Money Mindset Tips For Therapists in Private Practice
Your money mindset has far-reaching impacts as a therapist in private practice. It impacts how you set fees, how you handle same-day cancellations, what you do with unpaid client balances, and much more. Even with a solid business plan, your beliefs regarding how to make more money in private practice can be a major barrier to success having a sustainable private practice. In this blog post, I’ll cover some common therapist stories about money, why so many feel incompetent as therapists, therapists’ relationship to money, and some money mindset tips for therapists.
Therapist Stories About Money
Therapist stories about money are far-reaching and simultaneously deep. When it comes to having a healthy money story or money mindset as a therapist, it’s rare a therapist is born into this profession feeling competent charging a sustainable rate. Therapist stories about money often sound like:
I didn’t go into this field to make money
If I really care about people, I shouldn’t worry about earning enough money
DIY-ing things in my private practice will help me save money
Being on insurance panels is an important cornerstone of having a financially ethical practice
Offering a sliding scale and pro-bono spaces is an important measure of financial accessibility to clients
I went into therapy because I’m not good at math--money is too foreign to me
Caring about my income or revenue makes me a greedy therapist
I could go on, but you get the gist; at the root of these stories about money is a basic (and incorrect) equation that is: money=bad, therapy=good, therefore, therapists shouldn’t care about money. These therapist stories about money are reinforced throughout the field as well, making it hard to feel confident anytime you make a change that impacts your private practice’s financial bottom line.
Feeling Incompetent as a Therapist
For lots of therapists in private practice, they don’t engage with their money or charge sustainable fees because they feel incompetent as a therapist. They think the only way to justify charging more is by having extra letters behind their name. This often leads them to chase additional certifications, go above and beyond the amount of needed continuing education credits, and feel like the interventions they provide and the space they hold “isn’t enough.” I see this so often, especially in young or new-to-the-field therapists. They start out with their Master's degree or Ph.D., already quite the accomplishment, and get an EMDR certification. After that, they decide they really like mindfulness so they get a Mindfulness-Based CBT course. From there, they get into somatics and get their certificate in Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy. At the tail end of that certificate, they find they really like working with couples and families and sign right up for a Gottman Training.
I’m not poo-pooing additional training, in fact, as therapists and healers, we are lifelong learners and need to be humble enough to keep an open mind about continually learning. Behind the certification-chasing is often a deep sense of feeling incompetent. If you resonate with the imposter syndrome as a therapist, please remember that your experience of the world, your identity, and who you are is a part of your competence. I encourage you to seek out supervision and potentially therapy as well if you find yourself certificate-chasing.
As therapists, when we hone in on a therapy niche, it can help us to feel more confident. Instead of trying to be good at every therapeutic intervention, we specialize in a couple and see a specific type of person. Niching down can help us feel more confident as therapists.
Therapist Money
When it comes to feeling competent about money as a therapist, I’ve spoken at length about therapist money. I’ve covered common money mistakes therapists make, brought on experts to talk about tax deductions therapists can claim, and when it might be time to hire a financial advisor. What I’ll say about therapists and money here is this: it’s partially education (the ins and outs of personal and business finances) but mostly about your relationship with money. What you believe about money, how you interact with it, and whether or not you’ve cultivated a healthy relationship with it that impacts your financial bottom line.
There are three basic pillars of personal finance: a spending plan that works for you, short-term saving goals, and investing in your future. Decide where you want to focus on your finances first. I invite all therapists to read and listen to several different personal finance folks and find someone who has a style that resonates with them. We thankfully are in a world where there are more shame-free financial educators you can turn to for help.
When it comes to the business side of therapy, it’s more nuanced but many of the tenets stay the same. As in, make sure you are earning enough money to cover all of your expenses, pay your taxes, pay yourself, and cover your additional benefits. For me, additional benefits include contributing to a retirement account, paying for life insurance, and affording to pay someone to help me with the social media side of my business. For others, additional benefits might include contributing to a child or grandchild’s 529 education plan or paying for health insurance coverage. If you need help with the accounting and bookkeeping side of your private practice, I work with and recommend Heard Accounting. Heard is a software and service specifically designed to help private practice therapists with their numbers. Use my affiliate link to get a $100 gift card after you use them for a month.
Money Mindset Tips
Money mindset tips for therapists are slightly different than others, as I find therapists need more time to heal their relationship with money because of the indoctrination that we get that “money=bad.” Improving money confidence and money mindset takes time, but you can do it slowly and step by step.
For money mindset tips, I invite you to some gentle reframes around money, examples outlined below:
Instead of “I’m bad with money,” try “I’m learning how to understand pieces of my financial life.”
Instead of “I have to slide my scale so clients can afford me,” try “When I set my fee at a sustainable rate, I’m able to do better work and can give back to my community outside of my practice.”
Instead of “I need another certification so I can raise my rates,” try, “I practice within a niche and charge a specialty fee for my specialty work.”
When therapists have a healthy relationship with money, they can serve their clients and their communities in powerful ways.
Continued Money Mindset Work for Therapists
Therapists in private practice are more than mental health clinicians. They are small business owners. As such, in addition to keeping clinical skills sharp, you have to learn about setting and maintaining strong financial goals, policies, and boundaries. For many clinicians, financial considerations come with a lot of hand-wringing and rumination. I’ve heard questions from therapists like,
Is it possible to be a good therapist and have money?
Can therapists be a part of the conscious capitalist movement?
If you don’t accept insurance, are you doomed to only help financially privileged clients?
Because I’m passionate about helping therapists rewrite their relationship with money so they can have sustainable and profitable careers, I’ve teamed up with Simple Practice Learning to bring therapists a course that dives further into money mindset. This Money Mindset for Therapists course addresses the mindset barriers that get in the way of reaching your financial goals, and practical strategies to create a sustainable business. I’ll cover three factors that make it uncomfortable for therapists to talk about money, tips on setting financial goals, how to reframe fee setting and financial boundary-setting in a way that feels good, and ways to be accessible that don’t involve sliding your scale in private practice.