Beyond the economic context in which each person has grown up, everyone we forge a concept of money from an early age, even before learning to count it. The psychotherapist Vicky Reynalspecialized in financial therapyassures that this notion that we incorporate in childhood is one of the emotional traces most powerful things we receive from our parents and family.
Reynal was born in Argentina, currently resides in London, where he runs a specialized financial psychotherapy clinic, with clients internationally.
She is the author of the multi-award-winning book «The Psychology of your relationship with money«-in English known as Money on Your Mind– in which it addresses the emotional barriers that influence the financial habits we develop.
His integrative approach to psychology and finance emerged after completing an MBA at London Business School and postgraduate studies in psychodynamic psychotherapy.
Financial emotional awareness
The expert raises the question of whether the financial education It is a matter of family inheritance. «We are all sons and daughters of the family economies in which we have grown up,» said Reynal, in dialogue with the magazine I Womanwhich is delivered as a supplement to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.
It states that there is a «economic family tree» upon which we create our behaviors, values and financial relationships in the future.
«Money is a powerful symbol that emanates many meanings: it can represent distress o security; distance o can; self-esteem o lackfreedom or repression; and the feeling of feeling like a ‘valuable’ person can depend on the income we have, to feel worthy of attention, respect or love; among many other options,» he explained.
Reynal believes that to achieve financial well-being in adulthood, understood as satisfaction with one’s own economic situation and control over it, each person must delve into their own psyche.
«We need to understand what desires money represents for each of us,» he said. Inevitably, as with most therapies, it requires a retrospective of early experiences and relationships.
That past, to a certain extent, defines our financial future. «It is not that the desire for money begins in childhoodbecause certainly when we are children money is not a central desire, but rather some of the aspirations that we associate with its meaning symbolic date back to that time,» he explained.
«During childhood we rather desire love, control, power and comfort, but in adulthood we can try to satisfy those same desires, perhaps unsatisfied, through money: deep and important desires that were present in us long before we knew what money was,» he noted.
These associations impact our decisions and shape what is known as «financial emotional awareness.» «To achieve financial well-being in adulthood, you first have to understand what desires really represent for each of you,» he said.
Annalisa Valleassociate professor of Developmental and Educational Psychology at the Catholic University of Milan, did several studies to decipher the relationship between the generational transmission of financial skills, especially from parents to children.
A survey carried out in 2025 among 500 parents in Italy, of children between 6 and 14 years old, revealed that only 20% of parents feel competent to provide information and support on economic issues to their children.
Money as an emotional legacy
Reynal was one of the speakers at the Financial Advice Forum 2025which took place on September 25, 2025 at the Hilton London Tower Bridge, in London.
When he went on stage he mentioned the following quote from the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung: «Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it ‘destiny’.»
«I think this is especially true in the case of money. Many financial decisions are shaped not by logic, but by emotions that we may not even be aware of; trapped in an emotional relationship with money that we can’t fully understand or change until we go through certain processes,» he explained.
One of the questions most asked in interviews is how to identify if you have a toxic relationship with money. «People tend to be quite conscious when something is not quite right, it can come up on an emotional level when they feel guilty about spending money, or they feel anxious and can’t sleep, worried about money,» he said.
«There are even those who understand on a rational level that they have enough and have nothing to worry about. Sometimes emotions are sometimes the key, and other times the numbers speak for themselvesbecause if you’re constantly in debt you’re probably living beyond your means,» he said.
Excessive spending, impulsivity, the wrong reasons behind each choice, are some of the factors that tend to repeat themselves until they become patterns, emotional traps and limiting beliefs.
Italian journalist Annalisa Monfreda, now a businesswoman in the world of education and finance, agrees with Reynal and assures that money constitutes an «emotional legacy.»
«There are those who They saw their parents fight all their lives over moneyand now, when they win it, they waste it because they consider it the supreme evil,» Monfreda exemplified.
«Others were sent to school with torn clothes by their parents, so obsessed with saving that as adults they never knew how to spend it,» he added.
They both believe in «financial nakedness» as a tool to decipher layer by layer the highly emotional nature of financial behavior.
«The financial imprint received in childhood usually remains frozen in each of us for a long time, until a traumatic economic event, for example, a big crisis or meeting someone who does things differently, transforms us,» argued Monfreda.
Money, a great social taboo
Experts indicate that it is no coincidence that debts are often lived in silence. People rarely talk out loud about their money.
Sometimes these issues are not even discussed with friends. Asking someone how much they earn, how they manage each month, or talking about their intended salary in a job interview are still taboo.
«Money is not processed socially, it is not discussed, it is not updated or tested in life, you live in solitude many times out of shame or for other reasons, and that is the saddest thing,» Monfreda said.
Together with his partner, Montserrat Fernández Blanco, he created Coppera platform and community that tries to break down fears and prejudices around the emotional relationship with money.
Monfreda and Fernández Blanco created the podcast «financial nudism«, available on Spotify, a format of live events in which people, including some celebrities, speak openly about their relationship with money, their income, debts, moments of crisis, and reveal stories from their childhood.
