The Seven Stages of Money Maturity, by financial advisor and Buddhist teacher George Kinder, presents a totally original look at the ins and outs of individual economics. Drawing on timeless spiritual wisdom in addition to modern fiscal doctrine, Kinder deftly combines the philosophical and the practical to help readers broaden their understanding of the overall role that money plays in life from childhood onward--and, more importantly, put themselves on firmer footing with it today. Most financial advisors and books about money approach finance as if it were simply a skill to learn, the same sort of thing as hitting a fastball or speaking French like a diplomat. Money maturity does include skills, such as understanding investment options and using a budget effectively, but it goes much deeper, to the feelings, the heart, and, yes, the soul. By following three composite characters throughout the book and examining their experiences through the prisms of his own background and development, Kinder explains how to evolve naturally through these seven specific states (innocence, pain, knowledge, understanding, vigor, vision, and aloha) to achieve both financial and personal security.


From Publishers Weekly
Compared to other personal finance books that offer specific financial steps and planning strategies, this book focuses on the search for spiritual meaning in wealth. Kinder, a certified financial planner and former tax accountant, focuses on three composite figures, based on real people, to illustrate the seven psychological stages people go through in their relationship to money: Innocence (not knowing anything), Pain (discovering that we need to work to earn money), Knowledge (of such skills as saving and investing), Understanding (more sophisticated emotional wisdom about greed and inequality), Vigor (energy to reach financial goals), Vision (directing vigor outward, perhaps to a community) and Aloha (altruism without expectation of gain of any kind). Kinder provides useful questionnaires in which he urges readers to reflect on various questions: What are your three earliest memories of money? Why and how did money first enter your relationship with your mother, your father? While readers comfortable with spiritual self-exploration may enjoy Kinders approach, they will still have to turn to more traditional personal finance books for nitty-gritty money advice. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
This is a how-to book on money management, with a philosophical bent. The author, a CPA, provides readers with an awareness of the spiritual and psychological issues that surround money. With monetary expertise, practical experience, and a Buddhist orientation, Kinder offers a road map for understanding, deepening, and enriching the role that money plays in all areas of life and that leads to financial freedom. The book guides us through the seven stages of money maturity, beginning with innocence, or the absence of any concept of money. The next stages are pain, or realizing that some people have more and some have less money than others; adulthood, or the hard work of digging deep; knowledge, or learning financial techniques; understanding, or coming to terms with feelings about money; vigor, or developing the energy necessary to reach financial goals; and aloha, compassionate goodwill that allows use of the money without expecting a return. Kinder's case studies and exercises help readers attain the necessary skills for developing integrity in their relationship to money. Mary Whaley


Review
"A wonderfully clear and wise book of guidance."
--Jacob Needleman, author of Money and the Meaning of Life

"I love this book! It's what people really need to know about money, including practical advice on budgeting and investing. But it focuses on the real core of financial planning--goals and choices."
--Peg Downey, former president, National Association of Personal Financial Advisors

"Reading The Seven Stages of Money Maturity is like holding the hand of a wise and loving father who calmly guides you down the path to the land of financial freedom."
--Cheryl Richardson, author of Take Time for Your Life


Review
"A wonderfully clear and wise book of guidance."
--Jacob Needleman, author of Money and the Meaning of Life

"I love this book! It's what people really need to know about money, including practical advice on budgeting and investing. But it focuses on the real core of financial planning--goals and choices."
--Peg Downey, former president, National Association of Personal Financial Advisors

"Reading The Seven Stages of Money Maturity is like holding the hand of a wise and loving father who calmly guides you down the path to the land of financial freedom."
--Cheryl Richardson, author of Take Time for Your Life


Book Description
Discover a powerful new way to look at your money and your life.

Where do our attitudes about money come from--and how do they influence our lives? How can we approach financial issues with honesty and without fear?

In this groundbreaking book, renowned Buddhist teacher George Kinder, a Harvard-trained certified financial planner, demonstrates how we can literally transform our lives emotionally and financially by achieving "money maturity"--a full understanding of the spiritual and psychological issues surrounding our money lives.

Drawing on ancient Buddhist wisdom and his years of financial practice, Kinder has created a revolutionary program that guides us through the Seven Stages of a revolutionary journey--one designed to help us uncover the roots of our attitudes about money, and attain true peace, freedom, and security in our financial lives. Learn how to:

Understand feelings that impact taking financial action
Develop understanding and knowledge about money
Eliminate stress and anxiety around money
Let go of old patterns and painful habits
Approach money tasks with energy and optimism
Design a money life that is fulfilling both financially and spiritually

Filled with practical information, market-tested, wealth-building skills, personal success stories, and spiritual guidance, The Seven Stages of Money Maturity is an invaluable guide to a rich--and richly lived--life.


1.        Innocence--The childhood state we are born in, devoid of any concept of money
2.        Pain--The discovery that we have more money than some and less than others, and that work is necessary to make a living
3.        Knowledge--The intellectual task of learning financial techniques such as saving, budgeting, and investing
4.        Understanding--The emotional work done in coming to terms with feelings around money, such as greed, envy, and resentment (which are rooted in Pain)
5.        Vigor--The energy (physical, emotional, and spiritual) that must be expended to reach financial goals
6.        Vision--The direction of Vigor outward toward the health and welfare of communities, with or without profit motive
7.        Aloha--The compassionate goodwill that allows one to use money to perform acts of kindness without expecting anything in return

Using THE SEVEN STAGES OF MONEY MATURITY, readers will understand each encounter with money as a step toward awakening; a lesson about the relationship they share with others as well as with the self. -->


Book Info
Focuses on the real core of financial planninggoals and choices. Demonstrates the human meaning of the whole of our life with money and helps us ponder the interdependence between our personal financial maturity and wealth. DLC: Finance, Public.


From the Inside Flap
Discover a powerful new way to look at your money and your life.

Where do our attitudes about money come from--and how do they influence our lives? How can we approach financial issues with honesty and without fear?

In this groundbreaking book, renowned Buddhist teacher George Kinder, a Harvard-trained certified financial planner, demonstrates how we can literally transform our lives emotionally and financially by achieving "money maturity"--a full understanding of the spiritual and psychological issues surrounding our money lives.

Drawing on ancient Buddhist wisdom and his years of financial practice, Kinder has created a revolutionary program that guides us through the Seven Stages of a revolutionary journey--one designed to help us uncover the roots of our attitudes about money, and attain true peace, freedom, and security in our financial lives. Learn how to:

Understand feelings that impact taking financial action
Develop understanding and knowledge about money
Eliminate stress and anxiety around money
Let go of old patterns and painful habits
Approach money tasks with energy and optimism
Design a money life that is fulfilling both financially and spiritually

Filled with practical information, market-tested, wealth-building skills, personal success stories, and spiritual guidance, The Seven Stages of Money Maturity is an invaluable guide to a rich--and richly lived--life.


1.        Innocence--The childhood state we are born in, devoid of any concept of money
2.        Pain--The discovery that we have more money than some and less than others, and that work is necessary to make a living
3.        Knowledge--The intellectual task of learning financial techniques such as saving, budgeting, and investing
4.        Understanding--The emotional work done in coming to terms with feelings around money, such as greed, envy, and resentment (which are rooted in Pain)
5.        Vigor--The energy (physical, emotional, and spiritual) that must be expended to reach financial goals
6.        Vision--The direction of Vigor outward toward the health and welfare of communities, with or without profit motive
7.        Aloha--The compassionate goodwill that allows one to use money to perform acts of kindness without expecting anything in return

Using THE SEVEN STAGES OF MONEY MATURITY, readers will understand each encounter with money as a step toward awakening; a lesson about the relationship they share with others as well as with the self. -->


From the Back Cover
"A wonderfully clear and wise book of guidance."
--Jacob Needleman, author of Money and the Meaning of Life

"I love this book! It's what people really need to know about money, including practical advice on budgeting and investing. But it focuses on the real core of financial planning--goals and choices."
--Peg Downey, former president, National Association of Personal Financial Advisors

"Reading The Seven Stages of Money Maturity is like holding the hand of a wise and loving father who calmly guides you down the path to the land of financial freedom."
--Cheryl Richardson, author of Take Time for Your Life



About the Author
George Kinder divides his time between Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Maui, Hawaii. He leads his seminar, the Seven Stages of Money Maturity, in locations all over the country.


Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Meeting Money Maturity
Midway in our life's journey, I went astray from the straight road and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood.
--Dante Alighieri

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.
--Henry David Thoreau
"I understand what you're saying," he said, "even though I hate admitting it to myself. "

The statement took me by surprise. I had known this man in a passing way for years, and I both admired and disliked him. My admiration came from his success as a financial planner, the same profession I practice. He was known far and wide for creating one of the largest, most multifaceted planning firms in America. But I disliked him because he stood publicly for a point of view I reject--that making money, lots of money, is an end in itself. So I was taken aback when he came up after my presentation on Money Maturity to a national meeting of financial planners and asked me if I wanted to have coffee. I could tell there was something on his mind.

He came right to the point. "I know how to make money," he said. "I've poured all my savings into the stock market for years. Now I've got more than enough to live on for the rest of my life. My problem isn't making more money."

"Then what is it?" I asked.

"The money's not enough," he answered. His tone shifted from confident to plaintive. "I have wealth, but something is missing. I don't know what it is. All I know is I'm not happy. That's why I wanted to talk to you. After hearing what you had to say, I think you may be able to tell me what to do next."

I may be a financial advisor by profession, but I often find myself working more like a priest in the confessional than a money manager. His was an admission I had heard many times before.

During the morning I had spoken on integrating money goals with personal objectives, a topic I have been presenting to my colleagues for years now. Financial professionals have discovered that if they don't understand what their clients are truly seeking, all their good advice goes for nought. In my presentation that afternoon, I had gone back to basics. Money, I explained, can be seen as the place where our internal selves engage the external world. If either side--internal or external, self or money--is slighted, the whole of life suffers.

Now, talking to my colleague over the coffee cups, I picked up on that theme in his life. "That distress you feel inside, that pain--it's there to wake you up," I said.

His face screwed up quizzically. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"It's a signal, an alarm. It's telling you, in no uncertain terms, that it's time to find out who you really are in relation to money."

"But what's that got to do with anything?" he snapped. His expression changed from quizzical to protective, as if I were getting altogether too close for comfort.

"Look at it this way. You could put all your financial statements from the past few years in front of me, and I still wouldn't know what I really need to understand in order to even begin to help you decide what to do next," I answered. "How can I work with you if I don't know who you are? Think about it. It's your own discomfort with yourself that is keeping you from seeing your way ahead."

His defensiveness gave way to curiosity.

"You've been thinking all along there's only one question about money--'How much?'" I continued. "But the truly important question is 'What does money have to do with who I am?' You think you're a success, but your feelings tell you otherwise. They're telling you 'When it comes to money, you're a mess.' Finding Money Maturity means resolving your inner conflicts around money. It really comes down to discovering a sense of ease around money. Without ease, where's the success?"

For a second or two, he was silent, thinking. Then he said, "Tell me. How do I find that ease?"

The Promise of Money Maturity

My colleague's search for ease in his relationship to money--even his difficulty in understanding that ease and freedom were what he was really seeking--is hardly unusual. The same drive for a deep-seated sense of peace on the financial side of life occupies center stage in the concerns of client after client I've worked with. And it's not just an issue for the well heeled, like my successful financial-planning colleague. The desire to achieve ease and freedom around money is as true for those who come from impoverished backgrounds and the middle class as it is for those who inherit wealth or make it big in the business world. Experiencing ease around dollars and cents is what I call Money Maturity.

When clients come to me to handle their money, or when I talk to participants in my seminars, I hear the desire for Money Maturity implicit in every statement they make about what they want their relationship to money to be. No doubt you yourself have said similar things. For example:

* "I want to be wealthy in life, not necessarily in money, but I know the two are related."
* "I want to be able to do whatever I want to do without thinking about the money."
*  "I don't want to always be afraid around money."
* "I want to be free."
*  "I want to feel balance between life and money. Too often money wins and life loses."
* "I don't want to worry about money."
* "I want to get what I need without feeling guilty about it."
* "I want to work and contribute in ways that are meaningful to me without having to worry about how much money I'll get from it."
*  "I want to feel I can be myself without money tripping me up."
*  "I want to know money won't get in the way of my doing what needs to be done."
*  "I want to be able to focus on finding value in what I do rather than finding money in what I do."
*  "I want to feel that I don't have to give up who I am or violate my deepest values just to get money."  

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Discover a powerful new way to look at your money and your life.

Where do our attitudes about money come from—and how do they influence our lives? How can we approach financial issues with honesty and without fear?

In this groundbreaking book, renowned Buddhist teacher George Kinder, a Harvard-trained certified financial planner, demonstrates how we can literally transform our lives emotionally and financially by achieving "money maturity"—a full understanding of the spiritual and psychological issues surrounding our money lives.

Drawing on ancient Buddhist wisdom and his years of financial practice, Kinder has created a revolutionary program that guides us through the Seven Stages of a revolutionary journey—one designed to help us uncover the roots of our attitudes about money, and attain true peace, freedom, and security in our financial lives. Learn how to:

Understand feelings that impact taking financial action
Develop understanding and knowledge about money
Eliminate stress and anxiety around money
Let go of old patterns and painful habits
Approach money tasks with energy and optimism
Design a money life that is fulfilling both financially and spiritually

Filled with practical information, market-tested, wealth-building skills, personal success stories, and spiritual guidance, The Seven Stages of Money Maturity is an invaluable guide to a rich—and richly lived—life.


1.        Innocence—The childhood state we are born in, devoid of any concept of money
2.        Pain—The discovery that we have more money than some and less than others, and that work is necessary to make a living
3.        Knowledge—The intellectual task of learning financial techniques such as saving, budgeting, and investing
4.        Understanding—The emotional work done in coming to terms with feelings around money, such as greed, envy, and resentment (which are rooted in Pain)
5.        Vigor—The energy (physical, emotional, and spiritual) that must be expended to reach financial goals
6.        Vision—The direction of Vigor outward toward the health and welfare of communities, with or without profit motive
7.        Aloha—The compassionate goodwill that allows one to use money to perform acts of kindness without expecting anything in return

Using THE SEVEN STAGES OF MONEY MATURITY, readers will understand each encounter with money as a step toward awakening; a lesson about the relationship they share with others as well as with the self. —>

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly