilities,” Keehn says.

Under financial stress, the best solution is to seek outside help from your banker, a debt counsellor or your financial planner — objectivity that can see other ideas.

Most people, though, are disinclined to do so. Keehn says she has seen many instances of people deep in debt who did not seek help until it was too late because they were emotionally overwhelmed and stuck in a myopic mindset.

Adding to the stickiness of our frame of mind is our brains are designed for favour stability. By default, we have a fixed mindset.

Here, Keehn points to the work of renowned American psychologist Dr. Carol Dweck, who coined the term the “growth mindset” that people seeking change must adopt. “The growth mindset says, ‘I don’t like it, and I don’t know how to change it, but I know that there are other people who have changed; I can learn from them and every little step I make gives me more confidence.’”

Yet Keehn also understands talk is cheap; change can feel costly and offers readers an explanation of why using neuroscience is less effective when not paired with storytelling.

With past books, fans frequently mentioned how stories about real people (their real identities removed) resonated the most.

“This book has that same approach, where every chapter has a character that, hopefully, readers can see themselves in, and see all of the steps these individuals took that they too could follow to reach a happier outcome,” she says. “I really want to get granular with the characters and what they went through, giving readers a peek behind the curtain.”

These stories help people relate and know they’re not alone. To that end, Keehn underscores the importance of building peer groups with others going through similar challenges to talk it out and get support.

“If you want to be healthier, you can join a running class, right?,” she says, adding social media has many online groups where people can find support.

“Nothing is going to change your life more than immersing yourself in a community focused on the change you seek.”

Joel Schlesinger is a Winnipeg-based freelance journalist

joelschles@gmail.com