Author Pens Best Selling Financial Book
Ballston Spa Author Pens Best -Selling Selling Financial Book
SEPTEMBER 21, 2014 BY STEPHANIE HALE-LOPEZ BALLSTON JOURNAL, BALLSTON SPA,NY – Laurie Bonser, CFP, CPA, and owner of Changing Times Planning , recently hosted a book launch for her newly released book, Financial Stewardship: A Guide for Personal Financial Health and Wellness. Dozens of community members attended the launch event at Lake Ridge Restaurant Wednesday and picked up copies of Bonser’s book, which has already been named to Amazon’s bestsellers list.
Laurie Bonser, author of Financial Stewardship: A Guide for Personal Financial Health and Wellness, at her book launch Wednesday, Sept. 17. Bonser has an eclectic background. Aside from being a CPA, Certified Financial Planner professional and coach, Bonser is also a musician, teacher, reader, and shaman who explores Reiki, MAP, plant spirit medicine, animal communication, and other healing resources. “[The book] really tied together everything from my music background, the work and the study that I had to do to become a CPA and CFP, and my interest in animals,” said Bonser. “I have friends in all sorts of different professions so it was really meant to be not only a book on financial planning, but a real holistic look at life and how we made decisions and choices.” Financial Stewardship isn’t your typical book about finances. The unique guide shows readers how to shift perceptions of personal finances from a numbers-oriented view to a rewarding one, encompassing individual needs, goals and ownership to benefit health and wellness. “I was motivated this winter with all of the snow and ice and everything, to sit down and write this,” said Bonser. “I guess it had been rolling around in my head for quite some time. I started writing in the middle of January and in the middle of April, it just kind of came all pouring out.”
Bonser says her book is meant to serve as a guide to financial fitness and that more people need to take into account their financial health and wellness. “You make changes to your diet slowly over time, or you come to an awareness that some foods don’t sit well with you, so that was in the back of my mind with the book,” said Bonser. “You don’t have to be a math whiz to know everything about the stock markets or investments. Financial planning is very much like going to your general physician and practitioner over time, because you go for periodic check-ups. I tried to use some of those analogies, because they made sense to me.”
Financial Stewardship: A Guide for Personal Financial Health and Wellness is an Amazon best-seller. The main message Bonser says she wanted to get across in her book is that money is just a tool. She says she wants to give people the knowledge and confidence to manage their own financial stewardship goals in actual planning, conversations and decisions. While everyone’s financial situation is different, Bonser does have some advice people can start implementing immediately to better their financial position. “Give yourself permission and the time to sit down and think about making your decisions,” said Bonser. “Don’t feel pressured or that it’s a deal of the day that you have to take advantage of. One of the other big things is to communicate and to get more comfortable talking with our partners and our spouses. If we’re not communicating with each other, we’re just making assumptions. Think about talking about money and finances as part of building relationships while taking your core values into consideration.”
Financial Stewardship: A Guide for Personal Financial Health and Wellness is currently available at Northshire Bookstores in Saratoga Springs and Vermont, as well as Amazon and Barnes & Noble . “Somebody told me this winter is going to similar to last year’s winter with the weather,” said Bonser. “So I may have to bundle up and write some more.” Laurie Bonser lives in Ballston Spa and may be reached through her website .
The new ‘Financial Stewardship” book is now available!
I feel rather like Tigger bouncing around this week with the actual publication of my new book ‘Financial Stewardship: A Guide for Personal Financial Health and Wellness”! After many months of writing, designing, editing, and finding the right path in the publishing realm, the messages are now ‘official’ and available in paperback and eBook formats through Northshire Bookstore, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and many other avenues (Please see the links on the Book tab on the menu bar). I look forward to all the future discussions, additional ideas, and transformations that will come from this collaborative effort. Thank you for being part of this momentum.
Financial Stewardship Choices
Excerpted from my new book Financial Stewardship: A Guide to Personal Financial Health and Wellness©, July 2014
Choices
‘Making conscious choices in our lives is the basis of honoring our intentions and callings. And the area of financial stewardship is an integral part of that process. It’s just as important to consider these decisions and choices as it is to review your physical health or relationships because finances influence many of our thoughts and communications, whether consciously or otherwise. Having a healthy dialogue about money choices can reflect positively on our personal relationships, our work alternatives, meeting future goals, our personal power and impact, how we can help change future community conversations about financial issues, and much more.
Consider:
How do I give choices about financial matters a lower priority in my life – and why and when?
What other areas of my life are affected by my choices (or lack thereof) regarding money?
What benefits could I have by taking a more active role in the financial stewardship of my life?’
Why is Financial Stewardship Important?
Excerpted from my new book Financial Stewardship: A Guide to Personal Financial Health and Wellness©, July 2014
‘Individually and collectively we are at a critical point where we must address financial stewardship and adjust our intentions and actions if we are to create a longer term, more rewarding life for ourselves, our planet, and our future generations – which may well include us personally again in a different earth role, so there’s extra motivation right there!. I believe strongly in our ability to heal and dream positive, expanding visions into future reality. However, existing energy draining behaviors of pessimism, entitlement, abdicating responsibility, short-term focuses, and similar responses from many surrounding their financial awareness will continue to derail our current and future lives individually and as a whole unless we step up and change these patterns. The time for a dramatic shift is right now.
In both my own personal experience and in working with countless individuals over the years, the downsides and harmful outcomes of not taking financial stewardship to heart are as numerous and diverse as there are humans on this planet. I’m sure some scientist could come up with a calculation that expresses to the quadrillionth place the different iterations of scenarios that result from various combinations of unthoughtful, unhealthy financial choices, but does such a measurement really make a difference to the bottom line question of whether we opt to take personal or collective action? We know in our gut that the above myth and mask statements actually relate to fear, anger, self-protection, abdication of responsibility, and other very basic reactions.
And we also understand that reactions are far different from using the individual gifts of thinking, considering options, communicating, and consciously choosing that we’ve all been given. If we continue to ignore personal financial stewardship, then we remain stuck in the same loop that seems comfortable but is actually damaging…stuck listening to a world that tells us we are financially incapable and need latest product or someone else’s program to be saved. However, if we choose to move into the stewardship and apply our attention first, then we gain the real balance, integrity, and sustenance we seek’.
The main message: As Buddha is reported to have said, “Truth is bitter in the beginning, sweet in the end, and lies are sweet in the beginning, bitter in the end.”
What is Financial Stewardship?
Excerpted from the my new book Financial Stewardship: A Guide to Personal Financial Health and Wellness©, July 2014
‘Personal financial stewardship represents the care, conservancy, planning, attention, upkeep, and management of our financial resources and choices beginning at the individual level. In contrast, Thesaurus.com shows ignorance, negligence, squandering, and waste as antonyms of stewardship. As more of us become aware and proficient with individual stewardship, then there can be a greater corollary to the community and global stewardship needs – which will be addressed in future discussions.
Please note this definition does not limit financial stewardship to those being math wizards, those having professional credentials in the financial or business world, or to people labeled as analytical, objective, or left-brain thinkers. Nor is there any predetermined range or measure of financial wealth (or perceived lack thereof) that removes the responsibility of attention from being on the ball with stewardship in this area. From this perspective then, we’re all in the same learning boat together here and everyone needs to claim their personal responsibility and abilities for their own financial stewardship. While I am a long-time supporter of formal education programs and qualifications, I also believe it’s vital that we equally value our own self-study, experiences, and intuitions. So, you could well end up with your own personal PhD in Financial Stewardship based on your application and accomplishments.
Financial stewardship has many components, including:
- Managing all of our current resources with wisdom
- Teaching our children about finances
- Integrating career choices with compensation possible
- Planning to make a family or charitable legacy gift
- Educating ourselves with knowledge from reliable sources
- Making thoughtful, conscious choices between options
- Considering how and why our decisions impact those around us
- Removing the fears and myths and masks that stymie our intentions
- Understanding the relationship between money and other areas of our lives
- Taking personal accountability for how we gather and use our financial resources – money, tangible assets, human capital (earnings potential), time, legacies, and more
- Invoking universal abundance with respect and responsibility
- Learning to view money as a currency, a tool, without judgment labels attached
- Becoming more adept at valuing our own time and contributions, and those of others around us
- Realizing that the awakenings and awareness in each of us of the wondrous universal gifts brings a calling to balance all areas of our lives, including financial stewardship
As you can see from the definitions above, this offering is clearly in a different realm from many of the popular approaches that have their core focus on how to get rich, how to fix what’s wrong with you so you can get rich, why rich people have a better life, what’s the latest hot trend or method guaranteed to make you money, why you deserve to have more money, why you’ll be more loved/sought after/revered as you become ever more successful, and other assumptions that center around financial status as a primary means of measuring one’s net value and happiness quotient’.
Are We Financially “Myth-oriented”?
In our culture, silence is often treated as an uncomfortable situation and so we usually feel compelled to fill in any breaks with words or activity…and many times the actual content or sensibility of our responses don’t seem to matter – just as long as the space gets filled up. But when ideas and phrases get repeated over and over without conscious thought, they generally take on a life of their own and are absorbed as non-questioned truths that govern our lives to a seemingly easier path.
In fact most of us are really disoriented by money and finances. I call this Myth-oriented instead of disoriented, though, because so much of our disorientation comes from daily myths driven from outside sources that really don’t know who we are and what our challenges and experiences are. To honestly and openly figure out what are the myths and masks in our lives, we need to reclaim the art of listening to both ourselves and to those around use. Then we need to support our awareness and desire by saying, “Wait, what was that? Does that really make sense? Does that really help me? What’s the real situation here? How does this fit with the rest of my life goals and purpose?”
Perhaps you’ve heard some of the following statements, assumptions, or postures coming from yourself, family, friends, colleagues, or others?
· Financial planning is all about investments and making the best return, and since I don’t have any money to invest I don’t need to do any planning.
· I often say to others that I’m clueless about financial matters and preface my questions with words like ‘dumb, silly, and stupid’.
· I was never good at math so I’ll never understand money, taxes, and all the economic talk.
· My personal value here in this lifetime is based a lot on how much money and other assets I have because it reflects how smart, capable, hardworking, and favored I am.
· Money is a bad driver in our economy…just look at the corporate greed, stealing, lying and other behavior that goes along with it.
· I care about teaching, healing, the arts, the environment, and other charitable activities…so I have no time or interest in money or management.
The list includes several other common themes….
Excerpted from Financial Stewardship: A Guide to Personal Financial Health and Wellness, available July 2014
