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The Get Ready Money Podcast with Ruschelle Khanna: Making Emotional Intelligence Our Superpower

• Tony Steuer

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On the latest episode of The Get Ready Money Podcast, I spoke with Ruschelle Khanna, therapist and fractional Chief Learning Officer about changing the way we think about money and making emotional intelligence our superpower.


In this episode we discussed:

  • You have to know yourself, invest the time to listen to yourself.
  • Defining emotional intelligence.
  • The importance of being curious. 
  • Listening builds relationships.
  • The value of behavior modification.
  • Understanding intuition. 


Ruschelle Khanna, LCSW is an Advisor and Therapist for High Net Worth Females & Families. Ruschelle specializes in helping leaders and teams develop high EQ skills to effectively blend strategic thinking, creative problem solving and effective communication. She serves as a Fractional Learning Officer for families in enterprise.  Ruschelle is a Gottmann Method Facilitator. She was formerly the Clinical Director at Samaritan Daytop Village. 

Connect with Ruschelle Khanna:

Website: https://www.ruschellekhanna.com/

Website: http://Lifestyleforlegacy.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruschelle-khanna-lifestyle-for-legacy/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ruschellekhanna/


Book:

Inherited Trauma & Family Wealth: A guide to heal relationships and build a lasting legacy (order here)


Mentioned this episode:

Money, A Love Story: Untangle Your Financial Woes and Create the Life You Really Want by Kate Northrup (Amazon)

Support the show

The Get Ready Money Podcast and its guests do not provide investment advice. All content is for educational purposes. Guest opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Get Ready Money Podcast and Tony Steuer.

Speaker 1:

Are you looking to get ready, be prepared and transform your financial future? Then you've come to the right place. This is the Get Ready Money Podcast with Tony Stewart, where Tony has insightful conversations with financial experts who are changing the way we think about money. Catch up on the latest financial trends and hear practical advice from Tony and his expert guests so you can build healthy habits that work, Be empowered with tips for implementing small changes that can have a big impact on your financial future. So sit back and get ready to hear from today's guest.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to the Get Ready Money podcast changing the way we think about money. I'm pleased to be joined today by Rochelle Khanna. Rochelle is a therapist and consultant. In this episode, we'll be discussing Rochelle's insights on how we change the way we think about money and making emotional intelligence our superpower. Rochelle, welcome to the Get Ready Money podcast. Thanks for joining us today.

Speaker 3:

Thank you for having me, Tony. I'm super excited to have this conversation with you today.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I am as well Excited for your insights. So you know, let's get started. What is your origin story?

Speaker 3:

Well, I have been a therapist for the past.

Speaker 3:

I believe I'm on year 23 being a therapist since I really since I graduated from high school actually I've been doing some sort of counseling and I work with primarily now I work with families who have this kind of combination of mental health and chronic health issues and also succession and wealth issues. So I work mainly with high net worth families who are struggling with these two kind of topics at the same time. For example, maybe an adult child is not thriving yet and they have some relationship issues with money and they may be set to inherit a large amount of money. So trying to work out and set them up for success.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so you know. I mean it's something that is getting growing attention in the financial field. Is that relationship between the mental component and the actual money management, the numbers component? Are you seeing that in your practice, that that's a growing area?

Speaker 3:

I know in for financial planners and advisors. This is a huge issue. There are a lot more continuing education opportunities for advisors in the area of psychology as well as motivation of their clients, and in my own work it just seemed like the longer I worked with families, the more the issues of money and mental wellness kept coming up. So this is just kind of what what kept coming back to me in my own practice.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's interesting. This has always been a topic of interest for me. I majored in finance, came close to minoring in psychology, and over the course of my career, it always puzzled me why people would make certain financial choices when they knew the numbers and they knew the pros and cons. And you go okay. Well, why are you still making that choice? And I think that's a question that we need to ask in the financial services industry, you know is why are people making these choices even when they know the numbers or they understand something like you know? Let's take a look at saving money for the future, establishing an emergency fund. I mean, it's my belief that everyone knows they need an emergency fund, but they're not necessarily doing it. I mean it's my belief that everyone knows they need an emergency fund, but they're not necessarily doing it. I mean, what do you think is a psychological, I guess, hold back for them from doing something like that, where they know they need to do it.

Speaker 3:

Yes, and I see this is a real issue for financial advisors, especially in terms of motivating their clients advisors especially in terms of motivating their clients. Like you said, sometimes they will sit down and put together a plan and then the clients never follow the plan. So, as a psychotherapist, we're looking at what are the unconscious drivers, what are the unconscious motivators for people? And I think the deeper I've gone into my practice, the more it has led me to these inherited patterns that we have, and those are sometimes completely unconscious, sometimes they're not. Sometimes we know the patterns yet we are still willing to go along with them, even if they're not good for us, and there are a lot of reasons for that as well. So I think when you start off looking at behavior change, you can start at the surface and do what, in psychology, is called behavior modification, and financial advisors will do that right. How do we change your behavior to help you make better decisions? But then, if we dive, keep diving into the conversation, it often has to do with their childhood experiences like.

Speaker 3:

Brad Klontz. You know points to in the money scripts. You know points to in the money scripts and it also has to do, maybe, with patterns that we inherited that we don't even maybe know were our grandparents' patterns, for example. I've seen information come out of genealogy searches or diving into your family history stories. A classic example is if there was a money trauma around. Let's say, great-great-grandpa had tax fraud in the business and there was a business trauma and three generations later people are still having trouble paying their taxes, interacting with taxes on any level. This is just a. It's a common but kind of generic example of oh, maybe there's something to kind of talk about there. That was a pain point that I inherited.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no, and I can think of that in my own family, as my grandfather went bankrupt during the Great Depression. But still, you know, I can see that with my father and I can see that with my own. Thinking about money is, you know, like that's a strong fear, you know, of going bankrupt. You know, even though that was now almost 100 years ago, that it still carries over it should be now almost 100 years ago, that it still carries over?

Speaker 3:

Absolutely yeah, and we can really look back to three generations easily. Look back to three generations and see patterns. And I have an upcoming book Inherited. Trauma and Family Wealth is the name of the book, and in that book I talk about these kind of three layers in the beginning of what is our individual experience of money, maybe our individual pain points around money. Maybe we had our own history that we've created, and then we have our family history of money. What were the stories that were passed down? And then our community history. So if we were in, for example, a community that was subject to oppression you know, I grew up in the coal fields of West Virginia and we have a long sordid history with money and the government and big corporations and what that does to thinking, our thinking about money- yeah, you know this is such a deep topic.

Speaker 2:

I want to ask you, as you talk about emotional intelligence, what is emotional intelligence?

Speaker 3:

So we have, in very, very simple terms, we have two parts of our brain. You know our brain is much more complex than that, but I'll just keep it really simple. Today we have our what I refer to as our adult mind, our logical mind, which is the, you know, where we do most of our analytical thinking, and then we have our emotional brain, or our child brain, and so emotional intelligence is the isn't just accessing the emotional brain and using it well, but it's being able to operate those two systems together, in sync, simultaneously, at the same time. So as a hypnotherapist, we talk about kind of holding two ideas at the same time. So emotional intelligence is really I can make rational decisions and understand my emotions and understand how those emotions can serve me and use them as tools, rather than being kind of at their mercy or being dragged along by them in some way.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, I think that's so important. I think that's you know. A great thing for people to understand is when your emotions are driving financial decisions. You know things don't always work out well, but you know, like you said, if you start to understand is like what else is going on with it, you know that that's going to help you. If you know, for feeling scared about money or for feeling angry, you know, or you know, getting back to what we were talking about parents, you know if your parents argued about money, you know you're going to carry that forward and maybe argue with your spouse about money, I mean.

Speaker 3:

So yeah, and one of the. You know I have a couple of kind of personal stories in my own mind when I think about why I wrote the book and why this is an interest of mine. And you're exactly right. Like the story, the first memory that I have of money is my mom writing out checks, writing bills, at the kitchen table and she's crying at the kitchen table and she's crying and as an as an adult, I very clearly could kind of point to that told me as a kid that this is nothing that you want to have anything to do with.

Speaker 1:

Like you don't ever want to pick up a checkbook just like this is not.

Speaker 3:

Checkbooks mean a lot of sadness. There's like an aversion. Now a different child may have had a different response and said I'm going to take the checkbook from mom and I'm going to be the one that's responsible for checkbooks from now on, because I never want to see my mom sad. And that's the difference between our personalities. You know our personalities and how we respond to a circumstance. But I internalized don't touch the checkbook. And then for years I live not touching the checkbook.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, yeah, well, and I think that hampers so many people. Is you know, with their uh money? Is you know? Know, for whatever reasons, there's shame involved with it. There's, you know, whatever judgment or like in this case, just playing out negative emotions. You know that keep you from doing certain things. And that gets back to what you were saying just a few minutes ago is understanding the emotions that are keeping you. You know. So, if you don't want to budget, is it because you don't want to create a budget and know your cash flow, or is it because you know it's just like it just makes you feel bad and really valuable stuff.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and you know, tony, just this morning I was, I got up I was working on something and I just I was doing some kind of administrative work and I just felt I was irritated about the stuff that I was doing. And I stopped and I thought to myself why am I feeling so irritated? Now, between then and now I haven't come up with an answer. But I'm telling you that example because I think one we can just pause and if we have an aversion to something, we can think, ask ourselves why am I having such an aversion to this? And the answer may not come right away. And that's when we, when we get into the details of emotional intelligence, it's it's really tapping into what is it that I don't know about myself? Or how can I understand myself better? What, what is it that I'm not catching here of being present with?

Speaker 3:

Because sometimes those emotions are not. We don't have language to describe them. Sometimes emotions are more body sensations. You know, I just get a terrible feeling when I think about a checkbook, like to this day. It's visceral. So connecting the visceral responses with an emotion is a lot of times the missing piece. You know, it's not for advisors to say that I don't know what financial advisors call difficult clients In therapy. Behind the scenes they're referred to as difficult clients, but we're never allowed to say that in public and we're not supposed to think that either. You know, when you think about somebody who's resistant to doing something that's good for them, you really want to let go of like seeing yourself as difficult or seeing yourself as incompetent and saying well, just what's in the way, and maybe I don't have the answer immediately, but I can be quiet and listen for the answer, or I can write about it or I can talk to a professional about it, and it doesn't have to stay that way.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, I think you bring up a very good point and thinking back to you know, when I was an active consultant, it's you know, yeah, probably difficult clients is the same thing and that can be really challenging. But it's also an opportunity for you to grow as an advisor. I mean, sometimes there are just clients that you can't work with and you can be up front and say you know what, maybe I'll find an advisor who's a better fit for you because I don't feel I can serve you as best possible. But something you also said about listening, and that's actually the next question why is listening an important skill?

Speaker 3:

Well, personally, for me, listening is my most valuable skill. And listening listening is an important skill because it's what builds relationship and whether that is with another person or with yourself, you cannot do that without deep listening. You know, if we have I work with a lot of people with chronic illness, I work with families who are struggling with chronic illness and if you don't get good at listening to your body, you are going to have a hard time getting well. And it's the same thing with money If you don't listen to the cues that are driving you to do things. And you know listening is a. We think about our ears when we're listening, but when we're trying to know ourselves, listening is often a felt experience. What, oh what, am I saying and sensing in this moment? That's not good. You know. It was, uh, people who are really great at investing and have just this great intuition to just I just knew when to do it. I just you know. So people will talk about investing as as really sometimes an intuitive process. That's deep listening to yourself.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, and that's fascinating because I think, yeah, yeah, as people will say, it's an intuition, but sometimes it's really driven, like you said, by so many other things. You know, it's really listening to their experience, listening to, maybe, patterns or emotions, you know, but it's yeah, you know. And investing is a great thing. Is you know for that? And I think you know? But it's yeah, you know, and investing is a great thing. Is you know for that? And I think you know. I mean, what would you say to somebody who says you know, well, I have these intuitions, but like half the time I'm wrong when I make investing decisions? Is how can you know when to follow your intuition or to balance?

Speaker 3:

I guess balance out went to follow your intuition or to balance, I guess, balance out. Well, the, the research on intuition really is that, it, it. It really is accumulation of your knowledge, your history and your knowledge of something, and the things that I would consider intuition are a history of knowing and practicing. And so if someone says, oh, I had a feeling, had a gut feeling, I made an investment and it was wrong, well, we can, we all have gut feelings about a lot of things. You know, I had a feeling to eat a whole chocolate bar this morning, but that wasn't maybe my intuition telling me what to do. So, real intuition an example of that would be I've listened to a client for 30 minutes and I just have this feeling that, you know, they never said anything directly, but I just had this feeling that maybe there was a trauma at the time of their birth. And then I say, can you tell me about your birth story? And then they explain that there was a trauma at their birth.

Speaker 3:

That wasn't. I'm not psychic. That was me collecting and knowing from my history of working with people and sitting with a client. Maybe it's nonverbal cues that they're giving me, that I don't. I'm not even aware that that indicates something. You know, maybe it was a subtle way that they talked about their mother. It could have been something that, in my brain, I took as as information that I had seen before, but it was unconscious so I couldn't tell you why. Did I have a feeling about that? This person had a birth trauma, consciously. I probably couldn't say why, but our body is very good at remembering all the information that we've collected. We just may not be aware of it, and there's a lot of evidence for this in physical and health issues, for example, allergies. I had a client once she had an allergy to perfume. Well, she would start to have the allergic reaction before she set foot in the mall where the perfume was.

Speaker 3:

So the body already knew this building is going to set me off. So you know, three minutes before she walks into the mall the body's already responded. And the reason why I'm talking about this in the realm of money is because it's no different. You might have an allergy to money because of history, of think traumas that had happened and you may literally break out in hives. I've had clients who literally broke out in hives when they talked about money. So you know I kind of joke about an allergy to money, but it could be very real, depending on your body's experience of money.

Speaker 2:

I would imagine for every financial advisor I know. My own experience is sometimes you did sit down with a client and right away you could already tell there's a wall.

Speaker 3:

What type of advice would you give to what kind of questions or how can you get that conversation started to start working on that wall? Well, what I recommend people ask and this is a very therapy question, but I think it works in all circumstances is something like you know what's your experience of talking about this right now? In therapy, you might have heard what's happening for you right now. You know if the therapist is trying to be inquisitive about your inner world and we really, as families, as advisors, we need to be more curious about the inner world of people around us.

Speaker 2:

I love that. That's something that I talk about is be curious, you know, be interested in what people are talking about or how they're feeling, and that will help you, as an advisor, really serve your clients. The best you know and it gets back to what you were saying is you need to listen to what they're saying.

Speaker 3:

Well, one. One other cue could be if you notice you're talking about something and maybe you notice your client looks away or shuts down, or their body language changes in a way that you really notice, then I would stop and say let's, you know, let's slow down. What? What just happened there when we were talking about that? A good salesperson will do this. Sales and behavior change are driven from extremely close attention to the person that you are, with Subtle facial expressions, tone of voice changes, and this goes for your family too. You know, if you really want to listen better to your family, you start to pay attention to what happens to them when you're talking.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's, that's wonderful advice. And I think back to, you know, when I was selling, is you know, my theory was always, you know, I wanted the client to discover the sale for themselves. Is that, you know, I would listen to them, figure out what they probably wanted and then provide them options and education so they can come to the decision for themselves of whether something was right for them or not, rather than me just going on and on about how great a product was.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so you're probably very good at motivational interviewing. Were you trained in motivational interviewing?

Speaker 2:

I think so.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, okay.

Speaker 2:

So, yeah.

Speaker 3:

So NLP, neuro-linguistic programming and motivational interviewing help drive people to in therapy. If you know the client's goal, the family's goal, it helps drive everyone to the goal. So you know how to ask the questions that direct them to the goal. And in sales, if you know that a client wants a certain type of product, that way of speaking to someone drives them to the best product for them and it's really effective and I heard it in your description really effective. And I heard it in your description so yeah.

Speaker 2:

Well, and I think that's great for every salesperson and if I was to understand, is you know, and that way the client's coming to the decision themselves and they're going to be much more satisfied with the decision, because it is their decision, not something that they agree to just to agree to. So I love that. So let's switch to the get ready questions. The first one is what basic money concept do you wish people knew?

Speaker 3:

The basic money concepts that I wish people knew. The very basic one I would think that wealth is a long game. So the very basic one I would think that wealth is a long game and that investing is a long game. And so you know I see oriented toward James Hughes Jr's work. You know we should be thinking 100 years out for our families, even if we are not ultra high net worth families. I think all families should be thinking this way and it helps us respect our resources when we have the long game in mind. So that's what I would wish people thought more about.

Speaker 2:

I love it because I think people do get short-sighted, you know, and it's hard when you're 20 years old, 25 years old, to think about the future. But you know, it is important to start laying, always be laying the groundwork. I mean that's why you go to college, or if you go to college or you go into the trades, is that you're thinking about the next step of what you're going to do. So, rochelle, the next question is what is one simple thing you can do each year to set yourself up for financial success?

Speaker 3:

Don't neglect your yearly planning. So whatever format you decide to go into as an individual, a family or community don't neglect setting your quarterly goals. You have to sit down and have the planning meeting. The more planning you do on the front end, the better your year will go. And I think people this is very simple what I'm saying but a lot of people are just winging it financially and that's not a good idea.

Speaker 2:

I love that and I think that's important is because so many people you know end up in these financial services and products because they don't think about their goals. You know I love picking up Bitcoin People who listen, watch this podcast, have heard this example before, but I think it always rings true. Is you know, if you think about Bitcoin, everybody's saying, well, should I buy Bitcoin or not? Should I buy Bitcoin or not, Rather than saying, well, my goal is to do X, is Bitcoin the right tool to help me reach my goal? And if you know your goals, like you said is, then you can come back and say, okay, well, this, in a sense, it's Bitcoin is or is not a good tool to help me reach my goals.

Speaker 3:

Yes, I love that Right Planning. Planning helps you hold on to your power and effectively deploy your power, and your attention is your power. So if your attention is divided, you are powerless. So we have to rein in our attention to hold on to our power.

Speaker 2:

I love that Planning helps you hold on to your power. I think sometimes people overlook that is in the financial service. I mean we could talk about power and not having power, but I think people oftentimes don't realize that they do have power when it comes to their money, or they can take power, but you know they have to overcome some of these issues that we've been talking about. But I think people oftentimes feel powerless when it comes to their money and get swept along.

Speaker 3:

And you know I have worked with ultra high net worth families and I also have worked with very impoverished communities. And I also have worked with very impoverished communities and it doesn't matter what, at what side of the spectrum you're on you can have power or or feel powerless with your money. It's amazing to me that the outside- doesn't matter at all.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I would agree with you. You know, in my consulting career I worked with ultra high net worth people to just people making, you know, getting by day to day, you know, and it is the same issues at the end of the day, um, you know it, a lot more zeros for some people. So, rochelle, what is one habit that people can change when it comes to their money?

Speaker 3:

Well, depending on who we're talking to, but the first one that comes to mind is open your bank account every day and look, so look at your money every day. Money a love story Christina Northrup, I think, is the woman's name. That's her first principle in her book. She's trying to help people fall in love with money again and have a better relationship with money, and the first exercise is just open your bank account and just look at what's there. And we can apply that to just look at your trust documents. Just, maybe you don't know what they say and maybe you do need an advisor to help you go through them. But just open the trust documents and start taking it one thing at a time. So, whether it's your personal checking account or your inheritance, just it's scary to start looking at that stuff if you're not, if you're avoiding it.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, well, I think it's important to know your resources, because if you don't know your resources, it's really hard to make sound decisions. And you know, and as you point out, people don't go back and review so many things. They'll write a trust and then not go back and change it, you know. 20 years later and there's a kid who's missing, or there's an ex-spouse, or half the beneficiaries have passed away and you know, yeah, go back and look at this stuff. So what money myth are you trying to break?

Speaker 3:

Oh, money buys happiness. We will. I mean, that's hands down. Money can really enhance and make our lives really, really wonderful. Money is a wonderful thing and does wonderful things for people and communities, but at the end of the day, you know, your sense of security, your sense of peace of mind, these things are not tied to your money the way you maybe think that they are.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah. I think that's so important for people to realize, because I don't think there's anybody on their deathbed who said boy, I wish you know.

Speaker 3:

Well, you know there are people who love making money and enjoy spending their time. You know, my dad was someone who recreationally loved to make money. He would flip properties and furniture, and you know, just for the sale, just for the fun of it, and that is a type of personality. Not everybody is like that. A lot of people just want to have money so that they can do other things with their time.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that trade-off, but I think you're right it's for some people the joy is actually in the making the money itself, not that money is giving them more joy, as you know. I mean, I think Warren Buffett is a great example In his 90s and he's still running Berkshire Hathaway and investing money because that's his thing.

Speaker 3:

And you know, if you can train yourself to, if you can reframe your relationship with money, that hey look, we have fun together. This is fun versus. You know, when my dad, when I, when my dad first, when I was young and growing up, money was very stressful to my dad because he was working a blue collar job and it was not fun and it was draining and painful. And then I got to see him in his lifetime switch and and, oh you know, making money can be a lot of fun and that was fun to watch.

Speaker 2:

So that's awesome. That's a great example. So let's get out the time machine now. What advice would you give your younger self if you could go back in time, knowing what you know now about money?

Speaker 3:

That would be the advice, and the reason why I'm writing the book would be don't don't avoid. There you don't, there's nothing to be afraid of, you don't have to avoid money and money conversations. And just what I described to you about you know my view as a kid of what money meant was that it was work was hard, things had to be hard, budgeting was scary. You know, I would say it doesn't have to be like that, and I would maybe have started looking at things from this fun perspective sooner.

Speaker 2:

That's awesome. That's great advice. So, rochelle, to wrap up, what is your number one tip on changing the way we think about money?

Speaker 3:

Listen to yourself better. Invest the time in learning to listen to yourself better. I've meditated for since I was 12 years old, and the basis of my practice and work with people really comes from listening and helping other people learn how to really really listen, because then I don't have the answers for people and, at the end of the day, your advisor doesn't have the answers for you. You have to be know yourself and know that the decisions that you're making are the right ones, and be clear about that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I think that gets back to what we were talking about earlier and you know, thinking, reflecting back on my own approaches, really, it's helping people discover the answers for themselves and being a guide, and I think the best advisors are the ones who are guides for their clients and, you know, help the clients, you know, at the end of the day.

Speaker 3:

But the clients have the answers. Right. If you know yourself well, you will pick a good advisor who knows how to help you, and that is the difference.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I think that's reflected. People have heard the stat is that you know, for example, 70 to 80% of widows and divorced women will leave their current financial planner and usually will seek out a woman to be their financial planner. You know, just because you know they didn't feel listened to by the male advisor. You know, I don't I don't have a statistic if that's the number one reason why they leave, but anecdotally, I think that's a huge lesson is that it's because they don't feel. I think what I have heard is they don't feel seen and heard by their financial advisor.

Speaker 3:

Sure, yeah, and sometimes it is the best thing to switch, and other times maybe the advisor could have done something different.

Speaker 2:

Probably around listening. So, Rochelle, where can people learn more about you and connect with you and find out what you're up to?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so my advising website is lifestyleforlegacycom, so people can find me at lifestyleforlegacycom and on LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn a lot, so please connect with me on LinkedIn, yeah.

Speaker 2:

That's awesome and for everybody watching and listening. As always, there will be links to Rochelle's website and LinkedIn profile in the show notes, so you can just click on those and go there. So, rochelle, thank you so much for joining us today on the Get Ready Money podcast.

Speaker 3:

Thank you so much for having me, Tony. It was a great conversation.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much for having me, tony. It was a great conversation. Yeah, it was awesome. Appreciate your insights and thank you everyone, as always, for tuning in to this episode of the Get Ready Money podcast. If you learned something today to change the way you think about money, please be sure to subscribe and tell a friend. Until next time let's change the way we think about money. Thank you.

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