Marilyn Bunger thinks she overspent last year on gifts for her family and friends. But instead of simply putting herself on a budget, she decided to figure out why she overspent.

        “Single women tend to spend more on the children and grandchildren,” she said she's learned. “It's a gratification thing. It's an emotional thing.”

        So as a way of dealing with her spending, she's dealing with her emotions. It seems obvious — people search their souls when dealing with other bad habits, such as drinking or eating too much. But until recently, matters of the heart have stayed out of money matters.

Marilyn Bunger (left), works on crafts at her Delhi Township home with daughter Beth Story of Bridgetown. (Ernest Coleman photo) | ZOOM |

        Whether it's a response to abundance or a spiritualism of the new millennium, professionals and consumers are melding psychology and finances more than ever before.

        Books on the spiritual side of money are becoming bestsellers. Suze Orman, author of The Courage to be Rich: Creating the Life of Material and Spiritual Abundance and The Nine Steps to Financial Freedom: Practical & Spiritual Steps So You Can Stop Worrying, has made appearances on PBS and The Oprah Winfrey Show.

        Barb Culver, a certified financial planner and president of Resonate Inc. in Blue Ash, is among those bringing the trend to Greater Cincinnati.

        In her seminar, “Making Peace With Money,” she asks participants to focus on bad money habits, their roots in childhood or societal lessons, and how to change them by changing the attitudes.

        It's not an approach found in the curriculum at the University of Cincinnati's business school, said Steve B. Wyatt, professor of finance and head of the finance department at UC. And it doesn't belong there, he said.

        Traditionally, finance and investing have been treated more analytically, because that's their nature, he said. Numbers, calculations and opportunities are factual across the board.

        Still, he said, he understands and sees the need for the self-help trend as applied to money matters.

        “There's a place for it, but it really is psychological — it's not finance,” he said.

        Ms. Culver, however, says any decision really does have an emotional root, no matter how it's rationalized later. Investors can't make personal decisions without taking their beliefs, values and motivations into consideration, she said.

        Ms. Culver said hers is a holistic approach whose time has come.

        “Maybe we feel money is controlling us more than we are controlling it,” she said. “If we want to have a new relationship with money, we've got to go back to beliefs.”

        Many of the patterns she has seen in her 21 years as a financial planner are similar to Ms. Bunger's: overspending for emotional reasons, believing one deserves to splurge, but then feeling guilty and unworthy.

        Using Ms. Bunger as an example, Ms. Culver said “single women and single mothers will spend money just as a way to feel better.”

        So while a traditionalist would put an overspender on a budget, Ms. Culver advised Ms. Bunger to find other ways to feel better and other ways to show her love.

        Ms. Bunger's granddaughter turns 5 Monday. But instead of spending lavishly on several presents, Ms. Bunger will buy just one. Her other gift is priceless: The little girl will skip preschool, and will spend the day doing crafts with her grandmother.

        “I know I'm not going to buy their love,” Ms. Bunger said. “Making them happy with my time is more important.”
       

Real world must be easier
Laughing all the way to the little bank
Small banks fill void left by takeovers
Microsoft president retiring
GE gets foot in door at Qantas
Understanding the emotions of overspending
Bush plans to revoke Clinton labor initiatives
HIGGINS: Personal finance
Industry notes: Commercial real estate
NYSE members want to know point of decimals
Producers' prices shot up in Jan.
Savvy Strategies
The Sophisticated Investor
Business Digest
Tristate Business Summary
What's the Buzz?