Glinda Bridgforth is a leading personal financial counselor and the founder of the Bridgforth Financial Management Group, based in Detroit, Michigan. Her new book, Girl, Make Your Money Grow, is a follow up to her successful first money-management book Girl, Get Your Money Straight. Peter Morris recently had the opportunity to catch up with Glinda on his weekday radio program to talk about her new book and about sensible and realistic approaches to managing money.

Peter Morris: What is your professional experience working with people and their money, and what inspired you to put the book together?

Glinda Bridgforth: I’m a financial counselor, a financial coach. And I specialize in working with clients who have cash flow and debt management issues. I’ve been in business for about 15 years now, and over that time I’ve realized that there are a number of similarities in terms of how people handle money. But over the years I also found there are some big differences in how people handle money. And about 5 or 6 years into the business, I was encouraged to write my first book, Girl Get Your Money Straight. And after writing that one, which takes a holistic approach to the basic fundamentals of managing your money, people started calling me and emailing me. People were saying, “Well Glinda, I got my money straight, now what do I do with it?” And so at that point I decided to invite a friend who is a stockbroker to co-author with me. And thus we came up with Girl, Make Your Money Grow.

PM: Glinda, What do you mean by a holistic approach to financial management?

GB: Well the holistic approach basically means that I like to take a look at money going beyond the practical side, going beyond the numbers on paper and the dollars and cents. I think it’s really important also to take a look at the emotional side of money. What is it that drives us to spend our money the way that we do? What are the impulses? For instance, when some people are sad or lonely or bored or depressed, they tend to spend more money.

PM: You mean like binge eating- it’s binge spending?

GB: Absolutely. There are a lot of correlations between the way that people handle food and the way that they handle money. Sometimes they binge and spend, sometimes they are anorexic. Some people feel that they don’t way to eat anymore and then there are people who don’t want to spend money because they are fearful for one reason or another. So we have to look at the emotional aspects, the psychological aspects, and the spiritual aspects that are related to money and how we handle it. I think you have to really look at the whole of your being. I think that there are various aspects to us and all of those aspects in one way or another are going to affect our behaviors. And so we have to look at how that plays out in how we handle our money and operate our businesses and so forth. And that’s the holistic approach.

PM: Can you share with us some of the key triggers or aspects of emotion that influence money spending and investment behavior that we should all be aware of.

GB: I like to look at what I call the “common threads.” And when I say that, I mean that whether I am working with a client who earns twenty thousand dollars or someone who earns two hundred thousand dollars a year- I’ve even had clients who had 6 million dollar trust funds- there are some common threads I’ve found with those individuals. Number one, self-esteem is a really big part of some of the problems that people have with money. Behavior with money is often based on our relationship with it. If we feel not good about our selves, for one reason or another, then we try to find a way to boost our esteem. Some people tend to go into the whole exterior. [They think] “I’ve gotta have the right clothes, drive the right car, live in the right neighborhood” and so forth, and that impacts the spending which impacts theirr overall financial situations. Deprivation is another area. When we look at areas of deprivation in our lives, whether it’s financial deprivation or relationship deprivation, or it could be deprivation in terms of having affection in our lives or love in our lives, people tend to act out on those things in one way or another. And certainly people who grew up in impoverished environments try to compensate for that when they become adults. So if someone only got one pair of shoes a year growing up as a child, he or she may have a hundred pairs of shoes or two hundred pairs of shoes in their closet as an adult, simply because subconsciously the person is trying to compensate for that lack and that scarcity he or she had as a child.

PM: Do you provide psychological counseling to your clients whose money you help manage?

GB: Well I don’t provide psychological counseling for clients because it’s not my area of expertise. But what I do in respect to working with people and their finances is, if I can determine that part of their unhealthy spending is based on some psychological factor, then I help them to find money within their spending plan to afford to go to a psychologist or a therapist. And in turn, that person can help them to really delve into the reasons for the dysfunctions they have with their finances.

PM: And so therefore at times you may coordinate assistance between a psychologist and yourself where you’re on the practical, financial side, and your client is also receiving psychological help to have a more balanced attitude towards money.

GB: Exactly. As a matter of fact, I am often referred to as a bridge between therapists and accountants. I get a lot of referrals from therapists working with people who have psychological issues. And at the same time there are financial factors [that the patients have] so I am able to help them deal with the practical aspects of taking care of their needs as well as some of their wants. But then I also get clients who are referred from accountants working with people who have issues and dysfunctions with their spending, and so accountants refer people to me. They refer those people who tend to need a little more structured plan or a bit of hand holding until they can develop some healthy habits.

PM: You’ve covered a lot of this material in your new book. Can you share some of the other main points you bring up in your book Girl, Make your Money Grow? What sorts of things are people doing, when they are investing their money the right way?

GB: Well the book Girl, Make Your Money Grow deals with the fundamental basics of investment on one hand. At the same time, we also felt it was important to take a look at the total financial how-to picture. So we talk about why it’s important to invest and the reasons we can’t afford NOT to invest. As we move forward, our financial security has to be based on something other than just having a job. So we talk about the need for that, we talk about why it’s important to pay off debt. We talk about why it may be important to create additional streams of income either to pay down on debt or to invest more. But really what we delve into for the most part is taking the mystery out of the stock market, helping people to understand the basic fundamentals of how to research a stock, what are the kinds of things that you can invest in.

PM: Talk about that point. How can we figure out what to invest in, and how do you help take the mystery out of it all?

GB: Well it’s a matter of looking at what sorts of things you spend your money on. When you wake up in the morning and turn on the light, do you have any stock in that utility company? When you get in your car, think do you have any stock in that car company? Our first step is to start with doing some research, and that’s taking the mystery out of it right there. We walk you through in baby steps and explain how you do research on the internet. We explain that you go to www.finance.yahoo.com or another site, and then we walk you through once you get to that page. We say that if you click on this or that, it will give you this or that information. So first we help you to have ideas about what to research, and then we walk you through the baby steps of gathering the information so you can begin to make an informed decision on where to put your money.

PM: In your book, you seem to be targeting women as your audience. You’re a very successful African-American businesswoman. Is your message also for men and is it race-related or generic as well?

GB: Well I am glad you asked that question because even though my books are directed toward African American women, the themes in the book are very universal. They cross racial lines and gender lines, so absolutely a man can pick up this book and get the fundamental things he needs to manage his money better. In the same way, anyone from any other race can do it- you don’t have to be African American. The themes are universal so anyone can take the same information, use the same principles and use the same exercises to help them identify personal belief systems and attitudes towards money. And the book can help anyone can put a finger on why they may or may not be managing their money well, and why they may or may not be making their money grow the way that it should.

PM: So people shouldn’t be reading your book for a hot stock tip to make a quick fortune. They should be reading your book to learn how to be conscious of their spending patterns, how to direct more of their wealth or their earnings into savings and conservative investments so they can end up building a nest egg. Is that a pretty fair characterization?

GB: It’s pretty fair. Our approach isn’t necessarily more conservative than others. However wheat the book does is it teaches you how to research investments and how to identify what kind of investor you are. The last chapter of our book is called “What Is Your Investment Style? So in that chapter, it talks about those kinds of people who do feel that they are willing to take more risks. Of course, you can gather information from this book if you are a person who is a bigger risk taker. But what the book also does is it tells you how to analyze the information that you are getting so you can determine what your risk tolerance is. “Can I feel comfortable if the market goes down and 20 percent of my investment goes down?” How comfortable do you feel with that? Or are you a person who can only sleep at night if your investment were to go down five percent? So there are a lot of things that are included in the book.

PM: Have you got a few money-making tips from the book for the readers that you can preview?

GB: I would say it is very important to make sure you know where your money goes. Very often people that contact me and say, “ I make really good money, Glinda, but I don’t know where it goes.” So if first of all, you start to identify where you are spending your money, and that is going to help you identify how comfortable you are. So after looking at how much you’re spending and where it’s going, then you can decide, “Well gee, I am really spending a lot more on food, eating out, than I had anticipated.” So maybe instead of eating lunch out five time a week, you can eat out three times a week and then you can take that additional money that you are saving and put it into mutual funds, lets say.

And the other thing that I think is important is that a lot of people don’t invest because they think they don’t have enough money to invest. Our principle is even if you start small, just start. So setting up something like contributing twenty five dollars a month to a mutual fund can be very helpful. In addition the other thing that we find is very important is to get people to contribute to their retirement plans, because that’s one of the first ways of investing, through a 401K at work. And then finally, we like to encourage people to diversify. When you buy a home, that’s an investment. When you get insurance, then that is a way of securing the investments that you are making. For example you want to make sure you have health insurance. Otherwise, if you get sick, you could have medical bills that could eat up your investments if aren’t covered. So there are a lot of little fundamental things that people can do to fine tune their finances and really begin to make their money grow.

More information about Glinda Bridgforth’s books and financial management group can be found on her website at www.bridgforthfmg.com.

For more fascinating interviews with leading experts, authors, business owners and cutting edge figures in business and culture, tune in to “The Business Shrink” radio program weekdays with Peter Morris or go to www.BusinessShrink.biz for more information.