The following is an interview with Karen McCall, founder of the Financial Recovery Institute. Since 1988, McCall has counseled individuals, couples, and businesses through a holistic, transformational approach that results in a stable and secure financial foundation.

Barbara Bryn Klare, a communications consultant and award-winning finance writer, is the interviewer. Co-founder of an international business writing firm, she believes women write their own financial destinies. Visit her Personal Finance and Women and Money columns at SF Examiner.com or her blog, The UpSide of Money, which takes dry financial concepts – like saving and investing – and infuses them with a fresh, UpBeat approach.

Barbara Bryn Klare: Tell me about your background and why you started the Financial Recovery Institute.

Karen McCall: Quite honestly, I was a mess with money. 25 years ago, I had a horrible secret: I had a teak bowl on top of my fridge filled with unpaid bills I had never opened, some even from the IRS. I was overextended, naïve and in a fog about money. Even though I had a Pacific Heights address, and all the right clothes, I was in trouble. People often think, “How can a financial expert know how I feel?” So many people have shame and embarrassment in their relationship with money. I’ve been there.

BBK: How did you recover financially?

KM: First I went to a budget counselor. They gave me a monthly payment plan based on a budget THEY thought up. I couldn’t stick to it. My beliefs and attitudes about money hadn’t changed.

BBK: What was lacking in their method?

KM: I believe there is a gap that therapists, budget counselors, and even financial planners don’t fill and that Financial Recovery counselors can. CPAs give tax advice, financial planners teach how to grow and invest. Even therapists didn’t take my financial problems seriously – or didn’t know how to handle them.

To tackle your money problems effectively, you have to have strong practical skills AND the ability to go inward. At the Institute, we teach our counselors that the client’s process is 1 – first getting conscious and connecting with your money, 2 – assessing, evaluating and prioritizing, then 3 – making strong choices about earning, spending and saving. We teach about needs vs. wants, and learning to go from wanting to fulfillment. All our counselors-in-training go through the process themselves, so they develop awareness and empathy.

[Writer’s note: Financial Recovery counselors are certified by the Financial Recovery Institute only, which is not an accredited program. They cannot give financial advice.]

BBK: How many people has the Financial Recovery Institute helped, do you think?

KM: With the Ripple Effect, probably thousands. I have helped hundreds in my twenty-year career [Karen retired last year from counseling].

BBK: What has been the most rewarding part of Financial Recovery counseling for you?

KM: Having long-term relationships with my clients over the years. Many come back saying, “I can’t believe I am paying you and I have more money than before!”

Ultimately, it’s watching someone go from making do and doing without, in other words, living a life of deprivation, to going to a fuller, creative quality of life – a life of fulfillment and a vision for that life.

You can achieve clarity, understanding and peace with your relationship to money instead of anxiety, stress and chaos.

BBK: What’s on the horizon for you professionally?

KM: Well, I still get responses to my first book, “It’s Your Money.” It’s just a small book that I wrote! Now I am writing the book I always wanted to write about financial recovery. It will be out soon.

This is a guest post from Money On My Mind, who writes from the perspective of a fiscally obsessed, financially neurotic, thirty-something formal financial planner turned Mom living in Central Canada.

Back in the day, I was a credit counselor for a non-profit credit-counseling agency. One of the things I learned is that there is an epidemic of financial denial. Scores of us have no idea how much money we spend or what we spend it on. One symptom of financial denial is a lack of spending plan. When conversations with clients would evolve to budgeting, most people would become very uncomfortable and offer a list of misconceptions that stopped them from budgeting. Here are five off the top of my head.

Myth #1: A budget is just a list of income and expenses on a piece of paper.

Truth: A budget (I prefer spending plan or cash flow plan as budget has so many negative connotations) is a process. The key is to work your plan: recording and itemizing your expenses and goals and allocating your income toward them. A system has to be implemented to ensure the various categories of your spending plan are funded and revised as necessary.

Myth #2: Budgets are restrictive. It will be like going on a financial diet.

Truth: You control your spending plan it does not control you. Based on your values you decide where to spend your money and where not to spend your money. You make up the rules. No one can make you give up something that you feel enriches your life.

Myth #3: Budgets are only for people who have money left over each month. I don’t have enough to budget.

Truth: Everyone who has cash flow needs a spending plan. If you live paycheque to paycheque and have barely enough in- flow to cover your out-flow, then having a spending plan is especially important since one financial set-back will have a ripple effect through your entire life.

Myth #4: I can’t stick to a budget; every time I try I fail

Truth: You have not found a spending plan that works for you. Money is not a success only journey. Spending plans are as unique as the people who make them. Instead of giving up, change your plan.

Myth #5: I don’t know how to budget. No one ever taught me.

Truth: Very few people have been blessed with a good financial education. In an ideal world personal finance would be taught in school and your pay cheque would come with an owner’s manual. Most financial success stories are self-made. It’s about trial and error. As long as you learn from them your financial mistakes can be considered successes.

This featured post is presented by Girls
Just Wanna Have Funds.

Eating junk now leads to chronic illnesses later which means trips to the doctor, time off work which then means losing wages if you end up exhausting sick leave. This leads to stress about missing work due to illness which then leads to lower productivity which leads to sleepless nights which begins the cycle again. Let’s not forget deductibles and copays when you do go to the doctor. Make no mistake, you will have these expenses if you think eating healthy is too expensive.

Continue reading Eating Junk is Expensive at Girls Just Wanna Have Funds.