By Wendy Wright, LMFT | Financial Therapist & Founder of the Wendy Wright Financial Therapy Approach™
The spreadsheet was never the problem. The story you learned about money — long before you earned your first dollar — that’s what we’re here for.
This post is part two of a four-part series on Wealth Transfer Dynamics and financial therapy. The vignettes featured throughout this series are fictional and are used to illustrate common emotional and relational experiences surrounding wealth transfer.
In Part One: The Emotional Side of the Great Wealth Transfer, we explored why receiving wealth can bring up far more than financial questions. In Part Two, we’re looking at three common places where the wealth transfer process can become especially difficult—and what can help.
Maria had always been careful with money.
For years, she worked long hours as an accountant, saved diligently, skipped luxuries, and made the kinds of financial decisions that were supposed to make her feel secure.
But money had never really felt secure.
Growing up, Maria wanted someone she could talk to about finances and wealth. When she tried to ask her father, Luis, questions about money, she was often met with criticism.
“If you don’t understand that by now, you’re stupid and hopeless,” he might say.
At the same time, Luis warned her about what having money could do to a person. Money made people greedy. It changed them. It corrupted them.
And when he was angry or disappointed, he sometimes threatened to withhold her inheritance.
So Maria learned two things at once:
Money was incredibly important. And money was dangerous.
Then, at 45, Maria received a letter informing her that her uncle had died and left her an inheritance of $600,000.
She already had a net worth of approximately $800,000.
Suddenly, Maria was looking at nearly $1.4 million in financial resources—and instead of simply feeling fortunate, she felt overwhelmed.
There was grief over losing an uncle she loved.
Relief that she had financial security.
Fear that she would make the wrong decision.
Embarrassment that she had this much money and still didn’t know what to do next.
Guilt about having more than some of her friends.
And underneath all of it was the Money Story she had carried for years:
What if having this much money changes who I am?
Wealth transfer can look like financial success from the outside while feeling incredibly complicated on the inside.
In Part One of this series, we talked about the emotional side of receiving wealth—and why a transfer is rarely just about the amount of money changing hands.
There are family histories involved. Money Stories. Relationships. Expectations. Grief. Old wounds. And sometimes decades of conversations that never happened.
This is one of the reasons financial planning alone may not prepare someone for the experience of giving or receiving wealth.
You can have the estate plan.
You can have the investment strategy.
You can have the accounts set up correctly.
And still find yourself thinking:
Why does this feel so hard?
In my work around Wealth Transfer Dynamics, I see three areas that can make an already significant transition even more emotionally complicated.
1. Communication Breakdown
Sometimes the hardest part of a wealth transfer begins long before any money changes hands.
The family simply isn’t talking about it.
For the 2025 FPA NexGen conference, I asked a group of financial professionals how often they see the wealth transfer process not being talked about.
Watch below to see:
Wendy: In your experience, how often is the wealth transfer process not talked about?
Stephanie: Nearly all the time! It’s not talked about—to the point that maybe the children, that next generation, don’t know anything’s coming. Or they think more is coming. Or they don’t really have an idea of what the numbers might mean to them.
Wendy: Anything you’d add, Janice, as far as your experience?
Janice: It’s not talked about unless the person you’re working with makes a point to have the conversation and get perspective on that. So I would say the majority of people we meet with have not addressed that.
Wendy: What happens, in your experience, when it’s not talked about?
Stephanie: The thing that comes to mind—maybe because it has struck me the most—is that the inheritors feel a great sense of responsibility and obligation: “I’m not worthy of this money.”
There’s a lot of emotional baggage that comes with it. As opposed to, I might imagine, if Great Aunt Myrtle told you that she was thrilled to give you this money to help you with your life goals or to help you buy that house you wanted. The emotional burden of it would be a lot less.
Wendy: And that’s pretty common, that the money’s not talked about?
Cindy: Maybe 95% of people do not speak to their parents about their financial situation. They don’t speak to their parents about where they want to receive care.
Wendy: How often is wealth transfer not talked about?
Liz: Eighty percent of the time—probably more. Almost never. Things would be a lot better on both ends if we changed that.
Wendy: In your experience, what happens when it’s not talked about?
Liz: There’s kind of the before and after.
Beforehand, children or inheritors may struggle a lot more than they need to because they don’t know that this money is coming, or they don’t feel that they can count on it. Perhaps they’re living very frugally, working so hard to save money, when maybe that wasn’t necessary.
On the other hand, it can be really difficult when people receive money that they didn’t know was coming because they don’t know what they’re supposed to do with it. They’ve already planned their life not counting on this.
It can be very overwhelming to have no idea that money is coming. Even if it’s not a large amount, anything that is a surprise is overwhelming.
Wendy: Having a financial planner or financial therapist kind of person to provide that non-judging space can be really helpful.
Liz: I would think a financial therapist isn’t going to be trying to sell you anything. They’re just there truly to help you.
Wendy: Just to listen.
Sometimes the next generation has no idea that money is coming.
Sometimes they know something is coming but don’t know how much.
Sometimes they have expectations that are very different from the reality.
And sometimes money has been mentioned for years—but only through vague comments, warnings, jokes, threats, or assumptions.
Communication breakdown can show up in several ways:
Zero communication.
No one talks about the wealth transfer at all. The person receiving the money may be left completely unprepared for what is coming.
Shaming communication.
Money conversations happen, but they are accompanied by criticism, judgment, or messages about what someone should already know.
Mystery communication.
Comments like “You’ll be fine when I’m gone” or “There will be money for you someday” may sound reassuring, but they can leave the receiver with more questions than answers.
And simply telling a family to “communicate more” doesn’t necessarily solve the problem.
Money conversations are influenced by each person’s Money Story—the beliefs, experiences, emotions, and family messages they have accumulated throughout their life.
Two people can be sitting at the same table talking about the same inheritance and experiencing two completely different conversations.
The goal isn’t perfect communication.
It’s creating more room for clear, respectful, emotionally safe conversations about expectations, responsibilities, questions, and concerns.
Sometimes that starts with what I call “talking about talking about it.”
Before discussing the numbers, you might first talk about what would make the conversation feel safer and more productive.
2. Grief and Emotional Processing
A wealth transfer is often connected to loss.
That can be easy to overlook when so much attention is being placed on what the receiver has gained.
An inheritance may arrive because a parent, grandparent, spouse, sibling, or another person you love has died.
Other transfers can happen alongside divorce, changes in caregiving roles, the loss of a family business, or a major shift in family dynamics.
So the receiver may be asked to make significant financial decisions during one of the most emotionally intense periods of their life.
They may feel grief and gratitude.
Relief and guilt.
Excitement and sadness.
Security and fear.
Those emotions can exist at the same time.
And they don’t necessarily disappear once the estate is settled.
There may need to be a period of adjustment before someone knows what they actually want this new financial reality to look like.
In the short term, the priority may simply be making sure the assets are safe, addressing immediate financial needs, settling the estate, and giving yourself permission not to make every major decision immediately.
Longer-term planning can come later: revisiting financial goals, updating estate plans, deciding how the money fits into your life, and exploring what you want this wealth to mean to you.
My approach to financial therapy can be particularly helpful here because it creates room for the financial and emotional parts of the experience to exist together.
3. Safety and Confidentiality
Receiving wealth can also change who you feel comfortable talking to.
Who knows how much money you received?
Who should know?
Who can you ask for advice?
Who feels emotionally safe?
And who has the expertise you actually need?
These questions matter.
I often talk with clients about creating a Financial A-Team: a group of trusted professionals who can support different pieces of their financial life.
Depending on your circumstances, that team might include a financial advisor or planner, tax professional, estate attorney, banker, and financial therapist.
But having professionals around you isn’t enough.
You also need to feel safe enough to talk to them.
If you’re afraid of sounding stupid, ashamed to admit what you don’t understand, intimidated by the person sitting across from you, or unable to ask the questions you really want answered, pay attention to that.
You deserve a financial team where questions are welcome.
This is also where confidentiality becomes especially important. Wealth transfers can involve deeply personal information about finances, family relationships, estate plans, and inheritance.
Being thoughtful about who has access to that information, how it is shared, and who you trust with it is part of protecting yourself during the transition.
The numbers may be only one part of what you’re navigating.
Communication breakdown.
Grief and emotional processing.
Safety and confidentiality.
Each can affect how someone experiences a wealth transfer—and they can overlap.
Maria’s inheritance didn’t suddenly create her complicated relationship with money.
It brought an existing Money Story to the surface.
That’s why preparing for wealth transfer can’t only mean preparing the assets.
We need to prepare the people, too.
That may mean having conversations earlier.
It may mean allowing grief to have a place in the process.
It may mean finding professionals who make you feel safe enough to say, “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”
And it may mean getting curious about the beliefs and patterns you’re carrying into this new financial chapter.
You don’t have to have every answer immediately.
And you don’t have to navigate it alone.
What’s next in the Wealth Transfer Dynamics series?
In Part Three, we’ll look more closely at how financial therapy can support both the giver and receiver during a wealth transfer—including how understanding your Money Story can change the conversations you’re able to have about money.
If you’re just joining the series, read Part One: The Emotional Side of Receiving Wealth to explore what can happen emotionally when wealth changes hands.
And if you’re navigating a wealth transfer yourself and want a supportive place to explore the financial and emotional pieces together, book a free discovery call with me.
Want to go deeper into Wealth Transfer Dynamics?
Receiving or giving wealth can bring up far more than financial decisions. My Wealth Transfer Dynamics resource explores the emotional, financial, and intergenerational dynamics that can come with wealth transfer—including the thoughts, fears, communication patterns, and Money Stories that can surface along the way
My approach to financial therapy explores the emotional, psychological, and relational side of money. It helps you understand how your experiences, beliefs, emotions, and relationships influence the way you think, feel, and behave with money.
Rather than focusing only on what you “should” do financially, financial therapy helps you understand the patterns underneath your financial decisions so you can create a healthier, more sustainable relationship with money.
Financial planning generally focuses on what to do with your money: financial strategies, goals, investments, and planning.
Financial therapy explores why you think, feel, and behave the way you do around money. It looks at the beliefs, emotions, experiences, and patterns that may be influencing your financial decisions.
The two can complement each other. Financial therapy can help address the emotional and behavioral side of money alongside the practical work of financial planning.
No. You don’t need to be in a financial crisis to benefit from financial therapy.
You may be doing well financially and still experience anxiety, avoidance, shame, conflict, or a persistent feeling that you “should” be better with money. Financial therapy can also be helpful if you simply want to understand your patterns and build a healthier relationship with money before those patterns become bigger problems.
My approach to financial therapy may be worth exploring if you notice that money regularly brings up anxiety, overwhelm, avoidance, shame, conflict, or patterns that you understand logically but have difficulty changing.
You might find yourself thinking, “I know what I should do. Why can’t I just do it?”
My approach creates space to understand what may be underneath that gap without judgment.
Your Money Story is the collection of beliefs, emotions, experiences, and patterns you’ve developed around money.
It can be shaped by how money was handled or talked about growing up, experiences of stability or uncertainty, relationships, cultural messages, and what you learned about things like success, security, worth, and responsibility.
Understanding your Money Story can help you recognize why certain financial situations affect you the way they do and give you more choice in how you respond moving forward.
The Wendy Wright Financial Therapy Approach™ brings together emotional insight, money behavior awareness, practical money conversations, and my therapeutic experience.
At the heart of the approach is the first of my 10 Principles of Financial Therapy©:
Approach money with Abundant Compassionate Curiosity and Zero Judgment.
Instead of beginning with criticism or focusing on what you “should” have done differently, the work begins by getting curious about the experiences, emotions, and patterns underneath your relationship with money.
There isn’t one “right” money problem you need to have.
People may come to financial therapy because they feel anxious or overwhelmed by money, avoid financial tasks, struggle with spending or saving patterns, experience conflict with a partner, feel shame about past decisions, or are navigating a major transition such as divorce, job loss, or inheritance.
You can also come simply because you want to better understand your relationship with money.
My Discovery Call is a free 20-minute video conversation where you can talk about what’s bringing you to financial therapy and explore whether working together feels like a good fit.
It isn’t a financial planning session, investment advice, or a high-pressure sales call. It’s an opportunity to ask questions, talk about what has been feeling challenging, and decide whether my approach feels supportive for you.
[…] Part 2 is out now and you can read it here. […]