The Psychology of Personal Finances

Audience: Personal financial planners, business professionals, coaches, counselors, therapists
Method: Online course
Duration: 8 weeks
Graduate application: Not required
Credits: 3
Cost: $2,900

Explore personal financial psychology

This course is designed to help financial and business professionals develop knowledge and skills to work effectively with clients. This is an advanced course that surveys topics facilitating the integration of financial psychology into financial planning, financial coaching, business and financial therapy.

This course provides students with an in-depth exploration of:

• The psychology of wealth
• Techniques to counteract self-limiting and/or self-defeating financial behaviors
• Change theory and enhancing motivation
• Cognitive-behavioral financial psychology
• Solution-focused financial psychology
• Financial psychology ethics
• Assessment in financial psychology

What you’ll learn in this course

Objectives for this professional development course include:

• To provide an environment conducive to the study of financial psychology using written and oral presentations and applied financial psychology theory and techniques

• To strengthen students’ ability to understand financial psychology and its implications with regard to financial health of clients and clients’ ability to reach their financial goals

Students will learn to:

• Apply theory and technique to gain a deeper understanding of their own personal financial psychology
• Identify psychological factors associated with high income and high net worth
• Learn techniques to mitigate the negative impact of self-limiting and/or self-defeating financial behaviors
• Describe a theory of change and techniques to motivate change
• Demonstrate knowledge of the cognitive model and techniques to help clients change maladaptive beliefs
• Describe solution-focused techniques to help facilitate financial health
• Identify areas of potential ethical concerns in financial psychology and strategies to ensure ethical practice
• Learn about reliability, validity and assessment tools in financial psychology

Course outline

In this eight-week class, you’ll explore a variety of topics related to personal financial psychology:

• Week 1: Working with affluent clients
• Week 2: Financial psychology workarounds
• Week 3: Change theory and motivational interviewing in financial psychology
• Week 4: Cognitive-behavioral financial psychology
• Week 5: Solution-focused financial therapy
• Week 6: Ethics in financial psychology
• Week 7: Assessment in financial psychology
• Week 8: Financial Psychology II: Applications

COURSE CREDIT

This is one of five courses in the Certificate in Financial Psychology and Behavioral Finance, and it’s worth 3 credits. The course can be taken independently as a professional development course or as part of the certificate program. Please note that students are limited to earning a maximum of nine graduate credits before applying for admission into a degree or certificate program. If you are below the nine-credit limit and are not seeking a certificate or degree, you’re free to take this course without applying to the graduate school.

Creighton University will issue a 1098-T by January 31 for all learners enrolled in courses for credit. As part of that process, you may be asked to provide your Social Security number.

Meet your course instructor

The Psychology of Personal Finance is taught by Bradley Klontz, PsyD, CFP®. An associate professor in the Heider College of Business, Klontz is a founder of the Financial Psychology Institute, a managing principal of Your Mental Wealth Advisors, a fellow of the American Psychological Association, and a former president of the Hawaii Psychological Association.

Dr. Klontz was awarded the Innovative Practice Presidential Citation from the American Psychological Association for his application of psychological interventions to help people with money and wealth issues and his innovative practice in financial psychology for practitioners across the country.

Dr. Klontz has co-authored/co-edited five books on financial psychology, and his work has been featured on ABC News’ 20/20 and Good Morning America and in USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Time Magazine, Kiplinger’s, Money Magazine, NPR and many other media outlets, professional magazines and journals.
 

Required materials

• Klontz, B., Kahler, R., & Klontz, T. (2016). Facilitating financial health: Tools for financial planners, coaches, & therapists, 2nd edition. Cincinnati, OH: National Underwriter Company.
• Klontz, B.T., Britt, S.L., & Archuleta, K.L. (2015). Financial therapy: Theory, research, and Practice. New York, NY: Springer.
• Articles as assigned.

Refund Policy