INFPs are dreamers and visionaries. They are led by their values in every area of their lives, including their finances. As an INFP, you probably like to dream about what it could be like to live a version of your life where you do not have to worry about money and can do what you truly love. It’s fun to dream about financial bliss and imagine a bright future. 

From a personality perspective, there is no reason why your dreams cannot become a reality. Every single facet of your INFP personality can work to your advantage in seeking financial bliss:

Introverted: Financial planning is a creative way for you to find reflective time.

iNtuitive: Your natural affinity for big ideas and concepts keeps small financial details from becoming roadblocks to financial bliss.

Feeling: Your values and gut feelings make it easier to make ethical financial decisions that you feel comfortable with over the long term..

Perceiving: Flexibility is to your advantage with the long-term ups and downs of investments and economic conditions.

Financial Dreams and Following Your Bliss

As an INFP, your financial dreams and visions likely look more like experiences and values than actual dollar amounts of money. My INFP husband has expressed his financial dreams in some of the following ways:

“One day, I’d like to be able to travel whenever we want and work from wherever we want.”

“I have lots of projects and things I’d love to have more time to build.”

“I want to be self-sustaining so we can enjoy our same quality of life, no matter what the economy does.”

“I want to take the family to the beach and Disney for a week, so we can see the kids enjoy it, and go on some dates.”

While less-idealistic personality types might create vision boards with specific dollar amounts as motivation, my husband’s financial dreams and visions have more to do with his top three values in life:

  1. Family
  2. Time freedom
  3. Travel

As an INFP, seeking money for the sake of getting more money probably doesn’t motivate you very much. Wealth might not be your goal. Instead, you will know you’re in a place of financial bliss when you can do what you love, live a lifestyle that frees you up to pursue your passions

Invest in your values, enjoy harmonious financial relationships with friends and family and enjoy time freedom.

Allow yourself the freedom to dream and cast a vision for the type of life you want to live. As a dreamer and visionary, following your bliss can actually help propel you toward making smart financial goals to get you where you’re going.

Financial Goals and Financial Bliss

The values and experiences you imagine having when you have a healthy financial life are important to your quality of life and sense of harmony in daily living. While you might not be focused on earning millions of dollars, that does not mean that you cannot set meaningful financial goals. The key is to take your big vision and break it down into tiny, manageable chunks that are easy to achieve.

For instance, if you want the ability to travel now and in retirement, try looking up what you spent on your last vacation. If it cost $1,500 and you know you want to enjoy a family trip somewhere peaceful once a quarter, then you know that you need to budget $6,000 a year for travel. 

Instead of focusing on that big chunk of money, try breaking it down like this:

  • $500 per month
  • $125 per week
  • $25 per day, five days per week

If you want to continue this into retirement, you might need to adjust those amounts for inflation. Instead of focusing on how to come up with $6,000, you can focus on finding ways to make it easy and automatic to set aside $125 per week. Less overwhelming, right? Now, you can enjoy the financial bliss of living your dreams without getting bogged down by large numbers.

Put Your Financial Bliss on Autopilot

As an INFP, you are intuitive, compassionate and easily craft plans and dreams. Make it less of a hassle to follow through on those plans and dreams by putting them on autopilot. It takes about a month for a new action to become a habit, at which time those actions start to happen on autopilot and don’t take a lot of energy to continue. Try setting one tiny goal per month, like these:

  • Check your account balances or investments over morning coffee.
  • Listen to a (non-rigid) financial podcast or audiobook during your morning commute.
  • Use an app that automatically categorizes your spending habits into pretty graphs.
  • Pay with cash instead of debit or credit cards.
  • Spend 30 minutes or an hour on a creative side hustle each day.
  • Practice visualizing your ideal life for 10 minutes per day.

Tools to Help Simplify Financial Bliss

Your smart financial habits help put financial bliss on autopilot, but so do the right tools of the trade. While you can automate your habits, these tools can automate everything from investing, to saving, paying bills, learning, and more.

My INFP husband’s very favorite financial tool of all time is a website called SmartyPig. It’s essentially a high-interest savings account that helps him automatically save for goals like travel, pet expenses, medical needs, clothing and educational expenses. SmartyPig allows him to set up recurring contributions toward his goals so the expenses don’t creep up on him later when cash flow is low. Yet, it’s also flexible so he can transfer or withdraw funds anytime. He gets to dream big while SmartyPig takes care of the execution.

Look for this kind of automation and flexibility in the financial tools you use. Some others to consider include:

Mint: Mint allows you to see all your accounts, credit score, and spending patterns in one place. The pie graph of spending habits is attractive and watching it change throughout the month is fun.

Everlance: Everlance offers automatic mileage tracking and manual receipt tracking for business expenses.

QuickBooks Self-Employed: QuickBooks Self-Employed is similar to Everlance but also includes invoicing and automatic tracking for recurring expenses.

Fudget: Fudget is a streamlined app that lets you see money coming in, money going out, and where it is going.

Albert: Albert makes saving money feel like a game because it puts the change from your daily debit card purchases into a savings account.

Acorns: Acorns automatically invests the change from your purchases with a debit card, and also provides easy to understand financial basics articles.

Motif: Motif is an ethical investment app that can help you live your values through your money, as you invest in companies that promote fair labor, environmental sustainability, and good corporate behavior.

Ellevest: Ellevest is an investing app created by women, for women. It takes a woman’s earning potential and longer lifespan into consideration and even shares empowering stories about women and money.

BillPay through your bank: Most banks offer a service to automate some of your monthly bills to make it easier to stay on top of things.

Thankfully for INFPs, gone are the days when financial health meant sitting down with a spreadsheet, calculator, and checkbook. These days, a plethora of creative, meaningful, and even fun apps help make financial bliss more achievable and a lot less stressful for idealist types like the INFP.

Career Choices and Financial Bliss

For most of us, our careers provide our number one source of reliable income, so it’s important to choose our work wisely. Strangely, the best job for financial bliss might not always be the one that pays the most. INFPs most often thrive by working in helping professions or the creative arts, such as:

  • Therapists
  • Writers
  • Social workers
  • Spiritual leaders
  • Visual artists
  • Musicians
  • Human resources
  • Midwives
  • Physical therapists
  • Librarians
  • Teachers

While it’s true that you might make more money in the short term if you accept the job offer to work as a corporate auditor, if you cannot stand the work and it stresses you out, it might not be worth it. If you burn out, miss work, and deal with the health effects of stress, you could end up losing more in the long run. 

On the other hand, if a position leaves time and space for you to relate with your colleagues on a personal level, as well as the freedom to be creative in your work, you are more likely to look forward to work and thrive.

Avoid Rigid Financial Advice

While some personality types thrive on rigid financial rules and challenges, the INFP is not one of those types. When you step out of your comfort zone to read a financial book or listen to a podcast, watch out for the following warning signs:

  • Advice to cut out any enjoyable spending, in order to survive on the bare minimum.
  • Advice to sell all your stuff to get more money for bills.
  • Advice to use all your money to pay down debt or start an extreme savings account.
  • Judgmental language about debt, spending, and enjoying life.
  • The financial program feels more like punishment than bliss.

As an INFP, you have great compassion for the people in your life and you are worthy of that same compassion, even when it comes to your financial life.

You do not have to follow a rigid financial plan in order to improve your financial health and start down the road to financial bliss. It is entirely possible to enjoy your life now while still saving for your future and paying down debts. Look for financial experts who endorse this more balanced approach to money. Some INFP-friendly financial sources to consider include:

  • Chelsea Fagan of The Financial Diet website, book, and YouTube channel
  • The Good Trade website
  • Erin Lowry of The Broke Millennial
  • Stacy Johnson of Money Talks News
  • Ryan Scribner YouTube channel
  • Mint.com YouTube channel

These financial sources tend to provide accurate information, yet they are compassionate, flexible, and offer advice without prescribing rigid rules and programs. This way, you can choose from financial advice like a buffet, based on your current circumstances, needs, and interests.

Takeaways About INFPs and Financial Bliss

INFPs are extraordinary visionaries and dreamers who can easily imagine a life where money is bliss instead of stress. The key to living out these dreams is to:

  • Focus on experience rather than wealth
  • Set achievable goals
  • Slowly form healthy financial habits
  • Automate financial responsibilities
  • Seek compassionate financial advice

There are more than enough apps and tools available to help take the struggle out of execution and make money management easy once you get the ball rolling. Your personality as an INFP sets you up to enjoy money with creativity and patience in unique and beautiful ways, as long as you can set up a helping hand (or two) to handle the details of execution.

Anne Kinsey
Anne Kinsey is the nonprofit founder and executive director of Love Powered Life, as well as a Certified Trauma Recovery Coach, certified HRV biofeedback practitioner and neurofeedback geek. Anne hails from her rural North Carolina home office, where she resides with her husband and three children. In her spare time, she enjoys hiking, traveling and sitting by the beach, hot tea in one hand and delicious novel in the other.