Art of Money Podcast

In today’s Money Mocha, I have an audio clip of me teaching about my unique version of creating budgets, which I call “money maps.” In today’s Mocha, I invite you into one of the most grounding and practical tools in my Art of Money methodology: the Three-Tier Money Map. This is not your typical, dry, boring, anxiety inducing budget. This is a soul-rooted, flexible, and deeply personal framework that helps you chart your financial terrain—based on where you are right now in your life, and where your heart is longing to go. Over the years, I’ve seen so many of us struggle with budgeting—especially those of us who are self-employed, caring for others, or living with inconsistent income. And honestly? A lot of the traditional advice just doesn’t work when you’re juggling a creative life, a business that ebbs and flows, or caretaking roles that shift with the seasons. That’s why I developed this Three-Tier Money Map. It meets you exactly where you are. It’s permission-filled. It’s body-aware. And it allows space for your basic needs and your big, bold dreams. Find the full show notes here: baritessler.com/podcast The Art of Money 3-Month Financial Therapy Program is open! Find out more here: baritessler.com/art-of-money

It’s time to pour yourself a warm mug of comfort and clarity. This next sip of Money Mocha is steeped in sacred storytelling, creative bookkeeping, and a practice that might just change how you feel when you sit down with your numbers. What if bookkeeping didn’t have to be boring? What if the categories in your financial tracking could speak your language — the language of meaning, memory, and values? Years ago, I had a dream that stitched together the threads of the sacred and the practical — a dream that arrived just weeks after my first money mentor, Tamara, passed. In it, she gifted me a red velvet-bound ledger that cataloged her life not just in numbers, but in meaning. Each entry in her Book of Life was paired with a value — not just a dollar amount, but a reflection of her essence, her creativity, her care. That dream became a doorway. It invited me to ask: What if we could make bookkeeping an honoring practice? What if the way we track our income and spending could reflect what we cherish most? Today’s Money Mocha introduces you to Values-Based Bookkeeping — a soulful and deceptively simple technique that invites you to rename your financial categories. Yes, rename them. “Rent” can become “Sanctuary.” “Debt” can transform into “My Big Italian Adventure.” Line items shift into love notes. Spreadsheets become mirrors. Find the show notes here: baritessler.com/podcast Learn more about my 3-month Art of Money program here: baritessler.com/art-of-money

How to Re-write Your Money Story by Bari Tessler

Today, I bring you a lovely conversation I just had with my friend and colleague, Rick Kahler. We just had a wonderful chat about all things financial therapy within the realm of financial planning, and I can’t wait for you to have a listen. Of all my colleagues in the finance space, Rick is one of my longest running friendships. He’s one of the first financial planners I met when I was in the early years of developing my financial therapy method. I credit Rick with being the first financial planner to bring therapists into his financial planning meetings. He was very clear that money is such an emotional subject and that adding money psychology support was essential for his clients (especially for couples trying to navigate different money approaches in the delicate terrain of planning retirement.) We first met in 2004 at Nazrudin, which is a think-tank for financial planners created by George Kinder and the late Dick Wagner. Rick loves to tell the cartwheel story which you’ll hear at the beginning of our interview, and the Nazrudin event is where my infamous cartwheel happened! Rick is also a Financial Therapist and has also been on the board of the Financial Therapy Association since its inception in 2009. He’s been a guiding force in that community. (I’m still not a part of the FTA, since I’ve been teaching my financial therapy method since 2001, before it was formed, and think all financial therapists should have a Masters in Psychology. I do, however, recommend them and they have a good directory to help folks find a financial therapist.) Starting in 2013, I’ve had the honor of interviewing many of the “elder” money pioneers. Olivia Mellon, Karen McCall, Deborah Price, Barbara Stanny (now Barbara Huson), Saundra Davis, Vicki Robin and many of the next generation folks where I fit in, like Brad Klontz, Mikelann Valterra, Jacquette Timmons, and Rachel Robiasciotti. Some of these interviews are on my podcast and the others live in my online program library (which people get access to when they join my Art of Money program.) To date, all of my conversations with Rick have been on his Financial Therapy podcast. He was a guest teacher in one of the rounds of my Mentor Program, but this conversation is our first interview on my podcast. I’m excited for you to have a listen to the conversation I had with him! In the interview we discuss: The realization that money work is so emotional for his clients Why he started bringing therapists into his financial planning meetings How important doing his own therapy has been for his life and financial planning practice His favorite therapy modality - IFS (Internal Family Systems) and how he connects it to money work Why do we both think the Enneagram (personality system) is so helpful for understanding your money behaviors and habits. How he has written 7 money books and has plans for more on the horizon And, some praise back and forth for our friendship over the years

Do you remember that scene in Lord of the Rings where Gandalf and Frodo and the whole fellowship of the ring crew were on a long, epic journey, and they were stuck at large stone doors, called The Doors of Durin, that had a riddle inscribed on it? For hours and hours they sat before that stone door in the moonlight, trying to solve the riddle inscribed in stone in the elvish language. “Speak, friend, and enter,” was all the riddle said. If they could solve it, the door would open and they’d be able to travel through the secret passageways that led through the mountain so they could finally destroy the ring of power once and for all. In many ways, that scene is a perfect metaphor for the money riddles we all face from time to time. We’re all trying to get somewhere on our epic journeys (a.k.a., our lives), and sometimes we end up blocked by an immovable stone door that has a seemingly unsolvable riddle about money etched on it. The riddle might be something like “how can we afford to buy a house in this economic climate?,” or, “how can I bring in more money when I have a job where the salary is capped?,” or “how can we save enough money to send our kids to college with only a few years remaining?.” Money riddles like this (which I also call “money koans,” like the koan questions you sit with in Zen Buddhist meditation practice), aren’t written in the elvish language on a big stone door, but they might as well be. Just like Gandalf and Frodo and the whole crew sat there for hours trying to solve the riddle that would open the door, we often have to sit with our money riddles for days, or weeks, or months, or even sometimes years for the big ones. Working with and solving these money riddles is the topic of today’s recording on the first volume of the Art of Money Mixtape I made for you. baritessler.com/podcast

In this clip, I’m telling stories (which is my favorite teaching method) about the practical, external side of overcoming underearning. There are mental and emotional internal shifts involved, and a good dose of creative brainstorming, but the focus here is on how we can shift our business models to open up new possibilities for breaking through money ceilings. I hope you enjoy this third recording on the Money Mixtape. (And believe me, if it was possible to mail you an actual cassette tape with these recordings, I would 100% do that. But…who has cassette players anymore?) Additional Links: baritessler.com/art-of-money baritessler.com/podcast

This second “song” on the mixtape is a clip from the first ever live 3-month version of the Art of Money program that I taught this past Fall in 2024. It’s a brief overview of my approach to using somatic psychology tools, which forms the foundation of my unique approach to financial therapy. And yes, this “song”/audio recording is just me teaching live in a recent class, rather than our pretend AI friends Jack and Julia talking about my ideas and concepts. You might hear from them again in the coming days, but that depends on the feedback we hear about their conversation we sent you a couple of days back. This clip of me teaching is packed with techniques for how to use simple awareness of the sensations and emotions in your body to help unblock the things standing between you and a healthier, less stressful relationship with money. Find out more at baritessler.com/podcast

As a Gen X’er who grew up through my teen years in the 80’s, long before the internet, social media, iphones, and Spotify, I can clearly remember making mixtapes for my friends. Back then, it was no easy feat to pull off, and putting together a collection of hand-picked songs and giving them to a friend on a cassette tape was a sign of affection. It was a way to say, “I see you. I know who you are and what you love, and I care about you. So I’ve made this collection of music that will bring you the kind of feelings I know you like to feel from music.” So this year, my friend, I’m making a mixtape just for you. Only, it’s not a collection of songs. It’s a collection of recordings that will take you on an emotional and psychological journey into many different facets of your relationship with money. It’s…A Money Mixtape, Volume 1, and I made it for you The first recording on this cassette is something you’ve never heard from me, and unless you’ve spent a good amount of time down in the AI rabbit holes over the recent months, you may have never heard something like this before. Now, before I tell you what this is, the second I mention the phrase “AI,” I know that can raise some people’s hackles. There’s a lot of hate for anything AI related these days. Trust me, I get that. My tech geek husband, Forest, has been way down in all the AI rabbit holes for many months now, so I’ve learned a bit about it all at the dinner table. Here’s the bottom line: there are a lot of crappy ways to use AI tools to create crappy content, and you can make the use of AI tools worse by trying to pretend that what you’re creating with these powerful tools is real, or that what you’re publishing was created by a human, when it was created by an AI tool. Doing that is just flat out lying. My own personal operating system doesn’t allow for any kind of deception like that, so, I’m doing what I’ve always done: I’m being open and transparent with you. This first recording was made by my husband. He took an excerpt of a transcript of me teaching, fed it through a couple AI tools, and had the software create a podcast conversation between two people who are talking about the ideas I covered in the excerpt. The first time I heard it I started laughing. It just sounds so incredibly human, and I couldn’t believe that this podcast conversation about my concept of “money stories” is not actually two people talking…it’s two AI bots. AI tools are just tools. They can be used for good or bad, like any other tool. There are some not-so-great uses of AI, and some very good uses of AI. This, I hope you’ll agree, is one of the good uses. Have a listen to this podcast conversation where Jack and Julia (yes, I just made those names up) are discussing my concept of money stories, how you can start to uncover your own stories, and how doing that can help you unlock a new way to relate with money.

As a Gen X’er who grew up through my teen years in the 80’s, long before the internet, social media, iphones, and Spotify, I can clearly remember making mixtapes for my friends. Back then, it was no easy feat to pull off, and putting together a collection of hand-picked songs and giving them to a friend on a cassette tape was a sign of affection. It was a way to say, “I see you. I know who you are and what you love, and I care about you. So I’ve made this collection of music that will bring you the kind of feelings I know you like to feel from music.” So this year, my friend, I’m making a mixtape just for you. Only, it’s not a collection of songs. It’s a collection of recordings that will take you on an emotional and psychological journey into many different facets of your relationship with money. It’s…A Money Mixtape, Volume 1, and I made it for you The first recording on this cassette is something you’ve never heard from me, and unless you’ve spent a good amount of time down in the AI rabbit holes over the recent months, you may have never heard something like this before. Now, before I tell you what this is, the second I mention the phrase “AI,” I know that can raise some people’s hackles. There’s a lot of hate for anything AI related these days. Trust me, I get that. My tech geek husband, Forest, has been way down in all the AI rabbit holes for many months now, so I’ve learned a bit about it all at the dinner table. Here’s the bottom line: there are a lot of crappy ways to use AI tools to create crappy content, and you can make the use of AI tools worse by trying to pretend that what you’re creating with these powerful tools is real, or that what you’re publishing was created by a human, when it was created by an AI tool. Doing that is just flat out lying. My own personal operating system doesn’t allow for any kind of deception like that, so, I’m doing what I’ve always done: I’m being open and transparent with you. This first recording was made by my husband. He took an excerpt of a transcript of me teaching, fed it through a couple AI tools, and had the software create a podcast conversation between two people who are talking about the ideas I covered in the excerpt. The first time I heard it I started laughing. It just sounds so incredibly human, and I couldn’t believe that this podcast conversation about my concept of “money stories” is not actually two people talking…it’s two AI bots. AI tools are just tools. They can be used for good or bad, like any other tool. There are some not-so-great uses of AI, and some very good uses of AI. This, I hope you’ll agree, is one of the good uses. Have a listen to this podcast conversation where Jack and Julia (yes, I just made those names up) are discussing my concept of money stories, how you can start to uncover your own stories, and how doing that can help you unlock a new way to relate with money.

Under-loving, Over-giving, under-receiving. Under-no-ing, over-yes-ing. It has everything to do with your experience of self-worth whether or not this is reflected in your salary or income. Finding and claiming your sense of value is a lifelong process. It unfolds over time in baby steps and leaps and then more baby steps. Overcoming underearning requires both internal and external work. For todays money teaching, I offer some of the internal practices that my community and I have found most helpful in growing our sense of value and overcoming underearning from the inside out. (This is an edited excerpt from my first book: The Art of Money: A Life-Changing Guide to Financial Happiness) So, which practices are you going to focus on today? Pick one or two and start slowly and lovingly... I am with you, Bari P.S. My three-phase financial therapy method includes Money Healing, Money Practices and Money Maps. This list of overcoming under-earning practices comes from the Money Healing realm where the internal work resides. We delve into the external practices of claiming your value by moving through money ceilings, learning how to work with cash flow dips and creating sustainable business models in the Money Practices and Money Maps phases of my financial therapy work.

Dear Friend, Most of my financial therapy work has to do with helping people create a more mindful, savvy and empowered relationship to money. This could be in the realm of personal finances, couples finances and even in business finances. In my Mentor program, which is a group program for therapists, coaches and financial professionals, I’m additionally supporting folks to create a more sustainable business. In that context, we’re not just working on our money psychology, we’re also working on new ways of offering our services and adding new revenue streams. And the way you do that has everything to do with your business models. There’s a funny thing about running a business though: once you do it for several years, you realize that the business model you thought would bring in great revenue forever…sometimes starts to not work so well. And when that happens, it’s time for a business model update. There are dozens of things that can change in the outside world that can lead to you needing to change something in your business model. It could be changes in a social media platform’s algorithm or something larger like a worldwide pandemic. And, there can be dozens of things that can change in our inner world that can also lead us needing to update our business models, such as having a new baby, going through a divorce, or experiencing a health crisis. Sometimes we just need to find creative ways to adapt and adjust our own business model so that it works better for the particular life phase that we are in. After a recent class I led for my Art of Money Mentor group, I had a strong intuition that there are more of you out there who might be facing challenges in your business or private practice that could be less challenging if you updated your business model. And I knew then that I had to share the audio recording from this call, because I took a deep dive into the topic of business models: what they are, why we need to change them, examples of different kinds of models, and a box full of stories from times when I’ve had to change my own business models. So today, I want to share this recording with you from my most recent Mentor Group call. If you have a business or private practice that could use a business model shift, I hope you find some helpful nuggets in this recording! Here’s to getting creative and fine-tuning,

Wisdom for money riddles, koans, and super-tough nuts to crack. by Bari Tessler

Bari Tessler interviews Lindsay Bryan-Podvin a Social Worker turned Financial Therapist and they discuss ADHD money tips and more. Find more on baritessler.com/podcast

In this candid interview, Geneen shares her own money story about losing her life savings to Bernie Madoff and how it changed her relationship with money - and herself - forever. If you are seeking to bring a deeper sense of security to your money journey, if the question of enoughness resonates with you, I encourage you to do a gentle body check-in and listen in. Content Warning: Please be aware that while this interview is a candid conversation about our intimate relationships with money, enoughness, and ourselves, relationship with food, as well as disordered eating behaviors, do come up along the way. If today’s teaching is not right for you, please know I see you and always encourage you to honor your needs and well-being first and foremost. You’ll hear: - What Geneen learned from her lived experiences with scarcity, abundance, and losing everything more than once. - Why Geneen struggled with feeling disconnected from truly receiving (and spending!) the money she earned. - How the money beliefs Geneen inherited from her father helped her save even in times of scarcity - and kept her from being present with what she had. - Why trying to change “undesirable” behavior keeps you from getting curious about what you believe and why you behave the way you do. - How Geenen overcame catastrophic financial loss and found enoughness within. Find out more here: baritessler.com/2023/06/what-is-enoughness Also, heads up: This is an older interview from 2013, and the audio quality is not so good.

Dear Money Adventurer, Every single day of our lives, whether we realize it or not, each one of us is writing our own unique Money Story. Yet, no matter how different our journeys may be, there are certain themes and questions that we all struggle with at some point or another. And when we realize that we aren’t the only ones facing these challenges, the burden is a little easier to carry. As your guide on this journey, here are the 10 Things Your Financial Therapist (me!) wants you to know right now.

In a world where so often our self-worth gets tied to the work we do or the money we make, we unconsciously invest our personal value in metrics, paychecks, and bottom lines. And we undermine our ability to truly honor and share our gifts, to show up as our most authentic selves, and to thrive in our work and lives. So, how can we transform the attachment between self-worth and money that is so prevalent in life and business? This question came up during my recent Office Hours call with the Art of Money participants, and the answer is a profoundly personal journey of self-discovery, tuning in to our inner knowing, and reclaiming our deepest values. Find out more here: https://baritessler.com/podcast

I recently had the opportunity to interview Iris for The Art of Money podcast, and I am so excited to share her insightful wisdom with you today. Her former roles include Social Justice Strategist at investment management firm Robasciotti & Philipson and National Organizer at Resource Generation, where she helped move over 10 million dollars to social justice organizations. In this profoundly moving conversation, Iris shares her own story of navigating unexpected wealth and loss and how we can deconstruct the ideals of capitalism to stand in the integrity of our own personal values to create a more equitable world. Find out more here: https://baritessler.com/podcast

The work you do, the paycheck you earn, your bank account balance - none of these has anything to do with your intricate worth. You are priceless beyond measure. Yet, we live in a world where most of us need to work to earn money to support ourselves, our families, and, as small business owners, our team as well. We don’t like to talk about making money, though, it feels uncomfortable, shallow, and vulnerable. Even more so when we’re in a position where we want or need to be making more money. But these silent taboos don’t serve us. Frankly, they never have. So it’s time to bring some loving honesty to break them down. I recently had the opportunity to interview a dear friend and colleague of mine, Money Coach and author of “Why Women Earn Less: How to Make What You’re Really Worth,” Mikelann Valterra. Find out more on the podcast: https://baritessler.com/podcast

I am SO excited to introduce you to my latest guest on the Art of Money podcast, Jayson Gaddis. Founder of The Relationship School, leading relationship expert, and sought-after coach, Jayson helps folks learn to repair everyday conflict with respect, compassion, and understanding for each other - and ourselves. The wisdom, insight, and accessible practices that Jayson shares in this interview will empower you “to love bigger and work out your differences.” Click here to learn more: https://baritessler.com/podcast

Recently, I had the privilege of interviewing one of my favorite people and dearest friends, Danielle Cohen, who joined me on the Art of Money podcast to share her own story of integrating life, money, and business as a woman, a mother, and a creative entrepreneur who has been forging her own path for over 20 years. Danielle is a visibility coach, professional photographer, business mentor, and educator with a unique talent for helping others step into and offer their greatest work by becoming more visible, owning their story and their magic, and sharing it with the world. This conversation is a deep soul dive into the stuff of life - we cover themes of motherhood, family, and relationships, creating new beginnings, pivoting a business during the pandemic, and everything that comes along with it.