Home - Denise Hughes Author Speaker Money Coach

What is Financial Coaching?

Financial Coaching is a process, supporting you creating the financial life you desire to have. This process involves four steps.

Step One, is gaining clarity on where you currently are in your financial life. This means looking at your numbers (savings, earnings, spending, giving) without judgement.

Step Two, is understanding your Money Blueprint and Personal Money Story with compassion. This understanding sheds light on patterns of behavior no longer serving  you. Together, we create a new Money Blueprint, which includes money practices (action), money mindsets (ways of thinking), and a new belief system supporting you in meeting your goals.

Step Three, is stabilization and strategy with cash flow. This means earning more than you spend. It means paying off current debt while not creating new debt. It means connecting to your deepest values, allowing your dollars to nourish those values and live a life with an internal experience of abundance. It means saving enough money for short term needs, emergency situations and for your later years.

Step Four, is sustaining new habits and behaviors supporting you long term. In this phase, you become accountable to you instead of being accountable to me!

Do I have to commit to a certain amount of Financial Coaching sessions?

No, you don’t have to commit to a certain number of sessions. Financial Coaching is client centered. This means you set your goals and we talk about how often we meet. Usually, we begin with meeting twice a month, which decreases to once a month, then once a quarter and then annually.

You can begin and end the process anytime you desire. Everyone has different needs. Some of my clients want one breakthrough session, others want a couple of consulting sessions and others want a coaching relationship that helps support permanent behavioral changes.

How is Financial Coaching different from Financial Planning?

Financial Coaching’s process supports that inside change (in ways you think, beliefs you hold to be true, actions you take and emotions you hold around money) creates a new outward financial picture for you. Financial coaching integrates psychology, spirit and money.

Financial Coaching is a therapeutic process focusing on your strengths, while closing the gap between where you are and where you’d like to be.

Common reasons people seek out Financial Coaching are:

• Feeling out of control with money
• Overspending
• Under Earning
• Not knowing how to have conversations about money with their partner
• Fear of looking at “what is”
• Not saving enough
• Living in a chronic mindset of scarcity
• Don’t know how to make money work in life or business
• Avoiding money

Financial planning is a process focusing on your long term plan, integrating estate planning, tax planning, risk protection (insurances), and investments through all of life’s stages. Most financial planners and advisors do not have training in psychology or processes that motivate people to make changes in the short term to support the long term goals. Financial planning is a very important part of creating financial well-being however and long term strategies in creating wealth.

For me, financial planning has been an invaluable road map (big picture vision) supporting my husband and I toward our long term goals.

What groups of people do you work with?

I work with couples, individuals and small businesses.

How do I determine if we are a good fit?

I offer a free 20 minute phone consultation to help see if we are a good fit for one another. It is important to me your need fits the services I offer. Otherwise, I am happy to offer you a referral that better fits your need. You can call me at 650-592.8239 or email me at denisehughes@comcast.net.

If you want to learn more about Financial Coaching and have questions that aren’t covered here, I welcome hearing from you.

Neuro-Economics: The Brain-Money-Spending Connection

This is a highly desired two hour talk. Financial Planning Chapters love this talk because Denise explains the core reasons why people make the purchasing decisions they do and the behavioral interventions needed to keep a client’s spending behavior in check. She explains the physiology behind why people buy more at Costco than they planned and the strategies stores use that loosen up our brain chemistry so we open our pocketbooks without a second thought. Because of her background in psychology, coupled with her education and experience in finance, she easily lays out an in-depth understanding of the brain-money-spending connection.

Five Secret Ingredients of the Million Dollar Woman’s Mindset

Maybe you have a favorite recipe and you know just the right ingredients to make a savoring mouth watering dish, right? Well, guess what? Denise knows the ingredients to help you grow your business to the size of your liking. She has worked with and interviewed over 150 women entrepreneurs helping them to grow their business revenues to the million dollar mark. She knows the secret ingredients that capitulate business women into success. This talk is filled with inspirational stories and the necessary ingredients to get you reaching for your dreams and creating a successful business.

Women, Money, and Power

Is your audience ready to support woman in taking off their financial burkas? Why is it that women know their bra size, shoe size, clothing sizes and yet don’t know the amount of money available to them in their checking accounts or how much money it takes to make their lives work well? This talk addresses the core emotional issues women have with their relationship with money. Uncover deep seeded myths of Cinderella’s glass slipper, Snow White’s Prince and the many spells that keep the veil of innocence in place with a woman and her money.

Financial Coach

Who is the best professional to consult to help you find financial solutions that address your concerns? It really depends. Lets take a look at the similarities and differences between a Financial Coach, a Marriage Therapist and a Financial Planner. Over the years, I have hired all three but for different reasons.

Financial Coach – Integrating Psychology and Money

A Financial Coach helps you to understand and change your relationship with money for the better, linking finances with psychology. Financial Coaching addresses issues of chronic debting, under-earning, cash flow management, effective financial communication with one’s spouse, over-spending, inability to save money, overcoming scarcity mindsets, and a myriad of other personal finance issues.

A Financial Coach helps you explore the past (where your money beliefs come from) in order to understand the present, but the focus is on creating what you want in the future. A Financial Coach understands your money picture is the result of the thinking, emotions and actions you bring to your relationship with money. Solving money problems has little to do with one’s intellect. It has more to do with breaking through emotional blocks and limiting mind-sets.

A Marriage Therapist

Therapy is based in the medical model and the therapist is in the role of clinician. Your symptoms are assessed, then you are given a diagnosis based on the DSM (diagnostic statistical manual), and then treated accordingly based on your diagnosis.

It makes most sense to see a marriage therapist if your money problems are a result of a primary disorder; such as untreated bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety disorders, gambling addictions, or deeply seated unconscious patterns of behavior rooted in early childhood. When couples are working through relationship issues, they often see a Financial Coach and a Marriage Therapist. When money issues are addressed, root problems in a couple’s relationship, may show themselves more clearly.

Therapy’s major focus is healing the past through understanding the past. Much of the focus is on family of origin issues.

A Financial Planner

A Certified Financial Planner is focused on helping you line up your resources to meet your short and long term goals. Your Financial Planner is a master at coordinating your big financial picture by bringing together your estate, retirement, investment, risk (insurance), and tax plans. Your planner makes sure all of these plans are current and are in alignment with one another.

A financial coach, may be just the right professional for you if you want to gain control of your finances, break-through emotional money blocks and find freedom and make peace with money.