Our philosophy has four cornerstones that create the foundation upon which we build your new relationship to your finances.

Practical Financial Management

This is the 1-2-3 of financial management. We look at how much money you have coming in and how much is going out, getting a detailed look at your entire financial picture, from debt to daily expenses. We then look at your financial goals, which can include retirement plans, paying off all your debt, real estate (buying a home or business), investment, children’s college funds, opening your own business, etc. A new plan is created that will allow you to meet your financial goals by applying a newfound awareness of your daily spending habits.

Growing Inner Awareness of Money

The skills around learning solid financial habits are an external tool that many financial consultants teach. One of our unique services is our understanding that true transformation of your spending habits requires an inner transformation and not just a new set of skills. We help you to grow your awareness about your relationship to money, which creates truly lasting change.

Psychological and Spiritual Discovery

All of us have unconscious attitudes towards money of which we have little awareness, no matter if we horde it, spend it freely, or simply never think about it. We will help you to strengthen the places where growth is most needed. For some, such as business people and corporate professionals, a more holistic, intuitive, and emotional perspective on money might help to align their goals and dreams with their financial reality. For others, such as artists and healers, a more linear and logical orientation towards money might be the most helpful, with a focus on practical money management skills. No matter where growth is needed, we will help you to align your life goals with your day-to-day financial reality.

Stewardship & Sustainability

When you learn to be a good steward for your own resources and live in a truly sustainable way, it becomes much easier to do this on a larger scale. In our experience, it is hard to create large changes in our lives when the smaller pieces are not in harmony.

Conscious Bookkeeping is for anyone who would like to integrate their relationship with money into the rest of their life and the values by which they live.

Below is the original philosophy of Conscious Bookkeeping created in 2001 by Bari Tessler
To read more about this, read our chapter in Einstein's Business.

Three Doorways - Gateways

Financial Therapy: exploring your relationship to money on a practical, emotional, psychological and spiritual level

Bookkeeping Training:  learning to set up & maintain a bookkeeping system for personal & business- creating a practice!

Life Visioning:  visioning & taking all the data and creating and living into a values-based Map of Intention (aka budget)

Conscious Bookkeeping Eleven Elements

Looking Back – This is a desire and willingness to honestly look at your money history. This is done with a simple clarity and gentleness for the decisions that have already been made.

Completing Incompletes – Let’s take a deep look at what needs to be forgiven or completed from our past regarding our money exchanges and see how we can best go about that process.

Getting Current – Let’s gather the data to see, truly, what your current assets and your current liabilities are at this time. Also, let’s gather the data to see what you current bottom line/basic needs monthly #’s are so you know your current reality. And, let’s take a deep breath here.

Sacred Vessel – This is an image that I offer people to work with. A conscious bookkeeping system is potentially a sacred vessel, a sacred organizational system/foundation that can assist in bringing down your dreams and visions that hang out in the heavenly spheres. Bookkeeping is a way to merge heaven with earth. It is a way to manifest your dreams in physical form and give them a body/vessel to hold them in.

Values – You create a bookkeeping system based on your deepest values. You actually name your income and expense categories based on what is of true meaning to you so that you can begin integrating your money and the rest of your life. Bookkeeping is potentially a political and spiritual practice. We can create the world we envision by bringing in and spending our money in accordance with our values. That is how we make a political statement and vote for the world we want to create.

Intention – You use bookkeeping as a means to set intentions and goals for yourself. In Conscious Bookkeeping, this process is called creating "Maps of Intention," (these are similar to "budgets" yet they add a profound sense of dimension to an otherwise flat process.)

Practice – This is an ongoing practice (daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly) that keeps you in touch with every aspect of where your life touches money and allows you to stay committed to a path of intention based in financial awareness and literacy and clear life visioning.

Self Inquiry – This bookkeeping system is used as a mirror, which can show you hidden aspects of your self, or personality, in all areas of your life.

Financial Transparency – The first task is to be willing to be transparent to ourselves regarding our numbers and our current financial situation. Our second task, when appropriate, is to begin to share with each other our financial statements so that we can reveal how we receive and spend our money, which ultimately reveals what our values are and what type of world we are attempting to create. Imagine if the whole world shared true financial statements with each other. By the way, in Conscious Bookkeeping, the teacher always shares her numbers (her P&L) as a teaching tool and as self-modeling.

Stay in the Body – We will do our best to stay in our body, be present and feel our sensations and feelings as we engage in our bookkeeping/finances and all areas of our life.