Last Sunday, I went to hear the Dalai Lama speak.  He talked about how, when we are afflicted by powerful emotions like fear and anger, our perceptions become clouded and distorted.  And when perceptions are distorted, we cannot see clearly, we may not discern the truth, and we have difficulty acting wisely.

These are important words for our time.  When we are in a state of contraction and paralysis, we can’t see the truth about our options, our opportunities, our actual financial situation. Look at your numbers.  Review all your expenses and see what is really true.  What can you actually afford?  What should you give up?  Many of us are engaged in catastrophic thinking  which is fueled by listening to the media.  But until you actually look at your numbers, you won’t know with any certainty how bad (or not) it is.  Looking at the truth will ease your mind (have you noticed that your fear creates situations that are usually far worse than reality?).  Look at the truth of your cash flow and your assets and liabilities.  Acknowlege your untapped skills and creativity.  Then you will have the confidence to shift your perspective and discern opportunities.

As the stock market tumbles, relationship woes soar. According to numerous studies, money is the number one cause of divorce in the U.S.

Now more than ever, couples are facing a huge challenge:  How to keep their marriages and relationships healthy in an ailing economy. Financial stress saps couples of intimacy and trust. Many lack the skills and the willingness to talk openly about such a sensitive and difficult subject.

Spencer Sherman has created a unique method for couples to achieve “Financial Intimacy” and begin the process of talking about money openly and without blame and shame. His simple techniques allow couples to realize the true value of their partner, and achieve calm through the ups and downs of their balance sheet. Learning to eliminate secrets, lies, and overspending are just a few ways couples are able to get back on track, increase intimacy, and make their relationship recession-proof.

Sherman helps couples to share their financial histories, including their earliest memories.  He calls this Getting Naked with Your Finances.  Sherman has discovered that money, far more than sex, is the last taboo.  But great riches await those who can shine a light into their dark financial corners and share openly with their partners.  Once their histories are known, couples can articulate their financial values and goals and start working together as a team to build their financial future.  An empty bank account can be the impetus to do this intimacy-enhancing work.  But the result is surely a strong nest egg and a stronger marriage.

Spencer is the author of The Cure For Money Madness (Broadway Books ‘09 ), a guide to overcoming the distorted childhood perceptions of money which poison relationships, impede intimacy, and interfere with our making money and enjoying the money we have. Spencer teaches Financial Intimacy and Freedom Workshops for couples.  He is the CEO of Abacus Wealth Partners.   www.abacuswealth.com

Spencer is available for interviews, speaking engagements, and workshops worldwide. www.curemoneymadness.com

I was in the shower this morning  thinking:  “Oh, when the markets come back and the business world revives, I’ll have more money.  I’ll feel more at ease.  I’ll be happier.”  Of course, three years ago my clients and I had more money.  And I remember that my clients and I were upset about various world events, our elected officials, our jobs, our commutes.  And we were worried about our money, too.   We were no happier back then than we are now.  The opportunity for today is to let go of the myth that more money will make us happy.

If we can let go of this thought we can have happiness and peace right now. Because happiness and peace have nothing to do with the amount of money you have.  When you know that, you’re free.  You can yell at your TV “CNN, you do not determine  my happiness!”  You can choose to be happy because of your own intelligence and creativity, your potential, your community of friends and family, the fact that the sun reliably rises in the sky every day.  We are not victims of  the markets.  We don’t need to wait for the markets to come back.  Were you really happier when the economy was strong?  Or were you just worried about other things?  Cultivate the things that make you happy and your happiness will grow.

And if you really want to add to your happiness, stop watching or reading the news for 1 week.  Feel your bliss grow.

We’re told as we grow up that the three great conversational taboos are politics, religion, and sex, but in fact, people discuss these subjects all the time. No, the real taboo in our social discourse is money, as I was dramatically reminded this past summer.

My young son and I joined a bunch of old and new friends for a rafting/kayaking/ camping trip down the Klamath River. Of course, outdoor trips like this always speed up the process of intimacy; when you live together with others for five days—without obligations, without cell phones or PDAs, and sharing a latrine—you get to know them pretty well pretty fast. On this trip, the process moved even faster because of the forest fires that plagued northern California. The air was pungent with smoke, and the sun was always blocked, so there was a persistent sense of early dawn—a perfect setting for sharing our innermost truths, I’ve always thought.

Sarah and I had been acquaintances before the trip—my son and her daughter were pals from school—but on this trip, we grew really close. Although the fire danger meant there was a ban on campfires, we nevertheless sat and talked each evening, hunkered down in our low-slung camp chairs, our muscles weary, our kids safely in their tents. We talked about our past and present marriages, politics, religion, health, and our kids, sharing our concerns and vulnerabilities about each of these topics. It quickly became clear that ours was one of those friendships in which any subject could be fully explored.

As the trip grew to a close, we adults began to think and talk about tipping the wonderful river guides who had kept us safe through the Class 3 and 4 rapids. So on the last night, as we were settling into our camp chairs, I said to Sarah: “Have you thought about the tip? I’m thinking of giving a hundred bucks. What are you going to give?”

In the orange glow from the fires 30 miles west of us, I could see the look of stunned astonishment on Sarah’s face. “Oh,” she said, “I don’t feel comfortable discussing that.”

And that door slammed shut.

What is this? Why is money a blacklisted subject we hide behind a veil of secrecy as if we and our money were in some sinister conspiracy together? What made Sarah shut down? After all, I hadn’t asked her how much money she had in the bank or what her bonus had been last year. Nor had I suggested she tell me how many boyfriends she’d had in college or what her SAT scores had been. And the fact is that Sarah had told me some pretty private stuff about a rough patch in her marriage and about her own family history. That she could speak freely about such deeply personal matters made it even odder that she would shut down like a clam when asked what she planned to tip the next day.

What I can’t figure out is why. What makes people so uncomfortable talking about money? My guess is we see money as a measurement of our identity—and thus as a wedge that can separate us. That is, the person who “measures up” higher—i.e., with more money—feels he has to protect what he has from the person who measures up lower, while the person who measures up lower feels in danger of being exploited. I don’t know if that’s it, but when Sarah and I finally talked about her response to me, she said it was because she had indeed planned to give more than I was giving, and the difference—the separation it might define—made her anxious.

But if I don’t know exactly why we clam up about money, I do know the impact of all the secrecy: stress. And that stress makes us do stupid things in our money lives. It takes away clarity about money and cuts us off from any wisdom we might bring to our money lives. It leads us instead into a money madness that impels us toward dumb decisions about earning, spending, saving, investing, and giving money. In my own family, my father and his sister had been estranged for the last 30 years of their lives over a money secret!

I’ve been there too. I’m the guy who could talk a blue streak about my sexual history on the second date with the woman who became my wife—but for the first three years of our marriage never said a word about our assets, our debts, my income or possessions. Those were the conversational taboos I stuck to. And the dumb decisions I made as a result of that madness-driven secrecy were very costly indeed.

Yes, there are good reasons for keeping certain aspects of your money life private, but I think we’ve gone too far on the secrecy side. The money taboo has become so automatic that we no longer have a choice about whether to share or not to share details of our money life; it’s just not an option anymore. Yet most of the time, a secret or lie about money causes us stress, loses us money, and diminishes our intimacy with friends and family. That’s enough motivation for me to re-think what is the real conversational taboo—money talk.

Why are so many people fleeing the stock market and  concluding  that treasuries and high quality bonds are the only safe havens?  There are at least two instances in history when this has not been true.  In the 1970s, bonds did not keep pace with inflation.  People lost their purchasing power while stocks preserved theirs.  A more decisive and dramatic example of this is Germany in 1923.   Bond holders there lost everything because of hyper-inflation, while stock holders actually made money.

There is a mystique about stocks.  They seem risky.  But what’s risky about investing in  companies that make products and services that we actually use?  If you invest in a broad portfolio of companies, most of them will survive any crisis because consumers will always need products and services.  Bonds, CDs and bank accounts, however, all have the potential of losing tremendous value in an, albeit rarefied, environment of hyper-inflation.  If a bond is a promise to pay you back in the future, what happens when the dollars are devalued?  Those dollars buy a lot less.  That’s the risk of being a  bond-holder in a hyper-inflated economy.

So given that there is a chance of losing money with bonds as well as equities, and we don’t have a reliable crystal ball, why not maintain a diversified and well-balanced portfolio?  It’s the only source of true safety in an uncertain world.