The Financial Therapy Podcast - It's Not Just About The Money

Rick explains the more common money script types that are prone to financial dependence and why financial dependency also extends to relying on financial professionals with narcissistic, histrionic, borderline, or antisocial personalities.  These advisors are more erratic and live for drama. Consumers with dependent personalities are drawn to advisors with these disorders, and will give them exact...

Do you rely on others for the bulk of your monthly income?  If so, it’s possible you’re your relationship with money may be suffering.  Being financially dependent is a financial disorder defined as “reliance on others for non-work income that creates fear or anxiety of being cut off, feelings of anger or resentment related to the non-work income, and a stifling of one’s motivation, passion, and/o...

Making poor financial decisions is a financial behavior destined to keep us poor.  Over 70% of Americans think they understand money, yet surveys show 66% can pass a very simple financial literacy test. What’s the reason for the disconnect between our actual and perceived level of financial competence? For one thing, part of the human condition is that facts don’t matter if they don’t align with o...

Workaholism is an addiction where the workaholic is highly involved in work, feels driven to work because of inner pressures that make the person feel guilty or depressed when not working, and in which the person has low levels of work enjoyment. It has been estimated that one in ten adults in the United States are workaholics, with as many as 25 percent of psychotherapists and physicians estimate...

Problematic money behaviors and disorders are not caused by a lack of money. They cannot be cured by knowing more about money or having more money. There is no significant correlation between happiness and money once household incomes are above $75,000 per year. The significant economic gains experienced by Americans in the past few decades have not been accompanied by a rise in life satisfaction...

Somatic Finance rocks Gayle Colman’s world.  As a financial advisor, and the founder of Somatic Finance, she brings her passion for Somatic Finance to life by offering people an entirely new way of being in relationship with money. Join Gayle and Rick for an unscripted conversation about their respective journeys into somatic finance and financial therapy. A podcast that blends the nuts and bolts...

What would you guess the average American worker makes in a year?  This is the question professor Nina Strohminger, University of Pennsylvania’s Warton School of Business, asked her business students recently.  The professor tweeted that 25% of her class guessed the average American made a six-figure salary. “One of them thought it was 800k,” tweeted Strohminger. The actual average income of an Am...

If you are in your 50s or 60s, you may have reacted with concern to the numerous recent news reports in September on an announcement about Social Security.  One by Reason.com said, “Social Security Will Be Insolvent in 12 Years. Yet, another headline on the same day about the same story by CNN proclaimed.  “Social Security won’t be able to pay full benefits by 2034, a year earlier than expected du...

Kirsten was divorced and had primary custody of her eight-year-old son, Jack, who spent every other weekend with his father. One Friday evening when her ex-husband came to pick up their son, he handed Kirsten a piece of paper and said, "Here is your check." Jack looked up at his mother and said, "Oh, so Daddy pays you?".  A divorce is more than the termination of a marriage. It...

Last episode we covered the first 10 of  21 "Things your financial therapist wants you to know," by Bari Tessler, one of the early pioneers of financial therapy. I thought her points were excellent and worth repeating. Here is my take on the last 11 of them.  A podcast that blends the nuts and bolts of financial advice with the emotions that drive our money decisions. Join Rick Kahler, C...

Bari Tessler was practicing financial therapy before most of the rest of us had ever heard the term. A psychotherapist, Bari decided to go into the bookkeeping business, quickly saw the union of psychology and money, and in 2001 began calling her work financial therapy. I met her a few years later and have been a fan of her work ever since. Last fall Bari posted two articles listing 21 "Thing...

Bari Tessler has spent over 20 years guiding thousands of people into happier, more empowered and refreshingly honest relationships with money. She was one of the early pioneers of financial therapy, and actually coined the term, by combining her Master’s degree in Somatic Psychology and her financial expertise in bookkeeping to create an integrated approach to deep money work.  Join Bari and Rick...

What makes life worth living? This question is at the heart of financial life planning and financial therapy. Where do we rate financial, emotional, and physical wellbeing? A recent study by Pew Research Center , November 18, 2021, on "What Makes Life Meaningful?’ finally resolved my curiosity. The survey asked respondents from 17 developed nations to rank 17 topics for their importance in br...

For our ancestors, even as recently as the 19th Century in many places, survival skills were hands-on. If you didn’t know how to build a house, farm, hunt, butcher animals, sew, and cook, you couldn’t provide well for your family. Money skills were largely worthless. It’s completely different today. Providing for yourself and your family requires knowing how to earn enough money, spend wisely, sav...

New couples tend to be great talkers.  Young love can be a wonderful time of discovery and sharing. New couples, regardless of their ages, need to get to know one another and explore the possibilities of building a life together. They discuss their histories, their philosophies of life, their goals, and their dreams. Unfortunately, one thing young couples often don’t talk about is money, their mon...

How do you feel about the rich?  While most Americans feel the rich are hardworking, only 10 percent think they are honest and one-third believe they are “greedy” and “self-centered.”  It makes sense that if most people have a Money Script (a belief) the payoff for hard work is dishonesty, greed, and self-centeredness, that they might not want to work very hard.  Money Scripts like these can keep...

It’s shocking how many engaged couples don’t have substantive discussions around disclosing their finances to each other, much less their thoughts, feelings, and beliefs around money. It's common to get married and later discover that your partner has a huge amount of credit card debt that was not disclosed. This secret often comes to light unintentionally when bill collectors start calling,...

A reporter recently asked me how a left-brain, number-crunching financial planner ironically ended up being one of the founders of financial therapy.  The answer is simple, a divorce. Few would argue that divorce is life-changing and it was no different for me.  When my wife told me she wanted a divorce, my first thought was, “I am going to grow.”  Granted, that’s a strange first thought when info...

If you had a magic wand and could change anything about yourself that would improve your financial and emotional wellbeing, what would it be?  This is a hard question.  I am not talking about changing your financial circumstances, winning the lottery or getting a big inheritance.  I am talking about changing yourself, your behaviors, thoughts or emotions that could ultimately change your financial...

I spend a lot of focus helping my clients protect their hard-earned assets from the reach of a frivolous lawsuit. The chance of such a lawsuit in the US is always a risk when a person with a nest egg is perceived as “rich” and someone who “could afford” to shell out big bucks to make an unfounded lawsuit go away. As devastating financially as a frivolous lawsuit may be to one’s wealth, it’s nowher...

What do you do when your find yourself in a state of being financially “stuck?”  Stuck is not a very professional word, but it’s an accurate description of a very familiar financial condition.  According to Vocabulary.com, stuck describes something that’s frozen or fixed in one place and can’t be moved.  We can become stuck in almost any financial task; earning more money, drawing a will, drawing...

Making sound financial decisions can be the best-paying job we’ve ever had.  How do we obtain the skills needed to do this job well?  Since 80 to 100% of all financial decisions are made emotionally, learning something about emotions and how they affect our financial decisions can be financially lifesaving. The first step is to become aware of what we are feeling, that we have emotions.  While bei...

How do you find a comprehensive financial planner and a financial therapist that competently integrates both your humanity with the dollars and cents?  First, it isn’t easy even to find a comprehensive financial planner.  The term ‘financial planner’ is not regulated.  Anyone can hold themselves out to be a financial planner.  The same is true of the term financial therapist.  The burden is on the...

You're probably unfamiliar with The Nazrudin Project. That’s understandable. They don’t have a website. There is no organization. They don’t have leaders. The Nazrudin Project is often described as a leaderless, eclectic, and holistic group of financial life planners, therapists, authors, educators, and coaches. So why should you care? Why a podcast on this group? To let you know there are fi...

Perhaps the most common reason for wanting to control a legacy is a spendthrift heir. Giving a chronic over spender an inheritance in hope that it will help change their money behavior is almost always magical thinking. Most lump sum inheritances disappear within a few years in the control of an over spender. Does it make sense to leave inheritances with strings attached? My typical answer is “it...