I’m often asked for book recommendations to read as part of your money journey. So below are three wonderful books that get to the heart of your relationship with money. They are not just about the practical side of money, with advice on debt and savings, but rather, they all go much deeper into the emotional and spiritual sides of money.  All three of these women are trusted colleagues of mine. I’m quoted in Karen’s book, I’ve been cited in various books by Barbara (and even contributed to one of her anthologies) and Bari has had me both teach for her and has interviewed me. I say this not to brag, but to let you know how well I know and trust their work. These books cover everything from how you were raised with money and your “money story”, to getting to the root of overspending and underearning. They are each an odyssey of personal growth and will move you forward.

And as you know, I feel strongly about the transformative nature of my work as a money coach. Working with a guide will move you from feeling bad or just plain frustrated about your money life to designing a life you love and feeling great about money.  But sometimes it is a book that is your guide. So it my hope and prayer that one of these books can be a light for you on your money journey. Enjoy!

Financial Recovery- How to develop a healthy relationship with money

Karen McCall is my oldest and dearest colleague and this book is in many ways a capstone of her amazing 40 year career as a money coach. Whether you are suffering under crushing debt, unable to save money, or caught in the tangle of inherited wealth, Karen’s book offers a time-tested plan for building a stable and satisfying way of life — and keeping it that way. It will help you make a fundamental shift in the way you understand and behave around money.

Filled with many stories, Karen’s book presents a simple system that enables you to discover your underlying attitudes about money — often the cause of self-defeating money behaviors such as overspending, chronic debt, underearning, and low or no savings — and provides the tools, strategies, and support to achieve financial well-being. Karen is a master money coach and true adept at getting to the emotional heart of the matter.  (I trained with Karen after completing graduate school.)

The Art of Money- A life-changing guide to financial happiness

Bari Tessler has been a money coach for many years and finally wrote a book that captures her thinking and feelings about money. It’s a beautiful book. From how to heal your money story, to the practical side of what to DO with money, she maps it all out. She focuses on money “healing”, and using our relationship with money as a gateway to self-awareness. She weaves together emotional depth, big-picture visioning, and refreshingly accessible, nitty-gritty money practices. Like Karen’s book above, it is full of many honest stories, including her own journey. Enjoy with a cup of tea.

Sacred Success: A Course in Financial Miracles, by Barbara Stanny

Barbara Stanny has focused for years on working with women and their relationship to money. (Prince Charming isn’t Coming- how women get smart about money—was her first big book. It’s also fabulous.) This book goes deep into women’s often troubled relationship with power, and how this translates to financial success. Sometimes, it’s necessary to take a step back and surrender for a time, heal, step into YOUR vision, and from there move into your own sacred success. I have a lot of my high power clients who earn a lot of money, but may be questioning their life paths, read the first half of this book. What does it really mean to be a woman of power?…. This book is amazing.

Mikelann is a money coach with over 20 years’ experience, helping women escape the money fog, feel more in control of their finances and love their financial life. If you are ready to leave money stress behind and design a life you love, please see www.seattlemoneycoach.com and read about this life changing work.  Once there, grab her free eBook on how to stop worrying about money.

It’s a bright shiny New Year, and I bet you’ve heard many versions of “New Year, New You.” So—is this year the year to shift your relationship with money? Here are three steps to contemplate, so you decide if this is the year to make the shift.

The first step is to name the feeling that you are tired of experiencing.

Here are examples: you are tired of worrying that the money you make isn’t going to the right places. You’re tired of feeling guilt over what you spend sometimes, like taking vacations. You’re tired of feeling frustrated over not having enough for large home projects. You’re tired of stressing over balances (retirement account balances, debt balances). You feel anxiety when you think about sitting down and trying to figure it all out.

Worry, guilt, stress, anxiety. Yikes. If you feel these things relating to money, I imagine it is draining you. I find that people often get used to feeling these feelings, though. However, money frustrations can often morph to free floating anxiety.

And, sometimes people simply can’t kick this nagging feeling that they are “not good with money”. This feeling may go all the way back—to childhood. If so, I bet you are tired of this feeling!

So step one is naming what is not working. More specifically– name the feeling that you are tired of experiencing. 

Step two is to assess your energy you could potentially devote to making a shift.

Do you have the energy to devote to this project? Making shifts does take time. And time is energy. Yes, you can hire a guide and get help (step three perhaps) but before then, you want to contemplate your energy. This may be the year that you need to devote to your health, or your children or some other area of life. Is this the time to consider making a shift in your relationship to money?

Step three is to begin by taking one action to show the universe that you are ready to make the shift.

Here are some possible actions:

• Read a money book (I will share three books I recommend in my next post.)
• Set up automatic payments (to retirement accounts or to credit cards or line of credits)
• Talk to your financial planner
• Start tracking your spending and income
• Work with a money coach (you knew I would throw that one in there.)

What action appeals? Which feels doable? What does your intuition tell you is a good place to start?

Again, the three steps to feeling better are name the feeling you want to change, assess your energy to make a shift, and start by taking one action.

I have guided many women on this journey to feeling better about their finances. It is a sacred journey, and yes, it has twists and turns at times. Our individual money stories would make quite a fascinating read! But most of all, my wish for you is that you feel better about money. As simple as this sounds, we all know it is huge. When we feel better about money, we breathe easier, think about money less, have more freedom, and begin the next stage of the journey around money- designing a life we truly love.

Mikelann is a money coach with over 20 years’ experience, helping women escape the money fog, feel more in control of their finances and love their financial life. If you are ready to leave money stress behind and design a life you love, please see www.seattlemoneycoach.com and read about this life changing work.  Once there, grab her free eBook on how to stop worrying about money.

Did you know that food and money are connected in many ways? We spend and eat to feel better, or just to “numb out”. Yes, they both have a deeply emotional component to them. Here is my article on this. And here is a three minute video about this. I end it with three helpful questions to ask yourself so you can get a handle on both emotional spending and eating.

Mikelann is a money coach with over 20 years’ experience, helping women escape the money fog, feel more in control of their finances and love their financial life. If you are ready to leave money stress behind and design a life you love, please see www.seattlemoneycoach.com and read about this life changing work.  Once there, grab her free eBook on how to stop worrying about money.

As a money coach, I ask new clients about their relationship to food.

What?! Why am I asking that? Because food and money issues are often related. For starters, they are the two most common things we turn to, to make ourselves feel better.

Think of it this way– when we are depressed, sad or angry, many of us will eat to make ourselves feel better or we’ll spend money to feel better. They are also how we sooth ourselves when we feel anxious.

How about you? Have you ever had a bad fight with a friend or a boss and then found yourself out shopping? Or perhaps indulging in some yummy ice-cream?

We also turn to spending or eating when faced with fear of lack or not having enough. When people start a weight loss program, for example, it is common for their spending to spiral out of control. They are afraid of being deprived in one area of their life (food) so they turn to another area (money) to indulge and prove to themselves that they are okay.

I’ve had many clients sheepishly confess that before coming to their first appointment with me they did some major shopping. Why? They were afraid that when they really looked at their money, they’d see they wouldn’t have enough and they would be forced to spend less. They were worried. So they wanted to spend before they saw they “shouldn’t” spend. Now the truth is that when you truly learn how to take control of your finances, you learn how to truly take care of yourself. There IS enough. But the initial fear is that of not-enough.

Yes, food and money swing in the same orbit. We use food and money to reward ourselves. Sometimes we use food and money to punish ourselves. (It’s true- sometimes we don’t spend enough money on ourselves and we don’t eat enough. We may also deprive ourselves by underearning.)

I find that yet another reason food and money are so related is that there is no hard core “bottom line” for either. You can’t say to yourself, “I just won’t eat.” or “I just won’t spend money.” You have to eat and you have to spend. So what is the right amount? This is where it gets very personal. You need to discover, for you, what your ‘bottom line behaviors” are around money. What are your personal guidelines? They may be different than someone else’s. Money is very personal. And all of this goes for food as well.

The good news is that when we become aware that eating and spending have an emotional component, change becomes easier. It’s not all about “just do it”. When you take the time to see what is underneath the behavior, true change becomes possible.

For starters, I have clients think on these three simple but deep questions when they feel drawn to spend in an emotional way:

1. How am I feeling right now?

2. Am I trying to change how I feel or am I trying to numb out?

3. How else might I go about taking care of my feelings?

And as you can guess, these questions can work for emotional eating as well.

Money and food are deeply related. So here is to thinking about your own relationship to them. What do you notice?

Mikelann is a money coach with over 20 years’ experience, helping women escape the money fog, feel more in control of their finances and love their financial life. If you are ready to leave money stress behind and design a life you love, please see www.seattlemoneycoach.com and read about this life changing work.  Once there, grab her free eBook on how to stop worrying about money.

“If we could sell our experiences for what they cost us we’d be millionaires” – Abigail Van Buren

Raise your hand if you’ve never made a mistake with money or never had a financial regret. Anyone? I thought not. We’ve all made mistakes with money.  I know I have.

So many women beat themselves up for how they’ve dealt with- or not dealt with- money. So we have to start this conversation with forgiveness.

First of all, everyone has made mistakes. Everyone. Some of us are mad that we incurred credit card debt. (I was upset with myself about that one.) Some of us regret not saving more money.  (I really got down on myself for that one too.)

Some of us feel we made a mistake buying a house we could not afford, or taking out large student loans. Some of us realize how much we have undersold ourselves. (I was shocked when I realized that people around me had asked for more money at one of my jobs. I hadn’t even negotiated!) People make all sorts of mistakes. Everyone has made mistakes and everyone has money regrets. Join the club. There’s plenty of room.

To compound our woes, we rarely talk about them. When we make relationship mistakes, we often hash over the “I can’t believe I did that” with girlfriends over a glass of wine. But when it comes to money, we can be extremely self-critical—suffering pangs of regret and remorse- replaying our money mistakes over and over in our head– mostly in isolation.

So I want you to consider the idea that you are NOT alone. Everyone has made money mistakes!

And now I want you to consider that it is time to forgive yourself so you can move on. One of my favorite quotes is this Victoria Holt quote -“Never regret. If it’s good, it’s wonderful. If it’s bad, it’s experience!” And oh yeah, we’ve all got a heck of a lot of experiences.

I know you’ve heard it said that you did the best you could at the time, with where you were and what you knew. And that’s true. To err is human, remember. And you ARE human.

But I also want you to consider this- your health, emotional and physical- NEEDS you to forgive yourself. Every study done on the subject of forgiveness tells us that not forgiving actually harms our health. You are more prone to illness when you don’t forgive yourself.

So can you imagine saying, “I need to move on for the sake of my health?”

Some people have a hard time forgiving because they confuse it with forgetting. But they are not the same. You do not have to forget. You can use what has happened in your life around money as amazing fuel to move you forward. But you deserve to forgive yourself. What happened is one piece of your life, but it is not YOU.

Here is my vote: find the silver lining- so what is the silver lining? What did you learn? The school of hard knocks is hard, but it isn’t called a “school” for nothing. What would you do differently now? If this hadn’t happened, might it have happened in the future in a bigger or different way? There is a learning here. Find it.

For me, I was embarrassed about having credit card debt, and about not making enough money. I didn’t want to talk about it. But I thought about it- a lot. When I finally let myself talk about it, I could hear how self-critical I was. And once I started sharing my feelings, I experienced a huge sense of relief.

When I began to reflect on my financial life, I realized I had learned a lot. And I needed to experience what didn’t work in order to seek a new way.

Remember, to make mistakes is human. And making money mistakes does NOT define who we are. What we do about them, though, does say a lot. It is our capacity to see and learn and grow that makes us amazing human beings. Transforming and healing your relationship to money is a sacred journey, full of twists and turns at times. But it is a journey none-the-less. Is it time to forgive yourself so you can continue the journey?

Mikelann is a money coach with over 20 years’ experience, helping women escape the money fog, feel more in control of their finances and love their financial life. If you are ready to leave money stress behind and design a life you love, please see www.seattlemoneycoach.com and read about this life changing work.  Once there, grab her free eBook on how to stop worrying about money.

So— I just read the most depressing article on divorced women and retirement funding. And it REALLY pissed me off. Perhaps not for the reasons you think. We have all heard how divorced women have less money for retirement, and often less money period.

But this article was so damn depressing I thought, “Okay, I’m divorced. So I guess I’m just screwed. I’d best just jump off a bridge now and be done with it. Since I sure as hell don’t want to live UNDER the freaking bridge.”

Now I’m not sure this is the effect they were looking for. And keep in mind that I’m a money coach, for god’s sake. But this article really hit me. (I’ve been stewing on it for a couple of weeks. I won’t even link to it here- it’s too depressing. On Slate.com. Email me if you want the link.)

I mean, what is the point of scaring people? To be clear, the article was not on how to get a better divorce settlement. Now THAT could be helpful. If you are divorced, well, you are divorced. And are you trying to scare women in to staying in bad marriages? Really? So if you are in a horrid, or just loveless, this-chapter-in-my life-has-definitely-run-its-course (and I may have married the wrong guy to begin with) marriage, well, too bad. No matter how bad it is, you should stay married. Are you kidding me?? REALLY???

I think not.

I am divorced and I have created a wonderful life for myself. It’s not what I saw for myself 15 years ago. My house is smaller. But my house is wonderful and so truly “me” that it’s the favorite hangout spot for many of my friends. (Some of whom have bigger houses.) And in many ways my life is even more wonderful that I could have imagined.

Having to be super conscious about creating a new life will do that to you. There is nothing in my life that I do not want in my life.

My mother divorced, and her generation of divorced women really skew those depressing stats in a downward death spiral. BUT she has used her creativity, practicality and general even-keeled view of life to create a life that is envied by many of her friends (and some of mine as well.) Oh- and she retired last year and is having a great time!

So- I share my pissed-offness to say, if you are divorced, you CAN thrive and create an amazing life. It takes thoughtfulness in a different way. It takes conscious living. And it takes a willingness to really look at what you value so you can have more of that, and less of what you don’t. If you do have less money, there is simply no room for things that don’t light your fire. (And if you are working, there is wonderful new fuel to take your career and sacred earning to a new level.)

In fact, many divorced women I know are actually living more authentic and joyful lives then before they divorced (we divorced for a reason, remember?) They are focused on intentional life creation. Do they have to be? Yes. The downside is that the stats tell us that if we are not super intentional and really look at our relationship to money, we risk not having enough. But when we step back and ask “what is enough?” and how do I use my creativity to create a new life of MY own design, all things are possible. Really.

Mikelann is a money coach with over 20 years’ experience, helping women escape the money fog, feel more in control of their finances and love their financial life. If you are ready to leave money stress behind and design a life you love, please see www.seattlemoneycoach.com and read about this life changing work.  Once there, grab her free eBook on how to stop worrying about money.