Behavior-first money coaching

Most Financial Advice is BS

You aren’t bad with money; you’re just a human with an ancient brain in a digital mall. Stop fighting your nature and start building a system that fits YOU.

Get a simple, human-friendly framework that helps you spend with confidence, save automatically, and stop the guilt spiral—without living in spreadsheets.

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Behavior-First
Money Coaching

Practical habits, simple rules, and a system that works with your brain—not against it.

No shame. No spreadsheets required.
Simple rules you can actually follow.
A system built for real life.

Bonus: Quick-start checklist included

Instant download

Ted McLyman, MS, MPA,

Reformed Financial Advisor

The Rational Spender is a Myth

Most traditional financial advice is built on a flawed assumption: that you’ll behave like a calm, consistent robot if you just get the right spreadsheet and enough willpower.

Take a quick look in your closet or attic. Can you explain every purchase—or do you see evidence of comfort-buying, optimism, and “future me will use it” decisions?

Your brain is roughly 200,000 years old and wired for survival—avoid danger, grab resources, seek comfort—not for compound interest and long-term optimization. The solution isn’t more shame or stricter rules; it’s building a money system that works with how humans actually operate.

In real life, about 95% of spending is emotional and automatic—happening fast and driven by stress, convenience, habit, and the need to feel safe or rewarded. That’s not a personal failure. It’s how your brain is designed.

Humans are emotional creatures who think, not thinking creatures with emotions.

To make better spending decisions, we have to understand the emotional drivers beneath our behavior—and learn how to work with them.

1) Emotion comes first

Notice the feeling before you reach for your credit card. When you know the emotion, you regain choice.

2) Thoughts follow the feeling

Your feeling brain builds a story to justify your spending. Challenge the story—not yourself.

3) Align behavior with values

Use emotions as data—then choose the next step that matches your values and priorities.

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Your Roadmap to Financial Security

A simple, behavior-first framework to align your values, your wiring, and your decisions—so your money supports the life you actually want.

Traditional planning starts with numbers. We start with the mirror. Here is the 5-step framework for your financial security:

Money Values

Stop buying things. Start funding what matters. We identify the core principles driving your decisions.

Money Temperament

Your Financial DNA. We map your natural wiring so you can stop apologizing for it.

Money Knowledge

Information is not knowledge. We identify your specific learning style so you stop drowning in data.

Money Strategy

The Vision. We build a behavior-based roadmap that works with your ancient brain, not against it.

Money Plan

The Tactics. Only now do we talk about the products and the math. One Size Fits ONE.

Stop Fighting Your Brain

What you’ll get inside

A simple, behavior-first roadmap you can actually follow
The 3 steps that make spending feel calmer and more automatic
A clear next move to build real financial security

Get the Free 3-Step Guide to Spending Smart and learn the steps missing from traditional financial plans—so you can start to build a money system that works with your wiring, not against it.

Not sure if this is for you?

If you’ve tried budgets before and they never “stick,” this guide will help you build a spending plan that fits how you actually make decisions—so it’s easier to follow consistently. We’ll send the guide to your inbox. Unsubscribe anytime.

Meet Ted

Ted McLyman, MS, MPA, Author

Financial Choice Architect

Why I Reformed

For 25 years, I crunched numbers. Allocation models. Projections. Optimized plans that looked airtight on paper. And for a while, I truly believed that if the numbers were right, the outcome would be right.

Then I watched the real world happen: smart people making “irrational” choices, good plans falling apart under stress, and perfectly reasonable strategies getting abandoned the moment life got loud. That’s when it clicked—financial success is 90% behavior and 10% products.

I shifted from managing my clients' finances to guiding their behavior. Rather than resisting human nature, I focused on developing personalized strategies and plans that complemented their natural money temperament. They took control of their finances, become calmer, more engaged, and confident.

Yep, I'm reformed. I sold my practice, dropped my licenses, and began my quest to challenge conventional wisdom about money and wealth creation, and help people discover their unique financial DNA and start spending smart. You could say, I'm now a Financial Choice Architect.

Confessions of a Reformed Financial Advisor

(Yep, It's Mostly BS)

If you’ve ever felt like you “know what to do” but still can’t seem to follow through, you’re not broken—you’re human. This book is a behavior-first guide to fixing financial self-sabotage without shame, willpower contests, or spreadsheet guilt.

Inside, you’ll walk through a simple framework that helps you understand what’s actually driving your money choices and replace chaos with clarity.

Fix self-sabotage in 5 easy steps:

Spot the triggers behind your “why did I do that?” spending
Align money decisions with your real values (not your fantasies)
Work with your money temperament instead of fighting it
Build a learning approach that sticks
Turn the plan into small, repeatable habits that create security

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Featured Book

A quick look at what you’ll get inside.

Behavior-first money framework
Simple steps you can repeat
Less guilt, more clarity
Practical, human-friendly guidance

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Discover What the Book is About

Watch the short overview, then grab your copy on Amazon.

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For coaches & consultants

Attention Coaches & Consultants: Start Guiding Money Behavior

The Who: Is This You?

You are a holistic, wellness, life, or business coach dedicated to driving massive transformation for your clients. Yet, like many master practitioners, you might completely overlook one critical area: money behavior. Perhaps you avoid financial discussions because you lack formal financial licenses, or maybe you find yourself frustrated when clients abandon their beautifully designed lifestyle plans the absolute second financial stress hits.

The What: The Money Behavior System (MBS)

This isn't another generic personal finance course filled with boring allocation models and product plugs. This program is an intensive behavioral training framework that transforms you into a Financial Choice Architect. Grounded strictly in my core text, Confessions of a Reformed Financial Advisor, this program teaches you how to map out human behavioral wiring, interpret financial blind spots, and master a repeatable system for permanent habit change.

The Why: The Urgency is Real

Every single day you wait, your clients are actively losing battles against their own biology. Standard economic wisdom is broken; it assumes humans are completely rational actors. In reality, 95% to 99% of all spending is emotional, automatic, and nonconscious, driven by a 200,000-year-old brain hardwired for instant gratification. If you aren't actively addressing this biological reality in your sessions, you are leaving your clients entirely vulnerable to modern fintech traps and spending self-sabotage.

The How: Shift From Spreadsheets to Brain Science

The framework does not ask you to build rigid budgets or hand out generic advice. Instead, you will learn to sequentialize the 5-step Money Behavior System into your current service models:

Discover Your Core Values: Stop focusing on generic goals and unearth the emotional principles that require real financial commitment.
Map Natural Temperament: Evaluate individual "Financial DNA" (risk behavior, planning tolerance, and emotional impulses) to create customized guardrails.
Filter with Learning Styles: Identify whether a client is Visual, Auditory, or Kinesthetic so they never drown in data again.
Audit and Execute: Formulate an overarching financial vision and personalized tactical map tailored exclusively to their unique biological wiring.

The Value: Your Definitive Comparative Advantage

Integrating the MBS into your practice delivers an immediate, unfair comparative advantage in a crowded market. By shifting your role from managing technical data to actively guiding natural behavior, you elevate your value proposition. This structural shift allows you to permanently abandon the "efficiency penalty" of hourly billing and confidently implement Value-Based Pricing, meaning you charge a premium based strictly on the massive, transformed outcomes you deliver.

It's Time for a Change

Don't let business-as-usual sabotage your clients' breakthroughs or your practice's growth. Take immediate charge of your position as an elite coach.

Services

Choose the format that fits your style—learn at your pace, build momentum with a group, or go deep 1:1.

Contact Ted

Online Courses

Self-paced, behavior-first lessons that turn money knowledge into repeatable habits—without shame or spreadsheet overload.

Small Group Coaching

Discover, uncover, and unleash your Money Temperament with structure, accountability, and real-life implementation support.

1:1 Personalized Coaching

3 to 6 months of intensive behavioral implementation—so your plan becomes your default, even when life gets loud.

Speaking & Workshops

Keynotes on the Ancient Brain and Money Temperament—practical, high-energy sessions that change how people make financial decisions.

You Aren’t Doing This Alone.

Download the guide and immediately get access to the Spending Smart Community.

It’s time to stop fighting your ancient brain in isolation. Join other Smart Spenders to brainstorm, discuss money behavior, and fix the behavior gap together. Think of it as a Facebook Group, but without the distractions.

Free to join • Weekly prompts • Practical, behavior-first support

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Remember: The behavior gap doesn't close on its own. Whether you join the community, read the book, or just pause for ten seconds before buying that thing you don't need—take action today. Your ancient brain is watching.

Behavior-FirstMoney Coaching