Expert Advice on Love and Money

26 Nov Expert Advice on Love and Money

Deborah L. Price

Expert Advice on Love and Money

Deborah Price, my money coaching mentor, has written a beautiful new book, The Heart of Money: A Couple’s Guide to Creating True Financial Intimacy:

Money issues have long been the number one cause of relationship disharmony and divorce, yet when it comes to identifying and changing unhealthy money patterns and behaviors, many couples feel helpless. Money coach Deborah Price has taught thousands of people how to work together to resolve money conflicts and create a financially empowered future. In these pages, she presents strategies and tools for creating financial intimacy while learning to communicate about money issues calmly and reflectively, rather than reactively. With inspirational stories and practical techniques and exercises, this book will help you and your partner:

• learn the language of financial intimacy and talk about money in a healthy and empowering way

• recognize and change unhealthy money patterns

• identify which of the eight money types apply to each of you and understand the impact they have on your life, your relationship, and your finances

• build a mutual sense of financial security and confidence

• work through setbacks and challenges to make your relationship stronger than ever before.

Deborah kindly agreed to a personal interview for RAISING CLARITY. I started our by interview by confessing to Deborah that the way I explain the origins of money coaching is by describing Deborah’s work as a financial professional and her noticing that no matter how much rational information people received about money, they still did dumb stuff with it. Deborah replied affirmatively:

It was very clear to me that our clients’ financial decisions were being driven by their emotions and behaviors which nobody was actually addressing. The horse was before the cart: we needed to talk about the behaviors and the patterns before doing the financial planning and advising so that we had a better idea of what people’s individual money patterns were, and then be able to help and even more aptly predict future behaviors.

Knowing that the origins of money coaching, and of Deborah’s first book, Money Magic lay in her personal experience, I next wanted to explore the origins of her “financial intimacy” and her book itself, The Heart of Money: A Couple’s Guide to Creating True Financial Intimacy:

I’ve had many, many experiences with people and money, both personally and professionally, and I’ve noticed that while I’m very comfortable talking about it, most people are very reticent or even have outright aversion to it. Money is a very important area of our human experience. If we can’t begin to talk about it openly and honestly, and become aware of our personal relationship with it, we are limiting both our individual potential, as well as expansion of the human consciousness. I’ve always been drawn to the exploration of human consciousness. If we leave this area of money unexplored, it represents a significant limitation to all of our potential. Because we can’t pretend that we can evolve consciousness without opening this door. Money is always the proverbial elephant in the room. Until we address it, we will always struggle in this area of our lives. As for myself, I actually like going “where no man or woman has gone before.” It’s just my nature.

 The exploration of human consciousness–that’s really where your work starts.

That’s the door that opens all other doors…the one that leads me everywhere.

 Has that been true your whole life?

Definitely. I was always the little girl who always asked “why” and questioned everything. Now, instead of just asking why, I’m looking for the answers. I think human beings are very fascinating. We are the most fascinating creatures ever created. We have such enormous potentiality and yet many people barely scratch the surface of what is possible, which is truly tragic.

I’m interested in understanding why that is, and how we can help people expand beyond their perceived limitations. Because if we can help people to grow and expand individually, the whole world will benefit. Within each of us lies an answer to something that is bigger than we know. I truly believe there is no problem that exists on the planet today that if we continue to expand and evolve our consciousness, that we don’t have it within in us to solve. There are no unsolvable problems…we just haven’t grown up enough in our consciousness to discover the answers. Yet.

How do you expand your own consciousness?

I consider myself spiritually eclectic in that regard. I have my personal relationship with God and my guides and prayer. I have my own versions of meditation, but they’re certainly not traditional. I’m also very inspired by nature and its raw, primitive beauty. And then just being with, observing and experiencing human beings, and interacting in this big messy, beautiful world that we live in informs my consciousness everyday.

 Who are some of your inspirations?

Rumi, John Donoghue, David Whyte, Carl Jung, Angeles Arrien, Hazel Henderson, the Dalai Lama...all amazingly profound human beings.

 What has happened with The Heart of Money so far?

This book has actually come out of the gate with a much faster, more favorable response than my previous books, I think because the subject is so timely and so needed. I’ve been getting a lot of press, which is wonderful. It’s certainly hit a nerve.

I’m happy to be getting some international press and that’s a new thing for me. This is exciting to me since it will help more people to realize that there is help available. As you know, not many people are trained in the behavioral side of money and so unfortunately, a lot of people fall through the cracks just because they don’t know where to go for help.

Is it the more advanced book of the two you’ve published (Money Magic and Heart of Money)?

The individual work is included as part of the couples work. The Heart of Money was written in a way that readers can do both. It’s essential to look at the individuals in the couple. Once you understand yourself, we can begin to see how your patterns and behaviors either work in harmony in your relationship or cause conflict and disharmony. In most cases, a couple’s challenging money patterns and behaviors predate the relationship. Couples come into the relationship with them but don’t usually identify them because they avoid the subject of money. Also, we don’t have anyone to rub up against to identify them often until we mate and marry.

Will financial intimacy become an even bigger part of your work now?

Absolutely. The couples area is so vast and the cause of so much pain and suffering, divorce and destruction. I greatly want to be a part of helping to reduce that pain and suffering. I feel like I did when I first started doing the core money coaching work: a new door has opened and I’ve become hyper-focused on growth and development in this area. I find that when I get really intentional, I tend to have many breakthroughs myself in terms of the development of the work and what transpires as a result.

Give us an example?

One of the things I am really compelled by–it’s literally an obsession—is discovering the missing key to understanding and changing the collective money issues that have caused us to be very challenged since money arrived on the scene some 100,000 years ago. Thus far from my research and experience it is clear that we humans possess both some basic biological drivers as well as emotional and behavioral tendencies that cause us to malfunction and become emotionally reactive and irrational where money is concerned. This hasn’t served us as individuals and it certainly isn’t helping our love relationships either. We have a lot at stake here in the money game. So it’s definitely showing up in my work. I am creating new content all the time, both for our training programs as well as in working with our clients. I’m also conducting educational webinars to get more awareness and information out there to people in bite-sized pieces so they know there’s a lot more than meets the eye about this money stuff.

How are you going to approach doing this research?

Well, I’m not a scientist, I’m just a madwoman. I’m sort of like a hound-dog, I hunt, read and research ferociously and I process information very intuitively. I enjoy taking in disparate ideas and subjects that people might not think to combine and analyze, and coming up with my own theories and processes based upon many years of experience. One thing about us in the field of money coaching that’s truly unique is that we been working in the trenches with real people around money for over 25 years. That’s a lot of time and experience being with and observing real time behaviors. So while the sciences are great and have provided lots of data that has been useful, nothing replaces the experience of actually doing the work with people. At this point I’m really interested in the end result; taking all the insight, knowledge and experience and developing processes and strategies that help people understand and change their day-to-day experience and relationship with money. That is my life’s mission.