Your Mental Wealth Newsfeed

Thought-Leaders on Financial Psychology to Receive the 2018 Montgomery-Warschauer Award from the Journal of Financial Planning

The Financial Planning Association® (FPA®) is pleased to announce Derek R. Lawson, CFP® and Bradley T. Klontz, Psy.D., CFP® as the recipients of the 2018 Montgomery-Warschauer Award for their July 2017 Journal of Financial Planning paper, "Integrating Behavioral Finance, Financial Psychology, and Financial Therapy into the 6-Step Financial Planning Process."

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Your Beliefs about the Rich May Be Keeping You Poor

Our exposure to diverse perspectives on money is often limited, since we tend to hang around those with similar beliefs and financial status. As a result, our money scripts are often based on partial truths about other groups and are rarely challenged. We are launched into the world with a set of money scripts that are firmly held, but based on a limited perspective.

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Ranking for 2019: The Best Financial Advisors in the State of Florida

This firm believes that after a person’s relationships with family and friends, their relationship with money is the next most important one in their lives. To promote their clients’ financial decision-making, this top Florida financial advisor has created the Mental Wealth® Discovery Process.

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Who Will Listen to a Billionaire’s Troubles?

In an effort to gain a deeper understanding of the wealthy, Mr. Klontz was the lead investigator in a study of wealthy individuals (conducted with three others, including Paul Sullivan, a financial columnist for The New York Times), published in 2015. The study found the ultrarich to be deeply conflicted

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Inside the Minds of the Ultrawealthy

They have this feeling that rules don’t apply to them, although that mind-set is often the key to much of their success. If they’re told something can’t be done a certain way, they think that doesn’t apply to them and find a way around it. It can be viewed as elitist or having a sense of entitlement, but it’s also a highly effective strategy for innovative thinking.

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A financial psychologist explains why your money problems are 'totally predictable' based on how you grew up

According to Brad Klontz, a financial psychologist, author, and cofounder of financial-consulting firm Your Mental Wealth, our core attitudes about money aren't entirely of our own volition. "The No. 1 lie we tell ourselves about money is that our financial problems are the result of us being crazy, lazy, or stupid," Klontz told Business Insider. "It's actually totally predictable based on where you grew up and what you were taught."

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Resist holiday overspending with tips from experts

Overspending at this time of year can be a serious problem, leading to a holiday hangover in January, when credit card bills are due. To prevent a buildup of shopping anxiety and binge buying during the season, shopping and finance experts offered some tips to help shoppers navigate stores. Make a realistic budget. Courtney Jespersen, retail and shopping expert at NerdWallet, said the prime reason many people bust their budgets is they don't think of the total cost. Holiday spending is not just about buying presents.

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7 Steps to Facilitate Exquisite Listening

Relationships fail when communication breaks down. Mounting evidence confirms what we intuitively know—we are hardwired to seek connection with others. In order to feel connected, we must be able to communicate effectively. Exquisite listening focuses on the most important aspect of communication: listening.

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Why Financial Planning Research Doesn’t Matter (and What to Do About It)

For the most part, financial planning research doesn’t matter to financial planners. It is too obscure. It is too difficult to digest and even when digested, it is too unrelated to what concerns them most. For the most part, it does not inform financial planning practice.As a profession, we have work to do in bridging the gap between financial planning research and practice. To be fair, this science-practice gap exists in many other professions, including psychology, which continues to struggle with generalizing laboratory research to real-world settings

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Six ways to boost your fraud IQ

Expert reveals how to protect your finances

our emotional intelligence and IQ may be off the charts, but what about your fraud IQ for spotting fraud attempts and protecting your finances? "We have a natural tendency to block out awareness about fraud because it makes us feel vulnerable," says Dr. Brad Klontz, a Chase financial education partner. As the co-founder of the Financial Psychology Institute and the publisher of five books on the psychology of money, Klontz has studied attitudes toward money extensively. "A 'Know/Do' gap exists, where consumers likely know steps they should take to prevent fraud - but they often don't act until it's too late," Klontz says.

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Don't Let Boomerang Kids Sabotage Your Retirement

JUST WHEN YOU WERE beginning to spread your wings and enjoy your empty nest, your recent college grads are back home. Maybe they are still looking for that all-important first job. Or, perhaps that first paycheck isn't quite as big as they hoped and they are camping in your basement hoping to bank some coin. You aren't alone. A recent Rubicon Project survey found that 61 percent of parents of millennials are already planning to have their children boomerang home after college and 57 percent wouldn't charge them rent.Could this torpedo your retirement plans and financial future? Not if you follow these steps.

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How a woman who went from $12 in her bank account to millionaire status learned to stop sabotaging her success

Lisa Nichols didn't grow up with money. After a humble childhood, she found herself a single parent with a mere $12 in her bank account at age 27. She needed government assistance to survive. Today, her net worth exceeds $1 million, thanks largely to the success of her company, Motivating the Masses, which offers business coaching and professional development to small business owners.

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Celebrities Behaving Badly With Money, and How They Were Rescued

Celebrated musicians, singing stars and pro athletes may be masterful in the spotlight, but when it comes to handling money, they’re often pitiful failures. Indeed, such talents typically blow the millions they make in the first heady years of hitting the jackpot or immediately after retiring. Enter Dr. Ted Klontz. Focusing on the psychology of money, he helps folks cork the financial bleeding — or prevent it from happening in the first place. In an interview with ThinkAdvisor, Klontz tells horror stories about the bad financial behaviors of the rich and famous — and how he’s helped rescue these personalities.

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A ‘Therapeutic’ Approach to Financial Planning

Advisers turn therapist to help clients understand their ‘money scripts’

Does your inner child have too much influence over your financial life? Do your finances stress you out? A growing number of so-called financial therapists want to help. Due in part to the rising popularity of behavioral finance—an academic field that holds that people often don’t make rational economic decisions—financial planners are borrowing techniques from psychologists and other specialists in our emotional lives.

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Dr. Klontz’s Financial Therapy Aims to Cure Your Clients’ Fear of Change

Brad Klontz, a psychologist and CFP, talks about the four paradigms that drive investors money behavior (and conflicts).

Financial advisors who give financial therapy can stop clients from making portfolio-blowing investment decisions and encourage them to follow their advice overall. So says Dr. Brad Klontz, Psy.D., who is both a clinical psychologist and a certified financial planner. Nowadays, more people are experiencing “financial anguish” regardless of the state of the economy or the market, Klontz argues. Consequently, training in the relatively new technique of financial therapy is growing in popularity among FAs who realize that their job is much more than investing clients’ money: It’s about understanding human behavior. Klontz’s training programs pivot on clients’ “money scripts” – ingrained beliefs they were taught about money while growing up that they carry around as adults.

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Dr. Brad Klontz and Brian Davis Expand OCCAM Leadership Team

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Occidental Asset Management, LLC (OCCAM), a rapidly growing registered investment advisory firm (RIA), today announces the appointments of two Managing Principals to the executive leadership team: Dr. Brad Klontz, Psy.D., CFP®, Executive Director of Financial Psychology & Behavioral Finance, and Brian Davis, Executive Director of Strategy & Organizational Development.The addition of these industry veterans drives the next phase of OCCAM’s advisory growth plan, which focuses on developing innovative services for clients and recruiting new advisors who share a passion for utilizing financial psychology to help clients transform their financial lives. Considered a pioneer of financial psychology, Dr. Klontz brings over 20 years of diverse experience to OCCAM. Dr. Klontz co-founded Your Mental Wealth™ and the Financial Psychology Institute™, is an Associate Professor in Financial Planning at Kansas State University, and served as a spokesperson for H&R Block.

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How Couples Can Resolve Their Biggest Fights Over Money

Money is one of the biggest sources of marital discord—and it can be one of the toughest to resolve. That’s because when couples argue about how to spend money, they’re not just debating the issue at hand, such as how much they can put on the credit card each month, or whether they can really afford that big vacation. They’re giving voice to subconscious anxieties that even they may not be aware of—and bumping up against the unarticulated fears of their partners.

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