The Intentional Way | Wealth Identity and the Enneagram | Intentional LLC

The Intentional Way

Most financial frameworks
tell you what to do
with your money.
We start with who you are.

Nine types. Three centers. Twenty-seven subtypes. One question that ties it all together. Would you choose to live this financial life again?

Discover your Wealth Identity

The assessment is where this framework becomes personal.

The framework

Your type is the beginning.
Not the destination.

The Enneagram identifies nine distinct personality types, each with its own core motivation, ego defense, and behavioral pattern. Applied to financial planning, it reveals something that most wealth strategies completely ignore: why people make the financial decisions they do.

Not what the math says they should do. What their psychology actually drives them toward. The gap between those two things is where most financial plans fail.

But knowing your type is just the beginning. The Enneagram is not a box. It is a map. Your type describes the patterns you default to, the wounds that drive your behavior, and the blindspots that limit your growth. Awareness of your wings, your stretch, your release, and the strengths and blindspots of the other eight types is what creates the conditions for genuine growth.

At Intentional, we have built a proprietary framework that applies this depth to wealth. The result is a financial strategy that actually fits the person using it, not a version of success inherited from someone else.

"The question we return to with every client is simple. Would you choose to live this financial life again? That question cannot be answered with a spreadsheet."

James Roberts, Founder, Intentional LLC

The three centers

Where your financial decisions
actually come from.

Thinking Center

Certainty and Safety

Types 5, 6, 7

Process wealth through analysis, anticipation, and strategy

The thinking center client needs to understand before they act. They plan for what could go wrong, seek certainty before committing, and use knowledge as protection. Their gift is clarity. Their risk is paralysis.

Feeling Center

Worth and Recognition

Types 2, 3, 4

Process wealth through relationships, image, and identity

The feeling center client connects money to meaning, to how they are seen, and to the relationships that matter most to them. Their gift is depth. Their risk is building a financial life around someone else's definition of success.

Acting Center

Control and Autonomy

Types 8, 9, 1

Process wealth through instinct, gut, and decisive action

The acting center client trusts their gut, moves quickly, and values financial independence above almost everything else. Their gift is decisiveness. Their risk is confusing control with security.

The nine types

A framework built from
the inside out.

Type 5 · Thinking Center

The Minimizer

Strategy: Minimizing · Ego Engine: Avarice

Builds certainty before making a single move.

The 5 client often has significant assets and almost no estate plan. The vault is not wealth protection. It is self-protection wearing a financial mask. Frame every planning conversation as architecture, not obligation.

Type 6 · Thinking Center

The Sentinel

Strategy: Securing · Ego Engine: Anxiety

Plans for what could go wrong. Always.

Show the 6 client the floor before the ceiling. Once they have stress-tested the downside scenario with you, they become your most loyal client. The testing is not hostility. It is due diligence born of fear.

Type 7 · Thinking Center

The Expansionist

Strategy: Optimizing · Ego Engine: Gluttony

Chases the upside before securing the foundation.

The 7 client needs a plan that feels expansive, not constraining. Frame consolidation as creating capacity for the next move. Every new deal is an escape from sitting with what they already have.

Type 2 · Feeling Center

The Benefactor

Strategy: Giving · Ego Engine: Pride

Gives freely. Struggles to receive, or even admit need.

The 2 client needs explicit permission to prioritize themselves, often for the first time. The most impactful thing Intentional can do is name their needs before they do, and treat those needs as legitimate.

Type 3 · Feeling Center

The Striver

Strategy: Striving · Ego Engine: Vanity

The number on the scoreboard is never high enough.

The 3 client is often Intentional's easiest engagement and hardest transformation. They execute perfectly. The question is whether they're executing on what actually matters to them, or on the version of success they inherited from someone else.

Type 4 · Feeling Center

The Individualist

Strategy: Personalizing · Ego Engine: Envy

Refuses to build wealth the conventional way. For good reason.

The 4 client needs the plan to feel like theirs. The Wealth Identity Assessment is often the first time they have felt genuinely seen in a financial conversation. The plan must carry personal meaning or it does not exist psychologically.

Type 8 · Acting Center

The Commander

Strategy: Exerting · Ego Engine: Lust

Controls wealth the way they control everything else. Completely.

The 8 client is not looking for an advisor. They are looking for a partner who can match their directness. Come with data, hold your position when challenged, and never manage them. Earn respect first.

Type 9 · Acting Center

The Harmonizer

Strategy: Settling · Ego Engine: Sloth

Avoids the money conversation because it always creates conflict.

The 9 client needs an advisor who creates genuine space for their voice and waits. The first few sessions are diagnostic: are we hearing their actual preferences or the preferences they have absorbed from their environment?

Type 1 · Acting Center

The Architect of Order

Strategy: Ordering · Ego Engine: Resentment

Does everything right. Forgives nothing, especially themselves.

The 1 client needs permission more than advice. Frame recommendations as the most honest, integrity-aligned choice available, not the perfect one. Show them the gray zone is not a compromise of their values. It is where real wealth is built.

Why subtypes change everything

The number is just the
beginning. The subtype is where
the real behavior lives.

Each of the nine types has three subtypes: self-preservation, social, and one-to-one. The subtype determines how the core type expresses itself in the most personal and material domains of life, including money.

Two people can share the same Enneagram type and have completely different relationships with wealth depending on their subtype. Consider Type 3.

The self-preservation Type 3 is The Builder. Net worth is identity. Not as ego, but as evidence that they deserve to exist. The deep anxiety is not ambition. It is the belief that love is conditional on performance.

The social Type 3 is The Ascendant. Peer comparison never stops because the peer set keeps expanding. A wealth identity rooted in external validation will always require more external validation.

The one-to-one Type 3 is The Performer. Wealth is a love language. A way of saying: look what I built for us. The question that unlocks this client is who are you actually building for, and do they know it?

Same type. Three completely different financial profiles. Three completely different strategies. This is why the Wealth Identity Assessment goes where no standard risk tolerance questionnaire can reach.

The test

Would you choose to live
this financial life again?

Not would you have made more money. Not would you have taken fewer risks. Would the life your financial decisions created be a life you would choose again, knowing what you know now?

That question cannot be answered with a spreadsheet. It requires knowing who you are with money, what you actually need it to mean, and whether the strategy you are executing is genuinely yours.

Your full profile

The complete framework
is waiting for you.

The nine types above are the map. Your subtype, your wings, your stretch and release, your specific blindspots and growth edges, that is the territory. And it is personal. The full Wealth Identity profile is built through the assessment, not before it. Because understanding who you are with money requires more than reading a description. It requires honest reflection, guided structure, and someone who knows how to ask the right questions.

Request your Wealth Identity Assessment

A brief conversation with James comes before the assessment.

Keep reading

Related topics worth
understanding.

Wealth Identity Assessment

Where every Intentional relationship begins

Mattering

Why the need to matter shapes every financial decision you make

Founder Psychology

What nobody prepares you for after the wire hits

Common questions

What people ask about
the Enneagram and wealth.

  • The Enneagram is one of the most sophisticated psychometric systems used in executive coaching worldwide. It identifies nine distinct personality types, each with its own core motivation, ego defense, and behavioral pattern. Applied to financial planning, it reveals why people make the financial decisions they do, not what the math says they should do, but what their psychology actually drives them toward. At Intentional LLC, the Enneagram is the foundation of the Wealth Identity Assessment, which analyzes 193 data points across behavioral finance, decision-making, and psychometric patterns to produce a comprehensive picture of how an individual relates to money.
  • The Enneagram organizes the nine types into three centers of intelligence. The Thinking Center, which includes Types 5, 6, and 7, processes wealth through analysis, anticipation, and strategy. The core driver is certainty and safety. The Feeling Center, which includes Types 2, 3, and 4, processes wealth through relationships, image, and identity. The core driver is worth and recognition. The Acting Center, which includes Types 8, 9, and 1, processes wealth through instinct, gut, and decisive action. The core driver is control and autonomy.
  • Each Enneagram type has three subtypes: self-preservation, social, and one-to-one. The subtype determines how the core type expresses itself in the most personal and material domains of life, including money. Two people can share the same Enneagram type and have completely different relationships with wealth depending on their subtype. A Type 3 in the self-preservation subtype builds net worth as survival. A Type 3 in the social subtype builds wealth as status and proof. A Type 3 in the one-to-one subtype builds wealth as a love language. The number is just the beginning. The subtype is where the real financial behavior lives.
  • Knowing your Enneagram type is the beginning of awareness, not the end of it. The Enneagram is not a box. It is a map. Your type describes the patterns you default to under stress, the wounds that drive your behavior, and the blindspots that limit your growth. But awareness of your wings, your stretch type, your release type, and the strengths and blindspots of the other eight types is what creates the conditions for genuine growth. At Intentional, we use the Enneagram not to label clients but to help them see themselves clearly enough to make financial decisions that actually reflect who they are and who they are becoming.
  • The question we return to with every client, across every type and every subtype, is this: would you choose to live this financial life again? Not would you have made more money, or taken fewer risks, or given more away. Would the life your financial decisions created be a life you would choose again, knowing what you know now? That question cannot be answered with a spreadsheet. It requires knowing who you are with money, what you actually need it to mean, and whether the strategy you are executing is genuinely yours or one you inherited from someone else.

Start here

The framework becomes real
when it becomes yours.

The nine types above are a map. The Wealth Identity Assessment is where the map becomes personal. Schedule a conversation with James to begin.

Request your assessment

30 minutes. No pitch. No pressure.