SPOKANE, Wash. — How people spend, save, or stress about money starts long before their first paycheck.
Financial experts say the key to changing your financial behavior may begin in understanding how and when spending habits form.
“It’s important to understand when a money mindset actually develops, which is way earlier than people think, it’s around age five,” said Barin Saxton, a financial expert at Canopy Credit Union.
What children observe growing up, whether there was never enough money or always plenty, shapes how they handle cash as adults, Saxton explained. These early experiences create lasting emotional responses that often don’t match current financial situations.
“The emotions that we carry around money, fear, guilt, or anxiety, usually come from what we observed growing up, and don’t necessarily have to do with our current financial situation,” Saxton said.
To change these habits, Saxton recommends slowing down and examining spending motivations. He suggests checking in on where you spend the most and building in financial speed bumps, like cash-in-envelope budgets or automatic transfers into savings accounts.
Creating a new habit may feel uncomfortable at first. Saxton compares it to starting a new job.
“Driving to work for the first time, at a new job, right? The first time you do it, there’s a lot of decisions, there’s a lot of things you’re thinking about along the way,” he said.
Just as driving a new route can become automatic, good money habits can become second nature with repetition.
COPYRIGHT 2026 BY KXLY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, REWRITTEN OR REDISTRIBUTED.
