The Psychology of Financial Decisions | Dan Pascone with Nate Astle | Ep #15

Nate Astle is a financial therapist and the founder of the Financial Therapy Clinical Institute. He says he has been doing financial therapy for about 8 years, and that his training is as a mental health therapist focused on couples and family therapy. He describes financial therapy as working with the psychological, emotional and relational sides of money.

His core point is that money behavior is inherently emotional, from big moments like a promotion or starting a business to small ones like whether to buy a candy bar at checkout. Dan noted that after a whole career in financial services, he'd never met a financial therapist before.

Nate says he works with adults up to their 70s, usually in 3 areas:

• Couples in financial conflict: Partners who feel they can't get on the same page about money.
• Financial trauma: People whose difficult money experiences, or difficult life experiences, show up as anxiety or as the way they make financial decisions.
• Behavior change: People who are impulse shoppers, who struggle to save or who can't tell where their money is going.

In his experience, people often have "financial solutions to emotional problems," so the first job is to figure out which emotional problem a given money behavior is trying to fix. He says people now come to him specifically for money issues, although he started as a general couples and family therapist. He says money became personal for him when he went through his own therapy and saw how much the way he grew up around money shaped him. His view is that becoming your best financial self is partly about becoming your best emotional self.

Nate says fear shows up in many forms, such as worrying money will run out, and that it often creates tunnel vision: "the only way I can be safe is if these dominoes all line up." His advice is to remind yourself that you usually have more than 1 option. If you can widen your view, he says, it reduces psychological stress.

Shame, he says, is the other big one. We put a lot of meaning into money, and having a lot of it can feel like it makes us a good person or a good provider, while struggling can feel like failure. He helps people "de-identify" from their money: money is something you have, not something you are. He asks where the shame is coming from, whether it is useful or true, and how to make decisions from your own values instead of from insecurity or fear. Dan said he loved that line and planned to use it with credit to Nate.

Nate says financial therapy is relatively new compared with financial planning or mental health care. He says it took off after the 2008 crash, when mental health practitioners and financial planners found they were seeing the same issues, and that the Financial Therapy Association formed around 2009. He started around 2017–18 while in school, and says the field now includes a Certified Financial Therapist designation, trainings and books.

Looking ahead, he says the value financial planners bring is changing as robo-advisors, fintech and AI grow, and that being good at math and projections may not be enough on its own. He'd like financial care and healing to be a bigger part of working with a planner. He also says therapists need specialized training in this area, noting that financial stress is a major predictor of divorce and that money has ranked among the top 3 stressors in the American Psychological Association's annual stress survey for about 15 years. [VERIFY: guest claims, confirm with sources]

Dan agreed that money is more than a spreadsheet. In his words, money is to some degree a means to an end, and what matters is what you want that end to be and how you use money to live the life you want.

• Coffee or tea: Tea.
• Cats or dogs: Dogs.
• Technology he can't live without: Video games. He likes story-driven role-playing games such as Final Fantasy because they make him feel like he's in a book.
• Favorite quote: "Shame is the enemy of change."
• Favorite book: The Financial Anxiety Workbook by Lindsey Bryan-Podvin, which he says is closest to how he thinks about money and how he'd approach a treatment plan for someone with money anxiety.
• Personal finance hack: At the grocery store, look at the price per ounce, not just the total price.
• Bucket list item accomplished: Starting the Financial Therapy Clinical Institute, which he wanted to be collaborative with financial counselors and planners.
• Current milestone: Recovering financially from buying his family's first home.
• Financial mistake turned lesson: His own impulsive game purchases, which left him without personal spending money for a few months.
• Advice to his younger self: Be compassionate. Give yourself the grace you'd give anyone else, because most of us got no education or exposure around money.

• A higher income raises the stakes, not the calm: The same emotions show up, but the decisions are larger. Anxiety, avoidance and overcorrecting can all drive choices, including saving too much. Our post on oversaving as a hidden expense covers 1 example, and our post on moving from financial anxiety to clarity shows how a structured plan can help.

• Fear narrows your options, and a plan can widen them: Nate's "more than 1 option" idea is easier to act on when the options are written down before the pressure hits. Our post on fear vs. greed looks at how emotion can sabotage investing decisions.

• Money talks between partners are part of the plan: Conflict about money is rarely only about the numbers. Agreeing on goals and decision rules together before a big decision is often easier than negotiating in the moment.

• Know where each profession stops: A financial planner isn't a therapist, and a therapist usually isn't managing your investments. If money stress feels overwhelming or tied to past experiences, a licensed mental health professional is the right person to talk to. The American Psychological Association has a page on strategies for managing money stress.

This hypothetical is for illustration only. All figures are assumed, aren't projections or recommendations, and ignore interest rates, taxes and transaction costs.

Assume a couple with $600,000 in household income has $250,000 in after-tax proceeds from vested RSUs and a $400,000 mortgage balance. One partner is afraid of debt and wants to pay off the mortgage. The other is afraid of missing out and wants to invest it all. The conversation stalls because each is defending a fear, not a number. Writing out the options can widen the view:

• Option A: Put $250,000 toward the mortgage. The balance drops to $150,000 and nothing is invested.
• Option B: Invest the full $250,000. The mortgage stays at $400,000 and the money is exposed to market risk.
• Option C: Split it $125,000 and $125,000. The mortgage drops to $275,000 and $125,000 is invested.

None of these is the right answer for everyone. The point is that naming each partner's underlying need, safety for 1 and growth for the other, makes the choice a shared decision instead of a standoff. The final decision should also weigh cash reserves, taxes and the rest of the plan.

We use Life-Driven Planning, a 6-phase plan covering Cash Flow, Retirement & Hybrid Retirement, Risk, Expense & Goal, Tax and Legacy. It starts with what you want your life to look like and works backward, which is close to what Dan described when he said money is a means to an end. Life Driven Investing (LDI) builds a portfolio backward from your life using the Four Liquidity Bands: 0–2 years, 3–5 years, 6–10 years and 10+ years. Setting aside money for the near term in the 0–2 year band can help some people feel more settled about the future.

For executives with RSUs, options or an ESPP, our Equity Compensation Playbook, a set of structured rules for those awards, helps take some emotion out of in-the-moment decisions because the rules are agreed in advance. Under our Quarterly Strategy Rhythm (ongoing plan updates, decision reviews and rebalancing), we revisit decisions on a schedule. Our video on the art of investing in volatile markets touches on staying disciplined when emotions run high. We're financial planners, not therapists, and we'd point you to a licensed professional when that's what's needed. This episode is educational and isn't an endorsement of the Financial Therapy Clinical Institute or any company, book or service discussed.

This episode is for corporate executives and senior professionals in their 40s and 50s with $500k+ in household income and complex compensation who suspect that emotions, family history or partner disagreements are shaping their money decisions, and who want a clearer plan to work from.

If you're a high-earning executive who wants a clearer plan for the decisions on your plate, we'd be glad to talk it through. Book a free Wealth Strategy Call with us, and we'll look at your situation together.