Kathleen Burns Kingsbury, wealth psychology expert, explains why financial professionals should know the importance of each client's money story.

You know, Julie, you and I and I know other members of our team have been big fans of Kathleen Byrne’s Kingsbury over the three or 4 or 5 years that we’ve worked together. Now, around the topic of your money story, it’s a topic that oftentimes when we present to client audiences, gets people sharing really emotional both and the whole range of emotions, you know, things that make people laugh sometimes that make people cry about their relationship with money, where they learned it, where they came from. And it’s crucial information for financial professionals really to understand.

It is amazing how powerful this content is. And we always say, John, that it’s the longest running relationship that we have in our lives, if you really think about it. And to help financial professionals really tap into this knowledge and then apply it to how clients are saving and investing and spending and gifting. What an amazing conversation to be able to have.

And Julie, I have a challenge for all of our listeners, and that is when you listen to the conversation that we’re about to share with you that Julie and I had with Kathleen Byrnes Kingsbury, I want you to listen and think about your own relationship with money, because what we find is once a financial professional really thinks about and every time that she talks, both Julie and I are going, that’s like the time I learned this or we did that, or my mom said this or what? It’s like it takes you right back. So as you’re listening to this episode, I want you to think through the elements that Kathleen is talking about in your own money story. Because once you understand how this works for yourself, I guarantee you you become a bigger proponent of using these techniques with your clients.

Absolutely. All it makes me think of is needs versus wants. I’ll leave it at that. Yeah.

Well, Julie, why don’t you share with our audience a little bit about Kathleen, who she is and the work that she does, and then we’ll invite them to listen into the conversation.

I’d be delighted to. Kathleen Byrnes Kingsbury isn’t your average money mindset coach with over 18 years of specialized experience. She’s dedicated herself to empowering women across finance, business and entrepreneurship. Her expertise extends to working with financial advisors, helping them navigate the complexities of wealth management while fostering stronger client relationships. Recognized by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and others, Kathleen is the author of Breaking Money Silence How to Shatter Money Taboos. Talk More Openly About Finances and Leverage Your Life. Her most recent of five books on wealth, psychology and financial communication.

Without further delay. Let’s hear from Kathleen. Hi, I’m. John.

And I’m Julie.

We’re the hosts of the Hartford Funds Human Centric Investing podcast.

Every other week, we’re talking with inspiring thought leaders to hear their best ideas for how you can transform your relationships with your clients.

Let’s go.

Kathleen, welcome to the Human Centric Investing podcast. We are so excited to have you here with us today.

I am thrilled to be here as well with both of you.

Kathleen. Julie and I are both big fans of the analogy of a money story, and we’ve used it with client audiences quite a bit. But for those of our listeners who haven’t really heard this concept of what a money story is, we’d like to get it straight from you. What is a money story and why is it so important to a financial advisor?

Yes. Well, money stories aren’t talked about too, too much. But basically what it is, is it’s a collection of all our thoughts, beliefs and attitudes about money. And typically, a money story is something that develops between the ages of five and 15. That’s kind of the foundation or the opening chapters of the money story. And it gets written by us observing our behaviors of significant caregivers. So whether that’s parents or aunts and uncles and how they interact with money, what is interesting about money stories is that many of us aren’t aware that we have them because we don’t talk about money in our society very much. We’re starting to do it a little bit more. And so often this is a new concept for advisors as well as for the advisors clients. Money stories are really important. Whether you’re aware of them or not, they are influencing the questions an advisor asks because advisors have money stories too. It is also influencing how your advisory clients are doing financial planning, investing, saving, gifting. So these thoughts and beliefs that are kind of below the surface are really impacting many of the aspects of financial planning and also impacting how the advisors are working with their clients.

So, Kathleen, I want to go back to something that you said, because I think it’s really important. You said between the ages of five and 15, those are obviously very young ages. And so if we fast forward, typically these financial conversations are happening much later in life. And so we’re taking memories from much earlier in life or maybe memories we don’t even realize that we’re drawing upon. How does a financial professional start to wade into these conversations or maybe begin to draw parallels or help a client dip into some of these, you know, family memories? Obviously, you don’t necessarily just sit down on day one and say, let’s let’s let’s have this talk and let’s let’s think about what what it was like to grow up in your household or maybe you do. Will you talk to us a little bit about how a financial professional can start to begin to crack open some of these memories?

Absolutely. That’s a great question. One thing that’s important for people to know is that money stories, the foundation is between 5 and 15, but we keep kind of writing chapters as we go along well into adulthood, well into actually through the course of our lives. So that’s important to know. The other thing that is important to know is that you can change your money story once you become aware of it. So if there’s something that isn’t serving you, you don’t have to live with what was written when you were seven years old. So I think those are important things to highlight when it comes to an advisor really trying to get at their client’s money story. I recommend that they use a tool called a genogram. It basically is a family tree and it is a family tree that really starts to highlight what are the money messages that were passed down across generations. You may want to do this. Use this tool in the discovery process. You may want to wait till later when you’ve established more trust with your client. But we can certainly talk a little bit more about what that tool looks like. If you decide, Hey, I don’t want to use this big tool and add this to my whole discovery process. You can ask simple questions such as What did your parents teach you about money growing up? Was there conflict about money in your house? How do you think how you were raised impacts how you save, spend, gift and invest? So you can use this tool? You also can build in some simple questions that aren’t going to take as much time, that are going to start to introduce the idea that this is something that we talk about in the financial planning relationship and it’s okay to go there. People usually just go there with you and think. It’s kind of an interesting part of the conversation.

And Kathleen, I want to go back to this concept of the money story overall. You just mentioned a moment ago about the story being made up of different chapters. Can you give us some examples of kind of what these chapters might be? And then within that chapter, we know there’s a lot of writing. What makes up the chapter then, if we well, so couple of examples of what chapters might look like and then kind of what fills the pages.

Sure. I love that. So basically, if you think about it, each chapter might be on a particular financial behavior. So it could be a chapter. You’re on saving a chapter on how you spend a chapter on if you gift, how you gift. I think there’s also to broaden it out. And a lot of the work that I focus in on is there’s a chapter about, do you talk about money? Who do you talk about money with and who do you not talk about money with? For a lot of people, there’s also a chapter about earnings. You know, what is a respectable salary? Do you ask for a raise? If so, when? So there are many, many chapters that make up all the different aspects of our relationship with money. And it usually comes down to looking at what we call a money script. So a money script is like one line in the chapter that is a belief about money. So, for example, if you were taught to saving money is good, spending money is bad. So that might be in your saving spending chapter. If you have those money scripts, that’s going to impact whether you buy something for yourself, whether if you get a bonus at work, you’re going to use that to, you know, pay off the mortgage or splurge on something. So each of the chapters has all these different thoughts and beliefs in them. And the beauty of money stories. And I think what’s so interesting about them is they’re so unique to an individual. So you can grow up in the same family. Maybe you have some of the same money scripts, but your story is very, very different.

It’s interesting. I was just going to ask about the family that it could people grow up in the same household, obviously, and have very different stories or and or could they maybe take something that that happened with a family relationship or a parent and maybe rebel against it or do the opposite? You know, maybe if they grew up in a household where maybe their it was hard to pay the bills every month, maybe because money was mismanaged. And they said, you know what? In my lifestyle, I don’t ever want to be like that. So I’m going to manage my money to a budget because it’s really important to me to not live like that. It’s just very interesting. I would imagine how people process that information in their own money story very differently after they move out and kind of have their own lifestyle structure.

Sure. Sure. No, I think, Julie, that’s a really interesting part. I mean, family dynamics are really interesting anyway. They also can be challenging, but basically you can have siblings, you that have very, very different money stories. Often sometimes the foundation is similar. So if you were taught that, you know, you don’t buy showy things or you were taught that it’s really important to give back, you may still have that as a foundation, but how you express it might be different. The other thing that is interesting is we do tend to as and I think this is true in a lot of respects, but we tend to either go, Hey, mom and dad or my caretaker really knew what they were doing or I’m not doing that at all. So you are right. There does seem to be this polarization that happens. And I know many clients that I have who are affluent now, maybe grew up with very little. So they really, really focused on earning because they didn’t want to be in that same position. Or I also have clients now who were raised in a very thrifty household that are like, I will never budget to that level because that just really was so stressful in my house. So again, there’s a lot of different variables on how people can ultimately write their story and live their story.

It’s funny, Kathleen, when you say that. It takes me back. Every time you talk, I I’m reflecting back on my own life, my own money story. So I remember at one point in my life, I was very young. My mom was struggling to put food on the table for three kids. She was trying to apply for some government benefits or something, and she didn’t qualify. She didn’t get them. And I remember my mom being in tears, and that dramatically, in fact, affected me as her son being like, Well, government’s not good for anything, right? And that’s it was the script, right? When I talked to my mom about it years later, you know what she said? I don’t even remember that happening. Yeah, it’s funny it happened to her, but it impacted me. And I think, Julie, when we talk to clients with Kathleen’s material, this is what we hear all the time. We hear these stories that, you know, oftentimes what I find, Kathleen, is the money story. And the memories start off on kind of a happy note. We kind of laugh about something or we remember. And the more we reflect on them, some of the more serious stuff comes out. And and it’s quite interesting. What I found is that and Julie and I and our team have a have a story that says it’s not rational thought that causes people to make emotional or financial decisions. It’s emotion that puts money in motion. So I was wondering, Kathleen, I know you shared with us previously an example of a client of yours, and we’ll change the names to protect the innocent. But we we called her Gwen. And I was wondering if you could walk us through you mentioned that genogram and your work with Gwen and kind of what you uncovered and how you helped her kind of think differently about her money story and maybe change some of her behaviors?

Sure. I’m more than happy to share about Gwen. She is somebody that is representative of a lot of the clients that I work with, and I want to say upfront that even though she happens to be a female, I certainly have clients that identify as male that may have this same dynamic happening. So when she first came to see me in terms of working on her relationship with money, she was referred by a financial advisor and her presenting problem was that she was spending too much. She wanted to save for retirement. She wanted to make sure the kids had enough for their education, so funding those education funds. But she was relatively newly divorced. She was new to managing her own money, and she just would get totally stressed out. And when she would stress out, she would show up. And so, you know, when you think about it, you might just say to her, well, Gwen, stop shopping. Well, if it was that easy, she would have done that before she kind of met me. So basically when I started working with her, we did a family tree. Instead of looking at like, you need to stop spending. It was more, okay, let’s look at what’s underneath the spending. Like, where did you learn that? When you get stressed out, you go to the mall? And so we did the family tree, which is basically like any family tree. You know, it goes up two generations. And if you have kids, that goes, you know, one generation below you and you just identify the key players and just something about their relationship with money. So it could be as simple as, you know. What do you remember about grandma and money? What do you remember about grandfather and your parents? And so for her, we filled out this family tree. And what she discovered was that there were three generations of women. She was the third that found that they were married to people who, for whatever reason, that marriage didn’t work out. They were incredibly stressed out. And when they were stressed out, they’d go shopping. And so that might have looked different for her, you know, her grandmother, than it looked for her mother. But very early on, she realized in our work that boy mom would get stressed out and she would turn and she go, We’re going to go shopping. Don’t tell Dad. And they’d go shopping and they’d have a great time. And they weren’t stressed. So, of course, as an adult, when she got stressed out, she ended up at the mall. Now, for her and for other clients, how is that helpful? Because they still haven’t changed their behavior. That insight allows the client or the individual to be able to go, it’s not that I don’t have willpower. It’s not that I’m doing something that’s shameful. It’s like, I learned this behavior, so now I need to learn a new behavior. And so with Gwen, what we focused in on and then what the financial planner was able to reinforce was what else can you do when you’re stressed? You know, do you want to learn to knit? Do you want to take a walk? You know, do you want to go out with friends? And so while it seemed so simple, it really was. She needed a little bit more a few more coping tools before she was able to let go of her overspending. Happy to report that she did. And she was able then to start funding her kids college fund, which she was very, very worried about, and even start to look ahead to her retirement. So that’s a success story. I mean, I have many, many of these where the family money messages come to the conscious thought and then all of a sudden people are like, And something shifts. And so that’s the power of a money story.

You know, Kathleen, oftentimes we’re dealing with clients that seem petrified of investing. Right. Like, just roll those CD’s, rather don’t take any risks with my money. And all we see, we look at the person and say, wow, they’re really risk averse. But do we ever seek to understand why? And I think understanding that while listening to that story provides just a ton of insight, I’m sure. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead, Kathleen.

And I think with investing, what is interesting is it could be as simple as tell me where you learned about investing. You know, did your parents invest? If you look back, were there any mistakes that people made or were there any successes? It can be a very high level conversation that can get you to kind of what that money story is about risk.

Well. And what I was going to say was, I would imagine even between partners, spouses, couples, maybe even before they’re married, but even when they’re in a relationship, I would imagine that this exercise could be so powerful, just especially if they’re not on the same page about saving or spending or investing. And they’re having challenges in terms of thinking about the amount of risk they’re taking or budgeting. I know my husband and I dated for almost seven years before we got married because I wanted to make sure we were on the same page about money, and I wish that I had had this tool. We were young. I didn’t I didn’t know what questions to ask. So it was a lot of trial and error. And I’ve told him ever since I discovered your work, Kathleen, I think we could have expedited this by about five years had we just had this money. Genogram Because we would have been able to dig into our paths, figure it out, solve it and move forward. It took a lot of years of trial and error. We finally got there, luckily. But I just I really truly believe that this would be so helpful. I would imagine that you’ve you’ve seen that in your work between couples.

No, absolutely. What’s funny is, Julie, you make an assumption that I knew this when I first met my husband, and that is not the case. In fact, in my book Breaking Money Silence, I talk about my moment of like, wow, we haven’t talked about money and we’ve been married like ten years. So I think it is something I’m hoping to break going forward, but something that historically has certainly happened. It is fascinating with couples. I encourage couples to do this work. And what is interesting about it is, of course, you come from a different background and of course you have different thoughts and beliefs and a different money story. What is really nice is when couples are able to do this, certainly before marriage, but even now, being married a long time and discover what are the ways in which our money story complement each other, what are the strengths that you have versus the strengths that I have? And instead of making somebody’s money story wrong, you actually pull on those strengths because everybody’s money story has some things that are helpful and some things that aren’t helpful. And couples that are stronger don’t have identical money stories, but they’ve figured out how to blend it and become money compatible. So that is really the key.

So, Kathleen, talk a little bit about the role of the financial professional in this telling of a really receiving of money stories like the first thing that comes to my mind is I think it probably be important to be a little bit vulnerable, right. To to share some mistakes. There are just like both you and Julie made. Right. Or just what you just said about, Hey, I didn’t have this all figured out right when we got married or whatever it might be. But I think being able to show vulnerability probably be important. But what do you think is the appropriate role? I’m sure there are some financial professionals gone. I don’t even know if I want to go down this road because I’m not sure I can handle what emotions may come at me. What counsel do you give to financial professionals? Because, Kathleen, I know you talk to them quite often at various conferences and things like that.

Yeah, I’m coaching a lot of financial advisors these days around a variety of things, but certainly about money stories. And I think what is important is to, first of all, do the work yourself. So go through the money story exercises that we have developed and really get a sense of what your money story is. That in itself will help you feel less intimidated. You’ll find out, this isn’t that scary of a process. Also, when you are working with clients, there is a lot of research that supports that. Clients want emotionally intelligent advisors, advisors who go and have these conversations. I call it the human side of finance, just like you’re like the human centric podcast, right? So it’s a human side of finance and it really is a risk to your book of business if you don’t learn these skills. Now, I am not saying that you have to do the work at the level that I do the work. It’s really about introducing the concept of, Hey, we have money stories, talking to the clients and educating them a little bit about what a money story is and then asking them a few questions that will help you understand maybe what parts of their money story are as it relates to whether you’re working on investing, gifting or or, you know, whatever. It can be that simple. And the other thing I say about emotions, it’s so funny because I’ve been in this field over 18 years and I’m like, the one who showed up in the scene is like, we’re going to talk about feelings. And advisors are like, No, we’re not. And now, 18 years later, there are conferences dedicated to advisors really looking at the emotional side. So that’s great progress in my experience. Clients know that they are meeting with a financial advisor. They often have emotions that are related and in line with the fact that they’re meeting with a financial advisor. They’re not. They know they’re not meeting with a therapist. It is very rare that the emotions that come up are something that an advisor can’t handle. In fact, I’ve never heard of that coming up. It is a common fear that advisers have. But just know that if for some reason it gets too much, which I doubt it will, you can always say, Hey, I know this is stirred up a lot. Let’s take a break. Let me think about what the next steps are and then you get a referral to somebody like me. But again, keep in mind, typically clients take care of themselves and money stories will bring up as much or as little as they’re capable of handling.

I think that’s such great advice. Kathleen, what would you say to the financial professional that has worked with a client for 20 years or some period of time will say knows them well and hasn’t brought this up and wants to, but is worried about why now? How would they how would you counsel them just to dip their toe into this conversation all of a sudden after a lengthy relationship with that client or that family?

Well, the upside, Julie, is that they’ve worked with them for 20 years. So there is trust established. They probably know them fairly well, might even have a sense of what part of the money story might be useful for them to explore. So there’s some real advantages to doing this with long term clients. And I often say to advisors, you know, one thing you can say in an annual meeting is, Hey, I listen to this podcast, or I went to this seminar and I learned about this thing called Money Stories. I think it would be really helpful to the work that we’re doing if we took a little time to talk about it. And then you ask for permission, Would that be okay with you if we put that on the agenda? If they say no. Say, okay, I might revisit it, you know, the next time we chat. If they say yes, then you have permission to go there. And it really is just about letting them know that you want to share some new information that you think would be beneficial. It’s very similar to saying, Hey, I learned about this new type of investment or this new type of insurance, except for this is this new type of work. And I think if you approach it that way and you don’t stay attached to the results, then you can really introduce this work and it can be really helpful, especially if people are approaching retirement. I mean, there’s all sorts of money stories about that.

Well, Kathleen, you’re very kind to share your time today talking about your money story. But Julian, I have kind of a different exercise for you. If you’re a game where we get to learn not your money story, but a little bit about Kathleen’s story and what we call a lightning round of questions. So if your game here’s how it works, we’re going to spring a few questions on you. Not like mind benders, but just top of mind responses. And it just helps to get our audience to know Kathleen a little bit better and learn your story a little bit better. So if your game will give it a try and if you don’t like it, Kathleen will cut it out of the episode. How’s that?

I’m game, but I’m a little nervous. But I’m an open book. I’m an open book.

That’s where we want. Julie, why don’t you start?

Okay. Kathleen, on a scale of 1 to 10, how good of a driver are you?

Nine. My husband would say three.

But Kathleen, would you prefer a beach house or a lake house?

That’s hard. I’d like both. I’m going to go beach because I grew up going to the beach every summer, so I’ll say beach.

Awesome.

What’s the best age?

35.

Kathleen, we know you’re a very busy person. Do you prefer a paper to do list or a digital to do list?

I just love a to do list. No matter what it is. I have a I have it right here. I have a ton of paper. So paper.

What’s the ideal outside temperature?

24. Hang tight. 24. It’s snowing lightly, and we’ve just gotten a foot of snow.

Perfect.

We haven’t heard that one before.

I thought there’d be no response. Yeah.

Would you rather binge a TV show or watch a movie?

Movie. I think I’m going to go independent film.

Thank.

Well, Kathleen, we can’t thank you enough for joining us today on the Human Centric Investing podcast. And for our listeners, if you’re interested in learning more about Kathleen and her work, feel free to visit her website at CBC’s Wealth connection.com, or you can find her on LinkedIn at Kathleen Burns Kingsbury or she’s also on Facebook at Facebook.com. Breaking money, Silence. Again, Kathleen, thank you so much for sharing your time, your insights and your wisdom with our listeners today.

Thank you both. I’ve enjoyed breaking money silence with you.

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The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the guest who is not affiliated with Hartford Funds.