Author Barbara Huson’s Three-Pronged Process to Financial Success

When your father is the “R” in “H&R Block” and your (first) husband is a successful stock- broker, you aren’t waiting for the proverbial financial bottom to fall out from under you. Meet Barbara Huson whose story of resilience and success will help women everywhere want to dig in their heels, develop a healthy relation- ship with finances, and become the woman they’ve always dreamed of being.

When Huson was growing up, her father told her not to worry about money and so she didn’t. After marrying her first husband, this advice was cemented, and she relied on him to handle their finances. Unfortunately, she learned early on in their marriage that he was a compulsive gambler… “and I stayed married to him for 15 years. I knew he was gambling my money away and I continued to let him manage it because that’s how terrified and intimidated I was about anything financial.” She adds, “I was so terrified that I thought I couldn’t make it on my own, so I stayed with him. The only reason I left wasn’t because of the gambling, it was because he became physically abusive.”

Huson recounts that if you don’t deal with your money, your money will deal with you. She received a series of tax bills – totaling over a million dollars. Way over a million dol- lars. When she took the first $500,000 tax bill to show her father, he told her not to worry about it and so she put the bill in the tax pile and let it be. It was only after she brought the pile to her accountant and his face went white that she realized she was in trouble. Adding insult to injury is the fact that her husband fled the country and her father wouldn’t loan her the money. But crumble she did not. Huson had three young daughters and she realized she had to get financially smart because she was deter- mined not to live on the streets with her children. At the time she was a journalist and making no more than $20,000/year. Her attorneys negotiated down the tax bill and she sold everything in her Trust, minus a couple of prop- erties. Although she’d have to live frugally, she marched on.

“Women’s issues with money have nothing to do with money.”

With a new reality looking at her dead on, Huson rolled up her sleeves, committed to getting financially smart, and prayed. She was then hired out of the blue for a freelance writing project to inter- view women who were smart with money. From there, Huson says: “I’m telling you, talking to those women changed my life. I not only got smart about money (and that was in the early 90s) but I wrote my first book, which came out in 1997 and is still selling today. I’m very proud of it. I got smart and now seven books later, I’m a finan- cial coach.”

Sounds simple when it’s con- densed into a short profile, right? And you think it must have been her work ethic that got her to her successful self today. Wrong. “It wasn’t the work ethic for me – and this is important. You have to think differently – what I realized is that financial success is a 3- pronged process.” The outer work, she explains is “reading the books and going to classes and under- standing the difference between a stock and a bond and how to negotiate a deal.” The inner work involves “exploring my attitudes and beliefs and decisions about making money.” And finally, the higher work is “the spiritual aspect and that played a big part for me. I really believe that GOD put us all on this earth for a purpose and we can’t possibly pursue our purpose if we’re struggling to make ends meet financially, if we’re financially insecure.”

As she worked the 3-pronged process, she recounts that she was a little panicky “I was sailing along doing these interviews, working on a book and feeling much better and all of a sudden I hit this wall,” she says, “and my eyes starting glazing over and I realized I was saboutaging myself.” She made an appointment with a therapist and told him: “I gotta get smart. I gotta get my money act together. You’ve got to help me.”

This was the turning point for her as she began to realize that “there was a part of me that thought my parents would be furious if I took charge and there was a bigger part that thought if I took charge I’d lose everything – that I’m too stupid and I’d rather have my husband do that than me and there was a bigger part that thought if I became financially successful then a man wouldn’t love me. It was only by working on those parts of myself that that’s when things started changing.” Huson recognized that she wanted to do something in the world to use her experience to really help women with finances.

In 2015 Huson wiped the slate clean, cancelled her workshops and through journaling, medita- tion, and prayer she realized she still wanted to help women with their finances but needed to do it in a less traditional way. After reading an article on Neuroscience, she was hooked. Through her extensive research on the subject, Huson realized this was the missing link. She gradually took all the elements she’s most passionate about: spirituality, psychology, and neuroscience and their role in transforming women’s relationship to money.

Fast forward to 2022, based on the number of women going to college and becoming CEO’s at blue chip companies, you’d think women are taking charge of their finances. Wrong. “Study after study shows that women are not doing nearly enough to protect themselves financially,” says Huson. She adds that, “The latest Fidelity study, like so many other studies, prove that the #1 reason women aren’t protecting themselves financially is that they lack confidence.” “Women’s issues with money have nothing to do with money,” she says. “It is our fear of or ambiva- lence toward power. It’s not the money that gives us power, it’s who we have to become to attract, sustain, and grow our wealth.” Huson adds that too many women are waiting to be rescued, but not necessarily by a man. It could be an inheritance, the lottery or just an amorphous something – a type of magical thinking.

Based on this information, what advice would Huson give to women going through a divorce to get control of their finances? “Get a pit bull of a lawyer to represent you – even if you’re in mediation because you’re not thinking straight. I’ve been through two divorces, and I have a great hus- band. My second one was very dif- ferent because I got a great lawyer and I was very clear about what my boundaries were.”

With all she’s accomplished as author of seven financial books, individual and group wealth coach, webinar host, contributor to national media outlets, coaching millions of women, and raising three daughters, Huson shows no signs of slowing down. “I love what I do. It is the deep connection with the people I get to coach individu- ally or with the women I get to coach in a group. It feeds my soul. I’m 73 years old and I don’t see myself retiring anytime soon.”