The Long Strange Trip Episode 7: Exploring Financial Therapy with Rick Kahler

Why Your Bank Account Has a Heart (and Sometimes a Headache)

Have you ever looked at a logic-driven financial plan, agreed with every word of it, and then went out and did the exact opposite? Don’t worry I’ve been there too. In fact, I’m currently navel-gazing my way through my own transition after selling my firm, and let me tell you, the "logical" part is the easiest bit to swallow.

I recently sat down with my friend Rick Kahler on the Long Strange Trip podcast to talk about something we’ve both realized over decades in the business: money isn’t just about math. It’s about feelings. A lot of them.

So, What’s This "Financial Therapy" Thing?

We like to pretend we’re rational beings making 100% logical choices, but Rick dropped a truth bomb: about 90 to 95 percent of our financial decisions are actually driven by emotion.

Financial therapy is basically the bridge between your spreadsheet and your soul. It’s a field that finally admits that a wealth manager and a therapist should probably be talking to each other. It’s been growing since the mid-90s, but it’s more relevant now than ever because, frankly, many of us are realizing that "having enough" doesn't automatically mean "feeling okay."

The Voices in Your Head (The Money Edition)

Rick uses this cool framework called Internal Family Systems (IFS). Think of it as recognizing the different "parts" of yourself.

Have you ever had that internal argument?

• Part A: "We need to save every penny for retirement or we'll end up under a bridge!"

• Part B: "Life is short! Buy the tickets! Give to the charity! Live a little!"

Usually, we just let those parts scream at each other until we're paralyzed. Rick’s approach helps those parts actually talk to each other. He told a story about a client torn between giving to charity and saving for the future. Instead of picking a "winner," they negotiated so both parts felt heard. It turns out, when you stop fighting yourself, making a decision gets a whole lot easier.

Why This Matters for Us

I’ll be honest with you, I teach this stuff, and I still struggle with it. When I sold my firm, I thought I was prepared. Then I lost key team members and things got messy. I had to lean hard on resilience, which is really just a fancy word for "staying in the game when you want to hide under the covers."

If you’re facing a big transition selling a business, retiring, or just wondering why you’re so stressed about a number on a screen, you aren't failing. You're just human.

A few things to chew on:

• Are you making decisions based on your bank balance or your fears?

• Which "part" of you is in the driver's seat today? The provider? The adventurer? The scared kid?

• If you’re feeling stuck, is it a math problem or a heart problem?

I don't have all the answers—I’m a fellow traveler on this long, strange trip right beside you. But I suspect that if we start looking at the why behind our money, the what becomes a lot less scary.

Transcription:

Introduction (Josh)

Welcome to the Long Strange Trip. I'm Josh. the host of the show.   We're going to dig into six areas together, finding real work-life integration. Instead of that brutal 9 to 5 5 split too many business owners to live with.   We're going to approach retirement as an actual reinvention. Rather than just stopping work.   and we're facing death honestly, and avoiding PTSD around it.   We're also building resilience,

when life throws us curve balls.   We're sharing wisdom across generations.  And finally, we're understanding the patterns that show up in all our transitions.  I'm  not coming at this as an expert I'm a fellow traveler figuring this stuff out in real time.

 Especially now as I navigate my own dual cancer diagnosis at 73. 

Welcome to the Long Strange Trip. I'm glad you're here.

Josh Patrick (00:00.908)

Hey, how are you today? This is Josh Patrick. We're with Rick Kahler and you're at the Long Streams Trip podcast where we talk about doing business differently and how to retire differently, doing death without PTSD, building resilience, wisdom, and then finally knowing how to handle transitions that will come along the way.

Rick Kahler (00:01.551)

No.

Josh Patrick (00:26.142)

And today we're going to start off our conversation with Rick, who is a fascinating guy, had been in the wealth management business for, I'm going to guess, pretty close to 40 years and recently sold his firm. But we're going to start off with what his next act is, which is financial therapy. And we'll find out what that is. But first, we need to bring Rick on so he can start talking and I can shut up. Rick, how are you today?

Rick Kahler (00:51.471)

I'm well. Good to be with you, Josh.

Josh Patrick (00:57.47)

And you've had some challenges over the last couple of weeks, so we won't go there, but I'm glad you were able to make it today. So, Rick, what is financial therapy?

Rick Kahler (01:10.395)

that's a good question and it's kind of similar to asking what is financial planning? Because it can be a lot of different things to a lot of different people and it's not a controlled term as such. But my definition of financial therapy is the intersection of money and emotions. You have

behavioral health specialists that deal with the emotional component of anything, change behavior. And then you have your financial people, investment advisors, financial planners, to deal with the dollars and cents of money. But there's been nobody in the middle bringing together the emotions and the dollars and the cents. No profession has really owned that space.

And the crazy thing is that 90 to 95 % of all decisions, financial decisions, are made emotionally. That usually doesn't go down real well with people like myself that are so left brain that we think we are steeped in logic. But it's true. And so,

Josh Patrick (02:26.306)

You

Rick Kahler (02:35.631)

When I explain this to somebody in the public, they usually will respond by saying, you know, that makes perfect sense. I'm really emotional about money. So a financial therapist has some training, some background where they can address both the emotional side of money and understand the dollars and cents side.

Josh Patrick (02:59.224)

So, there's really no profession that bridges the two?

Rick Kahler (03:06.403)

There really isn't. can, in financial planning, the financial life planners have come the closest to doing this. Susan Bradley's work of starting to understand that there's a union between emotions and money that needs to be honored. And so that, I mean, you could say that that

recognition possibly started in 1995 with Dick Wagner and George Kindner who got together, they did a presentation at the ICFP retreat, and then formed a leaderless group called the Nazruddin Project to kind of explore and play with this idea of emotions and money. And it's truly from that

that financial therapy emerged in 2008, 2009 as potentially a discipline. And the difference with the Financial Therapy Association that was started in 2009, I believe, is that it also embraces academics, which in the past, it's mostly been us practitioners. It says, know, there's something here. And of course,

academics come along, research it, study it, and legitimize it. So that's a little bit of the start of this field. I think today there may be 120 certified financial therapists. And there's a lot of people that use the title financial therapists, but it's definitely a growing and emerging field.

Josh Patrick (04:59.374)

You know, it's too bad Dick didn't adopt that term instead of phonology because nobody knows what the heck phonology meant. I actually helped Dick edit his book and I couldn't figure out what phonology was when I was done.

Rick Kahler (05:14.895)

In true.

Josh Patrick (05:16.462)

But at any rate, that's a different and long story which we won't get into. Nobody listening to this podcast, about maybe three people would understand that last little piece. So we'll move on. Now I know, Rick, that you are also an internal family systems therapist. Am I correct in that?

Rick Kahler (05:42.319)

Yes, I'm a certified internal family systems practitioner.

Josh Patrick (05:47.693)

Okay. And how do you integrate that? I'm a big fan of, first of all, can you give us a short definition of what IFS is? And then how do you explain to us how do you integrate financial stuff with IFS?

Rick Kahler (06:05.401)

Sure, sure. I discovered IFS in 2017 and I thought it was the craziest theory that I ever came across, which is founded by Richard Schwartz, 40, 45 years ago now. And it maintains that we're all sub-personalities. We have sub-personalities.

within us. And most people relate to this really quite easily. And whenever a person says, well, a part of me would like to do this, and a part of me would like to do that. There's a part of me that wants to save the money rather than take the vacation. There's another part that wants to take the vacation. And this goes on and on. And it's really a methodology of

slowing down and interviewing that part of you that feels a certain way. And really giving space for that part to be witnessed by you. And it's really a phenomenal modality, especially in the use of trauma.

and most financial problems, financial behaviors that are problematic have some type of trauma underneath them. And when I say trauma, there'll be listeners that are mental health practitioners that may struggle with that. There's all sorts of definitions of what trauma is. The way I use the word trauma would be encompassing

Big T and little T trauma.

Rick Kahler (08:08.899)

There's a complex trauma, which is a lot of little t-trauma, but it's like death by 10,000 cuts. So it's an eloquent system to really help someone go to the core of the behavior, because problematic financial behaviors are not about the money. Money problems are rarely a

about the money. Let's just say 20 % of money problems can be solved cognitively. For example, I'm overspending, but I don't realize how overspending works. And the financial planner says, well, you can't have more going out than is coming in. And I go, Eureka! Problem solved!

Josh Patrick (09:03.702)

Okay, Captain Obvious.

Rick Kahler (09:05.487)

Exactly. And I will always tell somebody start with the cognitive solution because that could be the solution. But in so many cases it's not, say, similar to many overeating problems. It's not about the food and money problems are not about the money.

IFS can help us look at those parts of ourselves. There's protector parts that protect parts of ourselves that are exiled, so when we're wounded, we make sure that parts of ourselves to cope with it say, hey, that's never going to happen again. And we're going to stay as far away from that pain as possible. So that part is exiled.

and we have managers that protect the exile, we have firefighters that protect the exile. And it's just an eloquent, a very respectful system of interviewing all of these parts of ourselves. And I think one of the things that for myself personally, I'm an enneagram type one, which means I have a huge inner critic. And I tried a lot of things to help

quote tame my inner critic that didn't work. IFS is the only thing that's helped me befriend my critic and helped me understand that my critic had a good intention. And this is really fundamental to IFS is understanding that all of these parts of ourselves have good intentions. In fact, when I was working with Ted Klons, I remember

where we were in the car driving, he says, know, every financial behavior, no matter how illogical it is to you or other people, makes perfect sense when we understand the underlying belief system.

Josh Patrick (11:19.502)

So Rick, can you give us an example of how in financial therapy one part would negotiate with another part to come to a consensus?

Rick Kahler (11:20.847)

you

Rick Kahler (11:32.557)

Yeah, I've had some beautiful clients come up with some beautiful outcomes that I wouldn't have scripted. So these are typically called polarizations. So I can think of a person that had a part and wanted to give everything that they made to charity, specifically to help children.

and was very passionate about that and felt very, very guilty about keeping anything for themselves. And then they had another part of themselves that was concerned about their spending and keeping money for themselves and their future. And these parts just were at it.

There was a lot of suffering with this individual. So we were able to interview those parts and we would ask one part if it would be okay and you always get permission. You never go ramming into somebody's system. You don't try to throw out parts or make them wrong. You try to understand them. And so it was a matter of sitting down and saying

Josh Patrick (12:58.082)

Yes.

Rick Kahler (13:02.095)

Okay, let's hear from the part that really feels so much guilt about their lifestyle and wanting to give. And working with the other part as it listens. It's like working with a couple, You know, as one couple listens, you're working more with the one who's listening than the one who's speaking. You know, and how is this for you to hear?

And then when that part's done, you can go to the other part and say, okay, let's hear how this is for you. How is it to not have enough? And what are your hopes and dreams? And that's one of the questions that can really unlock a lot is when you ask a part, what are your hopes? What are your hopes with this behavior?

What are your fears if you don't have this behavior? What's your hope that this money script will bring? What's your fear if you don't believe this money script? And what can happen, and it might happen right away, it might take some time, is that you'll find both of these parts are on the same page at some point. They really want the best.

And once they can be heard and get their stories out, they can come up with a collaboration that is eloquent. And in this particular case, the part that wanted to give everything away really was able to buy into a promise by the part they wanted to save. The part they wanted to say said, listen,

If I can save enough so that we're okay, so that we can exist, you can have everything else. And that part was like, really? And so it was so funny because that part of this client got all excited about saving. Like, okay, all right, let's say, can you save a little bit more?

Josh Patrick (15:22.99)

Hahaha

Rick Kahler (15:28.975)

We really don't need that. And the focus of that part changed from today to the future. And I often say, whatever has the most emotional juice wins. Is that spending today or spending in the future? And they were able to see that, wow, in the future we could give a lot away.

Josh Patrick (15:38.414)

Is it?

Rick Kahler (15:58.019)

And of course, the part they wanted to save and was concerned about safety and security was very happy because they had the agreement that, yeah, as long as we'll be okay, you can have the excess.

Josh Patrick (16:12.44)

So, were there any kids involved in this sort of therapy? Yeah.

Rick Kahler (16:17.231)

kids? Not in this case.

Josh Patrick (16:21.966)

There were no children involved then. Okay. Interesting. Interesting. So, you recently sold your business. I'm doing a pivot, which is a big surprise for me. And you have some challenges with that, you've told me. Can you talk a little bit about that and how you needed resilience to get through those challenges?

Rick Kahler (16:53.657)

Yeah, I needed resilience on steroids.

Rick Kahler (17:01.41)

The sale of my business, and I still am a partner in my firm, so I sold a controlling interest in it. I started this path 13 years ago to bring in a successor, and my first attempt at bringing in a successor didn't go well.

We did such a good job embracing financial therapy that she decided she wanted to become a therapist and go into the mental health field and is a phenomenal financial therapist. Obviously, she was a certified financial planner. So then I sold, several years later, I sold internally to two people.

and thought I pretty much had it handled. One could run the business, one was a great planner. And four months after I sold, one that could, the operational person, went to work for another firm, which was the biggest blind side of my professional.

And that was a struggle to recover from that. We started working with, I had another partner who did not want to run the firm by himself. And so we started working with succession planners, worked with Tiffany Lee and Brooklyn.

Josh Patrick (18:58.478)

Mm-hmm.

Rick Kahler (18:59.975)

And

Rick Kahler (19:04.143)

It was actually when I was down at Susan's annual in 2024, which you were there.

and I got an email from my accountant saying, let's talk. And I had thought about him as a potential buyer in the past, but had done what I tell my clients not to do and answered for him that he wasn't interested without asking him. And so we started talking and had a lot of value.

Josh Patrick (19:32.909)

Ha ha ha.

Rick Kahler (19:45.167)

talks about that and felt that we had a pretty good match. During our negotiations, I received the resignation of one planner and then another planner told me that he was being headhunted by a much larger firm. And this was all within an hour of itself.

And that was crushing. That was just crushing. And it lit the fire that maybe I better make this transition happen sooner than later. Because the firm that I was working with was really had a sense of urgency around wanting to obtain or start a financial planning firm.

So the good thing about working with the succession planners is that I had a lot of touchstones, a lot of things that were important, and the top two things that were important is it good for clients and is it good for the staff. I would joke from time to time that I forgot to put myself on the list.

Josh Patrick (21:06.305)

Yes.

Rick Kahler (21:10.959)

We finally got down to, we had talked general deal structure, but not a lot of price. We got appraisals. We were quite far off on price as it turned out. They are accountants, they're used to EBITDA. I live in the multiple of revenue world.

Josh Patrick (21:33.666)

Mm-hmm.

Josh Patrick (21:38.414)

My experience with working in &A is always based on EBITDA, never on multiple sales.

Rick Kahler (21:49.325)

And as a business appraiser, which I was one of two for many, years in my region, EBITDA is usually the go-to.

Josh Patrick (22:05.26)

I mean, you get that or discounted cash flow, which makes no sense whatsoever for small companies. But I don't want to get into technicalities of this because I'm leaving that behind me. But anyway, yes, we I could I could move into that in like 12 seconds. So I don't want to.

Rick Kahler (22:15.791)

We could do that, couldn't we?

Rick Kahler (22:25.817)

So we came together on price and terms. And then the transition itself was pretty rough.

Josh Patrick (22:41.793)

as they usually are, by the way.

Rick Kahler (22:45.091)

You know, and you hear that. And I was prepared for that. But I was not prepared for that.

Josh Patrick (22:54.08)

Unless you have a coach that knows how to take you through it, nobody is prepared for it. I used to tell my class all the time, and this is true, by the way, for almost anything. When you're doing something that's the first or second time you've done it, the person on the other side probably has done it dozens, if not hundreds of times. So you have to realize where you are in the competence scale.

as you go through these processes. And I believe that's true, by the way, for about anything that comes to a transition is that transitions can often be there's an expert who really knows what they're doing and somebody who really doesn't. And it's a transfer of assets from the person that doesn't know to the person who does know. And

I can give you dozens of different types of examples this happens in. But it's pretty much, it's one of the things that we don't talk about as we're teaching people how to go through a transition. least that's my experience.

Rick Kahler (24:05.625)

Yeah, I think in this case we had somebody that

hasn't gone through this selling to somebody who hasn't gone through this.

I had been made plenty of offers by roll-ups.

Josh Patrick (24:26.264)

Yeah, but offers are different than the process because when the process changes and this is true, I mean, you can take this and apply it to other areas of life, I believe. But the process really changes once you get into the letter from Tant where you put the real deal down and the bad cop shows up. If there's a big enough

risk on the line. There's a good cop that starts the transaction who is really nice and you really like. And then there's the bad cop that comes along whose only job is to make the deal better for them.

Rick Kahler (25:06.371)

Yeah, I think in that regard, I was relatively fortunate. And this could work for or against me, but the buyer was my accountant of nine years. And so, and we're both Enneagram ones, which means we're also bought into fairness.

Josh Patrick (25:22.478)

Right.

Josh Patrick (25:31.566)

Mm-hmm.

Rick Kahler (25:33.263)

What we came up with, I remember Paul put our 75-page operating agreement down once we got it worked out. says, this is a work of art.

Josh Patrick (25:47.001)

Was 75 page operating agreement? Did it go over the rules of going to the bathroom?

Rick Kahler (25:50.115)

Yeah.

Rick Kahler (25:57.135)

Just about. Just about.

Josh Patrick (26:01.835)

God, I've never seen an operating agreement that long.

Rick Kahler (26:06.473)

It, we talked about a lot of things. So that part of it,

Josh Patrick (26:11.52)

I guess you did.

Rick Kahler (26:19.887)

went pretty well. mean, we negotiated and, but I think we were, we were fair. And the fact that I'm retaining 25 % also on me and the paper, pretty much the paper, meant that it needed to be a good deal for everybody. It couldn't.

Couldn't be one-sided. It had to be something that was sustaining them. that worked out. The big surprise was three days before closing, they decided they could not, we formed a new company, bought the assets of the old company, and they were going to extend offer letters.

Josh Patrick (27:06.444)

Mm-hmm. Right.

Rick Kahler (27:14.285)

They decided they were not going to make an offer letter to the director of operations. And in the way they did things, basically walked her out the door, which is, wasn't my culture at all.

Josh Patrick (27:32.622)

That's what happens when you sell is that the buyer gets to make the rules and the seller has no influence.

Rick Kahler (27:43.759)

So that was hugely disruptive.

And so.

Josh Patrick (27:52.815)

So that puts you squarely into passage or the messy middle, depending which term you like.

Rick Kahler (27:57.912)

absolutely into passage. mean, there was a pretty abrupt ending. And I'm still in passage.

Josh Patrick (28:13.004)

My experience with major transitions, whether it's retirement, I don't think that I think Susan would do well to pay more attention to retirement transitions than she does. She has a great job with widows and a great job with divorces. But everybody, mean, literally everybody goes through retirement transition. And it is a long

Rick Kahler (28:39.865)

to you too.

Josh Patrick (28:42.474)

long messy middle. That's why retirement reinvention is one of the areas that we're investigating is that I don't know, that's not true. I know two people who have sold their businesses and not had seller's remorse.

Not two people that have had had it, two people who haven't had it. And that puts hundreds that have had it. And there's a whole bunch of reasons behind that. And that's what we're investigating here is how can you avoid that experience or at least reduce the experience? I don't think you can avoid it.

Rick Kahler (29:10.281)

added.

Rick Kahler (29:27.885)

You talked about coaches and that's one of the things that helped me through this process. I I have an IFS therapist. I have an Enneagram coach. I had a business coach. I had succession coach. I have a supervisor that supervises my financial therapy. So those were five people in my life.

Josh Patrick (29:46.551)

Yep.

Rick Kahler (29:57.699)

that I would meet with weekly to monthly. And I kept them very busy.

Josh Patrick (30:02.157)

Yes.

Josh Patrick (30:05.582)

They keep you very busy.

Rick Kahler (30:07.02)

You

I remember Tiffany just bringing me back to, it good for the clients? Is it good for the staff? And talking me off the ledge a number of times. And

Josh Patrick (30:29.996)

Yeah, they should. I'm a little unhappy they didn't also say is it good for Rick.

Rick Kahler (30:38.255)

that there was some implication in there.

Josh Patrick (30:44.224)

If that was your transition coach, that was a big error, in my opinion. that's, you know, look, I've been I am definitely a contrarian when it comes to doing that work. Most people think I'm a little bit crazy, but I get good results from my clients. Or I did.

Rick Kahler (31:01.199)

Well, that's the important thing.

Josh Patrick (31:04.0)

Yeah. So, anyway, I am really sorry, but I'm looking at the clock and we have run over. We could continue on. We could. I know we could run this for quite a while. I think I'm to probably have you back at some point in the future and we'll do a deeper dive into this. If that's OK. Hey, if somebody wanted to find you, how would they go about doing that?

Rick Kahler (31:10.757)

my God, we just started.

Rick Kahler (31:23.951)

It's really.

Rick Kahler (31:28.207)

You can find me at, you can Google Rick Kahler. You can email me at rick at rick kahler. You can find me at financialawakenings.com, which is a blog, or advanced-wellbeing.com. That's going to get you to me.

Josh Patrick (31:41.837)

Yep.

Josh Patrick (31:52.239)

Okay. And just, just to let you know, Rick's an incredible writer. So if you go over to his blog and read, spend some time reading, uh, give yourself some time because he writes long blog posts, but they're well worth the time to read. And I've got one thing I would like you to do, or if you're interested, you can do this. If you've liked this episode and you would like to be a guest on the show, it's really pretty easy. Just send me an email.

at J. Patrick at Stage 2 Solution. That's the number two and Solution is singular. J. Patrick at stage2solution.com and I'll send you a link. We'll have conversation and see if you would make a good guest on the show. As you see, it's a conversation. I don't beat anybody up anymore. used to, but not not now. And you probably would have a fun thing, but if you have any of these six areas of investigation that you're interested in.

and we can talk about, give me a shout. So thanks a lot for being with us. This is Josh Patrick. I'm with Rick Keller. You're at the Long Strange Trip podcast. Thanks a lot for stopping by. I hope to see you back here soon.

Outro:

Thanks for spending this time with me today. I really appreciate you being part of this journey. I'd be grateful if you leave an honest rating and review. It helps other people find these conversations. Lets me know what's landing with you and what isn't.  If you love this show, give us five stars, and if you hate it,  give it one star and I'll just cry a little bit. 

Keep asking the hard questions, keep being honest about what's difficult, and remember.  We're all just trying to figure this out together.

 I'll talk to you next time on the Long Strange Trip. Thanks for stopping by.