INFP Personality Type: Creativity and Financial Freedom (Updated 2021)

INFP advice – Take control of your finances

“If I could give one piece of advice to a younger INFP, and only one piece of advice, it would be this – Learn fiscal responsibility at as young an age as you possibly can, because when you follow your dreams, it will be utterly vital to have financial discipline because the things ENFPs love to don’t pay well!” I personally argue with that, but that’s another conversation.

This doesn’t mean you can’t do them, it just means you have to be smarter with money than office drones. So this quote was sent by a reader, to serve as a piece of advice for INFPs and is featured in my book INFP Inspired

I wanted to expand on that because fiscal responsibility or being good with money or just not going totally broke as an INFP is really important and the thing is, that quote hit something on the head, which is that the things INFPs have to do traditionally do not pay exceptionally well, they are the creative fields, writing, drawing, any kind of artistic type endeavour, or they might be something more entrepreneurial, which can pay really well but you have a really long runway, maybe a year, two years, five years before you’re swimming in the money.

Advice for INFPs – Life, Finance, Career

So having fiscal discipline and the runway is really important. I wanted to share a few tips for INFPs on money that are not those cookie-cutter things taken from cliche financial advising books written for STJ types who have insane robot discipline.

The first thing is to be as minimalistic as possible. I found this to be really easy for myself, I’m actually an ENFP so we have some differences, so being a minimalist can really help with money because you just don’t buy things as much and your money doesn’t necessarily have anywhere to go. Once you start to see new things as a bit wasteful. So for example, if you have an iPhone 7, and the iPhone 10 comes out, looking at it, do you really need that? What’s it going to do differently, what’s going to be better for you than the old one? Is it really worth that financial commitment of 800, or $1,000, or whatever it is to get that new phone?

Same with things like clothing, my feet hurt sometimes because my shoes are probably too old. I look at these dress shoes and they still look good. I don’t really want to spend money. I mean I could spend that money, but that money could also go to savings or a trip or something like that. I can’t claim to be a minimalist, especially in the sense of living out of a backpack and having no possessions. I have a four-room apartment here and too many cameras and different things. But definitely, when I spend money, it’s kind of painful, I evaluate every possible other option before I go and buy something new, that’s not probably necessary.

I would encourage maybe getting into some minimalistic blogs, podcasts, things like that checking out some people who know it better than me. But overall, the attitude is just – Do I really need to buy this? One of the best ways to jumpstart this attitude, and it’s really what did it for me (I can’t claim I got into the subculture). I just packed up everything I had, sold or donated almost everything and move to Costa Rica six years ago. When you put four tailored suits into the donation ban, you’re like, “I’m not gonna spend that much money on suits again”, because they’re in a donation bin. So basically starting over getting rid of almost everything you have is a great way to kickstart the minimalistic thing.

How to earn more money as an INFP

So trip around the world, something like that definitely helps. The second bit of advice I would give is actually not so much on the financial discipline side, but how to earn more money. This is about the feedback that the reader shared – When you’re doing something you love, especially as an INFP, there aren’t many ways to make good money. I personally think that’s total BS. Doing visual services, like being a graphic designer or some kind of artist and writing, if you do it correctly can be insanely well paid.

When I was working as a freelance writer, I was living in Italy, Costa Rica, Barcelona, Spain, my clients were back usually in Canada or the US and I was earning somewhere between 100 and $150 an hour. That’s pretty awesome for writing in some cafe in Europe, right? I guess I was good at what I did and that’s something that you should do. If there’s something you pursue, you should get good at it.

So yes, I was good at what I did. But it’s all about finding the value and where a lot of artistic people go wrong is – If you are working for clients, if you’re trying to earn money from someone else, keep in mind that you should look for value, tell yourself this – How can my work benefit my client? because that’s ultimately when you get paid the most.

I won’t go into all the details of it here, but ultimately, if you can find a way to do work you love with people that you at least like if not love, and do it in a way that aligns, so they’re receiving a ton of value, or maybe they have a client as well, and you can put yourself in the middle, where you can help accelerate that through your skill, that is where you can be paid extremely well to do creative work.

The third thing that I would share, which is kind of a nuanced, or I should say, not a nuanced, a niche way of living, but something that’s becoming more and more popular is really looking at designing your life in a way that leverages your income. I mentioned that I was working with clients in Canada and the US while living in Spain and Italy and Costa Rica and in general that meant I was spending less day to day. My cost of living was lower than that in where my clients lived and that is a great way to live. If you can go live in somewhere, I know some people do this, they move to Thailand or Bali, where it’s quite cheap, I personally prefer Europe, but if you can live somewhere that is a lot cheaper than where your clients are, why not move somewhere?

So leveraging yourself through geography is really huge and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t lend itself to part of my own success, where I was able to write books and build my coaching practice in locations where I wasn’t living for like $3 a day, but my cost of living was maybe 60-70% what it would have been back home and that gave me a lot more runway to actually get things done and get things off the ground and all that.