It’s finally here!!! I’ve been waiting for this book for three years. It’s called Financial Recovery—developing a healthy relationship with money, by Karen McCall. Karen is my mentor, colleague and very good friend.  (And she is the founder and director of the Financial Recovery Institute.) She is the one who inspired me to become a money coach. This isn’t her first book, but it is her masterpiece. And it will change how you think and relate to money like no other book, so I wanted to tell you about it.

So many books are full of financial advice, yet when we read them and then struggle implementing all their advice, we just feel worse. But not with Karen’s McCall’s book.  The difference is that she writes about our actual relationship with money. She talks about the emotions of money. She goes into our history with money. Here is an expert who has spent decades in the trenches with real people (I was a client of Karen’s years ago) and understands why people really do what they do with money and how they can change.

What I love the most about her book are all the stories. She shares her own very personal story of struggling with spending and debt. (She shares some of her painful money secrets that people in her life would have been shocked by at the time, if they had known.) And she shares the stories of countless clients she’s helped guide over the years. Suddenly, you feel like you are not alone if you struggle with credit card debt or sometimes you spend too much, or you simply never seem to earn enough.

Here are Karen’s own words, from chapter one:

I’m not implying that money is the most important thing in life, and certainly it’s not more important than the people we hold dear. Interestingly, though, the healthier your relationship with money, the less likely it is that money will distract you from the things you value most. But money, and our relationship with it, is an undeniable force. Ignoring it doesn’t change that. In fact, when we choose to be ostrich like in our relationship with our finances, hiding our heads in the sand, money exerts an even greater, and usually more negative, influence on us. Money colors so many areas of our lives—health, education, lifestyle, career, family, self-image, political influence, and so on. Doesn’t it make sense to have as healthy a relationship with it as possible?

Karen also writes about being caught in the “money life drain” and how she has seen so many people simply try to work harder, only to not have it help their financial problems. She is very direct about addressing feelings of shame and deprivation and how this fuels our financial behavior. And yes, she shows you how to get out of debt and stay out of debt. She also covers how to track and plan your spending- topics that may be unpopular, as I well know from my years of working with people. But she makes a very convincing case how the new financial behaviors she advocates can truly change your life.

By the time the reader gets to the last chapter called “Imagining Sterling Money Behaviors”, you just want to BE that person, and you really feel like it’s possible.

To order Karen’s book click here