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 making them.Rick Kahler, CFP®, CFT-I™, has helped people make better money decisions by integrating financial planning. He blends the nuts and bolts of financial advice with the emotions that drive making them and shares them on his financial therapy podcast.

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 making them.Rick Kahler, CFP®, CFT-I™, has helped people make better money decisions by integrating financial planning. He blends the nuts and bolts of financial advice with the emotions that drive making them and shares them on his financial therapy podcast.

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 making them.Rick Kahler, CFP®, CFT-I™, has helped people make better money decisions by integrating financial planning. He blends the nuts and bolts of financial advice with the emotions that drive making them and shares them on his financial therapy podcast.

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 making them.Rick Kahler, CFP®, CFT-I™, has helped people make better money decisions by integrating financial planning. He blends the nuts and bolts of financial advice with the emotions that drive making them and shares them on his financial therapy podcast.

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 making them.Rick Kahler, CFP®, CFT-I™, has helped people make better money decisions by integrating financial planning. He blends the nuts and bolts of financial advice with the emotions that drive making them and shares them on his financial therapy podcast.

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 making them.Rick Kahler, CFP®, CFT-I™, has helped people make better money decisions by integrating financial planning. He blends the nuts and bolts of financial advice with the emotions that drive making them and shares them on his financial therapy podcast.

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 making them.Rick Kahler, CFP®, CFT-I™, has helped people make better money decisions by integrating financial planning. He blends the nuts and bolts of financial advice with the emotions that drive making them and shares them on his financial therapy podcast.

The FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) movement advocates extreme frugality in order to retire as early as age 30. The biggest challenge with the skills and discipline needed for a FIRE plan is not starting it (which isn’t necessarily easy) but stopping (which can be very difficult). Why? Like building an actual fire, building frugality into one’s lifestyle starts slowly. For some savers, especially FIRE advocates, frugality can become a way of life, a game, and a habit that’s hard to break. It can become, not the means to reach the goal of financial independence, but the goal itself. This is what I call “Frugality Syndrome.” A long-term focus on frugality, like a raging wildfire, has a momentum that’s difficult to stop.  Read more here.A podcast that blends the nuts and bolts of financial advice with the emotions that drive making them.Rick Kahler, CFP®, CFT-I™, has helped people make better money decisions by integrating financial planning. He blends the nuts and bolts of financial advice with the emotions that drive making them and shares them on his financial therapy podcast.

Dick Wagner, CFP, was fond of saying that understanding money and how it works is a 21st Century survival skill. This is not an exaggeration. What you don’t know about money—as well as what you think you do know about money—has the potential to literally kill you and those you love.  A comprehensive research project done by Columbia University in 2011 on the impact of social factors on mortality found that 4.5% of U.S. deaths could be attributed to poverty. Research overwhelmingly supports a huge correlation between financial illiteracy and not having enough money. Read more here.A podcast that blends the nuts and bolts of financial advice with the emotions that drive making them.Rick Kahler, CFP®, CFT-I™, has helped people make better money decisions by integrating financial planning. He blends the nuts and bolts of financial advice with the emotions that drive making them and shares them on his financial therapy podcast.

People that have money scripts like, “You should not tell others how much money you have or make,” “Money should be saved not spent,” and “I would be a nervous wreck if I did not have money saved for an emergency,” typically struggle with Money Vigilance.  “Work hard, play hard” is a foreign concept to Money Vigilants. This money script category is associated with poor relationships, lack of leisure time or activities, poor sleep, anxiety, and a lack of having “fun”.  If you are a Money Vigilant there is a way to have money and serenity.  A podcast that blends the nuts and bolts of financial advice with the emotions that drive making them.Rick Kahler, CFP®, CFT-I™, has helped people make better money decisions by integrating financial planning. He blends the nuts and bolts of financial advice with the emotions that drive making them and shares them on his financial therapy podcast.