{HBR 38} Wild Money with Luna Jaffe

Holistic Business Radio – The Podcast of the Love and Money Revolution – with Andy Dolph and Rhiannon Llewellyn

Rhi and Luna, the author of two upcoming books about money, have a winding conversation around creativity and money and how she has discovered the perfect way to relate financial concepts to non-financial people using art, play, and loads of compassion. Scroll down for show notes! We love your feedback! Please let us know what you think – email us at [e-mail], or leave us a comment below. If you’re not subscribed, please join us! How to subscribe: Most people subscribe to podcasts in iTunes; click the button to view the podcast in iTunes. Show notes from this episode with Luna Jaffe: Rhi talks with Luna Jaffe about combining financial planning with the creative world. Luna has two books: “Zguide to Money” and the recently-released “Wild Money: A Creative Journey to Financial Wisdom” and its accompanying workbook/journal. Luna has always been a creative human being, but she struggled with money for 20 years. She got involved in the world of finance ten years ago and realized that there were no resources or educational materials for people who think differently than the left-brained, analytical world. So she decided to change that and provide some really cool materials for the right-brained folks. After writing for herself for many years, she decided to turn that outward and write for others in order to help them find tools and build confidence around money. She uses visual images as a very powerful tool to help people understand what the deeper mythology of their own subconscious is. She says that words just don’t do justice to our feelings around money, so she has people draw or sketch their feelings around the topic. Making it a visual experience is a tangible and powerful practice and tool for transformation. People can “draw themselves out of money trouble.” Luna says that if people can visualize their financial situation as different, then they can make it different. She helps people find their own language to use so they can own their attitudes and feelings around the topic of money. This proves to be very empowering. Luna decided to do a workbook to accompany the book in order to share the exercises around money that she has done for herself over the years. Working with something, especially money, in this way validates our learning and knowledge in a positive, non-threatening way. When Rhi asks Luna to describe her path from artist to psychotherapist to financial planner, Luna recounts her journey from her days as a successful businesswoman in art. Her work as an artist allowed her to travel and live the lifestyle she wanted. Not long after she decided that she wanted to be a mother, her father died suddenly. She was 30 years old. She decided to evaluate where she was and where she wanted to be in life. That led her to graduate school. She continued to use art to teach creative process workshops and decided to pursue psychotherapy. Three years into practice, she realized she didn’t like it: it was too isolating for her. She wanted to be able to share her ideas and help people to get going rather than wait for them to come to their own conclusions—which is great in psychotherapy, but she really wanted to help people in a quicker way. She got divorced and reinvented herself at 36 years old. She realized that in order to fulfill her desire to be a mother, she would need a job with a reliable income and benefits—something she’d never had before. She started in high-tech, in customer service, and she loved it! She was promoted to be a trainer within three months. She realized that there are things that people can learn, and then there are things that are just innate—a part of who someone is that can’t be taught. She spent three years doing this for a Fortune 500 company and did it well but felt uninspired. She’s thankful for that experience, however, because it allowed her to experience the world of the 9-to-5 workaday. While she was employed with that company,