Misconceptions about money are common. Financial counseling may be necessary when you struggle with financial stress.
Financial therapy is counseling that provides financial advice and motivation to help people manage financial stress.
Here is what Madeleine Aggeler reported regarding financial therapy for The Guardian:
Not many people seem to feel happy about their financial lives right now. In the US, 63% of Americans cited money as a “significant stressor” in their lives, according to the American Psychological Association’s 2023 Stress in America report. Among those aged 18 to 34, that number went up to 82%. In the UK, a November 2023 poll found that a third of adults had felt anxious in the past month because of their personal financial situation, and 9% reported feeling “hopeless”.
There are concrete reasons for this anxiety. In the US, high inflation has given consumers a grim outlook on the economy, and a cost of living crisis has seized the UK.
But there is something else at play, too. For how central money is to our lives, many of us were never explicitly taught about it; some of us were expressly forbidden from discussing it. Instead, we learned about finances by watching how our family and friends handled it. We drew conclusions – often incomplete – and then brought those with us into adulthood. Is it any wonder, then, that so many people have a fraught relationship with money?
Enter financial therapy.
Still a relatively young field, financial therapy was born in 2008 when a small group of therapists and financial experts gathered in Garden Grove, California, to discuss how to bridge their two areas of study. A year later, they formed the Financial Therapy Association (FTA) to help shape and standardize the practice, develop ethical and training requirements, and grow the profession.
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