Do you lose sleep when it comes to managing your finances? If so, you are in good company. In a survey conducted in 2018, 30% of Americans said they were continually being asked for money. Financial problems also cause extraordinary tensions in relationships. In a study conducted on failed marriages in 2017, 21% of divorced women cited money as the major reason for the collapse of their marriage. It must not be like that! Financial therapy can be a solution to stress and uncertainty. Financial therapies can help you analyze your monetary situation and develop the habits necessary to control your finances and reduce stress in your life. Read on to see if financial therapy might be right for you.
Financial therapy is an area that combines psychological and financial management issues. It seeks through a discussion or a series of discussions with a patient to understand exactly how people are managing money and finances in their lives. In this regard, it discovers the strengths to develop and the weaknesses to correct. Financial therapy is about helping patients better understand their financial situation so they can improve their relationships with people around them and lead happy, fulfilling lives.
Financial therapy is very different from the financial advice you can get from an accountant, credit counselor, or other trusted financial expert. Traditional financial advisors aim to help you allocate your money more efficiently or to solve a problem such as excessive debt. In contrast, a financial therapist is usually a licensed physician. The primary goal of financial therapy is to help patients better understand their approach and beliefs about money so they can make more reliable financial decisions about borrowing and spending money.
A financial therapist gets patients to talk about their point of view about money and finances and then ask specific questions. In this way, they hope to help their patients better understand how they view money. Once people understand their philosophy about finance, they are often in a much better position to deal with the problems posed by money.
Discovering the personal approach of money can be strong. Financial therapies can help you understand why you pay for things using your credit cards, which can be a fundamental step in reducing debt. Understanding your financial philosophy can also help you determine the most satisfying professional field. For instance, a person who values financial security rather than the opportunity to move forward financially or create more wealth to be richer or may be more satisfied in a stable professional sector as an employee. On the other hand, a person who wants to be wealth can be much more satisfied as a business owner or entrepreneur. The information obtained through financial therapy can help you become more involved in the careers you are in or give you clear clues that it's time to choose a new type of job.
Money can often be the most controversial issue in a relationship. If your finances are affecting your relationship, then financial therapy may be more suited to your challenges than traditional marriage counseling. Financial therapies can help people in a relationship to determine their basic ideas about money and finances. This can be precisely the place of a couple of conflicts so that they can develop a way to handle it.
Financial therapy can also help couples discover financial goals and habits they have not been able to share. Maybe both of them secretly want a smaller mortgage and more disposable income. You may need to worry about high levels of credit card debt. Once you have discovered this financial therapy middle ground, both may decide to reduce the size of your home or look for more proactive measures, such as debt settlement, to settle your credit cards. In any circumstance, financial therapy can usually help couples find the areas of a financial agreement they can use to grow their overall relationship.
Although financial therapy is relatively new, it is appropriate. People are increasingly facing financial problems, such as many credit cards and student loans, and the stress of these problems is usually spread elsewhere in life. Financial therapy can support people to find the root causes of their financial problems and do better. If you are consistently stressed by money or do not know how to solve the many financial problems you face, consider finding a financial therapist. Financial therapies can be exactly what you need to learn to reduce financial stress and lead a happier and more fulfilling life.
Elliot Kravitz, ATP