The 6 Tactics to Take Control of Your Finances

Read Time: 4-minutes

Happy Saturday,

Here is this week’s edition of 6-Point Saturday — financial insights to help you make smarter money decisions.

*Clickable in the online version.

The truck driver?

James Cameron. One of the highest-grossing directors of all time, with films like Titanic and Avatar.

The gap between where he started and where he ended up didn’t depend on connections or wealth. It began with his own agency.

Psychologists define a “sense of agency” as the feeling of control over one's actions and their consequences.

You might gloss over the importance of this idea, but consider how the opposite of this plays out in your finances. If you’ve ever thought things like:

And it impacted your motivation to actually make a change, then you can see the importance of agency and related topics like locus of control (more on this in Point #4).

Taken to the negative extreme, you might begin to experience what psychologists call “learned helplessness.” Or a state where you start to believe your actions can’t influence outcomes.

Which would be like Cameron looking at his truck driving job, lack of funds, and giving up on the idea of becoming a legendary Hollywood storyteller.

As you can imagine, where you sit on the agency spectrum can produce drastically different results.

So, let’s look at 6 tactics you can use to ensure you are high agency with your finances.

1. Find a quick win. Not a big one, just proof that something can move. Log into your HYSA and transfer $50. Cancel a subscription you forgot about. Call your insurance company and ask for a lower rate. Your perceived size of the win doesn’t matter. The proof that you can improve your finances is everything.

2. Look for bright spots. If you've negotiated your car insurance renewal, your internet bill, or your credit card APR, you can use that same muscle on negotiating a raise. Money is a skill, and you've built other skills before. Past wins mean you have what it takes.

3. Question your beliefs. A lot of money dysfunction traces back to what we absorbed growing up: "We're not the kind of people who can afford that," or "all wealthy people are unethical." These aren't facts. They're inherited beliefs. High agency means questioning them and replacing any that don’t serve you.

4. Try constraint-driven creativity. Research consistently shows constraints sharpen problem-solving. If developing a full budget sounds miserable, that's fine. No shame. Simply recognize this as one constraint in your goal to improve your finances. Instead, track your spending for 30 days to see if your money is going where you actually want it to go. Or try a simple 50/30/20 framework: 50% to your needs, 30% wants, 20% savings.

5. Keep an Inversion Journal. Write down the situations, emotions, and triggers that typically derail your finances (stress spending, avoidance, impulse buys, etc.). Identify your traps, so you can design systems to avoid them.

6. Run a Pre-Parade. A Pre-Parade is a concept from Chip and Dan Heath's book Decisive (unaffiliated). Assume it’s one year from now and your finances are significantly better. What two or three things made a big difference? This reframe pulls your brain out of fear or hopelessness and into problem-solving mode.

Your Move: Pick one area of your finances that you’re procrastinating around and use one of these tactics this weekend to shift yourself into high agency.

"I am essentially hopeless about the future."

This line is pretty revealing. Because when you read this full situation, the hopelessness doesn't quite add up. This individual is 28 years old, earning $100K, living below their means, investing $2,200 a month, carrying zero credit card debt, and sitting on a Roth IRA, a 401k, and a brokerage account. They’re doing much more than many people their age.

And yet, “hopeless.”

Here's part of what’s happening. This individual has focused heavily on one side of the equation and barely touched the other. Every dollar of spending and saving has been scrutinized. But income? Accepted as given, now and seemingly forever. No mention of annual income increases, the benefits of a dual-income household after marriage, or building a side income. And on the savings side, investment contributions don't have to be permanent: temporarily paring back during the childcare years and ramping back up later is a reasonable and common approach.

There's another part of this story worth examining. Can you spot another area where this person could apply high agency?

Hint: it has to do with a commonly accepted goal among Americans…

Homeownership. Homeownership is the centerpiece of the American Dream, an “ideal” many of us simply automatically adopt as our own. Of course, homeownership may genuinely be this person’s dream. But blindly accepting someone else's definition of success is a reliable path to misery and unrealistic expectations.

Worth noting, too, this individual also lives in a high-cost-of-living city where homeownership can be very challenging. So, it’s important to keep perspective and recognize your tradeoffs. Later in the Reddit thread, they mention they want to stay in Seattle to be near grandparents in their last few remaining years. That’s the kind of goal that seems authentic to this individual and a tradeoff (pushing back homeownership for a bit) that’s part of this person’s self-designed “American dream."

High agency means pausing long enough to ask: Is this actually my goal, or did I just inherit it?

This individual has more going for them than they realize. A little agency applied to the right assumptions and expectations could change their perspective with money.

In the 1950s, psychologist Julian Rotter introduced a concept that can explain more about your financial life than your income, your budget, or your investment returns.

He called it: Locus of Control.

The idea is pretty straightforward. People tend to fall somewhere on a spectrum. On one end are those with an internal locus of control: they believe their actions, decisions, and efforts meaningfully shape their outcomes. On the other end are those with an external locus of control: they believe outcomes are largely determined by outside forces, luck, the economy, the government, and the hand they were dealt.

The research (Cobb-Clark et al., 2016) on this in a financial context is compelling. People with a more internal locus of control tend to save more consistently, report higher financial well‑being, make more deliberate financial decisions, and are more likely to plan for retirement. They’re also more likely to adjust course when something in their financial life isn’t working, rather than waiting for circumstances to change.

Another interesting aspect is that while locus of control is often treated as a personality trait, studies show it can shift with experience, environment, and the stories we tell ourselves. If you grow up hearing “we can’t afford that,” you may quietly develop a more external locus of control around money.

But the good news is that small wins can move the needle. Every time you take a financial action and see a result—negotiating a bill, automating a savings transfer, or paying off a debt—you build evidence that your actions matter, and your internal locus of control around money strengthens.

And once you start to believe your actions matter, your motivation to become high agency around your money builds momentum.

Which of these quotes resonates most with you?

Reply to let me know! I read every response.

Thanks for reading — I hope you found a helpful idea or two.

I’ll see you next Saturday with more.

Have a great weekend,

Benjamin Daniel, CFP®
Founder, Money Wisdom

P.S. Want to take control of your money, stop stressing about your expenses, & feel confident about your financial future? There are 2 ways I can help you:

Disclaimer:

This material is not investment or tax advice. No responsibility for loss occasioned to any person or corporate body acting or refraining to act as a result of reading this material can be accepted by the publisher.

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