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

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 situation. Ebenezer Scrooge did just that with the help of some of some skillful guides.

A podcast that blends the nuts and bolts of financial advice with the emotions that drive our money decisions.
Join Rick Kahler, CFP®, CFT™, as he blends practical financial wisdom with the emotional insights that shape our choices. Discover how financial therapy can help you make money decisions that truly align with your values.. 

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 nowhere near what I consider the number-one potential destroyer of financial wealth—divorce. Learn more here.

A podcast that blends the nuts and bolts of financial advice with the emotions that drive our money decisions.
Join Rick Kahler, CFP®, CFT™, as he blends practical financial wisdom with the emotional insights that shape our choices. Discover how financial therapy can help you make money decisions that truly align with your values.. 

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 up a health power of attorney, investing a sum of money, being financially dependent on someone, reducing living expenses, setting up a retirement plan, the list is endless.  Tune in and learn how to get unstuck.

A podcast that blends the nuts and bolts of financial advice with the emotions that drive our money decisions.
Join Rick Kahler, CFP®, CFT™, as he blends practical financial wisdom with the emotional insights that shape our choices. Discover how financial therapy can help you make money decisions that truly align with your values.. 

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 being aware of feelings is an important first step, without a method of successfully processing those feelings, reaching objectivity may not happen.  We may just continue to make poor financial decisions even though we are fully aware of the emotions driving them.  It’s important that we learn how to feel a feeling, not just talk about it.

A podcast that blends the nuts and bolts of financial advice with the emotions that drive our money decisions.
Join Rick Kahler, CFP®, CFT™, as he blends practical financial wisdom with the emotional insights that shape our choices. Discover how financial therapy can help you make money decisions that truly align with your values.. 

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 consumer to figure out if a financial planner is actually doing comprehensive financial planning and a financial therapist is actually trained in financial therapy. 

A podcast that blends the nuts and bolts of financial advice with the emotions that drive our money decisions.
Join Rick Kahler, CFP®, CFT™, as he blends practical financial wisdom with the emotional insights that shape our choices. Discover how financial therapy can help you make money decisions that truly align with your values.. 

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 financial professionals passionate about the heart and soul of helping people make good financial and life decisions. If your financial planner, therapist, or coach is a member of the Nazrudin Project, you are probably in good hands. 

A podcast that blends the nuts and bolts of financial advice with the emotions that drive our money decisions.
Join Rick Kahler, CFP®, CFT™, as he blends practical financial wisdom with the emotional insights that shape our choices. Discover how financial therapy can help you make money decisions that truly align with your values.. 

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 depends.” It’s natural to want your legacy to be used wisely but trying to control from beyond the grave can have unintended consequences. Read more here. 

A podcast that blends the nuts and bolts of financial advice with the emotions that drive our money decisions.
Join Rick Kahler, CFP®, CFT™, as he blends practical financial wisdom with the emotional insights that shape our choices. Discover how financial therapy can help you make money decisions that truly align with your values.. 

When someone in this position calls me for help in changing a hurtful financial behavior, I struggle with the next question: So what does a person do? What are the next steps? Typically, I explain that the solution does not lie in knowing more information, but in understanding the emotional baggage that underlies the behavior. The best thing to do is call a financial therapist. The next best thing is to employ some of the tools used by a financial therapist to begin to understand your interior financial landscape. Read more here. 

A podcast that blends the nuts and bolts of financial advice with the emotions that drive our money decisions.
Join Rick Kahler, CFP®, CFT™, as he blends practical financial wisdom with the emotional insights that shape our choices. Discover how financial therapy can help you make money decisions that truly align with your values.. 

Financial Trauma are money-related occurrences that, either as single extreme events or chronic patterns, can overwhelm a person and become traumatic. Some emotional signs of financial trauma are depression, ambivalence, regularly reliving the original event, anger, mood swings, overeating, trouble concentrating, chronic fear, shame, and anger. Emotional trauma can develop around eight general types of money events: giving, receiving, spending, saving, loaning, borrowing, earning, and taking. Typically, if you feel a sense of shame around any of these, there may be some past financial trauma. Read more here. 

A podcast that blends the nuts and bolts of financial advice with the emotions that drive our money decisions.
Join Rick Kahler, CFP®, CFT™, as he blends practical financial wisdom with the emotional insights that shape our choices. Discover how financial therapy can help you make money decisions that truly align with your values.. 

One of my retired clients is fond of telling me, “Growing old is not for the faint of heart.” As we age, it becomes increasingly important for us to have a support system that will advocate for us, or “have our back.” Putting such a support system in place doesn’t just happen; it takes time, money, and intentionality. I know far too many people who have no one looking after their emotional, physical, or financial wellbeing as they go through retirement. Many struggle through their retirement unnecessarily because of the lack of past financial planning and the impact of poor financial decisions. It’s heartbreaking to watch, especially when the suffering was unnecessary. There are several missteps people can make during retirement. Read more here for more information.

A podcast that blends the nuts and bolts of financial advice with the emotions that drive our money decisions.
Join Rick Kahler, CFP®, CFT™, as he blends practical financial wisdom with the emotional insights that shape our choices. Discover how financial therapy can help you make money decisions that truly align with your values..