So is over-spending. But I won’t get into that here.
I had a question from a reader asking what my Myers Briggs type is – and it’s INTJ.
Despite the rarity of that personality type (aren’t we all such special snowflakes though?), there’s been some anecdotal surveys that determined that INTJ’s are overly represented amongst the early financially independent crowd. As are ISTJ’s – but I suspect that those ISTJ’s might come from a government background and have pensions. Government systems are too inefficient for INTJ’s to be happy working in that environment.
Some say that the prime characteristic of INTJ’s is that they have to get something finished or accomplished every day. This isn’t really true but it’s close.
INTJ’s generally need to feel closure and adore systems. They have a goal in mind and they will deprive themselves (but it won’t feel like deprivation to them), work insane amounts of hours, and basically do anything necessary to reach that goal. But not a tiny bit more than necessary. To them, doing the unnecessary is redundant and a sign of failure in their system.
How to spot an INTJ-written PF blog:
- They may want to “die broke” – that’s the ultimate in a perfect plan. They may even do some kind of analysis on exactly when that “die” part is going to occur – like a life expectancy calculator. Thinking about dying doesn’t really bother them either and they may even want to control how and when that’s going to happen – which seems to be when they feel like they’d no longer be useful.
- They may talk about how great it is to have kids that are older, or often don’t have children at all – INTJ’s value independence a lot. I have one kid that’s also an INTJ (he was SO easy to raise) and one that’s an E*TJ. (Here’s a test for kids. And here’s a book about raising kids according to the MBTI.) The E*TJ talks a lot, builds things that have no purpose and wants to be with me all the time and I’m not sure what the point of that is sometimes. But because there’s enough of a feeling parent in there somewhere, I’ve learned how to give him what he needs so he leaves me alone to read (and to make him happy). Or I hide in the bathroom and him and the extroverted dog wait outside the door. Weird.
- They’ll give you (what they see as) the “gift” of information and (usually) won’t ramble about themselves and what they did on a daily basis a lot. This is because they don’t really live in the present as much as they live in the future. The information is to know how to have a better future and to improve their systems for living, not for its own sake.
- They may seem to occasionally contradict themselves without warning. But if they do, it’s something they’ve been thinking about a lot, they just need to work out how it plays out as a whole system.
- They probably won’t travel a lot and if they do, they won’t pack a lot and the things they do pack should serve a variety of purposes. My INTJ son and I were having a drink one day on the back deck and determined that many INTJ’s travel in their minds via what they read so they don’t really need to experience things first hand. Plus most INTJ’s know that there’s a pattern in the world and if you really want to experience a different culture, you don’t need to travel half way across the world to do that when there’s people vastly different from you across town – or even next door. It’s just a more efficient way to learn about those people – if you pay attention, they might give you tips about how to improve your systems after all. But the best place to find these different people is in the library.
- They hate repeating themselves. If they told you something once, they don’t expect to have to ever say it again. So most of them won’t write very often.
- Traffic metrics are kind of meaningless to them. They don’t want 100,000 readers or 50,000 comments – that’s too overwhelming to those introverts. They want 1 or 100 readers who have truly benefited from their systems.
- They may come off as argumentative or cranky or way too blunt. Their feelings aren’t easily hurt so they forget how they can come across to others. I hit backspace and cancel a lot. And sometimes I don’t and come across as a complete beyotch.
- Many (not all) of them seem to have a problem with giving to charity. I think this is due to a couple of things: (a) possible lack of feeling for other people, and (b) seeing most charities as having inefficient systems. So they’d feel like their money isn’t going to good use – and that’s crazy-making for an INTJ.
- They’ll feel annoyed at themselves that they’ve lost track of what their post is supposed to be about…
So what about over-saving?
Saving money for the sake of saving money – ie. money hoarding is anathema to INTJ’s. There’s no purpose or utility in saving money that you’re never going to use. And INTJ’s will have that amount calculated out to a very fine degree – but being as realistic as possible since there’s no utility in being overly pessimistic or optimistic either. But being them, they’ll probably set a reasonable target and then challenge themselves by trying to beat it to see just how efficient they can be.
Well. I must not be very INTJ-ish today if it took 1000 words to say what could have been said in a paragraph.
Source: http://singlemomrichmom.com/over-saving-is-inefficient/
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