The Seven Stages of Money Maturity : Understanding the Spirit and Value of Money in Your Life - Hardcover

Kinder, George

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385324049 ISBN 13: 9780385324045

Publisher: Delacorte Press, 1999

Synopsis

"A vital, seminal breakthrough work... Kinder penetrates money's enigmas and mythologies with the artist's delicate touch, the critic's discriminating eye . . . and the insightful sensitivity of a good human being. This book is a gift."
--Richard Wagner, former chairman, Institute of Certified Financial Planners

Replace anxiety, self-sabotage, and self-doubt around money with the sense of ease and freedom you deserve in The Seven Stages of Money Maturity, a one-of-a-kind guide in the life-changing tradition of The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom and Your Money or Your Life. A renowned Buddhist teacher as well as a Harvard-trained, nationally prominent certified financial planner, George Kinder draws on both disciplines to guide us toward a full understanding of the spiritual and psychological issues that surround money.

Although many of us may assume that issues of money and spirit are separate, incompatible questions, George Kinder shows us that we must explore them together to attain true peace, freedom, and security in our money lives. Tracing the same path to transformation on which he has led his clients and lectured audiences for years, Kinder leads us through the Seven Steps of a journey to the profound liberation of awakening to a world of abundance and possibility.

Revealing practical, market-tested wealth-building skills as well as the wisdom that contributes to understanding and enriching the role money plays across our lives from the surface to the soul, Kinder teaches us how to:

Understand feelings that impact taking financial action
Develop understanding and knowledge about money
Eliminate stress and anxiety around money
Let go of old patterns and painful habits
Approach money tasks with energy and optimism
Design a money life that is fulfilling both financially and spiritually

A powerful new way to look at your money and at your life, The Seven Stages of Money Maturity will help us experience each encounter with money as a step toward awakening and a powerful lesson in understanding the relationships we share with others and with ourselves.

About this title

About the Author

George Kinder divides his time between Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Maui, Hawaii. He leads his seminar, the Seven Stages of Money Maturity, in locations all over the country.

From the Inside Flap

l, seminal breakthrough work... Kinder penetrates money's enigmas and mythologies with the artist's delicate touch, the critic's discriminating eye . . . and the insightful sensitivity of a good human being. This book is a gift."<br>--Richard Wagner, former chairman, Institute of Certified Financial Planners <br><br>Replace anxiety, self-sabotage, and self-doubt around money with the sense of ease and freedom you deserve in <b>The Seven Stages of Money Maturity</b>, a one-of-a-kind guide in the life-changing tradition of <b>The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom</b> and <b>Your Money or Your Life</b>. A renowned Buddhist teacher as well as a Harvard-trained, nationally prominent certified financial planner, George Kinder draws on both disciplines to guide us toward a full understanding of the spiritual and psychological issues that surround money. <br><br>Although many of us may assume that issues of money and spirit are separate, incompatible questions, George Kinder s

Reviews

Compared to other personal finance books that offer specific financial steps and planning strategies, this book focuses on the search for spiritual meaning in wealth. Kinder, a certified financial planner and former tax accountant, focuses on three composite figures, based on real people, to illustrate the seven psychological stages people go through in their relationship to money: Innocence (not knowing anything), Pain (discovering that we need to work to earn money), Knowledge (of such skills as saving and investing), Understanding (more sophisticated emotional wisdom about greed and inequality), Vigor (energy to reach financial goals), Vision (directing vigor outward, perhaps to a community) and Aloha (altruism without expectation of gain of any kind). Kinder provides useful questionnaires in which he urges readers to reflect on various questions: What are your three earliest memories of money? Why and how did money first enter your relationship with your mother, your father? While readers comfortable with spiritual self-exploration may enjoy Kinders approach, they will still have to turn to more traditional personal finance books for nitty-gritty money advice.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This is a how-to book on money management, with a philosophical bent. The author, a CPA, provides readers with an awareness of the spiritual and psychological issues that surround money. With monetary expertise, practical experience, and a Buddhist orientation, Kinder offers a road map for understanding, deepening, and enriching the role that money plays in all areas of life and that leads to financial freedom. The book guides us through the seven stages of money maturity, beginning with innocence, or the absence of any concept of money. The next stages are pain, or realizing that some people have more and some have less money than others; adulthood, or the hard work of digging deep; knowledge, or learning financial techniques; understanding, or coming to terms with feelings about money; vigor, or developing the energy necessary to reach financial goals; and aloha, compassionate goodwill that allows use of the money without expecting a return. Kinder's case studies and exercises help readers attain the necessary skills for developing integrity in their relationship to money. Mary Whaley

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Meeting Money Maturity

Midway in our life's journey, I went astray from the straight road and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood.
--Dante Alighieri

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.
--Henry David Thoreau

"I understand what you're saying," he said, "even though I hate admitting it to myself. "

The statement took me by surprise. I had known this man in a passing way for years, and I both admired and disliked him. My admiration came from his success as a financial planner, the same profession I practice. He was known far and wide for creating one of the largest, most multifaceted planning firms in America. But I disliked him because he stood publicly for a point of view I reject--that making money, lots of money, is an end in itself. So I was taken aback when he came up after my presentation on Money Maturity to a national meeting of financial planners and asked me if I wanted to have coffee. I could tell there was something on his mind.

He came right to the point. "I know how to make money," he said. "I've poured all my savings into the stock market for years. Now I've got more than enough to live on for the rest of my life. My problem isn't making more money."

"Then what is it?" I asked.

"The money's not enough," he answered. His tone shifted from confident to plaintive. "I have wealth, but something is missing. I don't know what it is. All I know is I'm not happy. That's why I wanted to talk to you. After hearing what you had to say, I think you may be able to tell me what to do next."

I may be a financial advisor by profession, but I often find myself working more like a priest in the confessional than a money manager. His was an admission I had heard many times before.

During the morning I had spoken on integrating money goals with personal objectives, a topic I have been presenting to my colleagues for years now. Financial professionals have discovered that if they don't understand what their clients are truly seeking, all their good advice goes for nought. In my presentation that afternoon, I had gone back to basics. Money, I explained, can be seen as the place where our internal selves engage the external world. If either side--internal or external, self or money--is slighted, the whole of life suffers.

Now, talking to my colleague over the coffee cups, I picked up on that theme in his life. "That distress you feel inside, that pain--it's there to wake you up," I said.

His face screwed up quizzically. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"It's a signal, an alarm. It's telling you, in no uncertain terms, that it's time to find out who you really are in relation to money."

"But what's that got to do with anything?" he snapped. His expression changed from quizzical to protective, as if I were getting altogether too close for comfort.

"Look at it this way. You could put all your financial statements from the past few years in front of me, and I still wouldn't know what I really need to understand in order to even begin to help you decide what to do next," I answered. "How can I work with you if I don't know who you are? Think about it. It's your own discomfort with yourself that is keeping you from seeing your way ahead."

His defensiveness gave way to curiosity.

"You've been thinking all along there's only one question about money--'How much?'" I continued. "But the truly important question is 'What does money have to do with who I am?' You think you're a success, but your feelings tell you otherwise. They're telling you 'When it comes to money, you're a mess.' Finding Money Maturity means resolving your inner conflicts around money. It really comes down to discovering a sense of ease around money. Without ease, where's the success?"

For a second or two, he was silent, thinking. Then he said, "Tell me. How do I find that ease?"


The Promise of Money Maturity

My colleague's search for ease in his relationship to money--even his difficulty in understanding that ease and freedom were what he was really seeking--is hardly unusual. The same drive for a deep-seated sense of peace on the financial side of life occupies center stage in the concerns of client after client I've worked with. And it's not just an issue for the well heeled, like my successful financial-planning colleague. The desire to achieve ease and freedom around money is as true for those who come from impoverished backgrounds and the middle class as it is for those who inherit wealth or make it big in the business world. Experiencing ease around dollars and cents is what I call Money Maturity.

When clients come to me to handle their money, or when I talk to participants in my seminars, I hear the desire for Money Maturity implicit in every statement they make about what they want their relationship to money to be. No doubt you yourself have said similar things. For example:

"I want to be wealthy in life, not necessarily in money, but I know the two are related."
"I want to be able to do whatever I want to do without thinking about the money."
"I don't want to always be afraid around money."
"I want to be free."
"I want to feel balance between life and money. Too often money wins and life loses."
"I don't want to worry about money."
"I want to get what I need without feeling guilty about it."
"I want to work and contribute in ways that are meaningful to me without having to worry about how much money I'll get from it."
"I want to feel I can be myself without money tripping me up."
"I want to know money won't get in the way of my doing what needs to be done."
"I want to be able to focus on finding value in what I do rather than finding money in what I do."
"I want to feel that I don't have to give up who I am or violate my deepest values just to get money."

Each of these statements is a cry for freedom--a desire to build the life you want from the deepest part of yourself. Just like my financial-planning colleague, you are seeking what is missing inside. You want to discover who you are in relation to money and, on the basis of that knowledge, experience freedom in the financial part of your life. That's exactly what Money Maturity offers.

Most financial advisors and books about money approach finance as if it were simply a skill to learn, the same sort of thing as hitting a fastball or speaking French like a diplomat. Money Maturity does include skills, such as understanding investment options and using a budget effectively, but it goes much deeper--to the feelings, the heart, and, yes, the soul.

Money Maturity helps resolve the troubling emotional conflicts around money that never seem to go away. For many of us money represents anything but peace. If you answer yes to any of these of these questions, you know what I mean:

Do you sabotage yourself around money--by, say, saving toward a goal only to fritter your money away in a shopping spree, charging less for your work than you need to make a living, or refusing to save for the future?
Do you feel chained to a job that limits your ability to express yourself and hampers your freedom, just because you need the money?
Are you so caught up in the rat race, and so fearful that somebody else will take your place if you stop for a breather, that you can't relax, not even for the weekend?
Does the pursuit of money leave you so drained that at the end of the day you don't have the energy for what you truly love to do--play tennis, music, write, sculpt or paint, listen to J. S. Bach or Bob Marley, spend time with your spouse, partner, children, or family?
Do you want to give more to your community yet also feel you can't because your financial situation blocks you?
Are you always in debt, ever struggling just to make the next payment--and still spending too much, digging an even deeper pit of indebtedness?
Do conversations about money with your spouse or partner have this way of erupting into fights?
Does staying home with the kids day after day leave you feeling powerless around money issues--resentful of and excluded from the marketplace, as if you don't have a voice?
Are stock market losses devastating experiences? Or do you feel the agony of self-reproach when the market goes up and you're not in it?
Do you feel stupid around money decisions, not knowing how to make them on your own or how to select a trustworthy advisor to help you?
Would you just as soon avoid checkbooks, account statements, investment decisions, and insurance policies for the rest of your life?

If you find yourself saying yes to any of these questions, Money Maturity is the answer you've been seeking.


The Benefits of Money Maturity

Money Maturity provides seven remarkable, insightful ways of understanding your own conflicts, dilemmas, difficulties, and pain around money and taking positive steps to resolve them. Money Maturity holds the promise of a new way of living financially, one that acknowledges the whole depth and breadth of human nature, not just the greed of Wall Street or the green eyeshades of Main Street. Most important, Money Maturity offers the ease and success that come from letting go of old, painful patterns around money and learning how to create your own life based on a deepened understanding of your power and purpose.

In the years I have been developing and teaching Money Maturity in my financial-planning practice and in seminars, I have seen one person after another transform his or her life. Not that the task was easy; often the road to understanding the source of emotional conflict was rocky. Still, the power of the transformation was undeniable, sometimes even miracu...

Edition details

• Publisher: Delacorte Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385324049
• ISBN 13: 9780385324045
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 384