“A sage and caring guide to facing one’s fears about money.”
See what readers are saying about The Emotional Side of Money
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The Emotional Side of Money: A Road Map to Financial Wellness by Tari K. Vickery gave me the most important insight into financial freedom that I had never considered.
This author reframes financial freedom and management as a psychological and emotional journey rather than a uniquely mathematical exercise. She uses her experience of childhood poverty and shares her story from business bankruptcy to earning degrees from Stanford to building a financial business to demonstrate how scarcity mentality, generational trauma, and unspoken family beliefs and taboos shape how we see and interact with wealth.
The book is structured into four parts and guides readers through self-reflection and mindset shifts to practical applications, estate planning, and parenting. The author easily delivers compelling lessons using her personal experiences, and she provides ample sociological insight while using anonymized client case studies to educate readers. The message that sustainable financial wellness requires healing from deep psychological and emotional wounds around money resonated with me.
Tari K. Vickery writes with confidence about the paralyzing grip of a scarcity mentality and the liberating power of abundance thinking, the importance of intergenerational communication on f inances, the destabilizing impact of gender income inequality, especially on marriages, and a lot more. The Emotional Side of Money features a compassionate, yet compelling voice, and writing that is conversational, yet intellectually rigorous. The stories make the book even more enjoyable and resonant. This is a book I needed to read, especially at this time, and it is a tool that everyone needs to educate their family on financial wealth management.
- Ruffino Oserio for Readers’ Favorite Review
Empowering study of the patterns and emotions that shape money perspectives.
“Vickery unpacks our dysfunctional relationship with money in this empowering roadmap toward “financial wellness.” From the start, she acknowledges that very few topics elicit more passion—and distress—than money, noting that untangling our emotions around finances can be a challenging journey, to say the least. Her mission is to help readers understand how their family history, social interactions, personal values, geographical location, and more contribute to their financial ideas and behaviors, as she notes that “mak[ing] peace” with our finances comes only after clarifying “our general thinking about money and choices about how we spend it.”
In Vickery’s world, financial wisdom is less about accumulating wealth and more about purposeful self-reflection. She details her own emergence from a scarcity mindset—“where life is one big pie, and if others take a slice, that leaves less pie for me”—into a position of experiencing abundance in every area of her life, while providing readers with thoughtful prompts to undertake that quest themselves. Whether examining our ancestors’ experiences and how those impacted their generational viewpoints on money or analyzing income inequality for women, Vickery’s approach opens crucial discussion around a range of financial topics: mortgages, wills versus trusts, intra-family loans, financial communication skills, and more.
Vickery’s precise guidance and engaging examples—such as the story of her mother growing up in rural Oklahoma during the Great Depression, watching their family refrigerator be repossessed—leave readers with striking imagery and vivid impressions. She emphasizes throughout that many adults are not taught nuts-and-bolts financial skills, such as balancing a checkbook or understanding how to responsibly use credit cards, and she notes that improving those skills could help relieve financial anxiety. By tackling a topic that is often taboo, Vickery opens communication lines between generations, nudges readers toward self-compassion, and paves the way toward a “powerful, peaceful relationship with money.”
“Sociologist, entrepreneur, and financial wellness coach Vickery offers a timely volume of financial advice and sound, positive encouragement.
The author makes a strong case for understanding financial trauma as something that one must work through, despite the hardships of daily living. Drawing on wisdom from other self-help titles, such as Stephen R. Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1989), Vickery builds trust with readers by tactfully using terms of therapy to reconfigure misconceptions about money and its emotional responses. Her compassionate voice makes the text appealingly readable as she empathizes with people with a wide range of money worries. Above all, Vickery values communication as a key method to find new ways to understand financial matters, whether one is communicating with parents, spouses, children, or, above all, oneself. The author illustrates several scenarios from her clients, bringing real-life resonance to various lessons; some focus on couples’ financial dynamics in particular. These slice-of-life chapters are where the book truly shines, and its reflective questions to help readers carry on with further work are a bonus. Some readers may balk at talk of “abundance,” but it’s important to note that Vickery doesn’t stray into ideas of manifestation; instead, she stays grounded in here-and-now money matters. Helpful topics include budgeting, gender inequality, travel, scarcity mindsets, debt, and unemployment. Readers will find themselves in good hands when later chapters discuss advertising and consumerism, and their effect on the collective psyche; Vickery’s takeaways feel notably helpful regarding such fraught topics. She effectively reminds readers that financial wellness is never out of reach and must be viewed as a dialogue between one’s framing of a situation and one’s material needs and wants. By the conclusion, readers will agree that one should discuss financial matters in such an open and emotionally healthy manner more often.
A sage and caring guide to facing one’s fears about money.
— Kirkus Review
“With warmth and compassion, Tari Vickery invites us to gently explore the emotions and stories that shape our relationship with money. The Emotional Side of Money is a wise and reassuring guide, leading us from fear or shame into peace, freedom, and alignment with what matters most. It is more than a book about money—it is a path to financial well-being.”
— Lynne Twist, Author of The Soul of Money
“Years ago, Tari visualized this book into being—literally wrapping a handmade cover around her dream. Now it's real! And so is her gift: Tari shows us that our stories about money can transform for the better. With passion, heart, and hard-won wisdom, Tari proves abundance starts with belief.”
— Elle Luna, Author of The Crossroads of Should and Must
“In The Emotional Side of Money, Tari Vickery feels like a wise, compassionate friend, helping us discover why money so often brings stress. With warmth and clarity, she guides us through uncovering lifelong patterns and experiences, transforming anxiety into confidence, peace, and even joy.”
— Julie Lythcott-Haims, Author of How to Raise an Adult, Your Turn: How to Be An Adult, & Real American: A Memoir