Money Baggage — Linny Kresch Jones, LPC

The Idea

You didn't pack this bag.

Everyone alive is dragging a bag through an airport they didn't choose. Somebody packed it for you, mostly before you were old enough to object.

You check your balance seven times before noon and call it diligence. You haven't opened a bank statement in months and call it "not that important right now." None of that is a math problem. Nearly everyone has spent years trying to solve an emotional pattern with a spreadsheet — and it was never going to work, because a spreadsheet is the correct tool for the wrong problem.

Money Baggage takes attachment theory — the framework built by John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth to explain how children learn to trust (or not trust) their caregivers — and applies it, in clinical detail, to money: the source of safety most of us were never taught to examine.

Where It Comes From

Linny is a Licensed Professional Counselor who spent fifteen years noticing that the money conversation and the family conversation in her therapy room were the same conversation wearing a different hat — and that nobody had applied attachment theory directly to money with real clinical detail.

Money Baggage is the framework that filled that gap: four attachment styles, eight sub-styles, and a way back to a calmer relationship with money that doesn't start with a budgeting app.

The Model

The Four Money Attachment Styles

Two dimensions underneath every pattern: how much you fear money will disappear (Anxiety), and how uncomfortable you are looking at it directly (Avoidance).

Anxiety →

High Anxiety · Low Avoidance

Anxious

Carousel Watcher
Overpacker
Lost Luggage Alarmist

High Anxiety · High Avoidance

Disorganized

Gate Repacker
Bag Left at Security

Low Anxiety · Low Avoidance

Secure

Continuous Security
Earned Security

Low Anxiety · High Avoidance

Avoidant

Unclaimed Bag
Solo Checker
Carry-On Pretender

Low Avoidance

High Avoidance →

A single person can look Anxious about a joint account and Avoidant about a business's cash flow — style isn't one fixed setting across a whole financial life. Style can also shift temporarily under stress, even for people who are largely Secure. That's not a relapse; it's a sprained ankle, not a broken bone.

Inside the Book

What Each Chapter Covers

Money Baggage is written in draft — these are the chapters as they currently stand.

Introduction

The Bag You Have Been Carrying

The core metaphor, and why a spreadsheet has never once fixed an emotional pattern.

Chapter One

Everyone Has Baggage

The full framework: four styles, eight sub-styles, and the quiz to find your own.

Chapter Two

Generational Trauma

Building your money genogram — tracing the scripts and silences across generations.

Chapter Three

Financial Shame

The feeling doing more damage in this territory than any other single emotion.

Chapter Four

Identifying Your Triggers

Catching your pattern in real time, instead of only recognizing it in hindsight.

Chapter Five

Net Worth Is Not Self-Worth

What happens when a number quietly becomes a verdict on who you are.

Chapter Six

Money Fights Are Never About Money

What's really happening when two Money Attachment Styles collide — partners, co-founders, family.

Chapter Seven

Rewiring Your Spending Habits

Naming, regulating, reframing, and rehearsing — the four stages of actual change.

Chapter Eight

Boundary-Based Systems

The external structures that keep a private breakthrough from getting eaten alive at Thanksgiving.

Conclusion

Passing Down a Lighter Bag

What you're already transmitting to whoever's younger than you — and how to change it on purpose.

About the Author

Linny Kresch Jones, LPC

Linny is a Licensed Professional Counselor specializing in the intersection of attachment, family systems, and money. Drawing on fifteen years of clinical practice, her certification in the Integrative Enneagram Questionnaire, and considerable personal experience unpacking her own baggage, she developed the Money Attachment Styles framework at the center of Money Baggage.

She works with individuals, couples, and business partners navigating the emotional architecture underneath their financial lives. She is also Co-Founder of Tandemly, a leadership coaching and business consulting practice that helps executives and teams level up through coaching, management consulting, and Enneagram-based work. Money Baggage is her first book as a solo author; before it, she co-wrote Please Do Disturb (Barett Kohler).

Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC)
15 years of clinical practice in attachment & family systems
Co-Founder, Tandemly — leadership coaching & business consulting
Certified, Integrative Enneagram Questionnaire
Co-author, Please Do Disturb (Barett Kohler)
Creator, the Money Attachment Styles framework

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Let's Work Together

Testing Ideas, Taking Clients, Open to Conversation

Money Baggage is still being written — which means this is the right moment to talk, collaborate, or bring the framework into your own work.

Client Sessions

Individual, couples, and business-partner work using the Money Attachment Styles framework.

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Media & Social

Podcasts, interviews, and collaborations — happy to talk through the framework or a specific chapter.

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