Individuals and Families

For ten years I practiced as a financial planner and investment advisor at Strommen and Associates, St. Paul, and Swenson Anderson Associates, Minneapolis, working mainly with couples and business partners on life and health insurance, investment planning, and qualified plans. In conjunction with Schwarz, Strommen I also did some employee benefits work, but just enough to learn how complicated and scary a specialty it is. Watching my clients struggle with money is what made me return to Academe to try to learn more about people and their money.

Organizations

I used to do a lot of consulting with colleges and universities about faculty evaluation. As my interests evolved, I began to do more with insurance, investments, and financial planning, mainly with families and business partners, sometimes with professional associations on behalf of their members. Except for the occasional measurement-and-evaluation project, all the consulting I do now is about one aspect or another of financial psychology and the meanings of money. Along these lines, my two favorite non-profit “gigs” were, first, devising an entire certificate curriculum for USAdvisor.com, a web-based support organization for CPAs, and a ten-year project with the American Institute for Certified Public Accountants, looking for ways to introduce financial psychology into the practice of accounting.

For-Profit Corporations

Besides reducing conflict and increasing intimacy, the psy-chology of money can help people make better financial decisions. I especially enjoy working with financial services organizations to set up programs that help their members dis-cover what money and property mean to them symbolically.

My target market for these services is:

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Consulting