Plain talk about our experiences with money remains the last taboo to break in our society. Part of becoming an effective, happy person is making old money messages current and bringing hidden money messages out into the open.

Are you talking about money therapy? In most cases, it’s more like mental catch-up. We need to pick up the thread of money experiences and add it to the other story lines in our lives. That’s why I have all of my clients write a “money autobiography,” which is simply a truthful account of signi½cant life events from the perspective of money. Inevitably, an organizing theme emerges: It could be about “having and losing,” “never enough,” or “pretending that money doesn’t really matter, even though it does.”