Taha Pūtea – Money as Mana; Breaking Free from Financial Colonisation

Last week we looked at how our Digital Wellness is impacted in todays modern fast-paced world and how Te Poutama o te Ora can bring light to what that looks like and a path forward to help transform where we currently are stuck to a healthier you.

We continue with this deep dive with this weeks topic Taha Pūtea – Money as Mana.

Scenario:

You are sitting at your kitchen table at 2 AM, calculator in hand, trying to figure out which bill you can pay late this month without catastrophic consequences.

Power…No, it’s winter. Phone…No, you need it for work. Food…Already down to basics. Rent…Can’t risk eviction. You think to yourself, “how come this keeps happening…I’m responsible, I work hard, I don’t spend recklessly…”.

But here you are, doing the same desperate math your mother did, and her mother did before her. The math that defines poverty: stretching not-enough into barely-enough.

And the worst part…The voice in your head is saying “you should be better with money…if you budgeted smarter, saved more, worked harder, you wouldn’t be in this position”.

The voice that blames you for a system designed to keep you broke.

Here’s the truth nobody wants you to know: the biggest lie about poverty…”it is not a personal failing”. The financial system isn’t broken – it’s working exactly as designed.

Taha Pūtea, a Māori financial wellness framework, offers a pathway out of this trap through three foundational steps that move you from financial shame to economic sovereignty.

Step 1: Te Ohorere – The Awakening (Facing Financial Reality Without Shame)

Financial trauma is real trauma. It lives in your body – the knot in your stomach when checking your bank balance, the tension that never leaves your shoulders, the panic that rises with unexpected expenses.

It shapes your relationships, making money the number one thing couples fight about. It distorts your identity, making you believe your worth equals your earning capacity. It crushes your spirit, leaving no space for joy or rest. It occupies your mind completely, consuming mental energy that could go toward creativity, healing, or growth.

And here’s the most insidious part: financial trauma gets passed down. Your parents’ money stress became your money stress. Their scarcity thinking became yours. Not just through what they taught you, but through actual biological mechanisms – their financial stress literally changed how their genes expressed, and you inherited those changes.

Te Ohorere asks you to look directly at your financial reality for seven days. Not to judge yourself. Not to fix anything yet. Just to see what’s true. You’ll track how money affects five dimensions of your life:

Whakapapa (relationships): How is money stress damaging your connections? What patterns did you inherit from your parents? Which ones are you passing to your children?

Tinana (body): What’s happening physically? The chronic stress of poverty causes real illness – high blood pressure, heart disease, weakened immunity, chronic pain. Your body is trying to tell you something.

Tuakiri (identity): Have you started measuring your worth by your bank balance? Are you compromising your values for survival? Losing touch with who you are beneath what you earn?

Wairua (spirit): Has financial stress replaced abundance thinking with scarcity? Can you trust that your needs will be met when your experience has taught you, they won’t be?

Hinengaro (mind): Is money worry consuming all your mental bandwidth? Are you stuck in shame spirals – feeling bad, avoiding dealing with it, making it worse, avoiding more?

This awareness work takes courage. Most of us avoid looking at our finances because looking means feeling the fear, the shame, the overwhelm. But avoidance keeps you stuck. You can’t change what you won’t look at. You can’t heal what you keep hidden.

After seven days, you see patterns clearly. You identify which dimension is suffering most; recognise where avoidance keeps you trapped; name the stories about money that keep repeating. And acknowledge the forms of wealth you have that capitalism taught you to discount – relationships, knowledge, cultural connection, community.

Step 2: Te Whakatūria tō Mana – Establishing Your Authority (Reclaiming Your Power)

Mana is your authority, your sovereignty, your power to choose. Right now, the financial system has your Mana. It decides where your money goes through predatory lending, planned obsolescence, subscription traps, and marketing designed to convince you that happiness requires constant purchasing.

Te Whakatūria tō Mana is about taking that power back. You start by converting vague intentions (Te Whāriki o te Ora – goals) from Step 1 into concrete, achievable goals (Te Whakatakato tō Mahere – the plan). Instead of – I want to be better with money…you create specific commitments: – I will check my account balances every morning. – I will wait 24 hours before any non-essential purchases. – I will redirect spare money to future bills.

The framework uses a three-tier system to keep this sustainable:

Tier 1 – Daily Non-Negotiables: These are your foundation. Things you do every single day without exception. Maybe it’s checking your balances each morning or logging all spending. Applying a 24-hour rule before buying anything non-essential. You pick 1-2 practices that matter most and commit completely.

Tier 2 – Regular Practices: These happen weekly or fortnightly. Perhaps a weekly budget review session. Automatic savings transfers every payday. Monthly subscription audits. These keep you moving forward without overwhelming you.

Tier 3 – Aspirational Rhythms: These are things you do, without guilt. A quarterly financial goal review; an annual meeting with a financial mentor; a monthly no-spend challenge. These stretch you without breaking you.

Here’s the critical part: start with ONE Tier 1 practice. Master that until it becomes automatic. Then add more. Trying to change everything at once is why most people fail. Your brain can only handle so much change at a time.

You also set up your environment to support your Mana. Automatic transfers so savings happen before you can spend the money. Separate accounts for different purposes (bills, savings, spending). Deleted shopping apps and unsubscribing from promotional emails. Physically removing credit cards from your wallet (if spending is an issue).

This is not about willpower – it’s about making the right choice as the easy choice. When you’re stressed and tired (which poverty ensures you often are), decision quality deteriorates. Environmental supports protect you when your capacity is low.

After 2-3 weeks, you review what’s working. Which practices feel natural…which still feel like constant struggle…what unexpected benefits showed up – better sleep, less conflict, more peace of mind. You adjust, refine, and find your rhythm. This isn’t about achieving perfect financial management. It’s about building practices that genuinely support your wellbeing and strengthen your Mana.

Step 3: Te Whakawhanake i tō Kaha – Building Your Resistance (Developing Strength)

Here’s what happens once you start protecting your money: the system pushes back. Sales become more urgent and – limited time offers. Credit offers become more convenient. Subscription cancellation becomes harder. Social spending pressure increases. Friends question why you’re being “so cheap!”. Every possible tactic gets deployed to get your money back.

This isn’t paranoia. When you extract yourself from wealth dependency, those systems fight back. They escalate, test your boundaries to find new hooks.

Te Whakawhanake i tō Kaha is about building kaha – strength, capacity, resilience – to withstand this pushback. The nine-day challenge progressively increases your resistance across different domains. Maybe Day 1 is resisting urgency tactics (sale ends tonight!). Day 2 might be navigating social pressure without justifying your choices. Day 3 could be rejecting convenience when it conflicts with your values.

Each day builds different resistance muscles. By Day 9, you’ve proven to yourself that you can protect your wealth even when systems actively try to extract it.

But resistance goes beyond willpower. You create architectural boundaries – structures that make wealth protection automatic. Account segregation means keeping spending money separate from bill money and savings. Access segregation means making impulse spending physically difficult (leaving credit cards at home, deleting stored payment methods). Time segregation means specific windows for checking finances, making purchases, and reviewing spending.

One of the hardest challenges? Social pressure. Family and friends who don’t understand why you’re suddenly being “difficult about money”. Te Whakawhanake i tō Kaha teaches you to prepare authority statements – responses that assert your boundaries without apology.

The difference seems subtle, but it’s profound. One invites negotiation and suggests your boundary might change if someone pushes hard enough. The other states a fact without apologising for it.

The framework also encourages forming resistance circles – small groups (2-4 people) pursuing financial wellness together. You meet weekly or bi-weekly for 30-45 minutes to share wins and challenges, identify dependency tactics you’re facing, problem-solve without shame or judgment, and celebrate sovereignty victories.

Individual resistance is powerful. Collective resistance is transformative. When others normalise your boundaries, shared strategies strengthen everyone, and community resilience sustains individual efforts, the impossible becomes possible.

By the end of Step 3, you’ve completed the nine-day resistance challenge. You’ve built architectural systems protecting your wealth automatically and developed authority statements you can deploy without hesitation.

Most importantly, you’ve experienced your own capacity to resist when dependency systems escalate. You’ve proven to yourself that you have kaha – the strength to protect your money and make it stick. You are building Tū Pūmau (consistency) through Whai Mua (success and productivity) giving you Tū Māia (stability).

Your Economic Sovereignty Awaits

These first three steps of Taha Pūtea – awakening, establishing authority, and building resistance – create a pathway from economic colonisation to financial sovereignty. They move you from unconscious spending to intentional choice, from system dependency to personal authority, from reactive patterns to sustained strength.

This isn’t about becoming wealthy by capitalist standards. It’s about reclaiming your Mana – your right to decide where your money goes, your capacity to make financial decisions aligned with your values, your sovereignty over your economic life.

The work requires courage. You’ll face uncomfortable truths about your financial situation and the patterns you inherited. You’ll recognise how thoroughly money stress has consumed every dimension of your life. But here’s what awaits on the other side: relationships no longer poisoned by money conflict, a body not constantly carrying financial stress, an identity separate from your bank balance, spiritual peace not drowned by scarcity thinking, a mind freed from constant money worry.

Remember: your financial situation is not a moral failing. The system is working exactly as designed – to extract wealth from you and keep you economically stressed. These practices aren’t about willpower or discipline. They’re about creating environmental and habitual supports that make aligned choices easier than misaligned ones.

Every time you check your balance, track your spending, or protect your savings (Tū Pūmau – consistency), you strengthen your mana. Every time you resist dependency, you build kaha. Every time you notice you’ve been pulled into unconscious spending and choose to realign with your values, you prove your capacity for transformation. Success and productivity (Whai Mua) have transformed to stability (Tū Māia).

The biggest lie about poverty is that it’s your fault. The truth? Economic colonisation is a system, and you can refuse to participate in your own exploitation.

Your mana is real. Your kaha is growing. Your wealth is becoming yours again.

Kua rite? Are you ready?

Me timata. Let’s begin.