Skip to content
Outsmarting ThoughtsOutsmarting Thoughts
Pinterest Email Instagram
  • Time Management
  • Cashflow Strategy
  • Stress Management
Outsmarting ThoughtsOutsmarting Thoughts

Do You Belief Money Is The Root Of All Evil? Here’s Why Scapegoating This Tool Keeps You POOR

ByShantiFreystein 2026-01-242026-01-17 Uncategorized

Wanna know why money is the root of all evil keeps popping up in your head the moment finances feel f***ed? This post is dedicated to dismantling that belief before it quietly runs (and ruins) your life in the background.

You feel it when bills pile up, when impulse buys sneak in, or when saving feels harder than it should. That tension isn’t just about numbers. It’s about pride, fear, and a self-doubt roundabout that makes you question whether wanting more automatically turns you into a bad person. Overachievers especially carry this weird guilt around ambition, as if desiring abundance somehow disqualifies you from being decent.

What you’re going to learn is why this belief didn’t come from wisdom, but from misinterpreted experiences, cultural conditioning, and unresolved emotional baggage around power. More importantly, you’ll see how treating money like a moral enemy fuels overspending, avoidance, and financial denial instead of preventing them.

After you have learned to separate money itself from the behaviour surrounding it, you will be able to make grounded decisions, set healthy boundaries with spending, and build systems that actually support you. That shift doesn’t just improve your bank account. It restores kick-ass confidence, self-alignment, and the calm authority that comes from being in charge of your life instead of reacting to it.

This post is all about the belief that money is the root of all evil, so you can stop sabotaging your growth and finally use this tool in a way that serves the life you refuse to half-ass.


Money Is The Root Of All Evil

The belief that money is the root of all evil thrives because scapegoating feels safer than ownership. You see this EVERYWHERE. You’re taught to blame, instead of to problem-solve. And that, while simultaneously, you live in a consumer culture designed to trigger you at every corner. So, when financial turbulence shows up, you blame yourself or the money instead of the system surrounding you.

On top of that, you confuse doing something misaligned with being a bad person. Overspending, impulse buying, and financial avoidance become moral failures in your head instead of behavioural signals. And the worst part? That self-judgment doesn’t correct behaviour. It amplifies it. Shame tightens the grip of impulsivity and keeps you emotionally hijacked. Aka, you’re trapped.

When you restore your innocence and recognise that missteps come from unmet needs, stress, and trauma responses, everything changes. Once the environment shifts, the strategy improves, and the belief loosens, levelling up stops feeling like force. It becomes the natural outcome of clear-headed rationality and better systems.

Money Is A Tool, Not A Moral Test You’re Failing

Contrary to popular belief, money is neutral. It’s a tool, just like a hammer. You can use a hammer to build a house, or you can use it to smash windows. The damage doesn’t come from the hammer. It comes from the intent, skill, and emotional state of the person holding it.

RELATED POST:
Bad With Money? Congrats, You’ve Been Gaslit By Consumer Culture

Yes, power and money often show up together. And no, that correlation isn’t imaginary. But what I would like you to consider is that corruption doesn’t start with money. It starts with unresolved trauma, unchecked pride, and emotional blind spots that existed long before the bank account grew.

When you label money itself as evil, you avoid looking at the human behaviour underneath it. That avoidance feels morally superior, yet it quietly keeps you powerless. If money were truly the problem, then removing it would fix everything. History proves the opposite. Scarcity doesn’t create virtue. It creates stress, fear, and reactive decisions.

And let me tell ya, fearing money doesn’t make you ethical either. It makes you avoidant. And that avoidance shows up as undercharging, overspending, or pretending numbers don’t matter. Let’s not sugarcoat it: rejecting the tool doesn’t protect you from misuse. Learning how to handle it does.

Money Management Is A Skill, Not A Personality Trait

Excuse me being frank, but I absolutely resent wishful thinking; and this is wishful thinking. Nobody is magically born good with money. Money management feels hard because you were never taught the rules.

Financial illiteracy isn’t a personal flaw. It’s a systemic failure. Schools skip it, families avoid it, and culture almost romanticises chaos. That’s the bad news. However, there’s also some light in the darkness here… The silver lining is simple. Once you set up even a basic system, you’re already ahead of most people.

Money management is extremely logical. It follows patterns, feedback loops, and cause-and-effect relationships. When you stop treating it like a moral battlefield and start treating it like a skill, progress accelerates fast. Structure removes emotional drama. Systems reduce decision fatigue. Awareness replaces denial. And this is all a teachable skill! Even if you don’t have a penny to spend, you can still YouTube financial literacy and get yourself started somewhere…

So: Pause & analyse the situation, because every improved habit you build compounds. This isn’t about becoming perfect. It’s about becoming strategically consistent in an environment designed to knock you off balance.

Owning a cashflow strategy is a skill that’ll give you some serious advantages in life. I think budgeting is an aligned action with taking life seriously, and I seriously believe life will reward you for it. If you’re not into high-maintenance strategies like ‘tracking your spending’ and just want to sit down ONCE to direct your financial future, our Guilt-Free Spending Plan Printable is the right cashflow strategy for you! Don’t let anybody outsmart you out of your own money and start budgeting today by simply filling out the form below:

Want a free
ONE-AND-DONE CHECKLIST for a
GUILT-FREE SPENDING PLAN?
Free up your bandwidth and stop overthinking with this
FREE One-And-Done Checklist for your Guilt-Free Spending Plan!
Simply fill out the form below to get this strategy
delivered straight to your inbox!

Your Beliefs Quietly Program Your Financial Behaviour

Neuroscience is proving this over and over. Beliefs dictate behaviour, whether you like it or not. If you truly believe money is the root of all evil, you will NEVER feel safe holding more of it. Deep down, you’ll fear becoming someone you don’t respect.

That fear drives self-sabotage. You don’t even realise that you have an internalised saboteur, because consciously, you feel you would actually LIKE MORE MONEY! However, subconsciously, this belief drives your behaviour in the opposite direction. You ‘accidentally’ overspend to get rid of money. You avoid tracking it to stay ‘innocent’. And you impulse buy to soothe stress, then punish yourself with guilt. Counterintuitively, the belief meant to keep you good keeps you stuck.

What’s really happening is emotional hijacking. Trauma wires your nervous system to associate money with danger, powerlessness, or shame. That wiring isn’t your fault. It is, however, your responsibility to untangle, because if you don’t, you’re trapped in a financial denial that can keep you poor for as long as you live…

RELATED POST:
How To Pull Yourself Out Of Financial Denial: An Overachiever’s Strategy To Get Back In Control

Money isn’t testing your character. It’s exposing your relationship with control, safety, and self-trust. When you stop blaming the tool and start understanding the pattern, behaviour changes without force. That’s how strategic growth actually works.

Breaking Up With Scapegoating And Reclaiming Power

To break up with scapegoating, and making money the problem, you need to look at the examples burned into your memory. Who, or what, are the instances that you remember as proof of this belief? Who caused you to belief that money is the root of all evil? Find the culprit in your belief system. The greedy boss. The reckless spender, or the family conflict. Instead of moral judgment, now, investigate it under the lens of understanding cause and effect.

Those stories are about unprocessed trauma, not money. When you shift the narrative from blame to investigation, fear loosens its grip. Money stops feeling like a threat and starts feeling manageable.

As long as you hold a negative belief about money itself, your relationship with it will stay tense. Change the belief, and behaviour follows. Set up systems. Define healthy boundaries. Practise getting a grip in any case or form. Build environments that support the version of you who wants more out of life.

This isn’t about proving anything to anyone. It’s about refusing to stay small for marketing machines that profit from your self-doubt. You’re here to self-actualise, not survive politely.

Money Is The Root Of All Evil (Summary)

The belief that money is the root of all evil survives because it offers an easy villain. It lets you avoid confronting trauma, consumer pressure, and emotional hijacking. Unfortunately, that avoidance keeps impulsivity alive and growth stalled.

What this post showed you is how reframing money as a tool changes everything. Understanding behaviour instead of judging it. Learning systems instead of relying on willpower. Building structure instead of drowning in guilt.

Now picture a future where money feels calm, neutral, and supportive. Decisions feel grounded. Progress feels earned. Life feels aligned with what resonates & aligns with you instead of ruled by fear. It can all be yours, as long as you dare to reassess your beliefs.

I wish you financial freedom, strategic self-trust, and the courage to grab life by the horns. You deserve a life you don’t secretly resent. Go build it.

This post was all about the belief that money is the root of all evil, so you can stop sabotaging your growth and finally use this tool in a way that serves the life you refuse to half-ass.

We aim to help you out as much as possible, but please keep in mind that the content is only for general informational and educational purposes. We offer our services based on independent research and life-experience only, and so our strategies can never serve as a substitute for professional advice. Trust me, we do not have 'everything figured out', are all still huge works in progress, but hey, what works for us, might work for you too! This is allll up for you to decide... It might not work for you, and that's okay, so cherrypick the stuff that resonates and leave the stuff that doesn't, and let's go!

Post navigation

Previous Previous
3 Procrastination Ted Talk Summaries That Prove: Willpower Isn’t The Problem. PAIN IS !!!
NextContinue
Dignity: Everything You Need To Know To Start Developing Healthy Self-Talk

Meet the writer

Meet the writer
Shanti Freystein

your nerdy sidekick in strategically getting your shit together.

learn more
Subscribe

Info

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy
  • Disclaimer Policy
  • Terms & Conditions

Let's Connect

Pinterest Email Instagram

Categories

  • Time Management
  • Cashflow Strategy
  • Stress Management

WANNA KNOW WHEN WE START LAUNCHING OUR MINI COURSES TO HELP YOU GET EVEN MORE KICK-ASS AT OUTSMARTING MONEY, Time And thoughts?

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy
  • Disclaimer Policy
  • Terms & Conditions

© 2026 Outsmarting Thoughts · All Rights Reserved

Manage Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
  • Manage options
  • Manage services
  • Manage {vendor_count} vendors
  • Read more about these purposes
View preferences
  • {title}
  • {title}
  • {title}
Scroll to top
  • Time Management
  • Cashflow Strategy
  • Stress Management
Pinterest Email Instagram
What are you looking for?
Search