Who am I to give you financial guidance that incorporates your personality, emotions, financial intelligence, and past relationship with money? I have the education, training, and hands-on experience in both the therapeutic world and the financial world to provide such guidance in each of these areas. I will share a brief snippet of my journey in understanding the individual, how that individual interacts with the people and world around them, and how the individual’s past impacts who they are today. Then I will walk you through my own personal trek through the financial landscape. I hope that you hear more about my heart for people and my passion for all things financial than simply my credentials and experience.
Since the 1990s I have been actively working in the mental health arena. In the early years I worked with youth who struggled with severe emotional problems that often resulted in behavioral disturbances at school and at home. These children were relegated to special schools and group homes. The majority of my work with this population was in the school setting, where we would try to teach academics while simultaneously attempting to control behavior and provide safety for fellow students and staff. There were some opportunities for the kids to share some of their struggles, but healing did not seem to be the primary focus.
This led me to return to school, getting my B.A. in Child and Family Development and then my M.A. in Marriage & Family Therapy. As a licensed MFT (Marriage & Family Therapist) I have worked in a variety of settings with diverse clienteles, from the mentally ill in day treatment facilities to community programs and private practice. Through my 20+ years and tens of thousands of hours seeing clients, I have found the following statistics to be true: it is widely accepted that the three most common areas of struggle for people are money, communication issues, and sex. There is a plethora of material out there on how to communicate better, have better sex, and how to make and grow one’s financial resources. However, there is a serious lack of resources that help you understand how your individual personality influences your understanding of money.
Observing this lack in the marketplace led me to take several additional steps. As a licensed therapist, there are some limitations to the work I can do with clients. First, I was not able to help people who live out of state. Second, I could not allow financial advice to override therapeutic advice, even if money is the bigger struggle in someone’s life. For these reasons (and a few others) I became a life coach. This has allowed me to help more people without having to worry about geographical or therapeutic boundaries. But I still wanted to have an even broader impact on those that I might not be able to see in person. I also wanted to provide a referral source that was actually helpful for understanding your financial self. This book goes well beyond the others out there, as it also looks at the pros and cons of each money personality type and presents remedies for each, all in a user-friendly way.
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