Ever since I attended and wrote about a certain presentation at the 1995 ICFP Retreat in Colorado Springs, my newsletter columns and articles have periodically explored the intersection of money, psychology and financial planning. In fact, the phrase "life planning" came from one of my early interviews with George Kinder and Cynthia Meyers, two of the first practitioners. We didn't have a name for what they did. They hated the term "lifestyle planning" (which suggests that the primary issue is whether or not to buy a Lexus), so we provisionally settled on "life planning," in hopes that a better term would someday emerge.

Since then, Kinder wrote The Seven Stages of Money Maturity and founded the Kinder Institute; Carol Anderson and Mitch Anthony launched turnkey life planning systems; and the Nazrudin organization was born. People are now being certified as "money coaches" by the Money Coaching Institute, and practitioners like Cicily Maton and Charlie Haines have been incorporating a therapist into their client discovery meetings.

The idea of exploring money issues has become so routine in so many planning offices that some advisors say we shouldn't have a name for it at all; in Roy Diliberto's now-famous phrase, it's just "financial planning done well."

EVERYONE HAS ISSUES

I'd like to say that I was purely exploring this psychology-of-financial-planning phenomenon when I attended Onsite's six-day Healing Money Issues program (www.onsiteworkshops.com/programs.htm) in Cumberland Furnace, Tenn., with facilitators Rick Kahler, a planner in Rapid City, S.D., and experiential psychologist Ted Klontz. But, as with just about everybody else (Klontz says a very conservative estimate is 80% of the human population), I brought along my own money issues-false assumptions, dysfunctional thinking and mental roadblocks that cause me, like many others, to sabotage my financial progress.

For example, three years ago I asked my Inside Information audience to provide me with testimonials for my very first marketing program. I received almost 500 enthusiastic replies. Those glowing testimonials are still sitting, unpublished, on my hard drive. Why didn't I follow through? Perhaps I would find out.

A BRIDGE TO MEANING

Early in the program, Kahler said something that caught my attention: "Money is a bridge to meaning." Money can be used to support our dreams and aspirations, to buy books we want to read or for the overseas trips we want to take. An education costs money; so does the first phase of a business start-up. And yet, Kahler told our group, when you ask people to free-associate with the word "money," about 70% of the associations will be negative. "If that were true about your spouse or significant other," he said, "how would that work for you?"

The essential methodology of Kahler's workshop is similar to the process that Ebeneezer Scrooge underwent in the classic A Christmas Carol.Scrooge was confronted with his past, given a tour of the present, and offered a grim look at his future. So were we. With Kahler playing the Ghost of Christmas Past, our small group was invited to write down anything we could remember about money when were growing up.

PRISONERS OF CHILDHOOD

I immediately rediscovered a long-buried memory. As children, my younger brother and I received occasional allowances, not consistently, but at the whim of my father. The money would barely have touched my brother's hand before it was recirculated into the economy, spent on chewing gum and comic books. Mine was stashed in a bedroom dresser drawer next to the socks.

Later, my brother would mope because he had no money. Out of sympathy my parents would give him more. Could I have some too? My parents would smile and tell me I did such a great job of saving that I didn't need any more. (Money script: "Not spending money on myself is praiseworthy." My brother's script was somewhat different.) Kahler told us that money scripts are typically written by others, often a caregiver, when we're young, and tend to be deeply ingrained-so much so that it's common for people to suddenly blurt out: "I didn't know I believed that!"

As he talked, others were coming up with their own scripts: It is far better to give money than to receive it. Money corrupts. One member of the group was more financially successful than her brothers, who would constantly ask her for loans—which of course were never repaid. Her script, written in early adulthood: "If I never have any money, then nobody will take it away from me." She came to the workshop to get her overspending under control.