Follow the Money

Why is money so hard to talk about? Even in therapy? Even for therapists? Follow the Money addresses a critical gap in therapeutic practice: the reluctance to explore money in clients' lives. Therapists, social workers, and coaches often avoid money conversations, leaving an essential area of identity and relational dynamics unexplored. Traditional training programs rarely provide frameworks or tools for discussing money, resulting in missed opportunities for insight and change. Judith Stern Peck and Betsy Witten offer a practical, accessible approach to integrating money into therapy. Drawing from experiential workshops, they guide professionals through exercises that build comfort and skill in addressing financial issues. Central to their method is the money-focused genogram, which reveals multigenerational patterns shaping clients' beliefs and behaviors around money-patterns often transmitted invisibly across generations. The book combines theory with practice, presenting strategies and principles that help uncover clients' internal money narratives and their impact on emotions, relationships, and decision-making. Through real-life examples from workshop participants, Peck and Witten illustrate common themes such as gendered money associations, class identity, and parenting challenges. These stories demonstrate how understanding money dynamics can lead to profound personal and relational change. Follow the Money provides therapists and other professionals with a new framework and practical tools to explore financial issues confidently. By "following the money thread," practitioners can help clients achieve greater self-awareness, agency, and healthier behaviors around money-transforming an often-avoided topic into a powerful avenue for growth.

Judith Stern Peck, LCSW, has extensive experience as both a family therapist and a consultant to family businesses, family foundations, and family offices. She is director of a project team at the Ackerman Institute for the Family that researches, educates, and consults on Money and Family Life, and the author of Money and Meaning: New Ways to Have Conversations with Clients about Money (Wiley, 2007). She is also principal of JSP Associates, a firm that provides educational and consultation services to family businesses, family foundations, and family offices.

Betsy Witten, JD, brings her varied background to her work guiding parents looking to create healthy conversations about money with their children, young women in the early stages of navigating money, and adults with aging parents who need help talking about planning and transparency. Her work with individuals is shaped by her decades of experience working as an attorney, engaging in social justice activism, and running her family's business and fam

Introduction: The Money and Family Life Project at the Ackerman Institute for the Family Part I: The Construct of the Workshop Chapter 1: Principles of the Workshop: Using The Ackerman Institute for the Family's Relational Approach Chapter 2: Premise of the Workshop Format: The "How" of Safe Space Chapter 3: Interactive Exercises Part II: Implementation of the Workshop Chapter 4: Making the Invisible Visible, Part 1: Hearing the Voices in Our Heads Chapter 5: Making the Invisible Visible, Part 2: Seeing the Patterns in Relationships and Choices Chapter 6: The Money-Focused Genogram: We Come By Our Patterns Honestly Chapter 7: Themes and Patterns Chapter 8: Other Tools for the Professional: Money in the Therapeutic Relationship