For many people, earning more money does not necessarily translate into greater financial security.
A person may have a good salary, a successful career and seemingly every reason to be financially comfortable, yet still struggle to save, accumulate wealth or make confident decisions about money.
Executive and financial coach Maxine Attong, who spoke to the Business Guardian, believes the explanation often lies deeper than conventional personal-finance advice suggests.
Her new book, “It’s Never Just Money: Making Peace with Your Past to Create Your Financial Future”, scheduled for publication in October, examines the psychological and emotional forces that influence how people earn, spend, save, borrow and think about money.
It’s Never Just Money, which has 19 chapters, will be published by Bamboo Talk Press, an independent publishing house based in Trinidad and Tobago and established in 2013 by poet, musician and publisher Paula Obe.
The book is scheduled for publication in October 2026 and will be available in print and digital formats, with an audiobook planned for 2027.
The price of the book will be US$24.99.
Attong’s book grew out of her financial coaching work during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Between 2020 and 2023, she worked with professionals, entrepreneurs and business owners, mainly in North America, who were experiencing anxiety about their finances.
She noted that some earned good incomes, but struggled to save and build wealth, while others were dealing with debt, reduced income or uncertainty about their financial futures.
Attong said the experience led her to develop a financial coaching model and a six-week programme combining practical financial tools with psychological and behavioural insights.
“We develop our relationship with money long before we know financial terms such as budgeting, saving, investing, borrowing or spending,” she said.
According to Attong, much conventional financial advice concentrates on what people already know they should be doing — budgeting, saving, investing, reducing debt and planning for retirement.
But knowing what to do does not necessarily mean people will do it.
“This book asks a different question: Why do we do what we do with money?” she said.
That question is at the heart of It’s Never Just Money.
The book takes readers through three stages: understanding themselves, changing their relationship with money and creating their financial future.
Attong explores the influence of scarcity, abundance, guilt and shame on financial behaviour before moving into practical issues such as affordability, disposable income, financial decision-making, debt reduction, savings and planning.
The book combines adaptations of psychological and behavioural models with financial tools and methodologies that Attong developed through her coaching work. Each chapter includes exercises and reflection questions designed to help readers apply the concepts to their own circumstances.
The process of writing the book also became personal for Attong.
As a Certified Management Accountant with a long career leading teams in finance and strategy, she said she understood the mechanics of managing money. However, examining her own financial decisions forced her to confront some uncomfortable questions.
“Maxine, if you knew better, why didn’t you do better?” she recalled asking herself.
She realised that her financial decisions had been influenced not only by knowledge but also by beliefs, emotions, experiences and what money represented to her.
That realisation strengthened the central premise of the book: people need to understand why they behave as they do with money before they can necessarily change those behaviours.
The book is primarily aimed at working adults who earn a steady income and want a healthier and more intentional relationship with money.
Attong believes it will be particularly relevant to people experiencing what she describes as the “high-income, low-savings paradox” — people who earn relatively well but nevertheless struggle to accumulate savings and build wealth.
The book is aimed at anyone who wonders where their money goes, struggles to save consistently, wants to eliminate debt, experiences anxiety or shame around money, or recognises that they repeatedly engage in financial behaviours that are not serving them.
It is not intended to be a get-rich-quick guide or an investment manual.
Instead, Attong wants readers to understand their financial behaviour, take responsibility for it and make different choices.
Although the book is written for an international audience, she said her Caribbean background inevitably informs its perspective.
Messages surrounding money, family obligations, generosity, success and the expectation of “doing well” can influence financial decisions, particularly in societies where family and community relationships can carry significant financial responsibilities.
The manuscript has already been shared with approximately 35 readers and endorsers worldwide.
Attong said one of the most gratifying aspects of the feedback has been the extent to which readers recognise themselves in the stories.
“People see themselves in the stories,” she said.
Some readers have encountered new ideas, while others have begun viewing familiar financial behaviours from a completely different perspective.
Others have expressed a desire for younger adults in their families to read the book, believing it could help them establish a healthier relationship with money as they begin earning and making independent financial decisions.
She informed that the emotional elements have also resonated with readers, with some identifying strongly with discussions about guilt and others recognising themselves in the sections dealing with shame.
For Attong, that response reinforces the idea that financial decisions frequently have deeper roots than people realise.
Attong said one of the book’s central messages is that financial challenges do not always look like financial problems.
“Our money patterns do not always look like money problems. Always picking up others’ bills may look like generosity. Constantly helping family and friends may look like responsibility. Working relentlessly may look like ambition. Never spending money on yourself may look like discipline.”
Attong wants readers to become curious about these behaviours and examine what is driving them.
She also wants people to distinguish between financial choices they have consciously made and behaviours based on what they were taught or told they “should” do with money.
The book encourages readers to ask questions that are rarely found in conventional personal-finance guides.
“What does having money say about me? How do I feel when I have more or less money? What do I think about people who have more or less than I do? What drives my financial decisions? What am I trying to prove? Do I believe I deserve to have more?”
“These are not questions we usually find in a personal finance book,” Attong said. “Yet the answers can tell us a great deal about why our finances look the way they do.”
For Attong, the ultimate objective is not simply to teach people how to manage money more effectively, but to encourage them to understand the personal history and beliefs that influence their financial choices.
That approach brings a behavioural dimension to personal finance, suggesting that financial literacy alone may not always be enough.
People can know what they should do with their money and still struggle to do it.
She said understanding the experiences, beliefs and emotions behind those choices may therefore be an important step towards changing them.
“My hope is that readers come to the same realisation I did. Our financial decisions are very often about much more than money.”
