6. Sign up for online assistance. Mint.com uses visual graphs, colors, and pie charts to help users meet their money goals; Learnvest also offers free, interactive boot camps on its website. Taking a close look at finances can be hard for people who don't enjoy perusing financial statements, says Lee, which is why she uses Mint.com. "You can set up budgets and have it be visual," she says.
7. Make spreadsheets pretty. Creativity and career coach Gail McMeekin urges her clients to color-code their spreadsheets. "A lot of creative people have multiple businesses going on, so if you color-code them and see which are generating income and which aren't, and where your expenses are going, then you can look at it as more of a mind map than an Excel spreadsheet,' she says.
8. Focus on possibilities instead of limits. Right-brainers tend to resist restrictions. That's one reason Jude Boudreaux, a certified financial planner, prefers to think about the trip he is saving for instead of the restaurant meal he is forgoing. "I'm not depriving myself, but enabling myself to do what I really want," he explains. Similar to Lee's vision board and Silber's movie, Boudreaux creates a vision book full of photos and images of his own goals and carries it around.
9. Find your team. Since financial planners can tend to be more left-brained, it can be hard for right-brainers to find the right fit when searching for an adviser. That's why Lee recommends getting referrals and browsing the websites of planners and other financial professionals. "Think about, 'What are the qualities of the person I want? Who do I want to support me? I want a financial planner who understands my creative mind and who doesn't mind if I draw pictures,'" she says.
Twitter: @alphaconsumer
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lloyd franklin of CA 2:42AM January 29, 2013
Bert Wicks of TN 4:35PM January 30, 2012
nancy gordon of CA 6:33PM January 05, 2012