Left Brain, Right Brain
Posted by Gail | Filed under Budgets
Y’all have probably heard the theories on left-brain and right-brain people:
- Left-brainers are logical and detail-oriented, facts rule their world, they like math and science, make lists, are great at pattern recognition and love order.
- Right-brainers like to see the “big picture”, are more perceptive, have great imaginations, are more impetuous and are willing to take more risks.
Have you ever considered how your dominant style may be influencing how you deal with your money?
If you’re a right-brainer with a big-picture perspective, doing the detail of daily tracking would be anathema to you. If you’re a left-brainer, being able to see beyond the minutia may be too much to ask. Fact is, if you want to be successful at managing your money, not only must you be able to create a vision for yourself, you have to be able to do the detail to make the vision a reality.
Let’s take figuring out a budget as an example. If you’re a left-brainer, working out a budget on paper make sense to you because you like to look at things sequentially and solve problems logically. If the budget doesn’t balance, you can see how going back and trimming expenses can bring things into line.
If you’re a right-brainer, making a budget the traditional way – balancing it on paper – may not work for you because right-brainers are highly experiential. Instead, you may have to grab a pile of “play” money you can use to make the experience more real for you.
- Find an amount of “money”, (be it computer-generated dollars or money raided from your child’s Game of Life or Monopoly box) in a mix of denominations, that matches what you earn every month. This is your “income.”
- As you work through your budget, take the money out of your “income” and set it aside with a note that says what category it’s going into. So if you’re planning to spend $400 a month on food, write $400 on your budget worksheet and take $400 out of your pile of “income”, label it ““food” and set it aside.
- Work through every category of your budget like this until the money runs out. If you have categories with no money, you’ll have to decide if you’re going to eliminate those categories from your budget or take money from the other piles to put something into those piles.
While the tendency of a right brain thinker may be to duck and hide because numbers that represent money make them freeze in terror, giving in to that tendency isn’t the grown-up thing to do. Figuring out how to make your right-brain happy is. And while dealing with taxes, retirement, debt repayment may feel overwhelming, not dealing leads to dire consequences.
Left-brainers don’t have it made just because they love detail and are better at controlling their feelings. With a tendency to sequential thinking, they need to get outside their comfort zones and imagine the future. After all, if you can’t imagine what your retirement might look like, how can you create a plan that will see you joyous at a time when you should be. No imagination leads to a pile of money (maybe) and absolutely no idea what to do next!
If you don’t buy the left-brain/right-brain “science” because you believe it to be more pop culture than well-researched theory, hey, you’re missing the point. Don’t argue with the metaphor. Think instead about how you like to process information and then use your strengths to get you to where you want to be next. Throwing your arms up and saying, “I just can’t do the detail,” is a cop-out. Sure, it may not be your first choice, but I don’t enjoy washing the kitchen floor either. I do it because if I don’t, it’s gross!
In the best of all worlds, you can find yourself someone who has strengths that compliment yours. If you are a left-brainer and your mate is a right-brainer, try working together instead of fighting each other’s styles. And if you don’t have a mate with the opposite skill set, find yourself a friend, an advisor, or a Gail Club where you can bounce ideas and learn new strategies that’ll work for you.
September 11, 2009 at 6:58 am
I am one of the lucky ones who married an LBer!
Seriously though, we’ve found our division of labour to be a godsend. Keeps us both from going crazy.
I take care of the big picture budget stuff. I don’t know if an RB/LB thing, but I can’t stand the minutae of most budgets, so we basically work off of a budget with Individual Fixed Expenses, Savings, [Debt Repayment- gone now!], Travel, EF, and “Variable Misc.” categories. “Variable Misc” has to cover everthing from parking and gas (being walking commuters helps with this!), food, entertainment, etc. Once it’s gone, it’s gone!
We started out with a more individualized model when we first started focusing on debt repayment, but we found ourselves constantly shifting the money around anyways. So this works well, and I’m mostly responsible for keeping track of it, our overall financial picture, etc.
Hubby takes care of the details (or “weeds”, as I like to call them!). He’s the one to take care of paying individual bills, dealing with companies if they’ve over/under charged us, etc. He’s actually gotten good at dealing with Rogers, if you can believe that!
We occasionally switch off, just to make sure we’re both in the loop and in practice with the other side, but I think we’re both very happy to go back to our usual responsibilities in the end!
September 11, 2009 at 7:35 am
Thank you again Gail for a very thought out and informative post. It sure does assist in explaining some of the differences in ideas that my spouse and I have in communicating about finances.
Have a great weekend!
September 11, 2009 at 8:33 am
Wowza’s…I would never have thought to break out the monopoly money. I’m a LB and my budgets on the computer seem to only ever have my Hubs. skim over them! No matter how many times I re-vamp or rearrange them.
He’s a definite RB…and this wknd. we’ll be playing some monopoly-Gail style. I’m so grateful that Gail will share with us the stuff that for whatever reason just doesn’t occur to us on our own!! Thanks Gail : )
September 11, 2009 at 9:36 am
What a serendipitous post. DH and I are currently in a major debate about whether or not we should move to a bigger house, and this sums up the core of the debate. I’m trying to figure out how to stretch my left-brained self to understand where his right brain is coming from, but I’ll admit, it’s tough.
September 11, 2009 at 9:59 am
I think I have issues
I go from wanting to be detailed orientated LB to getting sick of it and reverting to RB. Then the RB gets mad at the LB and I go at it again until the LB gets sick of it. My patient husband just smiles and asks how I want him to help; I’m a lucky woman, and at the end of the day if the budget works it doesn’t matter how exactly it works… just the fact that it does is good enought for me!
September 11, 2009 at 10:05 am
I am a creative, big-picture type, and used to be absolutely awful at organization and details. However, with practice you can accomplish almost anything. Years back I used to avoid checking my balances, for example, and my filing system used to be a mess. Now I’m actually a pretty organized person.
For me the challenge is connecting the big picture with the details. I want to clarify all those dreams and visions I have for myself so I can actually take a look and see what I need to do to make them happen. To be honest, I never would have thought to do that, if it were not for Gail. Career wise, maybe, but financially? no.
September 11, 2009 at 10:27 am
Great post Gail. We’ve been able to negotiate our way through the last several months of hubby being let go by focusing on the big picture and working our way backwards. How much of the severance could we use to pay off debt, and what was the minimum we’d need for month to month from his share… it has made this whole experience a lot easier to handle.
The upsides of his being let go – we were able to pay off a five year loan two years early, he’s much happier not working for his company and we’ve learned how to live within our means and know what it really can be like to plan for our futures. Big picture, with attention to detail. A fun jigsaw puzzle of life.
September 11, 2009 at 12:59 pm
That was really interesting. My hubby and I are both left-brained (we’re engineers so that probably explains it, LOL!) and the big picture does frequently stump us (and it’s hard to know how much to save for retirement when we can’t figure out where we’ll live, how big our house will be, how often we’ll travel, etc.). We’ve written down every penny we’ve spent for over 30 years, but just what we’ll do with our money when we retire isn’t nearly as clear to us. Thanks for giving us something to think about (maybe we’ll talk to our right-brained daughter to get some good ideas about how to think about this!).
September 12, 2009 at 3:11 pm
I have periods of both. getting waayyy ahead of myself down the road but mostly fretting the small stuff in the here and now. I find I now focus too hard on details and panicing about right now instead of taking an objective look at the big pic. For instance, right now I have a balance of $640 on my credit card. I am waiting for a $445 credit to go through and made a $100 pymt so technically I owe $95. I should be happy but no I fret and worry over a measley 95 bucks!! How does one get to the nice balance of future and here and now…and not dwell obsessively on details, especially when so trivial?
September 14, 2009 at 5:28 am
Wasn’t here a movie about “the man with 2 brains” featuring ah Steve Martin in about 1983?
I pefer a good combination of the 2 brains
January 18, 2011 at 11:27 pm
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