The investor within: Balancing your psychological make-up with your financial make-up

Financial psychologists work to help you uncover the "why" behind your investment strategies.

By Alice Shane, AMNews correspondent. May 19, 2003.

If you live beyond your means, carry excessive debt, engage in inappropriate high-risk investing or have frequent battles over money with your spouse, your problem may not be in your bank account -- it may be in your head.

That's the basis of the emerging field of financial psychology. While your certified financial planner is focusing upon the ledger, a financial coach (which is what some of these professionals call themselves) could be rummaging through your psyche, unearthing reasons and attitudes that lead to dysfunctional behaviors with money. Television talk show host and author Suze Orman has made a fortune selling this approach to money management.

Right now there is no licensing or accreditation for a "certified financial psychologist," so conceivably anyone could claim to be one. But that aside, Erik Thurnher, MD, an emergency physician and certified financial planner, likes the concept. In fact, he thinks this approach is such an important and legitimate development that he has launched a search for a qualified financial psychologist to recommend to his own clients.

"We're looking for someone with a formal psychology or psychiatry background, someone qualified to help clients understand how spousal relationships, childhood upbringing and control issues cause dysfunctional financial behaviors," says Dr. Thurnher, who thinks someone in this position should also have at least a basic understanding of financial planning concepts.

Dr. Thurnher, who heads Physicians Financial Consultants, a fee-for-service financial advisory for physicians based in Newport Beach, Calif., believes that his own holistic exploration into goals, values and how money fits into the big picture of clients' lives, can be therapeutic.