The three most common personality types for FIRE inclined bloggers are INTJ, ENTJ, INTP.

Table of Contents: 

Introduction
The importance of knowing your type
How personality affects your financial habits
How rare is your personality?
Most common types for Personal Finance Bloggers
How personality affects your income and career
In Closing and Sources

Intro to the Myers-Briggs personality test

In order to master our finances, we have to develop a solid understanding of our personalities. The way we think dictates how we save, how we spend, and how we manage our money in general. Our temperaments can also affect our income earning potential. With a little self-discovery we can discover our financial strengths and weaknesses so we can focus on the skills and actions that we naturally excel at. 😉

One popular personality test is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI.) Through a series of short questions, the MBTI measures our affinity towards four pairs of personality traits. The result is a 4 trait combination, one trait from each pair, that gives us some insight on how we think and perceive the world. Here is an explanation of each pair of traits.

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Each pair of traits is a spectrum because personality is not binary. For example, nobody is purely introverted or extroverted. The resulting trait is whichever one the person has a stronger tendency towards. So if someone’s temperament reflects Introversion, Sensing, Thinking, and Judging, then his MBTI personality type would be ISTJ for short. There are 16 possible outcomes for the Myer’s-Briggs personality test.

If you don’t know your personality type you can take a free test here.

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Why It’s Important to Know your MBTI

Increasing our financial self-awareness strengthens our relationship with money, so we can prioritize what’s important to us. For example, there are two primary ways to save more money for retirement. ENTJs are better at increasing their incomes, while ISTJs tend to have an easier time cutting back on spending and being frugal. Understanding our natural tendencies lets us choose financial management strategies that suit our needs. 😉 Once we know our 4-letter personality type we can do a lot of practical and useful things with it, including the following.

• Discover new career opportunities or side hustles to make more money.
• Narrow down which financial experts or famous investors to follow based on how similar their personalities are to our own.
• Better understand where gender stereotypes in society comes from.
• Find personal finance bloggers that think like us and learn vicariously through their stories and experiences.

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What your Personality says about your Financial Habits

The 16 MBTI types can be grouped into 4 general personality categories. This gives a broad overview of how the personality types can affect someone’s financial behavior.

• Protectors (SJ)

  ESTJ, ESFJ, ISTJ, ISFJ
  These people all have the Sensing and Judging (SJ) traits. They are known as protectors because those who fall into this category are more financially conservative and want to protect their principal investment regardless of opportunity costs. They see wealth preservation as the main priority. Most protectors make average income or higher. As natural planners, they are good at saving for emergencies and for retirement, but sometimes have trouble accepting some calculated risk with their investments. Protectors generally have high savings rates to make up for their conservative risk tolerance on their portfolios.

• Creators (SP)

  ESTP, ESFP, ISTP, ISFP
  Sometimes also called players, creators like to live in the moment because they are Sensing and Perceiving (SP.) They like to work hard and play hard. Many creators are entrepreneurs and they tend to take bigger risks with their money than other groups.

• Intellectuals (NT) 

  ENTJ, ENTP, INTJ, INTP
  Intellectuals embody the traits Intuition and Thinking (NT.) Also known as planners, intellectuals like to look at the big picture and plan for the future. They are willing to accept thought-out risks in order to achieve their long term financial goals. Similar to protectors, intellectuals are avid savers. But sometimes they focus so much on the future that they miss out on short-term opportunities to splurge or have fun in the present.

• Visionaries (NF)

  ENFJ, ENFP, INFJ, INFP
  This group of people tend to be emotional around money. They possess the Intuition and Feeling (NF) traits. Visionaries view lending money to or borrowing money from friends and family members as a very personal matter. They often see money as an extension of who they are. Most visionaries earn average income or lower. Their spending habit revolves more around emotions, relationships, compassion, and ideas, rather than strict pragmatism.

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How Rare is your MBTI Personality Type

Most people are Sensing so they prefer to deal with detailed facts and physical reality rather than big-picture ideas and abstractions. Men tend to be slightly more aligned towards introversion while women lean slightly towards extroversion.

Almost 1 out of 5 females in the world are ISFJs. This supports the studies that claim women tend to be more risk-averse than men when they invest. Meanwhile INTJs and ENTJs are the rarest personality types among females. More than half of all females identify with the traits Sensing and Feeling (SF.) This combination lends itself very favorably to working in careers that require a sympathetic approach to people. They are commonly found in the clergy, teaching, health care, child care, sales and office administration work, and personal services.

2 out of 5 males are Introverted Sensors (IS.) They are good at remembering stored memories of previous sensory experiences. This allows them to carry out tasks such as quality assurance because they can compare new products with memories of existing products. Introverted Sensors tend to be good at remembering details. They can easily recall specific things they are interested in, such as names of actors or football players, numbers, percentages, specifications, stock prices, and sports scores.

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What Personality Types are Personal Finance Bloggers?

With so many PF blogs out there it’s not always easy to find compatible bloggers who we can relate with. I cover stocks and the financial markets. But what about readers who want to learn about lower risk investment options, or how to get out of debt?

Well earlier this year I surveyed over 100 bloggers to find out about their Myers-Briggs personality types. 🙂 The data has been compiled in the following graph.

Discover the personalities of PF bloggers so you can narrow down which blogs might be more relatable to you.

For a detailed explanation of each personality type, please see the “MBTI Personality Types for PF Bloggers” table below. The types are numbered to make them easier to find. They are roughly placed in order from most common to least common in the blogging community.

1 INTJ the strategist
2 ENTJ the chief
3 ISTJ the examiner
4 ESTJ the overseer

5 INFJ the confidant
6 ISFJ the defender
7 ENFJ the mentor
8 ENFP the advocate

9 ESFJ the supporter
10 INTP the engineer
11 ENTP the originator
12 INFP the dreamer
13 ISFP the artist
14 ISTP the craftsman
15 ESFP the entertainer
16 ESTP the persuader

Notes and Observations About the Table

• 110 bloggers were surveyed. 57 males and 53 females.
• INTJ, ENTJ, and ISTJ, are the 3 most common personality types for personal finance bloggers and make up nearly 60% of them! Meanwhile, these 3 types combined account for only 16% of the general population. All 3 types have “TJ,” which are very common traits in managers and leaders. TJs are task-oriented doers who like to plan ahead.
• About 85% of all male PF bloggers are INTJ, ENTJ, ISTJ, or ESTJ.
• Female PF bloggers predominately dominate the INFJ, ENFJ, ISFJ, and ESFJ personality types. They all share the traits Feeling and Judging (FJ) which means they are friendly, sociable, and prefer things to be organized and orderly.
• In general female bloggers tend to write about debt, budgeting, savings, and household economics, while male bloggers have a higher tendency to write about stocks, investment philosophies, and technical or analytical financial topics.
• Many ENFP and ENFJ bloggers like to write personal stories about getting out of debt.
• Many ENTJ and ISTJ males bloggers in particular tend to write a lot about dividend investing.
• Some blogs have multiple writers. In those cases I chose the person who seems to be most active on the site.
• The “Name” column in the table indicates either real names or online handles taken the bloggers’ website or their public social media profile.
• If you have a finance blog and I forgot to include you, leave a comment below with your MBTI type and I’ll add you to the table when I have time. 🙂

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How Your Personality Can Affect Your Income and Job Satisfaction

Truity Psychometrics surveyed about 25,800 people using their Myers-Briggs TypeFinder to find out how different personality types correlate with yearly income. Here’s a look at the findings. It appears ESTJ and ENTJ personalities make the most money on average.

In general extroverts made more money than introverts. And the tactical, calculated planners of Thinking and Judging (**TJs) earned more than emotional, spontaneous spirits of Feeling and Perceiving (**FPs.)

Another survey polled about 2,000 people. They were asked how satisfied they are with their jobs. It was a multiple choice question with 5 meaning very satisfied, and 1 being very dissatisfied. Here are the results.

Once again, the study found that extroverted types were much more likely to report higher job satisfaction levels than introverts. However, it’s interesting that the personality type that makes the most money is only in the middle when it comes to job satisfaction. I guess money isn’t everything. 😀

Remember that we’re not pigeonholed into a statistic. Since we are equipped with this knowledge we can decide our own destinies. For example, if you don’t feel particularly satisfied with your job then take a look at the data and determine if there’s a culture mismatch between your personality type and the company you work at. Maybe your skills are transferable and you can look for other opportunities in a different position, with a new employer, or even switch careers entirely. A simple internet search will tell you the best career paths for your personality type.

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Keeping Things in Perspective

The validity of the Myers-Briggs personality test as a psychometric instrument has been the subject of much criticism. Many statisticians claim the MBTI displays low test-retest reliability. This means subjects who retake the test after a 5 week gap could easily fall into a different personality category compared to the first time they took the test.

Please keep in mind that none of the observations in this article have to be stereotypes or limitations that determine one’s life. People are unique and don’t fall into easily defined categories. Personality descriptions are simply generalizations based on statistics and averages. I hope people can use the information here to expand their perspectives in the world of personal finance.

Sources:
http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp
http://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/home.htm?bhcp=1

Everything explained!

http://oddlydevelopedtypes.com/
http://www.careerplanner.com/MB2/TypeInPopulation.cfm
https://www.personalitymax.com/personality-types
http://www.16personalities.com/personality-types