The Money Fixer: How Family Responsibility Shapes Your Money Personality

In my book, What's Your Money Personality?, I explore ten different money archetypes that can show up in Black families.

Each archetype has its own core wound, its own karmic mission, and its own way of relating to money, family and wealth.

I wanted to explore something I’d seen repeatedly in my own work: our financial behaviour isn't always just about what we learned about money, sometimes it's connected to the role we learned to play in our families.

I've also explored how these different money archetypes communicate with and relate to one another, because our money personalities don't exist in isolation. They interact, clash, support one another and sometimes trigger each other's deepest wounds.

One of the archetypes I've explored is The Fixer archetype.

What is a Money Fixer?

The Fixer's role is to move the family forward financially and materially.

They often have an extraordinary capacity to change the financial trajectory of an entire family. A Fixer can potentially move a family from poverty into the middle class or even the upper class within a single generation.

They are the ones who see the problems and immediately start looking for solutions.

Someone needs money? They'll find it.

There's a financial crisis? They'll solve it.

The family needs a plan? They'll create one.

They become the person everyone relies on when things fall apart but there is a cost to constantly being the person who fixes everything.

The Fixer is financially controlling.

They don't just support their parents, they parent them.

They parent their siblings.

They take responsibility for problems that aren't actually theirs to solve.

And because they've become so accustomed to being responsible for everyone else, setting boundaries can become incredibly difficult.

There is often a deep desire underneath all of this: They want everyone to be financially secure and to make better decisions so when they see someone struggling, their instinct is often to intervene.

This is one of the things that distinguishes the Fixer from The Sweet One, another archetype I explore in the book.

The Sweet One gives money because they want to be loved, needed or liked but the Fixer gives because they want to fix something.

Their giving is often proactive, they don’t wait for someone to ask, they see a problem and think, I can solve this but money doesn't always fix the thing they believe it will fix and often their family pushes back.

The Fixer can feel deeply hurt when their financial efforts aren't appreciated.

After all, they are working incredibly hard to help everyone.

Why isn't anyone grateful?

But the Fixer's money comes with conditions because the money isn't simply being given, it's being given to solve a problem the Fixer has identified and when the person receiving the money doesn't do what the Fixer thinks they should do, resentment can build on both sides.

The Fixer can make other people feel inadequate because their financial support can carry an implicit message:

I know how to fix this. You don't.

And that's painful for everyone involved.

In the framework I explore in my book, the Fixer's core wound is what I call a God Wound.

This can show up as a deep need to control what happens around them, to believe that if they can just manage everything correctly, they can prevent things from falling apart.

But being responsible for everyone is exhausting.

Eventually, the Fixer has to confront a difficult truth that not everything is theirs to fix, they cannot control everyone's choices and they cannot use money to make everyone behave differently.

The question for the Fixer is NOT How do I make more money?

They already know how to do that.

The deeper question is:

“What happens when I stop using my money, my success and my competence to control what happens to everyone else?”

What happens when helping doesn't mean fixing?

What happens when giving doesn't come with an expectation that someone will change?

What happens when I can love my family without managing their lives?

What would it feel like to build wealth without carrying everyone with me?

That is some of the deeper work behind understanding our money personalities.

Because sometimes the behaviour that helped us survive, and even succeed, is the very behaviour we eventually have to transform if we want to experience wealth with more freedom, boundaries and ease.