The one constant about people, companies and money may be this: there's never enough of the green stuff.

How people relate to money - or lack of money - is a topic money manager and certified public accountant Mackey McNeill tackles as an executive coach.

McNeill, a resident of Wyoming whose Advisory Team offices are in Fort Wright, speaks Sept. 14 at the YWCA of Greater Cincinnati about how perceptions about money often relate to an early adulthood event.

WHEN YOU GO

Discussion title: "Changing Your Relationship to Money: Tapping a new source of feminine power." Speaker: Mackey McNeill, a money manager and CPA. When: Sept. 14, noon. Cost: $20. Includes box lunch. Where: YWCA of Greater Cincinnati, 898 Walnut St., downtown. Information: (513) 361-2126. Background: McNeill will speak about how past experience with money can interfere with handling it properly as adults. She is author of The Intersection of Joy and Money, picked as the most life-changing book and outstanding book of 2003 by Independent Publishers Group.

"And it's not usually the event but it's how people respond to that event," says McNeill.

McNeill frames the money dilemma this way:

"Everybody has fantasies around money," she said. "I ask people to go back and look at their past - how an event framed their perceptions of money. Stories are unconscious.

"It may take a while for a person to uncover their particular story - but it's there."

A case study

McNeill has interviewed and counseled business owners who could never seem to save or sell their way out of debt, even though they were successful.

One business owner even tripled her revenue in the year McNeill coached. But she still couldn't save.

After McNeill then helped her to dive deep into her psyche, the client realized the trend probably had a lot to do with her first brush with money that she earned.

This woman's father had decided that she would have to save every dollar from her baby-sitting job. She couldn't spend any of the money she earned.

When school rolled around that year, he drove his daughter to the savings-and-loan and they withdrew her money to go shopping for school clothes.

"The father's intention was good - be industrious, save money," McNeill said. "But the story she made up in her mind was that when you save money, it goes to a necessity - not for fun."

When she became an adult, she compensated by having fun with her money - not saving it.

What is money?

The first question people and executives need to ask is simple enough: What is money? The answer must be only one word.

For women, the word most often used is "security." Men most frequently reply "power."

"Whatever the circumstances, people tend to repeat, repeat, repeat," McNeill says. "Figure out your story or your stories. That's the first step.

"The stories I've heard are all different - but they're all the same, too. Events happen, and then we make up what that means and use it for the rest of our lives."

E-mail jeckberg@enquirer.com