[00:00:00] Linzy: Hello and welcome back to another feelings and finances episode of the money skills for therapists podcast. These are our short and sweet Friday episodes where I answer your questions, the listeners of the Money Skills for Therapists podcast, the wonderful therapists and health practitioners and coaches that make up our wonderful community.

[00:00:21] Linzy: Here is a question today from Madeleine.

[00:00:24] Madeleine: Hi, my name is Madeleine, and I’m a therapist, and I’m also a yoga teacher and an educator, somatic educator. And my question is about branding because having two separate businesses… So I loved your episode about money tips for having two separate businesses. And my question is about branding, 

[00:00:52] and if I can brand and have a website under my name that links people both to my clinical therapy practice, and then links people to my work as a somatic educator. And I’m trying to build up the somatic educator component, and I’m trying to be really mindful about ethics of branding for the different businesses, and how to best do that.

[00:01:15] And I was going to have a website just with my name, and then link it to those two things. I know it’s, um, you’re doing more with money, but, maybe you have an insight on that, because branding and marketing is an expense and how to streamline it.

[00:01:29] Thank you.

[00:01:30] Linzy: Thank you for your question, Madeleine. And it’s true. It’s getting more into the branding side, but branding and money do very much connect in how we set up the structures of our business and how we even think about different businesses. Like, are they with the same branch of one business? Are they different businesses and different distinct hats that we have to wear?

[00:01:50] So the first thing that I would think about always when it comes to having those two distinct businesses is thinking about your license, and checking in with your licensing body to see if the somatic educator work needs to be completely separate. Now, different licensing bodies in different states and provinces have different rules; they see things differently. And the somatic educator work… you might be able to practice that work under your therapy license, and you also might not, or might choose not to because of certain rules associated with that.

[00:02:25] So for instance, for me as a social worker in Ontario, social workers cannot use testimonials in their advertising. My understanding, I believe, is that we can’t sell packages. I haven’t looked into that too closely, but I certainly don’t see folks selling packages. And so, I’ve had to make it very, very clear, very distinct that the work that I was doing over here as a therapist is not

[00:02:47] me over here teaching money to other therapists, right? Because if I was to blur those at all, I could be seen as in violation of the code of ethics of, in my case, the college, the Ontario College of Social Workers. So that’s the first thing that I would want to make sure about is even before you get into thinking about the strategy, make sure that you’ve got your legal ducks in a row and that you’re not conflating the work that you’re doing in such a way that it might jeopardize your license.

[00:03:15] If it turns out that you can practice as a somatic educator with your therapy license, and there’s nothing about that that’s going to potentially jeopardize your license, or undermine your code of ethics, then I think having them on the same website makes a lot of sense. Basically, you’re building a personal brand.

[00:03:33] As my friend, Maegan Megginson, who teaches branding, would talk about, you know, you are the expert, You’ve got your personality, you’ve got your vibe, and folks who are drawn to you and like what you do have different doors that they can take in their work with you. They could work with you as a client, and get therapy from you, or they might invite you in as a somatic educator, you know, to do a workshop.

[00:03:56] So, I have seen folks set up websites like that where it’s like the main page of their website is kind of like, here I am. And then it’s almost like you set up two different doors: go through this door for therapy, go through this door for, in your case, somatic education. And I do see the value of that if you’re looking to build a strong personal brand.

[00:04:14] Like if Madeleine is the brand, then it does make sense to have those folks that land on your website because they’re looking for you, because maybe they saw you on Instagram, or they heard you on a podcast, or they heard about you in their community… They can see these different types of work that you do.

[00:04:30] More commonly though, I do see folks brand separately and people brand separately when your brands are different enough that they would conflict if you put them side by side. So for instance,If I’m a therapist and I work with folks who experienced childhood abuse and trauma, which was my specialty when I was a therapist; I did complex trauma, dissociation.

[00:04:51] So if that’s my branch of therapy, but then I have a second business where I sell, I don’t know, punk rock mugs that have sassy punk rock sayings on them. Those two businesses from a brand perspective aren’t very complementary, right? And somebody who comes to me to check out my therapy page, if they also see front and center that I have this sassy mug business, they might be like, That’s like not really the vibe I’m going for.

[00:05:17] So those are kind of two distinct parts of my personality. There are two projects that are separate enough that I wouldn’t actually want folks who are looking for one to find the other super easily. It’s not to say people wouldn’t, if they’re doing an exhaustive Google search, but those are two brands that I would want to live separately.

[00:05:31] In your case, it sounds like there’s a lot more overlap probably between those two things, but I would just want you to think about:is there any reason that you wouldn’t want somebody who’s seeking you out for therapy to also see your somatic educator work? I can’t think of a reason offhand why those things would be in conflict, but just to double check to make sure that your one brand isn’t kind of undermining the other brand.

[00:05:52] If your brands really are truly complementary, and this is a suite of offerings that all kind of live in the same wheelhouse, then I think that building them together can make a lot of sense. But if there’s any potential for conflict, either with your licensing body, or with your potential client slash customer experience, of them landing on the website and one brand kind of putting them off the other brand, then I would encourage you to to have two distinct websites with two distinct brands.

[00:06:20] Both of them, you know, will have an about page that gets to you where they see, oh, Madeleine is the person who delivers this, but that allows you two distinct spaces to give very different messaging, without the risk of one message conflicting with the other message and putting off a potential client for either of those businesses.

[00:06:38] So those are my thoughts. Definitely more branding than we usually talk about, but it’s fun to use a different part of my brain. I’m excited for you, Madeleine, as you build out these businesses, and I hope that you can get good, clear answers from your licensing body and take the path that makes the most sense for you as you’re building out your two businesses.

[00:06:53] Thank you so much for your question. If you, like Madeleine, have a question for me that you’d like answered on one of these Feelings in Finances episodes. Super, super simple. Just scroll down to the show notes of this episode, and you will see a link where you can jump over to our podcast page. There’s a little record button, just like Madeleine did.

[00:07:10] Introduce yourself, give a little bit of context and share your question. I would be happy to answer your question on one of these episodes. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today.

[00:00:00] Aviva: You need to speak to a specialist because Google gives some good basic information, but it doesn’t tell you what to be aware of, what to watch out for, what the actual situation is when you’re dealing with daily. When speaking with a specialist dealing with this, they always know what to set you up with. They know which policy to recommend.

[00:00:30] Linzy: Welcome to the Money Skills for Therapists podcast, where we answer this question: how can therapists and health practitioners go from money shame and confusion to feeling calm and confident about their finances and get money working for them in both their private practice and their lives? I’m your host, Linzy Bonham, therapist turned money coach, and creator of the course Money Skills for Therapists.

[00:00:49] Hello and welcome back to the podcast. Today’s guest is Aviva Abraham. Aviva is an insurance specialist. She focuses on helping self-employed people with health insurance and life insurance and she is Canadian, but so much of what we talk about today is about insurance in general, and how insurance fits into our larger financial picture.

[00:01:12] So today Aviva and I talk about the best time to get insurance. We talk about the greatest risks to our financial stability and how insurance can help with those. She also gives some advice on how to make sure that you have the right insurance for you, who to get insurance from, and how to assess the insurance coverage that you have. It is not a sexy topic, as we talk about on this podcast, but it is such an important topic, and thinking today about the connection between insurance and finances certainly has me ready to go reassess my insurance situation. You might find yourself in the same place in about half an hour. Here is my conversation with Aviva Abraham. 

[00:02:05] Linzy: So Aviva, welcome to the podcast.

[00:02:09] Aviva: Great to be here. 

[00:02:11] Linzy: Wonderful to have you here. So, Aviva, I’m going to say that insurance is a world that I know is important. It’s very important to finances, but it’s also a world that I don’t know a ton about. So I think probably a lot of our listeners are on that same page. So just to get us grounded in where you’re coming from, can you tell us about the work that you do as we move into talking about insurance today?

[00:02:35] Aviva: So I have to admit that before I got into the insurance industry, I didn’t know a lot about insurance either. 

[00:02:43] So it’s really funny and if you would have asked me 20 years ago, and told me that I’d be an insurance advisor, I would have laughed at you. Because I started my career as an accountant in New York City.

[00:02:55] I’m good with numbers. I like numbers. I feel more comfortable with numbers, but I did get married, moved to Toronto, and took some time off to raise my family. And then when my youngest went to school, I decided to go back to work and was looking for something to do because I did not want to go back into accounting.

[00:03:16] But I wanted something in the financial services field. So I ended up finding a position with somebody in the same office that I am now who did insurance and investment. And I originally thought I would go into the investment field.

[00:03:30] But then 2008 happened, and I said I never want to be responsible for people’s money. To have to tell them the market tanked, we lost their money. And insurance was more like a better fit for me. in terms of planning, guarantees, and stability. So I gravitated towards that and started my new career in that field. So that’s when I learned all about that and the advantages of that. But yeah, it’s not something people wake up to in the morning and say, I want to learn about it or I want to get it.

[00:04:09] That’s one of the challenges of being an advisor. 

[00:04:13] Linzy: Absolutely. It’s funny, you mentioned that you like planning and stability. So insurance is a natural fit. It’s something I haven’t thought about before, but I do remember years ago now, probably like 15 years ago, when I got kind of my first real job that had benefits, I remember reading my benefits booklet to my partner at the time and being like, Hey, look at this.

[00:04:33] If I die overseas, they’ll ship my body home. And he was like, stop it. What is wrong with you? But I also get overly excited about stability and security. So it makes a lot of sense to me that with those traits, you would get excited about helping folks to create that in their own life. 

[00:04:49] Aviva: Yeah, but that’s funny.

[00:04:51] Linzy: Yeah, I do get excited about stability for sure. So for folks listening, what’s the starting point? Like what would you tell them is the most important thing that you want them to know about insurance and getting insurance 

[00:05:08] Aviva: I know that you talk to your therapist about feeling calm and confident about their finances, and that’s what insurance does for you, because while they’re building their practice, along the way they’re going to get a handle on their finances, they’re going to start creating their wealth, but along the way, they need to protect that wealth and that’s what insurance does for you.

[00:05:31] It gives you that financial foundation and protection so that if something were to happen, whether it’s someone getting sick or even if you’ve got a family and somebody passes away, then you want to know your family is taken care of. So, the big thing that people should be aware of today is that

[00:05:53] if you are healthy now, and if it’s something you haven’t dealt with yet, for whatever reason, you’re busy in your business, life’s busy, you just never wanted to deal with it before… But if you’re healthy now, now is the time to apply, and to get that insurance, because the insurers are stricter these days, in terms of who they are approving, and what their health status is.

[00:06:19] So if somebody started a new medication, if somebody has gone for testing, they could be postponed or declined coverage because of these things. I know a lot of people say, I’m healthy, I’m fine, I don’t need to get it yet, but that’s exactly the right time to get it.

[00:06:39] Linzy: What I’m hearing is once you start having health issues or once they start to identify risks for you, you may not get insurance because now you’re a liability, or I’m assuming your insurance gets more expensive as you get older.

[00:06:52] Aviva: So both can happen. I’ve had clients in the last few years who started a new medication. They went for testing because they went to their doctor for a concern. After all, that hasn’t been deemed stable yet… so the insurance company is looking at it; they said, Oh, you just started a medication.

[00:07:12] We don’t know how that’s going to affect you or if you took a test; we don’t have the full diagnosis yet. So they either postpone and they say come back to us in a year, or they decline. So, in those cases, there are some specialty insurers where you could get a more limited amount of coverage, and you would pay more because you’re considered more at risk, but yeah, so it could be either or.

[00:07:38] Linzy: Yes, what I’m hearing is to get it before you think you need it. Right, which is when we’re not thinking about it. When you feel young and invincible, then is the time to get that. What is so interesting, and it must be such a challenge for you because that’s so contrary to human nature, right? We tend to think about things once they’re a problem, 

[00:08:00] Aviva: I get a lot of those calls. Oh, you know, I just went to the doctor and so I realized I never got my insurance and yeah, it’s too late once there is an issue.

[00:08:12] Linzy: Right. right. Yeah, because what I’m hearing is As you said, I help folks to feel calm and confident about their finances, right? Like, get clear on your numbers, get money going where you want it to go. What I’m hearing from you is insurance is an important part of the financial stability picture. Am I understanding that clearly?

[00:08:28] Aviva: Yes.

[00:08:28] Linzy: Tell me a little bit more about how these things fit together. Like, what are some of the risks that can come up, and ruin the financial work that we’ve done?

[00:08:38] Aviva: So first there’s if somebody gets sick. So, there’s a much higher chance of somebody under the age of 65 getting sick and living with that. These days because of medical advancements people who got cancer 20 years ago didn’t live all that long but today, about 50 percent of people who get cancer or another critical illness are actually living with it between two to five years, and sometimes more than five years.

[00:09:08] But they can’t work the way they used to work. They have higher medical expenses and are as different as the U. S.– because I know you have U. S. and Canadian listeners on here– as different as the healthcare systems are, what we’re talking about today affects both Canadian and U. S. and are similar in certain ways.

[00:09:29] So, if somebody is having a health issue, there are ways to keep working, but they’ll still have more medical expenses. People think Canadian health care is free, but it’s not. People with cancer must pay for their medical drugs. That’s how it’s like the U. S. That way your medical expenses will increase.

[00:09:51] So you need more money. You may not be able to work as much and earn as much. And the risk of getting sick before age 65 is like three times higher than somebody dying, but then there’s the case of somebody dying and then their family needs money. So, there’s a lot to consider there. 

[00:10:13] Linzy: Yeah, this conversation, not surprisingly, is illuminating my gaps in maybe the insurance coverage that I have, because my partner and I have life insurance, and we’ve had that for a long time, ever since we bought our home together. We were like, if I die, I don’t want you to be stuck with this mortgage.

[00:10:28] And so that’s when we got insurance in our lives, and that was about five years before we had my son, but what I’m hearing is you’re talking about is the risk of getting sick and then our expenses go up because we have increased medical expenses. And it’s true in Canada, I know a lot of cancer medications now you have to pay for.

[00:10:46] The treatment is no longer chemo in the hospital, it’s medication you take at home. And when you take medication at home, you must pay for it. So, although these drugs are more effective, they’re also expensive, and you can’t earn as much because you’re not working. So that kind of insurance coverage… what is that? Is that critical illness coverage? What type of coverage is that, Aviva?

[00:11:05] Aviva: Two types of coverage get affected by that. One is healthcare coverage. Who will pay for the drugs? What kind of health plan do you have? And so, if you’re self-employed, it costs a lot more, like you’re the one paying for it as opposed to you being an employee in a company that has a group benefits plan.

[00:11:29] Then there’s also the critical illness. So critical illness coverage is a lump sum of money that’s paid out to you if diagnosed with a covered condition. So there are situations where you might need a very high-cost drug. Like, in the last 5 to 10 years, the cost of specialty drugs have 

[00:11:50] more than quadrupled. Whether it’s for high cholesterol or chronic pain, it could be tens of thousands of dollars a month, and if somebody needs that, then that devastates. Like, that’s the biggest risk to somebody’s finances these days. It’s the cost of specialty drugs. The cost of medical care is significant these days if someone is diagnosed with a serious health issue. 

[00:12:17] So that’s just something that’s developed. It didn’t used to be like that 20 years ago, but these days, like a cancer drug, it can be over 100, 000.

[00:12:27] So that’s where the critical illness policy also comes in. If you have drug coverage, that’s great. But in addition to that, there might be other expenses that you need to cover. And so critical illness insurance gives you a lump sum of money that you could spend in whatever way you want. You could pay down debt.

[00:12:47] So if somebody has a mortgage and they decide, you know what, I want to use this to pay down my debt. They can do that. They can use it for a trip. They can use it for whatever they want. It’s just a lump sum of money if someone is diagnosed. So those two things together really help. Disability coverage can help as well, but that would be only if you’re disabled for an extended period because of an illness.

[00:13:11] So, there are a few different ways to cover that risk. 

[00:13:17] Linzy: Cause as you’re talking about that, I have disability insurance, which I’ve had for a long time. I have no idea what it is, Aviva. I have no idea how much coverage is there. I have no idea of the conditions around it like what allows me to qualify for it. And so that’s a curiosity that I have, you know, for folks who are listening because also you mentioning medical insurance, as I know probably most therapists in Canada and the United States, we either get coverage through your partner, or you have to pay an arm and a leg.

[00:13:46] Americans already pay an arm or leg. We know that. But this is something I’ve noticed in my own company is like going to look at insurance for our business. It’s so expensive, or it’s so difficult to find someone who will cover a company with four people in it, that every time I just give up.

[00:14:04] Right. But what I’m hearing is not having that. In my case, I have coverage, but if somebody doesn’t have that kind of coverage, that’s important to get. And then there’s this critical illness, which could be that lump-sum disability. So for people who are listening who, like me, are starting to have words swirling around their head of like, Oh, do I have that?

[00:14:22] I think I have that. Wait, how do I get that? Where do you suggest people start with starting to assess their insurance coverage and think about their options of what they need given their situation and what they’re able or willing to pay every month? I’m sure we could all pay thousands per month in insurance if we wanted to.

[00:14:42] Aviva: It’s great that you bring that up because I just did a post on that, where I said, Google is great. And these days I find people come to me and they have Googled; they have checked out some basic information. But I always say it’s so important, especially when you’re dealing with money matters, but anything that is an important thing that you’re checking out,

[00:15:04] You need to speak to a specialist because Google gives some good basic information, but it doesn’t tell you what to be aware of, what to watch out for, what the actual situation is when you’re dealing day to day, whether it’s dealing with a health issue or dealing with the insurers, speaking with a specialist that deals with this all the time, they know what to set you up with.

[00:15:31] They know which policy to recommend. They can assess where your gaps are like you were saying, oh, you’re thinking about, Oh, where your gaps are. So, speaking with a specialist and whether you get a recommendation from a friend or a family member, just speak to somebody that deals with this day to day.

[00:15:51] And I always say as well, speak to an independent advisor, not someone that’s tied to, let’s say, just one company. Whether it’s Sun Life, which here in Canada is. One of the biggest providers, right? So they can only offer Sunlight’s products, but other companies may have different coverage or different options.

[00:16:13] So speak to an independent advisor that can check things out for you in the, in the best way and give you the best advice. But don’t try to do it by yourself. Like I know some people who have approached me that did it by themselves and there are things to be aware of. It’s just good to speak to a specialist.

[00:16:33] Linzy: And that’s helpful information because that’s a question that was arising for me as we were talking is, yeah, are there fully independent advisors? That’s something that we’ve talked about in this podcast before and something I talk to whenever my students are to talk about personal finance, which is just outside of my lane,

[00:16:46] it’s not what I do, is to talk to an independent advisor, a financial advisor who’s only getting paid for their time with you, where it’s transparent as to how they’re getting paid. In the insurance industry then, I’m hearing there’s a parallel, like there’s folks who are basically working for a company, where they can only sell you their products, and then there’s independent folks.

[00:17:09] Can you tell us about the setup of this industry? 

[00:17:14] Aviva: There are those advisors that are set up with, and here in Canada, it’s more, Sun Life, Desjardins, that will only deal with those insurance companies. And that’s what we call captive agents because they can only deal with those companies. Then, there are also the banks here in Canada that will also sell insurance.

[00:17:34] And that’s also been a challenge for us as independent advisors, because, again, they’ve got… It’s been in the news, so I’m not saying any secrets here, but they’ve got their sales quotas 

[00:17:47] that they need to meet and they push certain agendas. And that’s why I was saying, get a recommendation from either a family or friends on an independent advisor.

[00:17:57] Cause you want someone trustworthy. You want someone that’s going to look out for your best interests. Like I know. I work with five, or six companies, and then some other smaller niche companies when it’s people that are harder to insure and need a special type of coverage. But my loyalty is not to the insurance company, it’s to my clients.

[00:18:20] And that’s also important because you want to know that you’re looked after. You want to make them feel that it’s something that you have, confidence in your advisor, and that they’re looking out for you. And like you were saying before, Oh, I have a disability, but I don’t know what it is. So the thought that ran in my head was: where’s the advisor that sold you the policy? 

[00:18:45] Linzy: It’s a great question. 

[00:18:46] Aviva: Why aren’t you doing annual reviews or even every two to three years so that you know what you have. If your situation changes you can then reassess. Either reduce the coverage, increase the coverage, or change the coverage, but it’s important, because life changes so quickly these days, to review your coverage every, at least every two to three years. 

[00:19:10] Linzy: Yes, that’s an interesting point as you said this. I think the term, did you say it’s captive agents, is hilariously tragic. It makes me think about pirates for some reason. But yeah, being captive, even if they’re trying to do the best they can for you, they have very limited things that they can offer you.

[00:19:28] So for independent insurance agents then, how are you paid? If I went to see you, would I pay you a fee for your time? Do you still get certain amounts from certain products, but you just have a much wider array of products that you can offer? How does that work?

[00:19:43] Aviva: So I’d say about 80 percent of the time, I get paid by the insurance company. So again, we’re paid the same amount. Doesn’t matter which company we’re going to. But again, the reason I work with these top six companies that I do work with is because they’re well established, they’ve got a great reputation, they’ve got good pricing, and it does change year over year. A lot of what I do is based on getting the best pricing for my clients. But that’s why I work with those top companies. They pay me, but it’s not like I get paid more by one company than another.

[00:20:21] So I get paid by commission. The other 20 percent of the time I’m brought in as a consultant. So, if somebody has multiple policies, if somebody wants an independent review where they know somebody is going to be impartial, then I do charge a fee, and then I just get the information about their insurance, and then offer my opinion on how it’s set up.

[00:20:47] I also tell them, you know, what the situation is in terms of who the beneficiaries are, what value there is, if they can get a better policy at this point. But mostly if you’ve got a pretty old policy, you don’t cancel it. You hold onto it. So most of my business is based on commission, not fee-based.

[00:21:11] That’s how we’re different than the investment advisors. But then I do have a small portion that’s consulting. 

[00:21:17] Linzy: Okay, but you also don’t have a quota. You’re not trying to sell a certain amount of XYZ, and don’t have pressure on you for that. Yeah, and it’s such a helpful thing to mention, and it’s an unfortunate part of the financial services industry, especially for folks in my audience, like folks in the therapy space, where it’s like this is already an area where we’re not loving having to engage.

[00:21:40] This is not our happy place. Then to have to navigate like who is trustworthy and who’s offering me a full range of options versus who’s telling me that they’re offering me full range, but there’s like three things they can sell me and they’re going to get more money if they sell me this one opposed to this one.

[00:21:55] It’s, an unfortunate is maybe like a nice soft way to put it. Part of this world, right? And I think for many therapists and health practitioners, It’s a great reason to avoid it, right? The fact that it’s like, I don’t know who to talk to. I don’t know who I can trust. I don’t know. This person’s saying things, do they have my best interest at heart?

[00:22:14] Are they just trying to make a sales quota? It does make it, uh, intimidating space to step into. In addition to the fact that there’s a whole bunch of jargon and terms that we don’t know or understand. It’s a scary world to navigate, Aviva.

[00:22:27] Aviva: Yes, yes. And that is one of my biggest challenges because insurance is not fun. It’s not sexy. So how do you motivate people? How do you help people? How do you get them to trust you? So, a lot of it is a personality match as well. And the fact that there aren’t a lot of female financial advisors.

[00:22:48] I’ve been focusing the last few years on helping women in business. And I don’t know how many of your networks are female, but a lot of the females that I speak with don’t connect well with male advisors. They are just coming at it from a different standpoint. Like the fact that I’ve got kids, that I’m working, and built my own business as well,

[00:23:12] I can relate to women in business, in a unique way than a male advisor. And it’s like 80 percent male advisors, 20 percent female advisors. And we just handle things differently. So just connecting, it doesn’t mean that none of the female therapists have a male advisor that they like.

[00:23:33] But if somebody is questioning or struggling or not matching up personality-wise, better to find somebody that you do, feel comfortable with. And that’s a big part of it. If you have that conversation and you feel comfortable, you start building that trust and it might take time.

[00:23:50] Like I’ve had people that will put through business with me within a few weeks, and then a few months, and then a few years. So, it’s just being patient and, and making it work. 

[00:24:02] Linzy: Yes. And it’s the same thing in the therapy world, and we’re used to being on the receiving end of this, which is that it’s all about fit. Right? Like, as you’re talking, I’m thinking about my world too, and, people who join Money Skills for Therapists, like my course that I teach, we just had somebody join today, we were like taking a look at his behavior, and he’s been on my list for three years, right?

[00:24:19] So it took three years for him to decide, yep, this is somebody that I like, that I want to learn from, this is the right time, I’m ready to do this work. And it’s the same for therapists, like when clients come to us, right? Like, they’re assessing us for fit so we’re very familiar with the concept of fit.

[00:24:31] And it’s nice to hear you say that this can also be part of your relationship with your insurance advisor, right? Fit is important, you need to trust them. You need to feel like they get you in your life circumstances. And I do still feel and see in the financial sector, And I count the insurance sector as part of this.

[00:24:49] Some of that, like, oh, don’t you worry, little lady, kind of attitude towards women. And it’s so infuriating, and it can stop us in our tracks when we encounter somebody like that. And so, for folks listening, you know, what I’m hearing is, Aviva is saying what we would also say to clients, find a good fit for you.

[00:25:05] Find somebody who you can trust enough to have these conversations, to get insurance set up, and as you said earlier, do it before you need it. Do it before it’s really on your mind, right? It’s one of these things to do in advance. So for folks listening today, Aviva, what is some advice that you can give for them to walk away with from our conversation?

[00:25:29] Aviva: So, sometimes people think insurance, like one of the other challenges that I come across or questions that people say is insurance. It’s just too expensive for me. I don’t know if I can afford it. First, there are options that can be less expensive, whether it’s getting insurance for a shorter term as opposed to a longer term.

[00:25:50] I always say to cover off at least part of the risk. So if you can’t afford all of the coverage that you do need based on the assessment that you’ve done. gotten, then at least cover off part of the risk. If you can’t do it for an extended for a 20-year term, do it for a 10-year term. Like, at least cover off a portion of your risk, because the truth is none of us have a crystal ball.

[00:26:18] We never know what’s going to happen. But at least if you cover off the risk of the next 10 years if you cover off 250,000 instead of a million dollars of coverage. It’s something for yourself, for your family. So that would be one thing. Another thing is to be aware that AI today is playing a really big role in insurance.

[00:26:42] And so things have gotten easier. You were saying people are overwhelmed. They really don’t know what to do. But the truth is, it’s gotten simpler to do insurance. For certain levels of coverage, you don’t have to do blood work. And you can get coverage without meeting with a nurse. You just have to answer a bunch of questions.

[00:27:02] And so it’s gotten easier to get insurance these days. So that’s a plus, something positive that came out of COVID. And the third thing is setting up your insurance policy is important. But as we were just talking about. It’s just as important to have an advisor that you know you can rely on and that will be there for you and that you get the right type of coverage. I did have a case years back where this lady was the sister of a client and she came to me and she said well, I got this critical illness coverage. Can you take a look at it?

[00:27:40] And it was called… It was weird. I’ve never seen it before… women’s critical illness, and basically it only covered women’s conditions, and it only gave you a certain payout if you went into hospital. It was very restrictive, so that’s where I showed her that she could get a much better policy for almost the same price that would cover her a lot better. So, covering off to getting the right kind of policy that will pay out.

[00:28:10] It’s not just getting coverage. It’s getting the right coverage. Make sure that you’ll be able to claim that it’s a good company and that you have an advisor who will support you. So, getting the coverage, and taking that next step, like you’re saying, is so important to do is great, but do it in the right way and, and get the right coverage so that when there is a claim, or if there is a claim, you can benefit from it.

[00:28:35] Linzy: I love that first point, which I would distill down to something is better than nothing. I do think that it can be intimidating, and lots of folks in my world are perfectionists, right, and we want to be able to do it perfectly, and if we can’t do it perfectly, then sometimes we don’t want to do it at all.

[00:28:54] But what I’m hearing is, yeah, if you can’t afford that million dollars, that’d be really nice, still 200, 000 is going to be helpful if a situation arises, you know, where that payout needs to happen. So that’s very helpful because I think that, yeah, it’s easy to go into that black and white.

[00:29:09] But this is just to make life easier, if the worst should happen, so that, you know, yeah, just more ease is what I’m hearing. It’s not going to solve the problem, but you’re definitely going to be happy to have 200,000 if something happens rather than zero.

[00:29:24] Aviva: As opposed to nothing, yeah. And I sometimes call that, doing it the salami way. So, you can’t necessarily eat the whole salami, but you can take a few slices, get some of it, and then in a year or two, once you’re used to paying those payments, okay, maybe your income has grown, you can take on a bit more. So do it more comfortably.

[00:29:47] Linzy: I have never heard do the salami way. It makes no sense to me, but I like it. I appreciate it. So, Aviva, thank you so much for coming and talking to us about this very not sexy, very not fun, but stability is great. We love it. And especially for folks listening, I know sometimes talk with folks about motivating themselves around money and part of it is connecting what’s not working. The what if. And what I’m hearing here is it’s being real about the fact that something can happen, and life doesn’t always go as planned, right? And like, you might be healthy now, but we don’t know what’ll happen in a year or two. Part of what I, I think, want folks to think about today is like, just think about taking care of their future self, even if everything seems fine now.

[00:30:34] It’s a huge favor that you can do to your future self by getting insurance lined up today and making sure you have the right insurance coverage is what I’m hearing as well today, rather than wishing you had done it 10 years from now. So, to that end, Aviva, where can folks find you to learn more from you?

[00:30:50] Aviva: Ah, so, I am more on LinkedIn than on Facebook, but I’m on Facebook as well. I do have a website, insuranceinvolved. ca, and yeah. You can find me there.

[00:31:06] Linzy: Great, perfect. So it’s 

[00:31:07] Insuranceevolved. ca and we’ll put that link in the show notes for folks to poke around. Get excited about insurance. Let’s all get coverage. It’ll be a group project. So thank you, thank you so much, Aviva, for coming on the podcast today.

[00:31:20] Aviva: Thank you so much for having me, Linzy. 

[00:31:36] Linzy: My conversation with Aviva has been reflecting on my insurance situation and how easy it is, of course, for us to avoid the things that are not fun, that we don’t understand, where we’re not sure who to get help from. You know, I think about my insurance, and although my partner and I are amply insured, I wonder if we’re overinsured, and do I have the right kind of coverage in case I get ill.

[00:32:02] So for me, it’s opened a lot of questions today. I have some investigating to do. Probably need to contact a new insurance agent, like we were talking about, an independent insurance agent. And so, if you’re listening today and noticing the same thing, that this is an area of your life that you have not spent very much time and energy on, especially if, as Aviva mentioned, you are healthy now.

[00:32:26] Now is a really enjoyable time to either get insurance for the first time or to look into the coverage that you have. It’s not exciting. Sometimes it has to get us thinking about things that are scary to think about, like us getting sick or dying or a partner getting sick or dying. But it’s one of these things that our future selves will be extremely grateful,

[00:32:45] should it ever happen that we’re going to have to use these insurance policies. So maybe we can make this a team project, a group project, Money Skills for Therapists Listers, that we can all go away now and look at our insurance and make sure that we have the coverage that we need to take care of ourselves and our families into the future.

[00:33:02] I think it is a very, very worthwhile project. So thank you to Aviva for coming on the podcast today. You can follow me on Instagram at moneynutsandbolts and if you are enjoying the podcast, please share it with your colleagues and your friends. Tell them about the podcast. We’re having conversations here about finances and money and therapy that are not happening in other spaces.

[00:33:24] I’m really happy about that. I’m really proud of that. And so if you have someone in your life who would benefit from being part of these conversations, please tell them about the podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today.

  [00:00:00] Linzy: Hello and welcome back for another Feelings and Finances episode of the Money Skills for Therapists podcast. These are our short episodes to end off the week to answer questions from you, the lovely listeners of the Money Skills for Therapists podcast, the therapists, health practitioners, coaches.

[00:00:19] Today we have a question from Margot Rochester. Here’s Margot’s question.

[00:00:25] Margot: Hi, Linzy. This is Margot Rochester. I also live in Ontario. I think you do, too. When I saw the word scaling, my interpretation was how we would scale for clients, for example, who might not have enough money for our regular fee. And so we agree toallow them to pay less. And this has been an ongoing struggle in my practice, an ongoing piece to think about.

[00:01:00] So there are people who I charge my full fee. And I feel good about the fee that I charge currently. But I can also fall into this thing where I’m like, this is how much I charge. And. at times feel a little bit like, is that too much, and then let them know that I have a sliding scale.

[00:01:22] But there are so many ins and outs, to this issue, as you can imagine. And I do some pro bono work, which I feel is an important part of my work. It is extremely limited, but I’d be so interested in your comments about this.

[00:01:43] If there is a measure that you would use in terms of, how many clients you would only see for a certain amount, or how you think about it, how you gauge it. I hope that’s clear. Thank you so much for all the work that you do.

[00:01:59] Linzy: Margot, thank you so much for your question. And yeah, that does, uh, point out an interesting way in our, in our field that there’s two uses for the same word. The word scaling can refer to scaling up as I was talking about in the Feelings and Finances episode with our question from Edgar about growing your business and expanding what you do beyond that one on one.

[00:02:20] We call that scaling, but then there’s also sliding scale. So that’s what you’re talking about here is sliding, I think, is often the verb that we use to talk about this, which is where, as you said, we offer folks a lower fee. And what I’m hearing is in your practice, there’s maybe many folks on a lower fee.

[00:02:36] So there’s two pieces to this, Margot, that come to mind right away. The first one is knowing your numbers, right? So you mentioned this piece of, is there a certain amount of clients that we should have that we offer these kinds of spots to you? I’m hearing you also do pro bono work, right?

[00:02:52] So that is just work, you know, that is free. So, the answer is that no, there’s not a certain number for everybody, but there is a number for you. So the very first place that I would encourage you to start as you’re thinking about this sliding scale question is how much do you actually need to make to take care of your life?

[00:03:11] Right? To be well, to be able to eat the food that’s good for you, to be able to pay your mortgage, to be able to save for retirement, maybe save for kids’ education, or inheritance for grandchildren, you know, whatever your goals are. What does that number look like for you?It takes a little bit of work to find this number, Margot, because in that mix, we need to think about how much money needs to come in the door of your practice, right? So that you’re sending enough money home to you, and there’s also money to set aside for taxes, and there’s also some money to set aside for running your business, right?

[00:03:43] So the money that comes in the door for your business has many jobs to do. Not just paying you, not just paying to run the business, but it has multiple responsibilities. So, you know, there’s going to be a little bit of sitting down and being with your numbers. That’s really going to be helpful for you here to think about what does your paycheck need to look like?

[00:04:00] What is that number that feels good coming home that covers off your obligations and responsibilities, but also gives you some money to live and save for the future. What is that number for you? Is that 2, 500? Is it 4, 000? Is it 6, 000? That number is different for all of us, depending on our life circumstances, whether we’re in a dual earning household, needs of our family.

[00:04:22] Everybody’s life has its own profile. So that’s the first thing I would have you ground in is sit down and think about what do you need your paycheck to be after taxes? Then we need to think about how much taxes need to go aside for you to get that paycheck, right? What would be, the 30%, that you would add to that number to give you, so there’s enough money going aside for taxes, and

[00:04:42] to cover off the money that’s going home to you, so your tax obligation is covered. Then we need to think about how much money it takes to run your practice. So how many dollars a month do you spend just paying your rent or paying for courses, professional development, your software that you use in your practice?

[00:04:56] What is that monthly net? Is that like 500 bucks a month, a thousand bucks a month? You’re going to add that to the picture, too. So now we’ve got three numbers that we’ve grabbed so far. One is your paycheck to yourself, the taxes to cover off for that paycheck, and the money that you’re spending to run the business, right?

[00:05:11] We’re going to add all those numbers together. It’d be nice if there was also like a buffer there, Margot, you know, for like some vacation time for you and a little bit of profit, profit being just oxygen, breathing room. But let’s just say, you know, for the sake of, of simple, clear numbers that you come to the conclusion that your practice needs to bring in like 6, 000 a month

[00:05:31] to cover off all of those different things. Now we can think about how do you get there, right? And in Money Skills for Therapists, I have a tool that guides you in doing this because there’s a lot of moving parts here, but we’re going to talk it through so you can work these numbers out on paper, right,

[00:05:44] and be with these numbers for yourself. So using 6, 000 as the number that you’ve come to, to cover all those things, thinking about how many sessions a week are you able to work and be well? I think about this, Margot, as your sweet spot number. This is not your drop dead number. This is not like I can do 20 sessions a week, and then I go home and feel like a zombie and cry myself to sleep, and use the weekend to like just recover so I can start over again next week.

[00:06:12] This is the number of sessions where you feel you’re best, you’re doing your best work, you get in the zone, but you can also still go home and be present in your life, engage in some hobbies, still have enough energy left over for you and the folks who love you. So let’s say in this case 6, 000 a month, and you decide that your sweet spot number is 16 sessions a week.

[00:06:35] So I’m going to take the number 6, 000. I’m going to divide it by 16 and then I’m going to divide it by four. There’s actually 4. 33 weeks in a month, but I’m going to play a little bit conservative, which gives us a little bit of, of breathing room if folks can’t make it, or if you’re sick.

[00:06:48] So that gives an average fee of 93.75 an hour. These are made up numbers. You’re going to play with your own numbers. But when I have that number, then I can start to see, okay, based on the folks that I have in the mix now, am I making enough money to get me to that 6, 000 a month? And if I’m not, where can I start to wiggle so that I do get to that 6, 000 a month that I need to see?

[00:07:14] Do I have 12 people on sliding scale that are paying me somewhere between 30 and 60? Can I bring up the bottom of that sliding scale? You have so much opportunity here, Margot, to play with the numbers to make the practice reflect your values. There’s no one way to do it. You’re also doing pro bono work, so I would actually add that in as you’re thinking about your capacity, right?

[00:07:36] So, if your capacity is 16 clients, but you’re doing 2 pro bono sessions a week, that’s actually 14 sessions a week that you’re getting paid for. So now we need that 6, 000 to, coming out of 14 sessions a week. And when I do that, then the average needs to be 107 an hour, right? You need to make 107 on average between all your sessions.

[00:07:55] And then you can start to ground on the mix that you have now, is it getting you where you need to be? If it’s not, start to experiment with, well, what if? What if each week, I had five folks on sliding scale who are each paying me $75, and just add these numbers together. So if I take five folks on sliding scale and they’re each at $75, and then the remainder of my folks, let’s say another nine people, because I’m playing with this imaginary 14, are on my full fee, which I’m going to say is 150,

[00:08:25] what does that get me to? If I do five times 75 plus nine times 150. Okay, that’s getting me to 1,725 a week, so that actually does get me to a number that’s getting me to that 6, 000. I’m just playing, right? And this is so important, Margot, as you’re figuring out the right mix for you that reflects your values and the folks that you love to serve, and your own financial needs, is be curious and play.

[00:08:52] Just do a little math. Right. This is all just, uh, it’s elementary school math, right? We’re talking about addition, subtraction, multiplication. So play with the numbers to see like, what would be a really nice mix that hits a couple sweet spots? It hits your amount of sessions that you can work for a week and still thrive.

[00:09:08] Be a happy human. That’s your sweet spot. It allows you to serve enough folks in your practice that you feel like you are contributing to your community in the way that you want to, or you’re able to serve the folks that you love to serve, who maybe could not access you at your full fee,

[00:09:22] and it’s getting you the money that you need to live and be well, right? So there’s like these three elements here that we are balancing that you get to play with and do a gut check on what makes sense. Once you determine what your sliding scale needs to look like, then you get to set boundaries around it.

[00:09:38] And this is the second part of my response to you. So once you determine, okay, I have three sliding scale spots available in my practice. And those are already taken. I already have three folks that I love who I’ve been working with for a long time. Those spots are taken. They’re not going anywhere anytime soon.

[00:09:53] I’m happy to work with these folks long term. Then you know that you don’t have any more sliding scale spots available. You’ve set a boundary for yourself. Now it’s about holding that boundary. And There was an episode that I did a few seasons ago with Brittany Kipnis, she’s a graduate of Money Skills for Therapists, and we had a conversation about this, about holding that boundary when you’re telling a client your fee.

[00:10:14] Because it’s exactly like you say. We start to, you know, tell a client our fee, and then we start to do some mind reading for them. We project onto them what we’re feeling, so we say, my fee is 150, and before they even have a chance to react in any way, we say, but I do have a sliding scale. Right? We’re not even giving them a chance to say, Oh, that’s fine.

[00:10:33] Or to say, Oh, okay, yeah, just let me talk to my mom because she said she would help me with therapy. You’re not even giving them a chance to solve their own problem when you are jumping in and assuming that they can’t afford your fee. So the strategy for this is say your fee, my fee is 150 an hour, and then stop talking.

[00:10:51] We need to give them space. We need to give them space to process, to respond, to let you know that they’re going to think about it or to say, Oh, that’s totally fine. My last therapist was 175 an hour. This is no big deal, right? We need to let them be the adult. And if there is a problem, we need to let them solve their own problem as an adult and not take that problem on as our own.

[00:11:14] If you have a hard time doing this, there can be some different tricks to help you hold that boundary. One that I find can work for parents is imagine taking that money that you are offering them out of the hands of your child and giving it to them instead. So if you are 150 a session, but you’re going to about to offer them a 75 sliding scale, imagine taking 75 from your own child and giving it to this client instead, because that’s functionally what you’re doing.

[00:11:38] You’re taking money from your own family and giving it to somebody else, which you can do sometimes, right? But if you’re doing it all the time, you really are depriving your own family and setting it up so their needs are not being met so that somebody else can have their needs met or be extra comfortable or not have to solve their own problem.

[00:11:54] So these are the two parts of my response. One, take that time to ground on your numbers, play with your numbers as we’ve talked about here. Two, once you have set that boundary, it might also be adjusting your caseload to start to have some folks who are on sliding scale wrap up with you if they’ve been with you a while to get you down to the number that’s sustainable.

[00:12:13] And then hold that boundary when you are having conversations so that you actually set up a practice that is sustainable for you. That takes care of you, that pays you, has you working an amount of sessions. That has you in your sweet spot enjoying your life. Right, so clarity and then boundaries. Those are the two parts to my advice for you, Margot, on sliding scale.

[00:12:32] I wish you clarity and groundedness. If people are watching YouTube, they’ll see that I’m doing a grounded motion in this piece. It can be a really tricky one, but once you get clarity around it, you are going to find that so many things in your practice and your life get easier.

[00:12:47] Thanks so much for your question, Margot If you, like Margot have a question that you’d like me to answer on a Feelings and Finances episode of the Money Skills for Therapists podcast, it is super easy. Just follow the link in the show notes. It’ll take you to our podcast page where you can just press record, leave me your question, just like Margot Share your name, share your question, and I would be happy to answer it on a future episode of Feelings and Finances.

[00:13:10] Thank you so much for joining me today.

Charissa: I know I need to let go, but how? And what is the strategy to do that? And just talking to you, I’m having all these insights Simultaneously. So I was like, But there is no use for that, and that’s something that I have to sort of take in. And I know that’ll take time, that I don’t have use for those coping mechanisms. 

Linzy:  Welcome to the Money Skills for Therapists podcast, where we answer this question: how can therapists and health practitioners go from money shame and confusion to feeling calm and confident about their finances and get money working for them in both their private practice and their lives? I’m your host, Linzy Bonham, therapist turned money coach, and creator of the course Money Skills for Therapists.

Hello and welcome back to the podcast. Today we have a coaching episode with one of our podcast listeners, Dr. Charissa Pizarro. Charissa is a clinical psychologist based in New Jersey. She specializes in trauma work and she works full time but also has a part-time private practice on the side and is thinking about moving into full-time private practice, but finds that it’s difficult to think about doing that because she struggles with her fee.

So today, Charissa and I get into the challenges that she has with actually owning her expertise. She has more than 20 years of clinical experience, um, but has a hard time holding her boundaries around the fees that she set for herself, both clinically and then with workshops and presentations that she does, and we talk about the challenges with that and it’s linked to intergenerational trauma Linking way back to two generations ago her family experiencing genocide and a dictatorship. The rich conversation here of getting into that kind of like a two-pronged piece of that, you know, the top end of kind of learning skills and numbers and owning what we want and the skills that we have but that on the other end trauma, like true trauma, that gets in the way of our relationship with money and makes it hard to do what we want to do With our lives here is my conversation with Dr. Charissa Pizarro

Linzy: So Charissa, welcome to the podcast.

Charissa: Thank you for having me. I’m very excited to be here today.

Linzy: Yeah, I’m excited to have you here. So Charissa, in terms of what you want to focus on during this conversation together today, what are you bringing that you want us to talk about on this podcast recording?

Charissa: So I do part-time private practice, and my end goal would be to do full-time private practice and to value the services that I bring to the table for clients, all sorts of clients. I have difficulty sort of, for lack of a better word, pricing my sessions or my services, like a presentation, for example. There are some very, very deep roots that sort of, that’s connected to. So maybe unpack that a little. I know we’re, we only have a certain amount of time, but that would be great if you could, help me with that.

Linzy: Absolutely. Yeah. Cause I’m curious, you know, starting in the now, tell me about what it is about pricing. What happens to you around pricing when you’re trying to price your different offers and services? 

Charissa: So I have 20 years… Gosh, I’m so old. I have more than 20 years of experience. I’m a clinical, licensed clinical psychologist. I’m also a play therapist. And then I find myself that clients are negotiating the prices with me. I was like, okay, so we’ll leave it at X, X amount.

And it’s not the price that I deserve. And I’m very quick to say, if you can’t pay this, cause I see some people for pro bono and that’s fine, but maybe I do more of that than I should. And it financially really takes a toll on me sometimes.

Linzy: Okay. So are you… Right now you’re in part-time private practice?

Charissa: Right. And I work full-time. 

Linzy: Okay, yes. In your private practice, are you taking insurance? Are you out of pocket?

Charissa: I was taking insurance. And it wasn’t working out. Sometimes I wouldn’t get paid. I would get paid like 25 for a session. I was like, I, I can’t. Like financially, I just couldn’t. So then I took myself off the panel and I just do, I just have a set fee and the clients pay that.

Linzy: Okay. Okay. Or, or they don’t pay that, is what I’m hearing. Mm hmm. Um, I’m curious, what is the fee that you have set?

Charissa: So  I’m so proud of myself because I raised it recently. Especially after the pandemic with all this stuff that’s going on. So it was a hundred and 175… Anyway, well, what it is now, it’s for the intake, it’s 250 and then 200 for individual sessions.

Linzy: Okay. Yeah. And when you say that, you know, folks start negotiating… What is the conversations that happen? Like, is it when you start working with somebody that they’ll try to negotiate you down on the fee or, yeah. Tell me what that looks like.

Charissa: So for some people, before we start sessions, I say this is the fee… I’ll give you an example of somebody I have in mind. Oh, but I can’t pay that, Can we do this? And then I feel bad because I’m like probably overly empathic. And I was like, oh, okay, what can you pay? And you know, we’re not bartering at a store… So I end up shortchanging myself is the bottom line. 

Linzy: Sure. Yes. Okay. Okay. And of the folks that you’re working with now, how many of them are paying you your full fee?

Charissa: So I have about five, well, one of them is on Medicare, so that’s, that’s separate. So let’s say out of the four, I would say two, so 50%.

Linzy: Okay. And then the other two

Charissa: sounds like a lot when I say that.

Linzy: Well, yeah, there you go. 50%. That’s great. So the 50 percent… of the other two, I’m curious what fees have you set with them? The two that are not paying the full fee. Yeah.

Charissa: I have somebody at 125.

Linzy: Okay. Yeah.

Charissa: Which is also coincidentally almost 50%.

Linzy: Yes, that’s true.

Charissa: I didn’t realize that actually.

Linzy: Okay. One at 125 and what’s the other one? 

Charissa: There’s the two people that pay the full fee and then the other person It’s 175, I would say.

Linzy: Okay. Okay. So, still less. Closer to those two, but for you then.  I am curious. What is it that happens when somebody challenges the fee? I’m hearing there’s maybe this empathic response that comes out. What happens to you when somebody says, “Oh, I can’t pay that.”

Charissa: very, we had food, but we had very limited resources. So I know what it feels like not to be able to pay for something, and I feel like therapy everyone should have access to it. So a part of me is like, oh, I know what this is.

Let me try to help this person. But then, oftentimes in the process, as I’ve discovered, you know, throughout my 20 years, this, it sort of works against me, and I’m trying to, to work on that.

Linzy: And how does it work against you?

Charissa: Well, oftentimes I have to do three jobs… so many more clients than I would otherwise have to do, and then I deal with trauma and childhood trauma, and it takes an emotional toll on me as well. It’s a lot. It’s a lot.

Linzy: Yeah. That’s the work that I used to do as well. It’s very heavy work. You can’t just do infinite amounts of that work by any stretch.

Charissa: And sometimes I do. Because that’s what I do in my full time as well… so I’m just trauma here, trauma there. It’s terrible. I mean, I try to make light of it, but it’s, it’s hard.

Linzy: It is. It’s very heavy work and, with this Carissa tell me where do you? Want to be like as you’ve started, because I know you’ve done some work before on money, you mentioned off mic as we were chatting before, where do you want to be in terms of your private practice? How many clients you see what is that picture of a more sustainable version of this work for you? 

Charissa: In an ideal world, I would have… I don’t know, maybe five clients a day or some presentations. Yes. You know, sprinkle throughout the week and I would have enough money to vacation, 

Linzy: Okay. 

Charissa: and to be able to take that time knowing that I’m not going to get paid if I were in full-time private practice because I love to vacation…

Linzy: yes.

Charissa: And my daughter is going to college in two years, so I also need to set some money aside continue to set some money aside, but I feel like I need to set even more aside now

Linzy: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So there’s the vacation priority money for college for your daughter. Five clients a day. How many clients a week? Okay.

Charissa: I’d be okay with 20 to 25, but if I could supplement with a vacation, not a vacation, 

Linzy: Hmm. That was an interesting slip. 

Charissa:  If I could supplement with a presentation because I go to go into the schools and do presentations, I wrote a book, so that would be some nice side income. To have money to live comfortably and vacation.

Linzy: Lots of vacations, all the vacations. Okay. So 20 to 25, but I’m hearing you have this other, revenue source, or a way of getting yourself out there, which is through these presentations that you do. I’m curious, how much do you charge for a presentation?

Charissa: That’s a great question, because the last one, I sort of gave it away, and then other people in the same, it was for a school, other people in the same school were like, oh, could you come present for us? I’m like of course, why not?

Linzy: Right. Okay.

Charissa: So I don’t even know what the competition charges sometimes.

Linzy: Yeah.

Charissa: And I mean, I was doing this for my cousin. I’ll give you this price. This is a special price. This is not what I charge, which is, you know, completely true. But I wasn’t sure also what I should be charging.

Linzy: Okay. Yeah. What did you charge? Like what’s the special price?

Charissa: It was 750.

Linzy: Okay. Okay. Okay. That’s good. That’s higher than I thought you were going to say. So, I like that.

Charissa: I had started at 500 and I was like, you know, this is… It’s a lot of work.

Linzy: It is. Yes.

Charissa: then I upped it a little bit.

Linzy: Okay, okay. So this is nice because you already have built out this other way of doing your work that’s not one-on-one, right?

You have these presentations that you get to mix into your work week, which is great. Because with this, I’m hearing five clients a day. I will say, I get this little response where I’m like, five is a lot. But that’s totally about my nervous system. But it does make me curious about, for you, how you know that five a day is the right amount for you, your nervous system, and your life.

Charissa: I do not know that, but from my full-time job that I had years ago, we were required to schedule, let’s say, seven, and then five would show, and we had to do 25 a week. So that’s where I’m getting that from. That doesn’t mean that that works with my nervous system at all, given the work that I do.

Linzy: No. Yeah, and this is what I’m wondering, because we all have our capacity, we all have our sensitivities, and the work takes different things from different people. For me, when I was doing complex trauma work, I found that, actually, 16 was my cap four a day, four days a week. My partner would say that three was my cap because he could tell the difference between a three-client day and a four-client day for me.

After four clients I come home and it’s like I had a full day but now I’m tired. Three clients and I come home and I had a full day, and I have energy for other things, right? So it kind of depends on your bar, but this is something I want you to think about as we’re thinking about what you’re building,

cause then we’re going to go into what’s in the way, what do you want? What’s good for you? Cause I’m hearing you’ve had the experience of five clients a day, five days a week. That’s normal, right? That’s what you’ve been conditioned to do by your workplace. But in private practice, especially if you do want to step into full-time, you get to determine what full-time is and you get to determine what your schedule looks like.

Charissa: Linzy I love the sound of that.

Linzy: It’s good. 

Charissa: I love it!

Linzy: Yeah. Yeah. Cause I’m curious there’s this concept that I like to talk about with folks, which is your sweet spot, and your sweet spot in your clinical session. The Number of sessions that you can do that you feel like, yeah, that was a good full work day.

I don’t feel like there was a gap, right? You don’t feel like Oh, I could have seen one more. I wish I had one more client on my roster today. It’s a good full day, but you come home, and you still have gas in the tank to do your hobbies, go out with a friend, and spend some quality time with your daughter.

 There’s still energy for you and your life, right? And you still have some curiosity and spark for things outside of work. That is like the sweet spot where you’ve done the work, you feel satisfied, but you still have something left for you, and something substantial left for you. I’m curious, just checking with your gut what would be that number for you per day? Just think about a day. What’s an ideal client day where you would have the energy to enjoy life after?

Charissa: Well, right now, I do not think I enjoy the life that you’re describing and I would love to.  So, I don’t know, it might be three a day then. 

Linzy: Yeah. Okay. And when you get to the point in this work of starting to visualize how to build what you need, three is probably more of the number that you’re looking for than five per day.

Charissa: Yeah, three sounds about right. 

Charissa: Sometimes I have one person and I’m like, oh my god, I need a vacation, right now.

Linzy: Depending on the session and the content, and how close it is to your own lived experiences, and how you’re feeling that day. Yeah. The relationship, all of those things. Some sessions are very, very heavy. Yeah. Okay. So, three a day, and how many days a week would you like to be doing clinical work?

Charissa: It’d be nice if I could just do four.

Linzy: That’d be nice. Okay. Three times four. I like your smile. It’s good. It’s like you’re lightening up a little bit thinking about this. So three clients a day, four days a week, and then your presentations. How many presentations would you want to be doing?

Charissa: So, maybe, two a month?

Linzy: For some reason, that’s a number that came into my head, too. Yeah. Two per month.

It seems like one a week would be a lot. But especially as you build out more and more of those materials, there’s going to be less, You know, this starting over. You can start to repurpose materials. It’ll be easy. 

Charissa: It is a lot, A few weeks ago, I did like three in one. I need to just sleep all weekend. And I couldn’t, of course.

Linzy: Yeah. No. And that’s helpful to notice, right? Because I think, too, with our work, there’s always, again, that sweet spot of what is exciting and engaging and good, but can become too much, right? We are, we only have the capacity for so much in any given period.

Charissa: Right. And I speak so passionately, and I care so much about the topics that I’m presenting. Which is a plus, but it also takes a toll in its own right. 

Linzy: Okay. Okay. So this would be a dream scenario. And I don’t want to say dream. This is your goal scenario we’re talking about right now, which is three clients a day, four days a week, and then a presentation like twice a month. So every other week doing one of these presentations, because the presentations, too, what I’m hearing is 750 is what you charged.

This isn’t what I charged. This is the friend rate. What do you think you could conceivably charge for one of those presentations? I’m hearing you don’t know what your competition is doing. But thinking about the audience that you’re serving, the pockets that they have, what kind of money do they have to train their staff or to offer services to their community?

Charissa: Well, I saw some numbers because I was doing a little research and I thought they were a little outrageous but I’m five thousand dollars. Oh my god. I can’t charge that, but why not?  I have more credentials than some of these people who are charging .. a couple of thousand dollars, 

Linzy: Sure. Yes. Yes.

Charissa: So it’s about sort of accepting .. what I am giving them is worth 

Linzy: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So I’m seeing, hearing that in the space that you’re in, you’ve seen folks charging up to 5,000 for the kind of work that you’re doing. I like that for you. Okay. So, we’re going to.

Charissa: I like the sound of that. I’m getting so excited. I love this. I’m like 5, 000. What?

Linzy: If you think of clinical sessions, it’s like 5, 000 divided by if you were charging your full fee, 200 an hour, which you’re not entirely, that replaces 25 sessions of income.

Charissa: Oh my god.

Linzy: Yeah, I mean a presentation is in the business space we’d call more of a scaled offer where rather than one to one where one person has to pay for that hour of your time, it’s one too many, right?

You’re like serving an organization that has multi million dollar budgets or, you know, school boards or whatever, right, where it’s you are standing in a room and 50 people are getting the benefit of your knowledge, or 20 people, and that is a scaled offer, right? That’s when you get out of that just like one to one relationship into much deeper pockets, because they’re paying to train a whole department at once. So yeah, there’s a lot more opportunity there, to charge for this expertise that you’ve developed.

Charissa: I mean, it makes total sense, but when I get out there and I’m in the position to state what my fee is it’s really difficult. 

Linzy: So let’s, focus there. Tell me about what’s difficult about it. Yeah. Yeah.

Charissa: So I work, so far with people of color, and people with very limited resources, so that’s hence the scaling of the private fee but the presentations are something newer and it’s also to people of color, but they do have deep pockets. They do have a budget, I could present for 120 children with a super personalized presentation. I’m like, why did I just charge them 750? What was I thinking? But there’s a part of me that, that can’t get past that.

Linzy: Yes. And what can’t you get past? What’s coming up?

Charissa: Well, we were talking before we started, I have a lot of my upbringing. As I mentioned before, limited resources, but intergenerationally I come from the Dominican Republic. We had a dictatorship from 1930 to 1961. And there was genocide, there was torture, you name it, it was there.

Now, when I did my dissertation for school, I sort of found out how people survived, because I interviewed people who survived this dictatorship. And one of the things that I was shocked and found out was that poor people were sort of favored, and that is one of how they survived.

And when I made this connection, it was like, the light bulb went off. There were fireworks. This is what I’m dragging with me and I do this work with clients. I’m like this is severe money trauma.

Charissa: Sort of survival versus finances.

Linzy: Yeah. Or survival versus living or thriving, right? Because what I’m hearing is in that dictatorship, if you were, small in a certain sense, right? If you weren’t threatening, I’m going to assume there were all sorts of political… I don’t even know what to call it. Toxicity is too light of a word, but you know, you wouldn’t want to be noticeable, right?

You want to stay under the radar, not a threat to anybody, you know, like barely getting by yourself, get ignored and therefore your life is spared. Am I, am I understanding that?

Charissa: Yeah, right. Very very much so 

Linzy: so. I’m curious, when you think about that now, what do you notice is happening for you? Thinking about that, small is safe. Small keeps you alive.

Charissa: It’s I mean you were describing it. And although I’ve done so much research on this, I was like, oh my god, she hit the nail on the head there. That’s sort of what I’m doing. I’m staying small, not being noticeable. I don’t even do any advertising.

Linzy: Right.

Charissa: It’s so parallel. I mean, I said it was deep, but it’s a lot deeper than I thought. Yes and thinking about this, Charissa, to maybe trace this a little bit in your own life, this idea, this strategy that staying small is how you survive. Did you see your parents or folks in the generation above you living this strategy, or how do you think you inherited it?

That’s a very interesting question. I’m a single mom. My mom was a single mom. My grandparents were together, and they’re the ones who experienced the dictatorship firsthand. But of course, you know, trauma gets passed down from generation to generation. So how did I learn it? I mean, I don’t know the exact mechanism. And there’s like, also the gender role, right? Because my grandmother was a huge role model for me. But she very much stayed invisible sometimes. And my grandfather, as a male, you know, patriarch, got the light. So I don’t know how I got all that. But I know that during the dictatorship, and I think in general in my family, and in my culture, it was also about staying quiet. I mean the same thing: staying small, staying quiet. That’s what we learned to do. 

Linzy: One question that always comes to mind for me, and I’m sure this is a question you’ve probably asked many times being a trauma therapist, is, you know, looking at your situation now, like zooming out and taking some perspective, what is different about your life now than your grandparent’s life under that dictatorship?

Charissa: I mean, fortunately for me, I’m not surviving,  it’s that my life is not on the line like theirs was… So I don’t need that coping which I am clutching and holding onto. So I need to find a way to let go.

Linzy: Yeah. Yeah. And if you think about letting that go, because this is a strategy that your grandparents needed, right? And all the folks of their generation needed… So it had utility, right? It had utility two generations ago. It’s inherited, right? These things we live and breathe it. Who knows, as you said, what the exact mechanism is, whether you absorbed stories or whether it’s biological trauma, but if you think about the idea of letting it go like you had this visual of clutching, right? So if you think about that release of just gently letting it go, what happens to you?

Charissa: I got a little, my body got a little tense when you said sort of let go. These are things that are so deeply ingrained. That’s a good question. I know I need to let go, but how? And what is the strategy to do that? And just talking to you, I’m having all these insights Simultaneously. But there is no use for that, and that’s something that I have to sort of take in. And I know that’ll take time, that I don’t have use for those coping mechanisms.

Linzy: No, I mean, there’s that, that piece of, Another kind of trauma phrase is like, you know, the conditions have changed just catching up, letting that part of you catch up because other parts of, you know, this doesn’t make any sense. I have all this experience. I have 20-plus years of expertise.

You know, I need the money. I need to pay for college. There are lots of parts of you that know that this doesn’t make sense, but the part of you that’s clutching it is slowly letting that part catch up to life now. And what is different about your life now than your grandparent’s life, right? And why that strategy isn’t needed at this moment.

Charissa: It will take a lot to sort of let that simmer if that’s even the right word. Yeah, cause it’s been, that was like 60, 70 years ago, and here I am sort of living a piece of it. This is a testament to the strength of the trauma, but okay, let’s let go of the trauma.

Linzy: Yes. I mean, this may be one of these moments where the way out is through, right? So there are two sides, I think to money in general, and one is the first part that we started talking about, which is the numbers to start. What are the numbers you need?

You know, what is possible here? You know, and we can play with those numbers even a little bit more. That’s that informational piece. That’s logic. That’s the possibility. That’s the beauty of math, I would say. Probably have a hard time getting most of the folks that listen to me on board with that.

But, the other side is this, Folks would call it mindset. That’s a very catch-all term. It is the mindset, but this is trauma. This is real trauma, right? This is intergenerational trauma. This is your family surviving a dictatorship and genocide, right? And that’s not something that, I think we’re often able to just shift, you know, through, cognitive knowledge. This might be worth taking to your trauma therapy.

Charissa: Yes, I agree. I just didn’t realize. This is so deep.

Linzy: Yeah, it is. And what I’m visualizing right now as we’re talking is that’s the bottom-up work to do, right? Which you can do with a therapist and which you can do in your other ways of healing and shifting that, you’ve developed for yourself. And then there’s the more top-down learning to getting your brain online, which is like figuring out what numbers are possible for you and what you want your week to look like.

And if you did step into owning your expertise and saying I charged 5 000 a workshop. I’ve been doing this work for 20-plus years. This is going to blow your socks off. Trust me, the best investment you’re gonna make all year, right? Developing the clarity of what you need, and a little bit of fake it till you make it, and seeing that people will. These two things meet in the middle, right? That is like deep work and the kind of logical strategic business part, to make real change in how you experience your business. And also what’s possible in your life, because I’m hearing there are lots of things that you want, mostly vacations.

Charissa: Yes, you heard me right.

Linzy: Is this survival mechanism going to get in the way of that?

Charissa: Right. And people back then didn’t have those luxuries. Those vacations. And it’s okay for me to have them.

Linzy: Yeah, I mean, something that I think about sometimes is… I bet they would have loved them.

Charissa: Oh, for sure.

Linzy: Right? They didn’t have them. It doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t have loved to go on an amazing trip somewhere and see the world or, you know, I think sometimes it’s easy for us to look at the low bar and think that because the bar has been low, that it should keep staying low. But the reality is everybody would enjoy going on trips, having a home that’s safe and clean, and being able to eat good food. These are things that everybody should have access to, right? The fact that folks throughout history or folks in the world right now don’t have access doesn’t mean that it’s not a wonderful thing that you should have access to or that they would also love to have access to. They’re just good things. So Charissa, coming towards the end of our conversation, we have scratched the surface. I’m curious, what are you taking away coming to the end of our time?

Charissa: I am taking away that I need more therapy, other things, but that doing the math is going to… And I’m not good at math, by the way… doing the math and planning and setting some goals and putting some strategies into place is something that I’m going to need guidance with, too, but it’s something that I need to do.

Linzy: Those are skills, right? That’s the piece around just developing the skills to be able to play with numbers and understand how they work together. To understand what I want. To take 12 weeks of vacation every year. How do I set up a system that allows me to do that, which is completely doable, right? I teach that. Because that is the machine, that’s the strategy part that supports you in being a happy, healthy human. 

Charissa: You said 12 weeks and my heart just jumped for joy.

Linzy: Did it? Yeah. Okay. There you go.

Charissa: At the thought of taking 12 weeks!

Linzy: I think, I think that’s what you need. And I mean, these things like travel… I’m going on a trip in a couple of weeks with some of my business friends, actually, for my birthday. I’m going to London and Iceland, and the levity that brings knowing that that’s coming,

and we’ve been texting about how much we’re going to drink so much fucking tea. We’re all so excited to go to London and go to the hot springs. If you are someone who enjoys travel and vacations it does bring so much lightness and wonder and joy to life, and the cost of those things is not necessarily that high when we are strategic and we build it into the way that we run our business. So I totally, totally see 12 weeks for you, especially with your 20-plus years of expertise that you’re about to step out and own in the world.

Charissa: Ooh, that sounds a little scary, but yes, doable. 

Linzy: Well, Charissa, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.

Charissa: Thank you for having me. It was a true joy.

Linzy: This conversation with Charissa today, which I so appreciate her having, cause it’s a vulnerable conversation to have, highlights something that I think so many folks in the coaching space, or financial space, miss, which is that some of our barriers around money, some of our quote-unquote mindset challenges,

are trauma, true trauma. Not like a little bit of trauma, but in this case, you know, deep intergenerational trauma that was very much about your life being in danger and what you had to do to survive. I always encourage folks, if you notice that you have really deep trauma, if there’s like a deep family of origin stuff, childhood stuff, things around safety and survival and self-worth that is hard for you to think your way through and that doesn’t just start to shift because you notice it, that is the opportunity for taking that to therapy.

And it does not have to be a specific financial therapist. It’s about going to a trauma therapist, or whatever modalities work for you, somatic therapy, to let your body let go of these things. Cause once we take the time to take care of that trauma, let our bodies let go, let our nervous systems and brains catch up to the present, then it is so much easier to learn.

You can still do this work simultaneously. You can still, of course, work on your trauma and learn skills, and think about what you want and own your gifts, a little fake it till you make it at the same time. But certainly, in some cases, that trauma work is essential to actually being able to heal your relationship with money.

So I’m super excited for Charissa. The work that she’s doing for other folks, the work that she’s planning to do for herself. She’s one of those people that I would love to hear from in a year or two about how things are going. If you would like to get my support and work with me, the way to learn about what I do is through my masterclass, the Four Step Framework to Get Your Business Finances Totally in Order.

This masterclass will walk you through the three biggest mistakes that keep therapists from getting clarity on their business finances. We’ll talk about how I went from just getting by in my private practice to thriving financially. If you finally want to take control of your private practice finances, then check out the masterclass.

The link is in the show notes, and that is also your gateway to get an invitation for Money Skills for Therapists, which is my signature six-month program where you get my coaching and support to make real changes around money. So you can check out the link for the four-step framework to get your business finances totally in order in the show notes.

You can also follow me on Instagram at Money Nuts and Bolts. And of course, as always, I humbly request that if you are enjoying the podcast, leave a review on Apple podcasts, it is the best way for folks to find the podcast and be part of these conversations. Thanks so much for listening today. 

[00:00:00] Linzy: Hello and welcome back to another Feelings and Finances episode of the Money Skills for Therapists podcast. These are the episodes where I answer your questions, the therapists and health practitioners and coaches who listen to the money skills for therapists podcast. Today we have a question from Fran. Here is Fran’s question.

[00:00:20] Fran: Hi, Linzy. I have a quick question for you. I use YNAB for both my personal and business expenses, and my personal expenses. I have enough money saved for, you know, whatever, six to twelve months, if I was to be out of work. So the question I have is, I have no idea how much of a buffer I need in my business account.

[00:00:49] Is there a particular calculation for that? All my expenses except for my salary, I’m not quite sure how to come to a reasonable number there. Thanks so much.

[00:01:02] Linzy: Well, Fran, it is lovely to hear your voice again. Fran is a graduate of Money Skills for Therapists. It’s been a few years now. So Fran, a couple of things. First of all, I’m very excited to hear that you are still using YNAB in your personal finances and your business finances, and I’m very excited for you that you have that 6 to 12 month buffer in your personal finances.

[00:01:22] So, that is great. Now, this piece about having a buffer in the business, how much of a buffer to have in the business. So the general guideline for having a buffer in your business is about two to three months of operating expenses. So as you say, that is the money that it takes to run the business without your salary and taxes. 

[00:01:41] It’s just those keeping the lights on expenses. So your clinic management software. Especially if you have rent, you know, rent is something that doesn’t go away if we can’t work. So having two to three months of rent set aside… All of those obligations that if for some reason you can’t work, let’s say you break your foot… Well, you could still work if you broke your foot.

[00:02:00] That’s one of the nice things about being a therapist. Let’s say you end up in the hospital for a little while and you can’t work. The things that you’ll have to pay anyways that, you know, you can’t take a break on, you can’t tell your landlord, “Oh, sorry, I’m not working this month, so I can’t pay rent.”

[00:02:13] You’re going to want to have a couple months of rent in that account. Two months is a good place to start. I generally aim for two months. Folks who are more conservative, in the sense of being more risk averse, want more security, might do three months. I would say no more than that. So if you look at your average operating expenses for, you’re going to have a great picture there, Fran, for, you know, let’s say the last year or six months.

[00:02:36] And you see that on average, it costs you 500 a month to run your business. Then your goal would be to build up a thousand to 1,500 in the business to cover off the business’s obligations if you can’t work. What I’m hearing is that you already have money saved up at home for your personal salary. So.

[00:02:56] It’s the therapist’s choice whether or not you’d also want to save some money in the business as a salary backup in case you can’t work for a little bit. You know, you could have that money in the business as well, but it would be redundant to what you’ve already got at home.

[00:03:08] Basically, you just need some money, an emergency fund somewhere. And it sounds like you really have that quite thoroughly covered at home, so it probably wouldn’t be to your advantage to also have some money for your paycheck in the business, but what I would encourage, Fran, if you don’t have it already, is to have that salary system going in the business.

[00:03:26] So there’s a buffer for your salary, which means that you get paid that regular amount every month. And this is in module five of Money Skills for Therapists. So if you’re not working this strategy yet, I would encourage you to add this in because this is a type of buffer in the business, which is making sure that you have extra money in your salary fund,

[00:03:41] so that if you have a month where you work a little bit less, you can still get paid the same amount for the business. Or so you can take vacation and still get paid the same amount from the business. That’s that regular paycheck system, which is another kind of buffer.

[00:03:53] It’s a salary buffer that allows you to have that regularity no matter what your month looks like. But in terms of more of that emergency fund, the I’m not working and I need to have money saved up, then that’s two to three months in the business. And that’s it. That’s a very straightforward question. I hope that that helps Fran.

[00:04:10] It’s lovely to hear from you again. If you have a question for me that you’d like answered on one of these episodes of Feelings and Finances, super easy, you just click on the link in the show notes. It’ll take you to the podcast page, and you’ll see a little box saying, “Do you have a question for Linzy?,” or something like that, and you can just push record, and leave your question for me, and in a case like this, it might be a very short, clear answer, that will hopefully set you on your way to continue getting your finances working for you in your private practice.

[00:04:39] Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today.

[00:00:00] Traci: For therapists especially, we pour into other people, that’s just what we do. And sometimes we neglect to remember that we are people too, and we have to pour into ourselves. So yes, you are deserving to have the life that you want.

[00:00:29] Linzy: Welcome to the Money Skills for Therapists podcast, where we answer this question: how can therapists and health practitioners go from money shame and confusion to feeling calm and confident about their finances and get money working for them in both their private practice and their lives? I’m your host, Linzy Bonham, therapist turned money coach, and creator of the course Money Skills for Therapists. 

[00:01:05] Linzy: Hello, and welcome back to the podcast. Today, my guest is Dr. Traci Williams. Traci is a financial therapist. She’s a clinical psychologist. And today we dig into financial therapy. What is financial therapy? What does she see in her, her practice around financial therapy? What are all the factors that can influence our relationship with money?

[00:01:28] And I get pretty specific with Traci asking her about exactly what financial therapy looks like because as a therapist, I have a big respect and appreciation for therapy, and financial therapy is pretty new. We talk about it’s a pretty new type of therapy in the space. It’s kind of a baby therapy modality.

[00:01:46] It’s been around for about 10 years. And, today Traci and I dig into what that looks like.

[00:01:51] We talk about the stories that we all absorb around money and what to do to start to shift your relationship with money, shift your mindset, and grow your skills. 

[00:02:02] And since we’re talking about our relationship to money today and all those emotional pieces, I want to mention my free mini-course, The Secret to Getting Unstuck in Your Finances. So if you find that some of the ways that Traci and I talking about today, you feel stuck when it comes to managing your business finances, you know you want to do something about it, but you just kind of never get around to it,

[00:02:23] The key is that your relationship with money needs to change. So if you’re ready to shift your mindset and get rid of those negative beliefs and emotions around money, you can check out my free mini-training, The Secret to Getting Unstuck in Your Finances. This is a quick and powerful first step to building a new relationship with money that is essential to getting your finances in order.

[00:02:41] It’s a series of short videos that walk you through step by step as well as a worksheet to get you in touch with your relationship with money. You can check it out for free using the link in the show notes. That’s The Secret to Getting Unstuck in Your Finances. Mini training. Here’s my conversation with Dr. Traci Williams.

[00:02:58] So Traci, welcome to the podcast. 

[00:03:01] Traci: Hi, it’s nice to be here. 

[00:03:02] Linzy: It’s nice to have you here. I’m excited to have you on the podcast today for a few reasons. One of them is that you are a financial therapist, which is still a pretty small world. Does that feel fair or accurate to say that it’s still a pretty niche little space, financial therapy?

[00:03:22] Traci: Yeah, in terms of the lifespan of therapy as a profession, it’s been a long time, right? And then financial therapy has only really existed as its niche for about the past 10 years or so and has gained a lot of traction over the past couple of years. So yeah, we’re babies if you look at the grand scale.

[00:03:45] Linzy: Sure, in the grand scale of things… which is funny though, because when you just said therapy has been around for a long time, I was like, has it, though? I feel like all of this… all the stuff that we’re doing is a hundred years old or even just only slightly more. So, yeah… 

[00:03:59] Traci:  In the way that we know of it.

[00:04:01] Linzy: Yeah. So financial therapy is relatively new, and it’s such a rich area of work because I know for myself, that when I was in therapy, my kind of thought for myself was when I burned out of therapy, which was my plan… I wanted to be, at that time some financial therapists do bankruptcy coaching.

[00:04:20] It was this very specific kind of financial coaching. I don’t even know if that’s the right word for it, but it was very much about helping folks who had gone through bankruptcy, get a budget going, very practical kind of stuff. And that’s what I remember existing about 10 years ago,

[00:04:34] When I was coming into the therapy space as a baby therapist, financial therapy was something else. I think it’s something that didn’t exist when I started. So can you tell folks who are listening, what makes financial therapy financial therapy?

[00:04:49] Traci: The way that I describe it, financial therapy is where we help people shift how they think about, feel about, and behave with money. And that can look very different for different people, depending on their financial situation.

[00:05:06] A lot of how we behave with money is tied to our childhood experiences with money in our families of origin, the experiences that we have had growing up with money. A financial therapist can be a financial professional, a financial planner, or a financial advisor, who has gotten training in mental health as well as financial health, and financial therapy.

[00:05:36] Or it could be someone like me. I’m a psychologist who has additional training in personal finance and financial therapy. 

[00:05:46]  Linzy:Interesting. I didn’t realize that there are those two avenues in the profession. I assumed coming from therapy myself, that it would be therapists who have that, like, full therapeutic training who then get this additional training, right, this focus on money.

[00:06:01] But you’re saying that folks, who are financial professionals can also get certified going the other way? How much training is that for them to go from being a financial professional to being a financial therapist? 

[00:06:13] Traci: Well, it’s kind of about the same training that it took for me to understand how money works, and wills and estates, and personal financial management.

[00:06:23] So I think it’s about the same on both sides. 

[00:06:25] Linzy: Right. Yeah. And is it kind of like a diploma size of work? How much training did you have to do to go from being, in your case, a psychologist to a financial therapist? 

[00:06:37] Traci: Yeah, there are a couple of paths that you can take. So I did the certification in financial therapy through the Financial Therapy Association. That is a self-study program. They say that it usually takes about six to nine months to do. It includes reading textbooks, and college-level textbooks. As well as a video series that they have. And then you have an exam and you have to show that you’ve done a certain number of hours of contact, and so on.

[00:07:07] That’s one route that people can take. Another is the accredited financial counselor program. And that has its requirements. Some people do a master’s degree in financial social work, or behavioral finance, or a diploma, and they go about it that way. So there are a couple of avenues to get there.

[00:07:33] Linzy: Yes, I feel that’s very therapisty at the end of the day. There are like 12 ways to get to this one place and kind of do very similar work to the person next to you, but slightly differently. With the work that you do then, Traci, I’m curious, what do you see as all the different factors that come into influencing how people act the way that they do with money?

[00:07:55] Traci: Yeah, that is a complex question to break down and answer. The way that I think about it, personal finance is personal. Literally every single person on this planet touches money at some point in time, but each of us has such a unique experience in our own lives and with money. So our experiences, our relationship with money, are going to be unique.

[00:08:24] For some people, it could look like, I experienced a traumatic event growing up that impacted our family financially, whether that is housing insecurity or food insecurity. If you think of the boomer generation, if you think about people who’ve experienced war, all of those things impact you financially.

[00:08:50] It can also look like, on the other end of the spectrum, having a windfall of money, and all of a sudden you’re very anxious about what to do with all of that money, and what it means for you to have that money when the people around you might not. It could look like people who are struggling with getting out of and staying out of debt, who are living paycheck to paycheck.

[00:09:17] We know that about half of Americans who have households of 100,000 or more are living paycheck to paycheck, which is a surprising statistic for a lot of people. And so those tend to be the conversations that I am having most often.

[00:09:36] Linzy: Yeah, and I mean that generational piece I think is so helpful to name because as you’re talking about, you know, folks who’ve gone through war, you know, there’s so many impacts and migration like there are all these things that deeply impact folks’ finances, and what I see, and I’m curious your experience with this, too, is like that also gets passed on to next generations.

[00:09:57] Sometimes folks are carrying these experiences, these traumas that are the generation up, right? It’s the previous generation’s experience of money. I’m curious, how often do you see that where somebody comes in to work with you, and as you start to untangle their relationship with money, there is that kind of generational legacy stuff that they’re experiencing?

[00:10:20] Traci: Most people don’t realize where their stuff comes from. And so I might ask, well, you’re struggling with this aspect of your personal finances. Where does that come from for you? And usually, the answer is, “Well, I don’t know.” Because we don’t realize that the experiences that we had in our families of origin or the conversations that were had around us have shaped how we think and how we behave.

[00:10:49] I’m a cognitive behavioral focused therapist and I have a specialization in family systems. So I usually ask questions, okay, if you are anxious about looking at your bills, for instance, when you are looking at your bills, what are some of the things that you’re thinking?

[00:11:11] The thoughts that you’re having around your bills… Do those sound familiar to you? Is there anyone who said something similar? And that usually starts to connect the dots for people. And then they come to realize that, oh yeah, there is this piece that I didn’t realize. Also, just looking at family history, and using genograms is something that some financial therapists do to figure out if there are patterns that we may not recognize.

[00:11:41] Linzy: Absolutely. And I think with money, it makes so much sense to be doing that digging because it makes you think too about the silence around money. And I’m going to kind of develop this thought out loud, but we absorb and inherit all these things from a family of origin, as you say just things that we might have overheard or observed.

[00:12:00] There’s this saying of kids are excellent observers and lousy interpreters. They take in everything, but they’ll make meaning of it that sometimes it’s like not at all what was going on or not what their parents would want them to think or believe. But, all of these messages that we absorb.

[00:12:14] And yet, what I’ve noticed is there’s such a lack of actual conversation around money that rarely have we had the opportunity to realize, Oh, this thing that I’m doing, this is what it is, first of all, and this is where it’s coming from and this is why it was there in the first place. There’s so much silence around this aspect of being a human and of our lives where we might Be starting to have more conversations around other parts of emotional well-being, but money is still something that usually we don’t have a lot of language around and we haven’t talked about with anybody.

[00:12:47] Traci: Yeah, and that makes me think of my graduate training. You mentioned kids hearing things and not necessarily being able to interpret things, but absorbing the message. How many people have graduate training where you heard things like “therapists don’t make a lot of money,” or “We don’t get in this for the money; we get in this because we care.”

[00:13:11] When I was in grad school. I heard on multiple occasions about having a bleeding heart. And so those messages then get internalized and can affect your money mindset, even as you’re developing your own business. 

[00:13:29] Linzy: Yeah. Absolutely. And something I see as well as those messages are usually layered on kind of some predispositions we probably already have to be going into that work in the first place, right?

[00:13:40] Like already folks who are going into the therapy space are caring people who want to help others. And then, yeah, there’s that hum around you, right? That message, which is about money. And yet often, I would say in graduate school, they don’t say that it’s about money. But it’s like this, just like real emphasis on doing it from the goodness of your heart, sacrificing yourself sometimes, making up for systemic injustice and historical injustice.

[00:14:07] It’s all these things, which at the end of the day, mean you can’t get paid well for this work, or you can’t ask to get paid well for this work, because there’s always other more important things. So to me that seems like there’s still almost a silence there. But we know what they’re saying.

[00:14:20] Yes. We know the subtext under the text. 

[00:14:22] Traci: Yeah. For some people, that internalization can lead to experiencing guilt around charging what you deserve to charge, or, for people who want to go into private pay practice, experiencing guilt and shame or even rejection from peers or just in general starting to make money in your practice and not knowing how to manage that money or what that money means to you.

[00:14:51] Linzy: Yes, I think that these are the all too common experiences that we get. Unfortunately. Coming out of the education that we’ve done. So I’m curious to hear about, some of the transformations that you walk through with your clients. Because I was a trauma therapist. That was my orientation.

[00:15:08] So like trauma, EMDR, parts work. I guess I kind of know how I work with folks. Still. I know we’re, you know, we all have our go-to interventions, right, and ways of framing things. I’m curious for you, coming from a CBT lens and family systems, where is often the end goal that you’re going with folks?

[00:15:29] How do folks know, and how do you know when they’re done their work with you? What does it look like in your work with a client? 

[00:15:36] Traci: Yeah, I always start with that magical question. So I wave my magic wand and things are better in your life. What’s different? And from there, we shape goals.

[00:15:49] Usually with my financial therapy clients, they want to improve their financial situation. For them, that might mean having a plan for reducing their debt or paying off their debt entirely. It might mean having a budget in place and a plan for saving for their future. It might mean, being better able to communicate around money, whether it is with just other people in general or in a relationship.

[00:16:24] So I do have some couples that I am working with around that. And so we have very specific goals. But for us to get there, we do have to take a look at the emotional side to the equation, as well as the thoughts that are getting in their way.

[00:16:44] Linzy: Yeah, and I think that’s the beauty, right, of having those therapeutic skills with financial stuff because I think so often folks have had the experience of sitting down and trying to make a budget.

[00:16:55] And it’s so, so hard, or they make a budget and then they never look at it again, or trying to set a goal to, as you say, like pay down debt or think about maybe paying their student debt sooner, and they just don’t get there. Like it doesn’t work. 

[00:17:09] Traci: Yes, exactly. And they don’t realize why it’s not working and from my perspective, It’s likely not working for a reason and so part of my job is to figure out what that reason is. 

[00:17:23] Linzy: So in your work with folks, and I’m asking these questions partially because I also want folks who are listening to start to think about, could I benefit from financial therapy, right?

[00:17:31] Because I do education. I have courses, I’m obviously bringing my therapeutic knowledge into the work that I do but doing actual therapy around money, I think is something that most people would benefit from. Right? Just like we benefit from all types of therapy. So, you know, I’m curious to hear more about the work.

[00:17:50] So folks who are listening can also think about this: is financial therapy for me? How long does your work with somebody tend to look like? How long would a course of financial therapy tend to be? 

[00:18:01] Traci: Yeah, so from what I have seen thus far if you stick with the traditional expectation around CBT, about 8 to 12 sessions, that seems to fit for most people. I think financial coaching can be effective for people who just want something that is a set plan.

[00:18:22] This is what we’re working on. This is what we’re doing but if you want a deeper dive, then it will take longer so I recommend one or the other, depending on what people are showing up with and what their expectations are. 

[00:18:36] Linzy: Yeah, certainly. Sometimes I think we want the shortcut.

[00:18:39] I see this with sometimes the folks that I work with where it’s like, but I just want to be able to do the thing. I just want to be able to finally like spreadsheet or budget, but it’s kind of the way out is through, right? So depending on what you have to go through, sometimes making space, either in your existing therapy, if you have a therapist who’s able to help you hold these financial pieces alongside the emotional pieces, or with a financial therapist, when you say eight to 12 sessions, Traci, I’m actually like, that’s great.

[00:19:04] That’s no time at all. If you think about the impact that it has on your life, because as you say, everyone touches money at some point in their life if they’re not touching money, then possibly they’re being financially abused, which is a different kind of financial issue, right, but it’s such a part of all of our lives.

[00:19:20] And something that I’ve been connecting with more and more lately is when we do this work, whatever that work looks like, whatever we need to be doing for our situation, you make that change forever. Right? Like that is a going forward. This is the new way; these are the new skills; this is the new relationship.

[00:19:36] And even if you do find yourself reverting into old things, you’re able to be like, oh, there’s that thing again. Okay, I know what to do when this thing comes up. I’m a big fan of change. I feel like that’s a prerequisite to being a therapist, but it’s so powerful to do this work and do it as soon as you can because then you’re going to have the effects of that for decades.

[00:19:54] Traci: Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. 

[00:19:57] Linzy: So, for folks who are listening, I’m curious from your perspective, if they know that they struggle with money mindset issues, negative stories, they’ve had some of these negative experiences that you’re talking about of financial precarity, trauma around money, where do you suggest people start to shift their money mindset to having more positive relationships?

[00:20:19] Traci: Yeah. The Financial Therapy Association has a directory. And so if you want to work with a financial therapist, that’s a good place to start. Folks on the directory have all types of experiences and backgrounds, so you want to make sure that it is someone who is appropriately trained and Is a good fit for you.

[00:20:42] That’s one. Two, if you’re not really in the space to be in financial therapy right now, or it’s not within your budget, or whatever the case might be, there are things that you can start to do. So you can start to look at, okay, my financial picture: what exactly does that look like? And that’s the absolute basics.

[00:21:06] So how much money am I making? A lot of people don’t know how much money they’re making. How much money am I spending? Where is my spending going? Can I look at the last three months of my bank statements to see where that money is going? I like to encourage people to dream. So if I dream, and I look towards my future self, five years, 10 years, 15 years from now.

[00:21:33] What do I want that future self to be doing? And what do I need to do with my money now to get there? Those are some simple things that people can do to start to make small changes. 

[00:21:47] Linzy: Sometimes, I gotta help people understand the difference between a picture of how they’re just getting by and a picture of their dream client. I ask them to think about what they really want and what their ideal client would look like, instead of just settling for whatever comes along.

[00:22:08] What brings you joy? Sometimes we’ve fallen so far into overworking or believing that we’re never going to have money or we have so much stress that we can’t even imagine what that positive picture looks like. But I feel I’ve recently become a little bit born again around if you do some hard work now. It’s amazing what can happen later, and not kind of giving in and being honest with yourself about what you want.

[00:22:33] Because I think it’s easy to give up.

[00:22:35] Traci: Yeah. Yeah. I think, well, two things. One, we live in a society where instant gratification is embedded in the things that we do. And so we are channeled towards looking at what we want right now and getting the things thing that we want right now. We’re not thinking about the future. The decisions that you make with your money today most definitely impact what your future is going to look like, but you’re fighting against a society that wants you to spend right now.

[00:23:07] So that’s one thing. And the other piece is that for therapists, especially, we pour into other people. That’s just what we do. And sometimes we neglect to remember that we are people, too, and we have to pour into ourselves. So yes, you are deserving to have the life that you want. 

[00:23:31] You know, we are in such an instant gratification culture, and everything is so easy. Sometimes if I need something that I know I can’t get locally and I look on Amazon, I’m like, this will be here tomorrow morning!

[00:23:42] How is this even possible? Like it’s like somebody is taking it off the warehouse shelf before I’ve even pushed send, you know it’s incredible. But it does mean that we are so used to now not experiencing kind of like friction or being able to be like, yes, I’m putting this in now for this bigger thing later.

[00:24:02] But with money, that’s how it works, right? We do have that cumulative effect that happens from what we’re doing today adds up for tomorrow. Like it compounds over time. 

[00:24:11] Traci: Yeah. Yeah. Whether that is Yeah. Compounding debt or compounding assets. Yeah. 

[00:24:18] Linzy: True. Yes. Compounding works in both directions.

[00:24:20] And can you speak to that a little bit for folks who are like, wait, what is she talking about?

[00:24:24] Traci: Yeah. So basically, like I said, everything that you do with your money now impacts you in the future. Let’s just say you have debt on your credit card. You’ve been spending on Amazon, going to Target five times a week, and buying coffee 12 times a week.

[00:24:40] I don’t know. And you’re doing your minimum payments, you’re not necessarily paying your card all the way off over time because of your interest rate, the amount that you end up paying off, in the long run, is so much bigger than it would have been if you were able to just pay it off when you immediately made those charges.

[00:25:04] And what ends up happening, the cost to you of having to pay off an even larger amount means that you are sacrificing the benefit of having your money go to work for you and compound and grow over time for you. So that’s just an example. 

[00:25:23] Linzy: Yeah. And I think that’s one of those great examples of understanding how the system that we have to navigate works helps, right?

[00:25:33] I’ve seen peoples social media posts before saying like, well, thank goodness I took quadratics in high school for this quadratic season, you know, during tax time. Cause it’s like, we learn all these things that are so abstract

[00:25:45] That, you know, help us learn how to learn, but aren’t practical. You don’t need to do quadratic equations in your adult life, but you certainly need to be able to think about, Do I pay this debt down first? How quickly do I want to pay it down? If I put money away instead, is that more strategic?

[00:26:00] We do have to make all these types of decisions, and yet we’re not taught how these things work. So part of what I’m hearing from you is like just starting to understand some of the workings of the system that we’re in, is a big part of starting to be able to make different decisions, better decisions.

[00:26:18] Traci: Yeah, the people who I see have an advantage have had someone show them the ropes around financial literacy. Just that knowledge of how money works can mean so much for what your financial picture looks like. And it is possible to learn. I let people know that I am an alien from another planet when it comes to the world of personal finance.

[00:26:44] I had to learn this language just like maybe you do. And so I know what it is like to start from scratch and be completely confused. And it is possible to learn.

[00:26:56] 

[00:26:56] Linzy: Absolutely. And I think it’s really helpful for folks to hear that because sometimes the story that I hear people tell is like, I’m not a money person.

[00:27:04] No, I’m not good at math. I’ve never been a money person. I’ve always been the spender or like my partner often, hopefully knock on wood, they partnered with somebody who is on top of managing money. So as a couple, there’s kind of being some management, but there can be that really fixed idea of I don’t know how to do this.

[00:27:20] Traci: This that used to be me. Yeah. Believe it or not. 

[00:27:23] Linzy: I’m curious. What changed for you? 

[00:27:27] Traci: Yeah. So I used to be the, I’m not a money person. The Klontz brothers, they are psychologists, they’re financial psychologists, and they came up with the idea of money scripts. There are four scripts; we fall into one of the categories.

[00:27:43] There is no good or bad. They just are. And so for me, I was money-avoidant. That was my script growing up. I became a psychologist because I wanted to help other people. The whole thing that we’ve talked about; is not in it for making money. And during the pandemic, I had an eye-opening experience as a therapist.

[00:28:06] At that time, I was working at the Children’s Hospital locally, and I was helping my families with not only their kids’ development but also how to get food and rent assistance. And I had some families who were riding out the pandemic shutdown in their vacation beach homes. So I was seeing two very different ends of the spectrum.

[00:28:30] And it made me realize that this money thing, it’s not just about dollars and cents. It is about so much more. We saw what insecurity looked like up close and personal. And it shifted, for me, into wanting to better understand my own money picture and making sure that I had things set up in place to take care of myself and my family.

[00:28:57] Linzy: And for you what was the first step in doing that, once you decided that you were gonna learn these things, even though this hadn’t been part of your identity before? 

[00:29:08] Traci: Yeah. Well, luckily for me, one of my closest friends, he’s a financial advisor. And so I immediately asked him, I was like, what do I do?

[00:29:17] And then I found the online financial personal finance community. One really good resource. There is a women’s personal finance Facebook group, and it’s really large. And I love that they exist, and I’ll be working with them next month. I joined and started reading… there were some really good intro to personal finance books that I recommend regularly.

[00:29:44] And that was my introduction. And I took it from there. 

[00:29:48] Linzy: Yeah, beautiful. I mean, there is so much information out there on personal finance it’s a universe unto itself. And I’ve even found for myself as I’m playing with some mortgage pay down strategies and stuff and I really do feel like I’m playing.

[00:30:01] I’m like, what does this feel like? Do I like this? Does this feel like a good place to put my money? Would I rather put it somewhere else? Just on mortgage pay down, there are so many people on YouTube doing education on different strategies and did it like, it’s just an almost overwhelming amount of resources out there.

[00:30:18] But certainly you could dip your toe into any little topic and have so much learning. Disclaimer, if you’re watching people on YouTube, watch a few people, and make sure you’re getting solid advice. Maybe run it by a professional before you make any big moves. But yeah, there is just such a wealth of information out there now that there didn’t used to be 30 years ago if you wanted to start learning about these things.

[00:30:39] Traci: Yes, so I am on social media. I post on TikTok, and I always say in my videos to be careful who you take advice from. Don’t take it from someone’s uncle here on TikTok because not all advice is created equal. Also, I like to put the caveat that if someone is berating their audience, that is not going to be good for your mental health.

[00:31:05] So you may want to stay away from them as well. 

[00:31:07] Linzy: Yes. Yes. Social media disclaimers. Not everybody is there for your well-being. Not everybody’s there for you. Yeah, so Traci, for folks who want to find you, maybe follow you on TikTok, where can they find you and follow you online? 

[00:31:24] Traci: Yeah. So I have two companies.

[00:31:26] Healthy Wealthy Roots is my media, social media company. And so I’m on TikTok on that name. The website for that company is healthywealthyroots. org. And then my private practice is Poui Consulting, P O U I. And you can find me on there as well.

[00:31:46] Linzy: Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. 

[00:31:49] Traci: Yeah. It was so much fun.

[00:31:50] I love talking about money.

[00:32:07] Linzy: Thinking about financial therapy, it occurs to me that money is one of those taboo topics. There’s a lot of silence around money. And I think everybody listening would probably agree that we like therapy. We think that therapy is a worthwhile way to spend some time and energy in your life. And it gets me thinking a little bit, if we could each do therapy, some therapy, on each of like the taboo topics, like if we each took some time to do eight sessions of therapy about sex, eight sessions of therapy about money, maybe eight sessions of therapy around

[00:32:42] Religion or politics… I don’t know, pick your taboos, that we’d all be better off for it, just taking some time to explore and be with these things and think about what we want our relationship to be. Notice what’s happening, and do that in a way that is depthful. What I have found with money is that it’s so easy in the financial space for people to talk about money, of course, as being purely skills, like it’s just numbers, whatever, and try to skip over

[00:33:09] this piece that Traci and I were talking about today, like all the history, the trauma, the family legacies that we inherit, the beliefs, the stories. But those things really shape our relationship with money and just thinking about what Traci was saying about imagining the future that you want, I also think that these things can get in the way of actually connecting with 

[00:33:31] the life that you want and what you want money to do for you. And I think so many of us could just default into continuing doing what we’re doing because it’s what we know, and almost a poverty of imagination around what our life could look like if we had money working for us. So, so much there.

[00:33:49] Lots to dig into. Anybody who’s listening, who thinks maybe financial therapy would be for them, I think you should do it. We all would benefit from having some focused support around money from a skilled professional. So I appreciate Traci coming on the podcast today. You can find me on Instagram @moneynutsandbolts.

[00:34:10] And as always, I so appreciate your reviews on Apple Podcasts. They are the best way for other therapists and health practitioners to find the podcast and be part of these conversations. Thanks for listening today.

[00:00:00] Linzy: Hello and welcome back to another Feelings and Finances episode of the Money Skills for Therapists podcast. These short and sweet episodes answer your questions; the listeners of Money Skills for Therapists podcast, the health practitioners, therapists, coaches. These episodes are lots of fun. We just started doing them last season and I’m really enjoying them.

[00:00:23] And today we have a question from Dana. Here’s Dana’s question.

[00:00:27] Dana: Hi Linzy, it’s Dana Corr, group practice owner from Manitoba. I’m loving your Friday Feelings & Finances episodes, and I’m so grateful for another opportunity to learn from you. My question is around expenses. I feel that my relationship and mindset with money and CFO time has made such a positive shift through my time and learning in Money Skills for Therapists and Money Skills for Group Practice Owners.

[00:00:54] I’m tracking and monitoring, I’m consistently forecasting revenue and analyzing the numbers, and this is all feeling really great. What I am noticing is I don’t have the same positive interactions with expenses. At the onset of the year I budget and plan for all the business expenses, but it seems that once I have a general idea of those expenses, I disconnect and hope for the best from there,

[00:01:18] looking at those expense numbers again at the end of the year. I don’t seem to be able to track and predict or to be on top of expenses in the same way that I can with income. I tried doing a weekly projection for expenses, but it felt completely overwhelming with so much uncertainty. My expenses are really fairly consistent, so I feel like this is a more of a mindset issue.

[00:01:40] I’d love your words of wisdom on how to better manage tracking real time or projecting expenses, and how to move through this block I seem to have. Thanks so much.

[00:01:51] Linzy: Thank you so much for your question, Dana. It’s so nice to hear your voice again. As folks listening would have heard, Dana is a graduate of both Money Skills for Therapists and Money Skills for Group Practice Owners, and has this amazing practice in Manitoba. So, Dana, my first question in response to your question is getting clearer with yourself. You might already know this, but I’m not totally clear on exactly where the block or like what the problem is.

[00:02:19] So is it that with your expenses you end up overspending? Knowing you, I don’t think that you do. But is there an overspending piece that starts to come in when you don’t know your numbers? Is it more around that emotional relationship like you mentioned of a certain avoidance around your numbers?

[00:02:35] So there’s a blurriness or a not knowingness there that even though you’re really clear on your income and projecting that forward, the expenses still have this emotional weight to them. I’m going to suspect it’s more the second one, knowing you. So I’m going to dig into that side of things more. But for folks who are listening, who are not Dana, yeah, this is something to look at when you are struggling with expenses is what is the real cost of not knowing the expenses?

[00:03:01] And is it literally costing you? Often when we avoid our expense information, we end up spending much more money than we want, and we’re out of touch with what we’re spending, and it might not reflect our values. And for many of us, probably most of us, that’s where the problems with expenses lie. In your case, Dana, I would suspect, knowing you, that that’s probably not the case.

[00:03:22] So my curiosity then is, what do you notice comes up when you try to be with this part of your financial picture? Cause I’m hearing you’re doing really well being with the other parts of your financial picture. What comes up when you start to look at the expenses? I hear you tried to track them weekly, and that was overwhelming.

[00:03:37] And that makes sense to me. I think that tracking your expenses in some sort of weekly way is probably going to be overkill. I know in my own business, I don’t track my expenses weekly. On my metrics tool, which you also have, Dana,through taking Money Skills for Group Practice Owners, I see the flow of my bank account, which is going to include, you know, money has come in and money has gone out, but I don’t actually get into my expenses every week because when I did try to do that as well, I found it was just too much information and not worth the effort.

[00:04:06] As a friend of mine would say, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze, right? The effort of trying to see your numbers on a weekly basis in terms of expenses, isn’t really worth what you’re going to get out of it. But certainly having that monthly picture is really important so that you have a sense of, okay, am I on trend for what I expect my numbers to be?

[00:04:25] Have my numbers gone up? Is there something different happening here than I expect? Am I spending more than I thought? Have numbers gone down for some reason? Usually that’s not what happens with expenses, but who knows, right? So there is a piece there of being with that sounds like it’s difficult for you.

[00:04:40] And I would dig into that curiosity of: what is it about the expenses that’s hard to be with? Because with some of the other tools that you have for Money Skills for Group Practice Owners, you have the big picture tool, which also is going to include your expenses. So are you using that tool? Is there resistance to using that tool because of the expenses piece? 

[00:04:56] Could you go back to using that tool and just getting that nice monthly snapshot of what’s happened? On your team tool as well, there’s also those projections for understanding how your expenses fit into your group practice machine. So there’s a couple places where I know there are tools that you could be using for your group that will involve expenses.

[00:05:15] So it does make me wonder if this is blocking you from having a true big picture, if that’s part of the cost of this. But again, it’s this piece of what is the resistance? What do you notice comes up for you if you try to spend your attention on this part of the financial picture? Right? And this is like a slowing down and tracking that we can all do in all areas of our money.

[00:05:34] Do you notice judgments come up about how money is being spent? Do you notice just not liking that money is being spent at all? Is there a part of you that’s maybe more about scarcity, or clutching money, or not trusting yourself to make good decisions with money, so it’s stressful to see money go out the door?

[00:05:50] You know, what is it that is there that stops you from being able to be in that clear, empowered space that you can be with so many other aspects of your financial picture, that that’s not happening here with your expenses, right? So there’s that digging in piece that I think will be really helpful for you.

[00:06:06] And I know you absolutely have the capacity to do this, to be with what do expenses mean to you? Maybe that’s the question at the core of it, right? What does it mean to you to be spending money? Are there negative beliefs there? Are you comfortable with spending money? Do you like spending money? Could there even be joy that comes with some of those expenses?

[00:06:25] Because this is the other piece is when we’re cut off from a certain piece of our financial picture, just like when we’re cut off from certain pieces of our lives, it means that we might be protecting ourselves from any negative emotions that would be associated with that information, but we’re also cutting ourselves off from any positive emotions that could be associated with that information, right?

[00:06:44] We’re kind of blunting our emotional range. So it also makes you wonder, is there opportunity here for positive emotion for you around expenses of seeing, Oh, wow, I’ve really like got this certain area clear and in control that before I was feeling a little blurry, or I really am very consistent with my expenses.

[00:07:01] I can see that I am disciplined, or, Oh yeah, that investment that I made felt so good. That was so worth the money. Because this is part of it, too, is when we’re spending money on our business, we’re also investing in our business. So by being with your expense information, you get to stop and reflect, you know, just one month at a time.

[00:07:18] Are the investments that I’m making really paying off for me? Am I putting money into the right places? It means that you can choose to stop spending, but knowing you, Dana, it also means you can choose to spend, right? To maybe put money into more places that will pay off for you and to be really thoughtful about how you’re directing that expense side of your business.

[00:07:37] So those are my thoughts for you, Dana, in terms of this expense side. As you said, I think it’s more of a mindset. Knowing you, I seriously doubt that you are overspending, but there’s going to be something else here. And for folks who don’t tend on the overspending side of things, then we tend to be more on the clutching, hoarding.

[00:07:55] It’s scary to spend. It’s scary to take up financial space. And I do wonder if that might be part of this situation for you, Dana. So dig in. Be with these questions. Be with the tools that you already have to look at your big picture group practice expenses, like the big picture tool, and the team tool, and let your curiosity show you what might be here that’s in the way of you having a fully engaged relationship with all of the aspects of your group practice finances.

[00:08:22] It was lovely to hear from you. Thank you so much for your question, Dana. If you also have a question for me that you would like answered on one of these Feelings and Finances episodes, it’s very, very easy. All you need to do is scroll down in the show notes for this episode. You’ll see a link. You jump over to our podcast page and there’s just a little record button.

[00:08:42] It’s super simple. Just record it: share your name, share a little bit of context, if that’s helpful, and share your question. And I would be so happy to answer your question on one of these episodes of Feelings and Finances. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today.

Lori: I’ve never been able to sustain cheating myself on sleep or cheating myself on quiet time for any length of time. I’m going to burn out. And I think most HSPs are like that. We burn out fast when we’re trying to cut corners. So it’s really about building some profound acceptance about what our needs are. And working all of the other things around that. 

 Linzy: Welcome to the Money Skills for Therapists podcast, where we answer this question: how can therapists and health practitioners go from money, shame, and confusion to feeling calm and confident about their finances and get money working for them in both their private practice and their lives? I’m your host, Linzy Bonham, therapist turned money coach, and creator of the course Money Skills for Therapists.

Hello and welcome back to the podcast. Today’s guest is Lori Cangilla. Lori is a psychologist. She specializes in working with highly sensitive people, specifically people who are bright, highly creative, and highly sensitive, including highly sensitive therapists. She’s also a graduate of Money Skills for Therapists.

 I record these intros after as you might’ve gathered. It’s been such a treat for Me to talk with Lori today. I was just saying to her, that I was in a grumpy mood before our recording and just talking to her has brought my mood up many, many notches. Today Lori and I dig into how being highly sensitive impacts your relationship with money, how highly sensitive people can create sustainability, you know, balancing that sensitivity with also our drive that we have to, you know, be just and do good things in the world.

That can be a real conflict that I’ve certainly experienced myself where you have basically more ideas and aspirations than you have energy. How do you balance those things? How do you make that work financially? And also we talk about what highly sensitive people have to teach non-highly sensitive people about money. So even if you don’t identify as highly sensitive, there’s lots here today about the gifts of being highly sensitive, which can also be the dark side, the shadow side of being highly sensitive, and the value of being able to be with and connect with values and meaning as we are navigating our relationships with money. Here’s my conversation with Lori Cangilla. 

Linzy: So Lori, welcome to the podcast.

Lori: Thanks so much for having me, Linzy. 

Linzy: I’m very excited to have you. We worked together in Money Skills… I have no sense of time. How long ago now did we work together?  

Lori: I think it was about three years ago. 

Linzy: Three years. Okay. Okay. It’s been a minute. It’s been a minute. And so, tell folks who are listening to a little bit about what you do and what you’ve been building since we worked together. I think this is pretty much the work you’ve done since you finished the course.

Lori: So I am a psychologist in private practice in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I’ve been working virtually since the pandemic. When we started, I was still in the process of really building my specialty and working with highly sensitive people. But I’ve built that out a lot and reframed how I’m working with people.

I have done several things that are outside the clinical room. So I wrote a book. I am doing a lot of freelance writing, and I love having that separate identity as an author, too. So my practice has shifted a lot in the last couple of years since we stopped working together, but it’s because of the freedom that I gained from your program. 

Linzy: Yeah, and this is something that I notice is, there’s many, many students I can think of who I’ve worked with over the years who, when they’re done, they go off and do something else fun. And I’m curious, your perception of like, what about the work that you did in Money Skills has made this possible?

Because I have my analysis, but you’re living it. So how do these things connect? 

Lori: It was about having a lot more intentionality with how I was spending, how I was earning money, too, not just how I was spending, but, the whole process of running a business became something that was much more intentional. And because I was looking at the numbers more frequently, and because I was thinking about, you know, Do I need to buy another course that’s going to sit on my computer and I’m never going to do it and I’m out 300 or whatever,

I was able to start to be a lot more thoughtful about what I want my spending to look like. What kinds of clients do I want to work with? What hours do I want to work? And make those adjustments and not have that fear of scarcity and lack and what if I do this and I don’t make enough, or what if this ends up not being the right direction? I had a lot more confidence to be able to say, I will know. I will catch it on time, you know before it’s a catastrophe in my business. And then I can shift gears, and nothing has to be permanent.

Linzy: Yes. 

Lori: right? Nothing that we’re committing to has to be the last word on what we do with our business. And that was part of the confidence that I got from the program. 

Linzy: And I feel like that too. I think that when you have the groundedness in your numbers you’re able to trust yourself because what I’m hearing is you trust yourself. You trust that you’re going to catch something. If something’s not working, you’re going to know. You’re not going to find out when it’s too late.

When you have that groundedness, then I think also we can be friends with impermanence. To be like, I’m going to try something, and I’m going to see what happens. And maybe it’s going to be great, and maybe it’s not going to be what I want. But, you know when we’re grounded then we can reach and bend.

I think of it, you know… That tree metaphor that I come back to again and again. I have this huge tree tattoo on my leg, which usually is hidden, but just this morning, one of my son’s teachers commented on it. That imagery for me is so powerful. It’s just when your roots are solid, when you have a foundation when you have that confidence and groundedness, you can reach and bend and expand, and you’re solid. You can trust yourself to try things. 

Lori: Yeah. I think what was helpful about the program, too, was that I saw that I was never really in any kind of bad financial position. You know, I was sort of hitting the success markers, whatever those are, for my business, but it was about the difference between being rooted like a tree versus being planted, building that where the foundation is there, and it’s erected, but it’s rigid and it doesn’t change with time.

I think I’ve moved out of that mode of my business as this monolith that has to stay a certain way and into a much more organic, expressive kind of space, which feels good to me.

Linzy: That’s beautiful. So let’s talk about the work that you are doing now. Because you are now focusing on working with highly sensitive people. So let’s talk a little bit about the book, a little bit about your approach, and then I want to chat with you about HSPs and money.

Lori: Yeah. So I’m a highly sensitive person. There are a lot of therapists who are. I think we are sort of set up as highly sensitive therapists to tune into what people need, what people are feeling, and maybe what they’re unable to express. And that’s always been something that I’ve been good at recognizing in other people and teasing out as, I made friends as a kid or, in my first career as a teacher, I was very good at, you know, finding the kid who wanted to come and talk to me in office hours and tell me their life story.

But as a therapist specializing in highly sensitive people, I’ve gotten to dive deep into that idea of how deeply highly sensitive people process things and what helps us get out of our heads and out of our emotions, out of our bodies, and start to take action because that’s ultimately what I want to see from people. I don’t care if it takes people a while to get to that readiness to take action, but I want to help them get to that stage because highly sensitive people always have brilliant ideas, really like pro-social, lovely things that they want to do that are very much oriented towards helping other people and helping the world.

And so that’s the work that I want to support as a therapist. And it’s been really fun to build that out. I work with a lot of creatives. So I have writers and musicians and designers and these brilliant, creative people on my caseload, as well as a lot of therapists, and people who are active in social movements and change organizations and things, and need that support to keep going when the world around them feels like it’s burning down.

Linzy: Yes, yes. So, let’s zoom in then on money and highly sensitive people. Because this is really like where you’ve kind of carved out your work. This is your zone. And I consider myself an HSP light. Which I think I’ve probably chatted with you about before. So I have some of the traits, but I don’t think I have 

all of the traits. So I’m curious, from your perspective and experience, how does being an HSP impact how somebody relates to money? How does this show up in our relationship with money?

Lori: I think a relationship with money… What I’ve learned over the years is it’s just like any other relationship. And so whatever places that a highly sensitive person struggles in other relationships, they’re going to struggle in their relationship with money. So for me, it was really about showing up with an ability to be vulnerable, an ability to show all of my stuff, like come in with my money stories with, with feelings of shame, with difficult things, and be in that process in an open, honest way. And I think for other highly sensitive people, it might be around getting too close to their money. So kind of getting lost in the details and unable to take a step back and say, “Okay. Well, this is what I could do or this is how I can manage those feelings that come.”

Linzy: Yeah, because there’s a phrase that I’ve started using more and more for the last few years in Money Skills for Therapists, which is getting lost in the weeds, right? Where we get lost in the details. It’s this stage that can come up with folks because part of what I teach is for you to understand your numbers and be able to actually know what they say.

But then some folks get stuck there, right? You can get stuck in it’s overwhelming, right? It can be overwhelming and as you’re saying this, this is Making me think about what you were talking about earlier about how HSPs, there’s almost so much going on that you can just be paralyzed, stuck.I don’t know what the language is that you find best describes that experience.

Lori: I mean, I think the language depends on the person. Some people do experience it as a paralysis or a stuckness. For other people, I think it is that lived-in experience of being lost in the weeds. You’re just not able to figure out what is it that I need to prioritize. And for me, I remember that stage of going through the numbers and especially with spending tracking, being completely stuck for weeks around what system I pick and wanting this perfectionism of wanting to, to know that I’m making the best choice and I’m going to know how to use it exactly.

And not being able to say, well, why? Well, you know, I think that’s where a lot of highly sensitive people kind of stumble is: why are we doing this? I’m not tracking my numbers to be able to say at any, you know, at noon on a random Thursday, this is what my bank balance is. That’s not

important, but it’s easy to get stuck in that because .. brain scans have shown that our brains are just more active all the time. 

Lori: So we’re having more brain activity. We’re taking in more of this stuff. We’re carrying it with us outside of, whatever our planned money time is. Our brains are just working, working, working.

And so we need a way to sort of settle our systems and be able to say, okay, wait, stop. I’ve got to get out of this lost in the weed space and figure out what my next move is. You know, do I need support? Do I need help? Do I need to just stop and think about something else for a while? 

Linzy:  Yeah, because it’s interesting what you mentioned earlier, what is the purpose of the thing. A grounding element can certainly be the right thing.

Another word that I’ve started using more and more, which very much vibes with who I am as a person, is meaning. What is the meaning of this? What does this mean to you? And meaning though is sometimes a spot where I think HSPs can spin off, right? And also get like lost… especially when I was younger, and I was not as regulated as a person, I sometimes would feel crushed by the concept of meaning.

What does something mean? As you’re talking about the world is burning down, I very much lived that for many, many, many years of my life. You’re kind of a bit raw, right? A bit impermeable as a sensitive person. And so the meaning piece. I’m curious from your perspective as an HSP then… Cause we’re all different. Everybody’s got their blend of things going on, but. How do folks turn that into movement, right? How does an HSP keep going when they’re in that space from your perspective working with HSPs? 

Lori: So The way I think about it is that when HSPs are thinking about what the meaning or purpose is in their lives. How do we connect that back to a person’s values? When people get clarity on their values, then it’s really easy to figure out from there, what actions do I want to take.

You know, what’s that purpose lived out look like? So I do a lot of work… and I did this before I specialized with HSPs, too. This is just sort of how I see the world too, is, is helping people to clarify those values and get nitty gritty because there are always times when those values conflict, right?

So where I see this coming out with money is sort of that conflict between I want to have a certain standard of living, and at the same time, I want to be able to do good in the world. Maybe I want to be able to provide certain kinds of services at a reduced cost, or maybe I want to work with populations that need pro bono services.

So how do we explore the ways that not only do we have those values, which most HSPs already know what their values are, but what do we do when they conflict? Or do they seem to

conflict? How do we build out from there? And that’s oftentimes a way for people to get unstuck by thinking about how to put those things in a different arrangement.

Linzy: Yes. yes. Yeah, and there’s that, that movement piece. What do these things look like? When do these two things come into conflict? Yeah. How do you choose? What do you do? How do you balance? Because as you’re talking about this as well, something else that I’m thinking about is HSPs, we tend to be very attuned to what’s wrong with the world, the needs of others, injustice, and systemic issues.

But also we tend to be people who can’t necessarily do as much in the world energetically, right? I have friends who feel like their days are twice as many, twice as long as my days in terms of what they’re able to do and accomplish. And when my son goes to bed at 8:15, I’m out that’s the end for me.

So. Yeah. I’m curious, too, how can you see HSPs getting their, own needs met in sustainable ways? Because often we have just kind of less energy in the bank in the first place, but we’re also trying to accomplish all these different things at the same time.

Lori: I think that’s such a great point. And I know for me, that’s always a struggle, too. My desired list of things to do is always longer than my energy and my ability to just sort of be in the emotion of some of it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I think it’s really about getting very precise and intentional about how you’re spending your time.

And I think that can happen for people when, when we can get settled, when we can be doing those baseline things, I’ve never been able to sustain cheating myself on sleep or cheating myself on quiet time for any length of time. You know, I’m going to burn out.

And I think most HSPs are like that. We burn out fast when we’re trying to cut corners. So it’s really about building some profound acceptance about what our needs are. And working all of the other things around that. But it’s also about kind of taking advantage of the way that we are good at looking at the details.

So we can say, I look at this part of my life and maybe I need to bring in some automation. Maybe I can’t do all of this myself. Or maybe I need a support person. Maybe it’s time to hire someone. I have to tell you the best decision I made a couple of years ago was looking at my finances and going, I can hire someone to manage my social media.

It’s not something I enjoy doing. It’s something that I don’t do effectively or efficiently. Canva can suck up too many hours of my time. So it’s much better for me to allot some of my finances to having someone who does that work for me. And then I free up that time to do the other things that I want to do and that do feel more meaningful to me. 

Linzy: Yeah, that acceptance piece. There’s so much wisdom in that because I think, we can spend decades of our lives trying to work against our nature and try to pretend that we are, you know, capable of things that we’re not or that we’re someone that we’re not. And I love that as a frame for a starting place is first accept who you are, right, and accept what is possible.

And then what I’m hearing is HSPs especially are great at, you know, solving the problem of how to then work within that frame. I see so many therapists, highly sensitive or not, set up private practices but also live for themselves that are not sustainable, right? It’s something that maybe they could do for three months, maybe for six months, but there’s no way that this is your five-year plan or your 10-year plan, right?

And I think that sometimes we can almost take for granted how precious that emotional energy that we have is. Because when it’s gone, when you experience burnout, it’s terrible, right? The cost is so, so high. But yeah, sometimes I do think as therapists, we tend to fly a little bit too close to the sun, maybe take for granted our superpowers and not think about the potential cost of not being honest about our actual capacity.

Lori: That resonates so much with me because I think. It’s so easy to fly too close to the sun. You know, the do as I say, not as I do kind of mentality, we would tell our clients, this is not a great move. But yet we go, Oh, no, I can do this. I can push past this. So yeah, I think it’s really about just acceptance, but it also is this honesty with ourselves. I think that’s become easier for me as I’ve gotten older, and further into my career, where I don’t feel like I get anything out of lying to myself about how much I can do. 

Linzy: It’s If X number of clients is the max I can do in a week in my life, then that’s the number, and I need to work with it.

Lori: And I’m not going to continue to be like, no, I can take 35 people this week,  I did in community mental health when I first started. No! That’s why I lasted nine months in that job. 

Linzy: Yeah, seriously, I would not have lasted nine months. I do have, I find in myself this very strong, it’s, it’s a part that’s a bit catastrophic, I’m sure. But like, if I think about doing 35 sessions a week, there’s a part of me truly, Lori, that believes I would die. I’m like, no, I would die.

I would die at the end of the week. I would lie on the floor and it would be the end of my human life. Because I can’t even imagine the emotional cost of that. So I’m amazed you did nine months of that, frankly.

Lori: Desperation. I think, and I was too young to know that I could quit. I did. Cause I thought the flip side of it was I would come home every, you know, at the end of the week, I would think I was going to die and I’d get up on Monday and I’d, and I was in graduate school at the time. So I was doing both. So as much as I thought it was going to die every weekend, I also thought if I quit, it’s the end of my career. No one will hire me. Every professional in this little town that I’m living in is going to think I’m a terrible person because I couldn’t hack it there, and it’s going to be the end of my career. So it was this, pressure from both sides, this internal pressure of knowing I can’t do this, knowing this isn’t sustainable for me. And this presumed pressure, or in some cases, real pressure from people in the community to just keep doing, doing, doing.

Linzy: Yeah, it is funny how we tend to get treated as factory workers, as therapists, as though this is kind of some sort of industrial setup where we’re just plugging ourselves into a machine. It does not honor or align with what it takes to be a therapist and what it takes to be a good therapist at all.

And yet, yeah, some systems will ask you to give yourself away, right? And to act like you have endless energy. So, you know, compassion for young Lori going through that. Cause that sounds like a very rough way to start your therapy career.

Lori: It was. And I feel fortunate that it only took me nine months to figure that out and that it didn’t burn me out entirely. I don’t take credit for that. I just, I think it was a combination of circumstances and I had some good people around me who supported the decision for me to get out of that work.

But I think, you know, it’s alarming to me when I see not only that sort of mentality continue in community mental health, but then all the tech companies that are buying out practices and building out these systems that just seem obscenely cruel to the therapists who are in 

Linzy: Yes.

Lori: Like I have deep, deep compassion and kind of the spirit of I want to liberate you and get you out of these horrible places.

Linzy: Yes.

Lori: I want to see them fail because I don’t think they’re providing good services to clients because how could they? How could therapists be doing their best work in those situations? And, it’s unfair to therapists. We don’t deserve to be turned through a mill like that.

Linzy: And this is why, too… this is a little side tangent, then we’ll get back to HSPs, but I think this is, too, why we need Therapists who are skilled in business and who do want to create great groups where folks are well taken care of and get mentorship and are given a caseload that makes sense.

We need those folks doing this work, right? Because I think that in the therapy space, group practice owners can get a bad name. Some of them have earned a bad name, no question. But I will say when I run money skills for group practice owners, I specifically attract the folks who are too nice to your staff because you want everybody to be happy and you’re making zero dollars.

Let’s come work together and find the balance point, but I want folks who start there because if folks aren’t starting from that compassionate spot… Yeah, you, you can become an exploiter yourself and these tech companies, they don’t care about therapists. They don’t know what it takes to be a therapist.

They’ve never been a therapist for a minute in their life, right? And so it’s like, we need folks in our space who have the skills to be offsetting this trend that’s happening because otherwise a bunch of great young therapists or even not young therapists are going to be eaten alive by these systems that do not understand what we do and do not value what we do. So it is a concerning trend for sure.

Lori: Absolutely. I’m so excited that you have the group practice program because I think you’re right. We do need these other models of what mental health delivery can look like and it needs to be a resource that therapists who need a job can look to. Not everybody wants to run a solo practice. 

Linzy: They don’t.

Lori: I didn’t for years either, but when your options are really limited, then it is a prescription for good people to get out of the field. You know, and that, that’s the part that breaks my heart is when I hear about therapists leaving because they’ve been working in these truly unsustainable systems.

It’s not their failing or shortcomings. It’s the systems that aren’t sustainable. And I think what you’re talking about is probably tapping into some of the highly sensitive people who might be fabulous group practice owners and leaders, but probably are avoiding it because that sounds overwhelming. You know, because now not only do I have to manage my experience of being in a private practice, but I’m managing it for other people who I feel a loyalty to.

So being able to do things to empower people like that, to be in positions of leadership, and to create these work environments is so important. It’s part of what I like about working with highly sensitive people. They need to be in leadership positions. 

Linzy: Absolutely. Yeah. Because they naturally have that compassion. They’re not going to accidentally exploit the heck out of somebody.

Lori: Right? Or if they do accidentally exploit it, they are, you know, humble enough to say, Oh my gosh, I was accidentally exploiting you and let’s fix this.

Linzy: Yes. So true. So true. So true. So from your perspective, what do HSPs have to teach non-HSPs when it comes to money management?

Lori: Think it’s really important for HSPs to be able to share that way that they are deep processors, right? That’s sort of the defining characteristic of, of what it means to be an HSP on a brain level is that there’s that deep active processing, but on a lived level, it’s that way that HSPs are asking the hard questions.

They’re willing to step back and say, there was something I didn’t know, or I don’t know the answer right now. And, I’m going to stay with this process until I figure it out. That’s something that I think is beautiful. And when I compare it to the way that I’ve seen some non-HSPs make business decisions or money decisions, I think, oh, there’s, there’s a piece missing for those folks.

Yes, they take action quickly. And yes, they, you know, they can be decisive in some ways. And there’s a part of me that admires that. But I think that willingness to be in the weeds for a while… hmm, It’s so important, and I think it is a good lesson that HSPs can share with, with non-HSPs, at least people who aren’t inclined to make decisions that way. 

Linzy: I’m thinking of other words too that go with that for me, which is presence, just being able to be with… curiosity, right? Thinking about these pieces we’re talking about values and purpose and meaning. What is this for, what are you doing? What is the ultimate purpose? And I will say in my relationship, I’m married to somebody who is not highly sensitive, which probably is a good thing. But he’s like an action-taker. There’s no contemplation. It’s just action. So he’s really good at making things happen. But I have noticed, in our 10 years of being together, that If I want something to be discussed, I have to hold it back until I’m ready for it to potentially happen.

So I will process, sit with something, look at numbers if it’s something financial, or sit with and contemplate internally until I bring it up. Because if I bring it up, it’s probably going to happen, or not happen, and that decision will be made. I’m kind of laughing at myself thinking about that. The difference between folks who do more of that deep processing, being with curiosity until you settle on something versus folks who are fast action takers, is a very different way of making decisions, and being in the world.

Lori: I think what you’re talking about speaks to me because I think it’s, it’s that way that we need different kinds of people in our lives. I need my fellow HSPs where I can talk about something for six months and bat about all the little details, and they’re able to be in it with me. And then,

I’m glad at times that I have my husband who is much more, let’s just make a decision. Okay. We’ve looked at things. If we’ve looked at the numbers, let’s go forward here. And he doesn’t agonize and there’s definitely a place for that, you know, and I need people like him in my life to say, go for it. You know, get off your feet and get going. You’re like, do this thing. But not too soon. Not before I’ve come to my decision.

Linzy: Of course, of course, yes, yes, because yeah, because this being with the piece that you’re talking about, and, and that, that’s the language I’ve just put on it. You use different language, but, yeah, that ability to kind of be in it, and that is a skill. And it’s a skill that sometimes I do see folks have 

to build while they’re doing their money work, like in Money Skills for Therapists or in Money Skills for Group Practice Owners, that ability to come back and be with something that is not clear and that brings up maybe icky feelings that you haven’t figured out, like having to almost be with that not knowing, I think is an HSP gift, but I’m also hearing can be an HSP trap.

But I think it’s essential for money because if you’re not tapped into the values, the purpose, the meaning. What is this all for? You could end up living a life and living your money out in the way that’s been prescribed to you that does not serve who you are at all. And you get to the end of your life and that’s it. You did it. You don’t get to go back and do it over later.

Lori: Yeah. I think that’s such a good point, Linzy. It’s the way that all of these qualities that we’re talking about with HSPs can be a strength and can be riddled with a shadow side that can take

over. And I think what I loved about your program, the reason I chose money skills as opposed to something else was because I think there was that space to be present, be with these things as they were unfolding.

It wasn’t a pressure of, you must get to a certain point by a certain date. That was why I knew I could be in your program and I could muck around for however long it took. And a lot of the growth did come after the program. My program officially wrapped up for me, but the foundation was there. The roots were there, to use that language from earlier.

Linzy: Yeah. And, you know, the program, it used to be a six-week program when I first started it, if you can believe that. I know.

Lori: No, I had six months and…

Linzy: I was going to say now it’s six months, and sometimes folks do, like if there may be faster processors or, you know, they’ve already got some pieces in place,

sometimes folks do move through it faster, but what I’ve also seen happen is people say at the end of their time, I didn’t understand why this program was six months because at first, I was like, I’m moving through it quickly. But then there’s so much that comes up when you’re living it, and if you can keep that presence and be with, and being like, hey, I set up my system this way, but something’s not working, but if you still are online and learning, and you’re not just like, well, I guess that’s how it is, you’re still in that building out phase, then you get to make all these tweaks, or you do a level of work and then something else comes up and you do a deeper level of work, you know, and then you do a deeper level of work. There’s just so much there because it’s a relationship that we live out over and over and over again.

That’s what that six-month container is for. And as you say, there’s much more growing to do even after that six months, but it’s that you’ve got to just keep being with it. And keep, almost keep being curious and fresh about it. Not thinking that, well, I did it. Money’s finished. I’ve locked in my business. This is what it’s going to look like until I’m 75 years old. 

Lori: A Horror thought.

Linzy: I know. Isn’t it? I’m glad to hear that you felt like you did get that space to do the work that you needed to do in the course.

Lori: Yeah, I think it’s Vital

Linzy: yes, I agree. I can always tell when somebody is not going to be a fit for the program if they’re like, I don’t need all of this. Then it’s, well, you might not need all of this. And also this is what makes it special is that we do have this container to get into the stuff of it. Maybe you’ll think about the stuff about your mom and money for two months. And then you’ll spend another month and a half learning YNAB. And then you’ll decide you don’t want to do YNAB. And then you’ll go over to the spreadsheet, and then you’ll raise your fee. There’s so much to do. And so having a container that honors. Some of that work, because it’s not even all of that work, I think is essential at this point, in the way that we do the work.

So, Lori, it is such a treat to be with you again. It’s so nice to see you. For folks who are listening, who want to get further into your world, can you tell them where to find you?

Lori: Yeah. So my website is singularly sensitive.com and it has information about how I work with HSPs, what the singularly sensitive approach is, and has a link to my book. I also have on there a chance for people to sign up for a free five-day journaling stretch. I do a ton of journaling with people because I think with highly sensitive people, it’s helpful to go in that way and have some time to reflect on paper or, or screen or canvas or music, however they want to reflect. But that idea of getting that container for going deeper and being in things for as long as you need to be. So that’s all on my website.

Linzy: Great. Okay. So singularlysensitive. com. We’ll put the link for that in the show notes. Thank you so much, Lori, for coming on the podcast today.

Lori: Thank you so much. It’s been so great to reconnect and kind of get to share how things have gone since we last formally worked together.

Linzy: Thank you. Thank you, Lori. I so genuinely enjoyed this conversation with Lori today. And one of the things that I like about it is I’ve worked with so many wonderful, wonderful therapists in Money Skills for Therapists. And often, you know, it’s like I get to see them at the end of that period we’ve worked together, which now is six months,

I get to see them with their skills, kind of almost like a backpack loaded up with skills. And they’re heading off. And when we do closure posts in our online community and people post, what they’ve taken away from the course, often I can’t help but use the word excited when I send them off.

I am so excited because I know that they have this backpack full of skills and they have this new way of being with money that is going to serve them so well in the coming years, but I don’t always get to hear how that went. So it’s such a gift to be with Lori and to see and experience how much she has grown around money and what that’s made possible for her in terms of, as she talked about, her business and being able to be more intentional, not just in how she is managing and spending money, but how she makes money and how she’s using her energy.

And yeah, in the three years since we’ve worked together, she has grown so much into this other area of writing her book, creating her singularly sensitive approach, and zooming into this niche in her practice. It’s just so exciting to see how the skills that she built three years ago have unfolded this whole other area in her business and just, you know, settled her so much more into her gifts and herself.

It was such a treat to talk with Lori today. If you are curious about working with me, and also loading up your metaphorical backpack with some money skills, and heading off on your way, you can check out my Masterclass, The Four Step Framework to Get Your Business Finances Totally in Order. This is a masterclass that’s going to lay out how I work with therapists in Money Skills for Therapists, and my approach.

It’s going to give you a sense of who I am and how I work to see if I am the right person to help you develop these skills and build that confidence so that you can also be intentional and clear in your business. And maybe even start a whole new branch in your business and do whole new things with that clarity, confidence and intention.

So you can check out that masterclass. I’ll put the link in the show notes, the four-step framework to get your business finances totally in order. That’s how you can learn about my approach. And also that is how you can get an exclusive invite to Money Skills for Therapists. You can follow me on Instagram at Money Nuts and Bolts, and if you’re enjoying the podcast, do tell your friends.

If you have a friend from grad school who you know is starting a private practice, send them an email, and let them know about the podcast. They can start listening to the podcast and absorbing the stuff even well before they step into practice. That always makes me so excited when I hear somebody thinking about and working on these things, even if it’s just internally starting to have conversations with themselves around money before they start practice at the beginning of practice because that allows them to lay this foundation that will serve them for years and years to come.

Those roots that are going to allow them to reach and bend and be creative in their business. So if you have somebody like that in your life, let them know about the Money Skills for Therapists podcast. I would appreciate it. Thank you so much for joining me today.