Money does not simply change circumstances; it changes the self — its relationship to risk, to others, to the future, to its own worth. Poverty can install a permanent fear-orientation that wealth does not simply erase; sudden wealth can produce what psychologists call 'sudden wealth syndrome,' a disorientation of identity whose core is the question: who am I when scarcity is no longer organizing my life? The examined relationship with money asks what narrative about selfhood your economic history has installed, and whether it is still serving you.
Each step builds on the last.