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(Note:  This post will always be the first post, it’s like my home page.  Please scroll down for newer - and older - posts and articles.  KP)

If you’re a woman, you’re likely one of the 91% of women do not feel confident that they will be able to retire with enough money.

Perhaps you are very successful in many ways, but you have not been able to build wealth, or perhaps you have lost what you once had.

Maybe you earn a good income, even a great one, but you’re at a loss to explain where all the money goes.

Perhaps you’re one of the great majority of women who is so embarrassed at the state of their finances that they would rather talk about their sex lives than their money.

You might experience your relationship with money as a “love-hate” relationship.  You enjoy money, you love to spend it, you’d like to have more of it, and at the same time, you find money frustrating, a hassle, and you’d just as soon not have to “deal with it.”

You dread the thought of meeting with your financial planner, if you have one (and you might wonder if you have enough net worth for a planner to want to meet with you anyway). 

You have big dreams, but you don’t see how to pull them off, financially.  Money feels like a barrier to you or a trap, not a useful tool that can help you. Continue Reading »

(A tale of two political figures - one fictional as well as accidental, one real and very intentional.)

As long as the roots are not severed, all is well.

beingthere

This week I re-watched the brilliantly constructed satire, “Being There.”  (A 1979 film directed by Hal Ashby, adapted from the 1971 novel written by Jerzy Kosiński.)  Peter Sellers plays a simple-minded gardner with no social or intellectual skills, being essentially raised by television sets and the plants he tended.  When forced into new situations such as befriending a billionaire and meeting the president, he is mistaken for a genius of sorts.  ”Chance the Gardner” becomes “Chauncey Gardiner,” his simple sentences interpreted as deep metaphors about the state of the nation.

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I was so moved by the words of FDR at his inaugural address, and struck by the timeliness of what he wrote for our own time as well, I wanted to share this excerpt.  Given March 4, 1933, this speech was delivered in the depth of the Depression. 

“This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. 
“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
 

 

In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory.  I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

“In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties.  They concern, thank God, only material things.  Values have Continue Reading »

The chaos in our financial markets seems to stand in contrast to the serenity of a beautiful fall day, with many-colored leaves on display and the gentlest of breezes giving them breath. 

But look closely…

I often find that my life tends to mirror and follow the season, both in exterior patterns and interior rhythms.  And perhaps the financial markets, which at a glance appear to be such a contrast to this autumn beauty, are doing the same. Continue Reading »

“Financial Therapy”

“What do you do?”  It’s the simplest, most basic question, one we might be asked on a daily basis.  I know exactly what I do, but I’m still trying to figure out how to answer that question in a way that people can understand.

In a nutshell, I help people think and feel differently about money.

I help people create wealth, but not with stocks, bonds, real estate and budgets with built-in automatic saving plans.  (Yes, one must have a plan, but it’s the wrong starting place.)  I help people create wealth from the inside out, through transforming beliefs, attitudes, and emotions. 

But what am I?

Sometimes I define it by describing what I’m not.  We all probably know what a Financial Planner is, or perhaps we have had experience with a Financial Advisor, Financial Services Representative, or similar animal.  Some work on commission, some work for fees, all have tools to help you assess your current financial situation, panic properly as you grasp the enormity of the canyon over which you must leap in order to one day retire, and financial products (investments, insurance, etc.) you can purchase that may assist you in reaching that and other benchmarks. 

I took a CFP course once.  I got my life insurance license.  I interviewed in the financial services field.  I was well on my way to a life of using tools and charts and calculators to help people plan their financial futures. 

But I wasn’t sleeping well.  It wasn’t my calling.  I knew the world didn’t need another financial planner (with all due respect to the thousands of fine financial planners who serve a genuine need to their grateful clients). 

I knew what I was.  I couldn’t deny it.  I had been one for years.  It was time to admit it.  Continue Reading »

“The quality of our life is the quality of our emotions.”

 

Gas is over $4 a gallon, meanwhile foreclosures are up, workers are being laid off, and business owners are tightening their belts.  The word “recession” is bandied about, sometimes in whispers (as if we’re afraid the economy might hear us), other times in not-so-soft complaints. 

 

I’m a prosperity coach, not an all-powerful genie who can cure this country of what ails it.  However, I may have some “cures” that may help our individual suffering in a measurable way.

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