The numbers matter. So does the person behind them.
For more than 20 years, I've helped people navigate financial decisions, challenges, and crises. Along the way, I learned that knowing what someone should do with money is only part of the conversation.
Real financial lives are shaped by experiences, relationships, emotions, beliefs, habits, responsibilities, and sometimes simply by what life throws at us.
That's what eventually led me beyond traditional financial counseling and deeper into financial therapy.
My Story
I started with the numbers. My clients taught me to look beyond them.
I began working in financial education and counseling in 2005, spending much of my career serving military members and their families.
Over the years, I've worked with more than 7,000 people facing just about every kind of everyday financial challenge: budgeting, debt, credit, major purchases, retirement decisions, financial emergencies, deployments, moves, changes in income, and unexpected life transitions.
And I saw something again and again.
Two people could have similar incomes, similar expenses, and even the same financial knowledge, and make completely different decisions with their money.
I could teach someone how to build a budget, but that didn't necessarily explain why the budget disappeared after a few weeks. I could explain how credit works, but that didn't necessarily address why someone continued using a credit card in ways they wanted to change.
I could give someone the information needed to make a financial decision. Information alone didn't always make the decision easier.
Those experiences changed the way I thought about financial counseling. I became increasingly interested not only in what people do with money, but why.
Why Financial Therapy
Financial behavior doesn't happen in a vacuum.
Our relationships with money develop over a lifetime. What we learned or didn't learn growing up can matter. So can our experiences with security, scarcity, family, relationships, work, success, loss, independence, and responsibility.
A financial behavior that doesn't make sense on a spreadsheet can make much more sense once we understand what sits underneath it.
That doesn't mean we ignore the numbers.
We understand the person so we can work more effectively with the numbers.
That realization led me to pursue graduate-level education in financial therapy and ultimately to create Restorative Financial Therapy.
Today, I combine financial counseling, coaching, education, and financial therapy to help clients explore both sides of their financial lives: the practical decisions in front of them and the patterns, experiences, and emotions that may influence those decisions.
Experience & Credentials
Experience you can trust
20+ years — Financial counseling, coaching & education
7,000+ clients — Helped throughout my career
Graduate Certificate in Financial Therapy | Kansas State University
FFC® — Financial Fitness Coach® | Sage Financial Solutions (credential earned under its prior certification program)
Ramsey Solutions Master Financial Coach
B.A. in Psychology & B.A. in English — University of Washington
Extensive Military & Veteran Experience — More than two decades working with military members and families
What It's Like to Work With Me
Curiosity, not judgment.
You don't need to clean up your finances before we meet. You don't need a perfect budget, neatly organized statements, or an explanation for every decision you've made. And you won't hear me tell you that you “should have known better.”
Instead, I'll ask questions. What's happening now? What have you tried? What worked for a while? What didn't? When does spending tend to happen? What does money mean to you? What would you like your financial life to look and feel like instead?
We'll look at the numbers when we need to. We'll also look beyond them when that's where the useful information is.
My role isn't to hand you a perfect financial life. It's to help you understand your own financial life well enough to make intentional changes and support you while you practice them.
Meet Tandi, my long-haired dachshund, constant office companion, and a very important part of my life.
Financial Therapy • Coaching • Education
A Little More About My Approach
I don't believe every financial question requires therapy. Sometimes you need information. Sometimes you need a plan. Sometimes you need accountability while you put that plan into practice. And sometimes you've tried all of those things and realize there's something deeper you'd like to understand.
That's why I draw from financial therapy, coaching, and education rather than trying to fit every client into one approach.
We start with where you are and determine together what would be most useful.
Let's start with a conversation.
You don't have to know whether you need financial therapy, coaching, education or some combination of the three. That's something we can talk about.
A complimentary 30-minute consultation gives us a chance to discuss what's bringing you here, what you'd like to change, and whether working together feels like a good fit.