The Heart of Money. Deborah L. Price

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      I have been enormously blessed in my life with the gift of the most wonderful circle of loving and supportive friends and family. These are the people whom I know I can count on in this world, who always have my back, and without whom my life would simply not be the same. My heartfelt gratitude goes out to the following people.

      My daughter, Anjelica Price-Rocha, for her wisdom and great writing and editing skills. My husband and best friend, Robert Coleman, for his unconditional support, editorial assistance, and honest feedback as my “in-house editor.”

      My business partner and friend, Steven “Shags” Shagrin, for tirelessly reading my drafts and providing friendship, editing, and support throughout.

      My wonderful girlfriends: Marian Morioka and Carol Bell, who fed me, loved me, and provided endless entertainment throughout; and Donna Colfer, Karen Harvey, and Molly Light, for being such dear friends and bearers of love and light in my world.

      Leslie Gainer, for her friendship, wisdom, and perspective just when I needed them most.

      Lili Goodman-Freitas and Greg Freitas, for the love, light, and laughter they brought into our lives.

      Dr. and Mrs. Preston and Frieda Wright, for always knowing what to say and do to make it better.

      Marge Abrams, Stephan Islas, Brenda Ferreira, and David Seligman, for always being there for me for as long as I can remember.

      Janet Rosen and Sheree Bykofsky, for being the best agents a writer could ever hope for.

      And finally, love and gratitude to my editor, Georgia Hughes, and New World Library, for continuing to believe in me and support my ideas.

FOREWORD

      As a licensed clinical psychologist, I began my relationship with Deborah Price and the Money Coaching Institute with a certain amount of skepticism. Here was a woman with no formal psychological training tackling the biggest taboo subject in the world: money and our relationship to it. Her first book, Money Therapy: Using the Eight Money Types to Create Wealth and Prosperity, claimed to help people to transform their relationship with money not only from a practical perspective but also through sound psychological principles so that they could lead more purposeful and prosperous lives. As I read, I quickly shed my skepticism, and over the past five years of knowing and working with Deborah, I have become increasingly respectful of and impressed by her deep wisdom and skill in working with clients as a money coach. Deborah is a highly experienced teacher and coach with a remarkable ability to communicate complex information so that it can be easily digested and practically implemented to effect significant change.

      In my training as a psychologist and throughout my work in the field, I have been amazed by the lack of focus given to the emotional impact that money has on our lives. Therapists are typically not trained to work with clients on their relationship with money and often feel afraid to address this issue. Similarly, most financial experts have neither the knowledge nor the training to work with clients on the qualitative issues of money, discussing their feelings, their fears, or their unconscious patterned behaviors. Remarkably, open discussion of finances and money choices rarely happens even in our most intimate and trusted relationships, with our partners. Despite the importance, there is a huge vacuum in exploring our relationship with money, what motivates our money behaviors, and the unconscious choices we often make with regard to how we use money. This reality has impacted our current financial situation, on both a micro- and macrolevel, with the result that money is the leading cause of divorce and whole countries are now threatened with bankruptcy.

      Money is consistently the number one thing that couples fight about, regardless of where they fall on the socioeconomic spectrum. This is not surprising given the lack of infrastructure we have around discussing money. Any topic that cannot be openly examined, giving people the opportunity to consciously think about what their values and goals are, what messages and rules they have inherited, and how they want to consciously act, is subject to blind, unexamined reaction. Shoot-from-the-hip interactions with money do not serve individuals, couples, families, communities, or our global society and have a tremendous ripple effect.

      It is time to banish this taboo and begin to have open discussions about money. Weaving a masterful understanding of human behavior and motivation with hands-on expertise in creating and sustaining financial success, Deborah Price is a maverick and a pioneer in the field, bringing forward a comprehensive body of work that has been missing from both the field of psychology and the financial planning and advisory fields. Her books and professional trainings through the Money Coaching Institute provide a step-by-step process for identifying, understanding, and transforming one’s relationship with money in order to achieve greater financial awareness and prosperity.

      Successful interaction with money requires an ability to quickly assess a situation and consciously utilize the most beneficial archetype to take effective action. To do this, we must learn about the characteristics of the various archetypes that Deborah Price describes in her book as well as our particular money histories to become aware of our conditioned patterns of interacting with money and how to consciously shift to more advantageous behaviors. We also need to be able to deftly understand which archetypes are showing up in other people’s actions around money and then manage our own behaviors in a way that achieves positive outcomes. This is the brilliance of The Heart of Money. In this book, Deborah Price recognizes the relationship between couples as a primary one and helps them to work together toward financial transparency and intimacy, powerfully strengthening their relationship and efficacy in interacting with money. Incorporating the Money Coaching Institute’s archetypal model in our work at the Wealth Legacy Group, we have seen significant shifts in results with clients. Couples have worked together more effectively in ways that were astonishingly simple yet powerful to transform their dynamics as they related to money.

      For each individual and couple who reads this book and takes more conscious actions around money, there will be an exponential positive impact in how families, communities, and ultimately our global economy interact with money. I thank you in advance for contributing to this much-needed change.

      Jamie Traeger-Muney, PhD

      Founder, Wealth Legacy Group

INTRODUCTION

      Money, love, sex … any one of these subjects represents a plethora of complex emotions and experiences that human beings have grappled with throughout history. When you mix these issues together, you have perhaps the most challenging and combustible material known to humankind. No wonder money issues are a major source of conflict in our relationships! Even in the best of economic times, over 50 percent of all marriages in the United States end in divorce. Given the current economic recession and the mounting financial pressures that couples are experiencing, it is likely that money issues and conflicts will continue to increase, as will the corresponding divorce rates.

      The subject of money is still highly taboo and one that people will go to great lengths to avoid. Yet couples who are in a committed relationship or married cannot have a healthy, truly intimate relationship unless they are willing to be financially open and fully transparent about their financial wants, needs, and expectations. Financial intimacy requires the willingness to be self-revealing and vulnerable; to be seen for who we really are; to share our fears and our secrets; and to love and accept one another unconditionally, flaws included. It takes an emotionally and financially mature person to achieve this depth of intimacy. While many people may possess the emotional maturity, relatively few are also financially mature enough to manage this terrain alone. Achieving this level of financial maturity and consciousness is remarkably difficult for most individuals (let alone couples!),