More planners using both couch and calculator

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and sometimes a financial planner is more than a financial planner.

Believing that emotional and psychological health are as important to retirement planning as investment performance, some financial advisers are taking a page from Dr. Freud’s book and weaving counseling services into their practice.

Take Richard Wagner, a partner in Sharkey Howes Wagner & Javer of Denver. Later this year he plans to team up with a therapist and open an advisory called WorthLiving LLC that will target people who have struck it rich, through an inheritance or an initial public offering, and never have to work again.

Not content with the “save more, spend less and don’t do anything dumb” school of financial planning, Mr. Wagner says he is “attracted to people who want to have a connection with their money and how they live their lives in exploring alternatives.”

The firm will hold summer camps and months of follow-up sessions to help people figure out what to do next.

While not all advisers are as intense as Mr. Wagner, a growing number see counseling as a way to set themselves apart in the marketplace and understand the individual needs of clients. The emergence of divorce planners, for instance, is an example of how planners adapt to situations beyond financial issues.

Most advisers who employ counseling services are trying to deal with emotional issues that arise from complicated financial planning or estate planning situations.

For instance, children of entrepreneurs might fear speaking up about how they don’t want to run the family business.

In general, planners who understand their clients’ motivations can determine how to communicate the risks of investing and guide their expectations. Some clients are overly cautious or overly aggressive and need to be prodded or reined in.

And, as planning can raise issues of priorities and goals, planners who use counseling approaches can help mediate and resolve disputes.

Charles Haines, president of Haines Financial Advisors of Birmingham, Ala., got involved in the softer side of financial planning four years ago by hiring a part-time counselor who specializes in studying how families communicate and develop. As part of the planning process, clients are required to meet with a counselor for two hours.

Mr. Haines made a bigger commitment last summer by adding a full-time counselor to his firm, which manages $250 million.

“Counselors are just better trained at eliciting the deep feelings related to money and happiness,” Mr. Haines says.

The focus of discussions can range from problems such as addiction to philosophical issues such as how to educate children about wealth and values.

While meeting with a counselor can carry a stigma, Mr. Haines says, all of his clients have complied. A few have been reluctant, however.

Doctor’s orders: No

“We had a 69-year-old doctor and his wife who were clients,” Mr. Haines says. “He said, `We really don’t need that,’ but his wife was leaning back in her chair and nodding yes.”

The couple ultimately met with the counselor and the doctor “said it was the best meeting I’ve ever had,” Mr. Haines says.

Rather than hand off the counseling to someone else, Scott Neal, a planner in Lexington, Ky., does it himself.

Motivated by a domestic spat that occurred in his office, Mr. Neal went and earned a master of divinity degree in pastoral care and counseling.

“With pastoral care you help people through crises or liminal moments like divorce or a death,” he says. “I saw if I was able to deal with this kind of issue I would be able to keep things in house and on pace.”

Mr. Neal, who teaches some of his clients meditation techniques, says customers’ financial decisions are often inspired by fundamental personality issues that counseling can bring out.

“I had a client so fraught with anxiety that she could never make a final decision,” he says. “I finally talked with her about seeking help from a psychotherapist.”

Indeed, Mr. Neal and Mr. Haines say they employ counseling only as a tool and are not prepared to take clients on as patients.

“We’re not telling the clients they’re sick,” says Mr. Haines. “It certainly could lead” to referrals for therapy, however.

There is a big risk in trying to tackle such fundamental issues: Clients who get turned off by the process may decide to take their money and go elsewhere.

“If you get too close to a client and it doesn’t work on one level, it may not work on other levels as well,” says Mr. Wagner.

That interest in counseling techniques is growing is evidenced by the career of Boston planner George Kinder, author of “The Seven Stages of Money Maturity.”

Based on his knowledge of literary and religious traditions as well as his experience as a financial planner and peer counselor, he believes money shapes individuals’ identities.

Instead of deciding merely how much money clients will need to live on, he says, advisers need to find out what their clients think they want from life — and make sure that matches what they actually do want. Stressed-out executives who despair of finding joy in life, for example, should be encouraged to establish goals that don’t involve working themselves to death.

“If we don’t understand what’s really important to them, we’ll be inefficient,” he says. “Our focus ought to be on what they really want out of life and we translate these things into financial terms and find out how they can achieve these goals.”

This can involve risk, as Mr. Kinder has learned from experience. He once worked with a woman who was preparing an estate plan that he could see would create strife among the beneficiaries. He decided to intervene.

“I suggested that she go back and talk to her children,” he says, a move he feared would alienate her. Instead, she changed her plan.