FOWARD

By Jeff Morris, CEO & Co-Founder, DreamSmart Behavioral Solutions

Let me begin with a confession of my own: I didn’t fully understand the power of money behavior until I stood at the intersection of two profound truths—human behavior is hardwired, and money is emotional. I felt honored when Ted McLyman asked me to write this book’s foreword, Confessions of a Financial Advisor, not only because of its depth, candor, and relevance but also because Ted’s voice is one of the few in finance that doesn’t sanitize or simplify the truth. He tells it like it is. What he says resonates deeply with our mission at DreamSmart: to decode the behavioral wiring that drives everything from leadership to legacy—and yes, especially money.

Ted and I share more than professional backgrounds in behavioral science and financial consulting—we share a conviction: you cannot separate money and behavior. No matter how hard you try, if you ignore the psychological, emotional, and neurobiological drivers behind your financial decisions, you will sabotage even the most logical and technically sound plan. Conversely, when you understand your natural behavioral wiring—your Behavioral SuperPower®—and pair it with your Financial Temperament, you unlock a power far greater than compound interest: self-mastery.

The Other Side of the Coin: Financial Temperaments

At DreamSmart Behavioral Solutions, we’ve long believed that your Money Temperament is the behavioral flip side of your SuperPower. While your Behavioral SuperPower reveals how you naturally communicate, decide, lead, and build trust, your Money Temperament shows how you save, spend, invest, and react to financial risk. One cannot exist in isolation from the other. Together, they form the inner script that governs every dollar decision you make.

Ted calls this out masterfully in this book. Page after page, he dismantles the myth of “homo economicus”—the purely rational, calculating consumer—and replaces it with a portrait of actual humans, struggling through Costco aisles, investment anxiety, and inherited money messages. What he’s doing here isn’t just storytelling; it’s a fundamental change. It’s time to stop treating financial planning like a math class and start treating it like behavioral diagnostics.

Money Temperaments matter because they drive everything: whether you’re prone to impulse buys or long-term planning, whether you chase trends or prioritize security, whether you avoid budgets like the plague or build spreadsheets for fun. Financial planners who don’t assess Money Temperament are flying blind. Families who don’t understand each other’s money wiring are setting themselves up for conflict. And individuals who ignore their own behavioral patterns are unintentionally leaking wealth—emotionally, energetically, and financially.

Why This Book Matters

Confessions of a Financial Advisor couldn’t have arrived at a more critical time. We live in an era of financial complexity, marked by apps, cryptocurrencies, buy-now-pay-later schemes, rising costs, and social media-driven spending norms. We’ve never been more disconnected from the “why” behind our financial choices. This book pulls back the curtain and reminds us that the primary problem isn’t in the market. It’s in the mirror.

Ted gives us the tools, language, and courage to confront that mirror. He is a reformed advisor—not because he failed, but because he succeeded in the traditional system and had the wisdom to ask, “Is this working?” Most advisors don’t ask that question. Most consumers don’t either. But if you’re reading this book, you’re among the brave few who do.

You’ll find that Ted doesn’t just critique traditional financial wisdom; he offers a new roadmap rooted in his Money Behavior Systems and real-world insights. His stories, data points, and analogies (I dare you not to remember the chicken at the coffee shop metaphor) make financial behavior accessible and deeply personal.

The Behavior Behind the Balance Sheet

The beauty of behavioral science is that it transforms judgment into curiosity. Rather than asking, “Why did I make that dumb financial decision?” we ask, “What part of me made that decision—and what was it trying to accomplish?”

Behavioral SuperPowers help us answer that question. Are you naturally driven to please others? You may overextend yourself financially to avoid disappointing loved ones. Are you wired to seek data before action? You may be prone to financial analysis paralysis. Are you impulsive and imaginative? You may need a behavioral structure to channel your creativity into investments instead of retail therapy.

That’s the core insight: you’re not bad with money; you’re just wired a certain way. You can understand this wiring. You can support and optimize it once you understand it.

At DreamSmart, we believe every person has a unique behavioral fingerprint, and the key to wealth, true, sustainable, generational wealth, isn’t just in earning more or budgeting better. It’s in learning how to work with your wiring, not against it. This book is a powerful step in that direction.

Toward a New Era of Behavioral Wealth

Wealth isn’t just a number; it’s a relationship between your values, your history, your emotions, and your opportunities. Ted invites us into that relationship, and in doing so, he gives financial advisors a new playbook, families a new language, and individuals a new sense of agency.

At DreamSmart, we see Behavioral AI as the next evolution of this work. By pairing assessments like Ted’s Money Behavior System with AI tools, organizations and individuals can receive real-time coaching and behavioral nudges to stay aligned with their Money Temperament. It’s no longer about reacting to financial mistakes, it’s about anticipating behavioral triggers and designing your environment, strategy, and conversations around them.

That’s what we call behavioral financial wellness. That’s what we call financial clarity. And that’s what this book delivers in spades.

Final Thoughts

If you’ve ever felt shame, confusion, or friction around money, this book is for you. If you’ve ever wondered why smart people make bad financial decisions, this book is for you. And if you are ready to stop struggling with your financial life and finally begin understanding it from your perspective, then you’ve come to the right place.

Ted McLyman has written a book that doesn’t just belong on your shelf—it belongs in your story. Because financial wellness isn’t about perfection. It’s about self-awareness, behavioral alignment, and strategic growth.

So read this book with curiosity, not judgment. Let it affirm what you’ve always known deep down: how you behave with money matters more than what you know about money. And then—maybe—permit yourself to rewrite your own money story, one insight at a time.

Let the journey begin.

With admiration and belief in your behavioral brilliance,

Jeff Morris, CEO & Co-Founder, DreamSmart Behavioral Solutions