Sara Rands, CMHC

Financial Therapy

Individual therapy in Utah for adults navigating money, work, security, freedom, and what comes next

You may be thoughtful, financially capable, and good with numbers—and still face questions the spreadsheet cannot answer.

Financial therapy offers room to explore the emotional and existential dimensions of money, work, security, freedom, and enough.

When the freedom finally arrives

You planned carefully, postponed gratification, and built real financial security.

Perhaps you have reached—or nearly reached—the financial independence number you worked toward for years. You expected that getting there would feel freeing.

Instead, you may find yourself saying, One more year.

The planning, discipline, and delayed gratification that helped you create options are real strengths. But those strengths can become rigid when fear takes over.

Planning can become a search for certainty that does not exist.
Discipline can make stopping feel irresponsible.
Delayed gratification can make it difficult to recognize when the future has arrived.

You may be financially ready while feeling emotionally unprepared.

The question may no longer be only:

Can I retire?

It may also be:

Perhaps you want to retire fully. Perhaps you want a sabbatical, fewer hours, meaningful unpaid work, more time for family, or a life that moves between contribution and rest.

There may be several possible lives, each offering something meaningful and each involving real tradeoffs.

Therapy offers room to explore them without requiring one perfect answer.

When the choice arrives before you are ready

Sometimes the decision is not planned.

A layoff, burnout, or sudden change in your industry can unsettle much more than your income.

Work may have provided identity, structure, status, community, competence, and a sense of being needed. Losing it—or realizing you cannot keep doing what you have been doing—can bring fear, grief, shame, anger, or disorientation even when you have substantial financial resources.

You may know intellectually that the numbers are okay and still feel terrified.

You may wonder:

This may be the first time you have had to consider your financial position not only as protection against disaster, but as something you can actively use.

Perhaps you already have room to pause, recover, reduce your expenses, care for family, return to school, take a sabbatical, or wait before making another major commitment.

Knowing that options exist does not automatically make them feel real—or feel safe.

Therapy can help you understand what has been lost, what remains available, and what this interruption may make possible, without rushing you toward reinvention before you are ready.

Money and safety

Money can carry the emotional weight of earlier experiences.

You may have lived through poverty, instability, illness, divorce, betrayal, religious pressure, family conflict, job loss, or times when survival depended on being exceptionally responsible.

Even after your circumstances change, your sense of safety may not change with them.

Financial success does not automatically resolve:

Therapy can help explore both the present-day question and what it touches from the past.

When appropriate, this work may include Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) for difficult or traumatic experiences. Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP) may also support deeper work around identity, fear, grief, meaning, and transition.

The aim is not to dismiss realistic concerns. It is to understand more clearly how present circumstances and earlier experiences may both be shaping your choices.

What financial therapy can offer

Financial planning can help you understand what is financially possible. Coaching can help you set goals and create a plan.

Financial therapy offers room for uncertainty, contradiction, grief, fear, and questions without immediate answers.

This work may help you:

The goal is not to prescribe retirement, continued work, or any particular kind of life. It is to help you understand the choices you have and what you want them to support.

What this work is—and isn’t

I provide individual therapy for adults.

Financial therapy with me is not:

I am not here to tell you whether you can afford to retire, how to invest, or which option will produce the best financial outcome.

I am here to help you explore the emotional, relational, identity, and meaning questions that remain after the projections have been run—and to help you see the information and options you already have with greater clarity and agency.

A therapist who understands the conversation

You should not have to spend therapy time explaining the logic of financial independence or defending the desire for a life that does not center paid employment.

I have longstanding familiarity with personal finance and the financial independence community, including the books, blogs, forums, and questions that have shaped it.

I understand that early retirement can make room for a rich life, that substantial resources do not eliminate fear, and that financial freedom can raise questions no calculator can answer.

Your financial choices will not be romanticized or resented. They will be treated as part of your actual life: meaningful, complicated, and worthy of thoughtful exploration.

Here, you do not have to translate your financial reality, minimize the options you have created, or apologize for having them.

You do not have to justify why a financially fortunate situation can still feel frightening. And you do not need to know exactly what you want before we begin.

You can read more about my background and therapeutic approach on the About page.

I am currently on a planned sabbatical and not accepting therapy clients.

I plan to reopen in private practice in January 2027. To be notified when scheduling becomes available, join the contact list.