“Financial Therapy”

“What do you do?”

It’s the simplest, most basic question, one we might be asked on a daily basis. I know exactly what I do, but I’m still trying to figure out how to answer that question in a way that people can understand.

In a nutshell, I help people think and feel differently about money.

I help people create wealth, but not with stocks, bonds, real estate and budgets with built-in automatic saving plans.  (Yes, one must have a plan, but it’s the wrong starting place.)  I help people create wealth from the inside out, through transforming beliefs, attitudes, and emotions. 

But what am I?

Sometimes I define it by describing what I’m not. We all probably know what a Financial Planner is, or perhaps we have had experience with a Financial Advisor, Financial Services Representative, or similar animal.

Some work on commission, some work for fees. All have tools to help you assess your current financial situation and panic properly as you grasp the enormity of the canyon over which you must leap in order to one day retire. Most sell financial products (investments, insurance, etc.) that might assist you in reaching your goals.

I took a CFP course once. I got my life insurance license. I interviewed in the financial services field. I was well on my way to a life of using tools and charts and calculators to help people plan their financial futures.

But I wasn’t sleeping well. It wasn’t my calling. I knew the world didn’t need another financial planner (with all due respect to the thousands of fine financial planners who serve a genuine need to their grateful clients).

I knew what I was. I couldn’t deny it. I had been one for years. It was time to just admit it.

I was…

A Financial Therapist.

Since no self-respecting therapist would ever call themselves a “shrink,” I figured I’d be “The Money Shrink.” I started a blog, I put it on my business cards. Then a professional writer friend pointed out that money “shrinking” was actually a very bad thing. Hmm, good point.

No, I’m not a licensed therapist. I don’t advertise myself as a “Financial Therapist,” because I can imagine some sort of lawsuit down the road, some disgruntled (or just greedy) client suing me for my worldly possessions because I had misrepresented myself as a “therapist,” when, indeed, I am not. (So much for the clever oxymoron suggested by the branding expert.)

In terms of credentials, I’m a Certified Life Coach. (And judging from how life coaches are portrayed in movies and TV shows, it was an odd choice of certifications for someone looking for some kind of professional clout!)

I’m also a Trainer, certified by the fastest growing personal development company in the world! (Of course, no one knows what a “trainer” is or does, either.)

Then there’s my degree in Educational Ministries. Thanks to what I learned at that fine Free Methodist University, I now write rather moving call-and-response liturgies. About money.

(Maybe I should be the Abbess of Abundance, or the Prosperity Priestess. Or… the Financial Healer! That ironic label might have possibilities….) But, I digress.

You see, most of us could use a little “Financial Therapy.” Many people are so stuck in (often unconscious) shame, regret, or fear about financial situations that they become frozen. Or perhaps, they are taking action, but not the actions that might lead to a life they would feel passionate about.

A therapist helps you dig under the surface to help discover the thoughts and feelings that have led to your current situation. I help people think and feel differently about money so that old patterns, beliefs and assumptions can be overcome.

Most of us have been planting the seeds of what we want, but watering the weeds of shame or self-doubt.

An old-fashioned therapist might have asked you to look at an inkblot and tell him what it represents to you. Does it look like a rabbit?  A monster?  Your mother? I give a Money Rorschach test. I ask people to look at words like “investor,” “landlord,” “rich” or “millionaire” and tell me how they feel, to observe and rank their emotional reactions. Do they feel excitement? Overwhelm? Anger?

I remember reading David Bach’s “Smart Women Finish Rich” a few years ago and being utterly shocked at a statistic.  The average retired woman in the United States at that time was living on an income of just over $1300 a month.

Thirteen Hundred Dollars!

And that included her social security, which made up the bulk of the $1300! I remember in that moment thinking two things:

First, it’s just not enough!

And secondly, I wanted to do whatever I could do to help change those statistics. Here we are, in one of the richest times and places on planet earth (yes, even in this recession), and too many women are having to choose between heat, medicine, or food.

I come from a middle class family. We are not destitute. But even so, I worry about my father, who still works at 75 only partially because he enjoys it. Truth be told, he can’t afford to stop.

I think of a woman I know, who was forced to move to a more affordable city in her late 70’s when her apartment rent soared due to appreciation and a remodel. I think of friends, single women in their sixties, who have credit card debt and no savings.

A little financial planning might have made a big difference in all of these cases. But as a “financial therapist,” I’m here to say that financial plans and strategies only one piece of the puzzle.

The most powerful determinants of our financial results are our thoughts and feelings.

Ask any financial planner: if a potential client doesn’t believe they’ll ever have a net worth higher than their credit card balances, will they bother to even meet with a financial planner? Not likely. If they are frozen by fear, regret, or shame, would they even act on the financial advice? Probably not.

As Maxwell Maltz discovered, we rarely outperform our self-image.

Lottery winners end up broke again, and tycoons who lose it all are usually back on top in a short period of time.

T. Harv Ecker calls this phenomenon of predictable results the “financial thermostat.” What’s yours set at? This is what determines your financial results (and the behavior that leads to those results): Your own thoughts and feelings. The decisions you make about ourselves. The judgments and assumptions we’ve adopted about wealthy people. The beliefs we’ve inherited about money since we were children. That’s why most of us need…

A little financial therapy.

Welcome to my blog.

Kate

2019 Update: I wrote this post in 2008, 11 years ago. Since then, Financial Therapy has become a real thing. There’s even an association for financial therapists now. I just happened to be doing it — by intuition and experimentation — before it was a thing. I guess I was a pioneer!

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