Insider Secrets From a Top Financial Therapist

Find the niche financial therapist for your niche issues

Financial therapists’ backgrounds and specialties vary, so it’s important to choose yours wisely. Some are licensed counselors, social workers or marriage therapists, while others specialize in niche services such as couples counseling, career changes or addressing financial trauma. To find the right professional, it’s really about knowing what you’re looking for and what you need. Then you can go to the Financial Therapy Association’s directory, which lists providers across the country, including their credentials and backgrounds. If you are somebody who is really trying to dive into the psychological, emotional and behavioral pieces of your money habits, look for somebody with a background in mental health.

Some of the best tools to help you manage bad financial habits are free

Financial therapists can help you come up with coping strategies to get your unwanted financial behaviors in check. Some of those may be affirmations — things you say to yourself each day to reinforce positive habits and keep negative thoughts in check. You can say to yourself, “I am financially secure,” “I am safe,” “I am capable of handling the situations that come up” or “I know I can get help if I don’t know what to do with my finances.” What we’re trying to do with these is to rewire how you think about money — remembering that you’re safe and taking care of yourself in your financial life. We can also give you grounding exercises to practice. That might look like box breathing, meditating or going outside and doing a five-senses check-in. What do you hear, taste, feel, smell and see?

We can help address the ‘money messages’ lingering from childhood

My work often starts at the beginning. I’ll have my clients walk me through their childhood and financial life up to the present day. During that time, we’re trying to identify some of the money messages they’ve heard and how they’ve created patterns and behaviors based on those. Some of those messages could be “You don’t ever talk about money,” or “When I’m having a hard time, I should treat myself,” or “If I don’t hold on to my money, then it’s all going to disappear for me.” Some of these messages are ones we all have, but some come from the unique life experiences and things that we witnessed or heard when we were growing up. Once we identify what’s driving some of these behaviors, we can develop coping strategies to help you through them.

When you’re stressed, you might not realize you’re making money decisions that might be shortsighted. Work to limit your stress so your decisions are clearer.

Amber Day

Better stress management = better financial habits

When people are stressed out, they don’t always realize that they’re making money decisions that might be shortsighted. It could be going out to eat, going shopping or going on a spur-of-the-moment vacation. When you’re uncomfortable and stressed out, when your system is dysregulated, it’s very easy for you to think, “Oh, I need to do this right now, because it’s going to make me feel better.” You’re trying to get out of that uncomfortable feeling. But this is just a quick fix that you’re reaching for. A financial therapist can give you coping mechanisms to deal with that stress and help you regulate your nervous system when you are stressed out — ones that ultimately do not involve spending money.

Financial anxiety is real

Some people have been particularly stressed about money since the COVID-19 pandemic. But over the past year or so, people have been worried about the economy. They are really feeling it with inflation, and feel like their money is stretched thinner than before. For people dealing with financial anxiety, I recommend having an appropriate emergency fund in place; then we work on tackling the anxious feelings and coming up with coping strategies. That could look like taking a walk, exercising, journaling or positive affirmations each morning that say you’re safe, you’re capable, you have enough money and are going to be OK, or it might just mean having conversations [with a financial therapist] and processing feelings together in session.

Impulse shopping is often just a quick fix for dealing with stress.

Amber Day

Financial slip-ups can be tools for good

Buyer’s remorse is common, especially if you’re feeling stressed. But those situations can be good learning experiences. We need to process what was going on for you when you made the purchase. Why did it feel important to make? Then, a lot of it is kind of forgiving yourself and not beating yourself up about it. From there, we can establish boundaries to help you avoid those feelings and behaviors again. We’ll discuss ways to send up a little red flag, if you will, when you are in a similar position again and might be tempted to spend on something you shouldn’t.

When you retire, you need to flip your money mindset

While retirement is often seen as a picture-perfect time in life, for many it’s a period fraught with financial discomfort. There can be a lot of stressors coming up for people when they have spent decades of their life saving their money for retirement and now it’s time to actually live in that retirement. It feels really uncomfortable for them to spend money without knowing that they have money coming in. When I work with people battling this scarcity mindset in retirement, I work on helping them understand what they need to feel secure and stable while also developing gratitude for all the work and saving they did before. I help them understand that while it might be difficult to let go of having that traditional income, that money is coming from a different place now. You are safe. You are stable. You’re going to be OK.

Financial trauma lasts the long haul

Some people may not realize how much their earlier experiences and financial traumas have impacted their current financial behavior. This could be an experience that happened 10 years ago, but depending on how impactful it was, it can really color how you navigate your finances today. You may be avoiding saving money or paying your bills, or you might be money hoarding, keeping all your funds in a checking account where it feels safe, rather than a high-yield savings account or other vehicle where you could earn interest. You may also feel like your risk tolerance is really high, so you may take bigger gambles on things, hoping that the bigger the gamble, the bigger the reward. If you’ve never taken the time to dissect those old traumas or get really honest about what your feelings are because of what you’ve lived through, then tackling your unwanted money behaviors today — and improving your financial situation — isn’t going to be easy.

Even the wealthy have financial trauma

Addressing financial trauma is a big thing that therapists can help with. But that trauma doesn’t always stem from not having enough. There’s a myth that people who have financial trauma don’t have money or didn’t have money — that it’s coming out of a place of scarcity. That doesn’t have to be the case. With financial trauma, it doesn’t matter how much money or how little money you have. Anybody can experience it. Say you are heading off to college and your parents tell you that they aren’t going to support you unless you study XYZ, or that unless you plan on going into the family business, they are going to cut you off. That concern, that worry about “Am I going to be OK? Am I going to be stable?” can come about even for those who have or come from money. Financially, it can be really traumatic.

Insurance probably won’t cover me (unless you have a gambling problem)

The cost of financial therapy varies depending on who you work with and their unique pricing and fee model, but it can range anywhere from $100 to $250 per session. For most people, it will be difficult to get this service reimbursed by insurance, and the fees will come out of pocket. To be covered by insurance, the service would need to be treating an official medical disorder listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Unfortunately, the only medical diagnosis that’s in the DSM that would fall under “financial therapy” currently is gambling. We would need to see more money disorders and their treatments added to the DSM for insurance to be willing to cover it. That’s a long journey.

If you can’t afford therapy, there are other options

If seeing a financial therapist isn’t feasible, there are plenty of books on financial therapy. Some that I recommend: The Financial Anxiety Solution by Lindsay Bryan-Podvin; Mind Over Money: Overcoming the Money Disorders That Threaten Our Financial Health by father-son duo Brad and Ted Klontz; The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness by Morgan Housel; and The Trauma of Money: Mapping Compassionate Pathways to Healing Financial Trauma and Disempowering Financial Shame by Chantel Chapman.

I’ve also written a book specifically about financial therapy and the psychology behind money, called Feel-Good Finance. You can also listen to the podcast Healthy Love and Money by Ed Coambs or follow the Center for Financial Social Work, a financial behavioral health center in North Carolina, which talks about these topics a lot, too. It has online courses, videos, e-books and online guides you can utilize for free. Help is out there!