After more than 20 years in this industry, I sometimes find myself wondering whether I'm a financial advisor or a therapist. Don't get me wrong, I'm very comfortable with my financial expertise. But I find that I'm at my best when I go beyond the numbers and get into the attitudes and behaviors that truly impact clients' financial lives. I never quite know what I'll uncover in my meetings with clients, especially when I'm working with couples.

As with many of my colleagues, I became an advisor to help people become financially independent. But over the years, I've learned that clients often sabotage their ability to achieve that goal. For example, no matter how much the client says he wants to save for his child's education, he simply must have the top-of-the-line minivan. Or the couple who bailed out at the bottom of the market, even though their investment had a 15-year time horizon and their resources were enough to comfortably get them through the rough patches. My mission is to see that they avoid these traps.

That's why I view the boundary between financial planner and financial therapist as a fine line. Even the most beautifully constructed financial plan will fail if the client's relationship to money isn't built into it. By this, I'm referring to the psychology of money: the sum total of the person's beliefs, upbringing and feelings about the purpose money serves in his or her life today. These things influence clients' spending, saving and investing habits. For a plan to be successful, the client's behavior patterns must be uncovered and factored in. This is much more effective than simply moving forward with the unrealistic expectation that a client will suddenly change his or her habits to fit a standard plan.

In the case of couples, you're often working with two different money personalities. Couples who marry later in life, after they have been financially independent for years, no longer handle money in the traditional way our parents did. Often, there is a complex "yours, mine and ours" approach to finances. This is also the case when douples are in second and third marriages.

GETTING INTO IT

The reality is that most couples would balk if they walked into my office for the first time and I announced that we're going to spend the meeting digging through their emotional money baggage. Obviously, that's not how we start.

Our first meeting is basically an hour-long meet-and-greet, an opportunity to familiarize clients with the financial planning process and discuss fees. The second meeting, the Fact Finder, is when I look to uncover their "money baggage" because this information will enable me to help them successfully implement the financial plan. Although I do gather all the necessary financial information at that two-hour meeting, I am far less concerned with the numbers than with the details of their goals and money behaviors.

I am careful in how I approach this essential conversation. I'll ask them how money was handled in their families when they were growing up. Was there enough, a lot or too little money? Did their parents talk openly about money? Did they fight about it?

It's helpful to start by sharing something about myself. My father was an immigrant and my mother's father died when she was young. There was a scarcity mentality about money in my family. This led my parents to live dramatically beneath their means, with a penchant toward saving, even after they had become financially stable, and even affluent.

Their attitudes about money were imposed on us, their children. For example, one day when I was about seven, I was with my two siblings and my mother at the grocery store. Chickens were on sale for a dollar each, but each customer was limited to two. My mother gave each of us two dollars and we all stood in the checkout line with our two chickens and two dollar bills in our hands.

I was embarrassed by that and similar experiences and vowed that I would always have enough. That commitment has been a driving force in my adult life, at times making me a compulsive saver. My challenge has been to loosen up a little and learn how to spend comfortably without either hoarding or splurging.

MORE QUESTIONS

Once I've broken the ice, my clients are usually eager to reveal some of their own experiences. Often they tell stories that they've never shared, even with their spouses. If they share just a kernel-e.g., "Yeah, I remember when my dad came home with a new car and my mom was furious because he hadn't even told her he was thinking about replacing the old one."-I'll probe for more. I might ask, "How were money decisions generally made? Who kept the purse strings? Was it common for your mother to disagree with your dad about spending?"