Why you should pay me cash for your couples counseling instead of using your insurance

Because lawyers don't accept insurance.

What does that have to do with anything?

Last year when my dad was sick, I went to see an attorney to make sure his financial affairs were in order. I contracted with that attorney to pay her $200/hour to do this work, and the final bill came to $2100.

That's 13 sessions with me at my cash rate of $160. Every dollar was paid out of pocket.

You pay for what you value. My dad was dying and we needed help. We were convinced that this lawyer was the person we wanted to work with, so we didn't even shop around. I'm not sure we could have found it much cheaper, since I don't even know what price ranges are for attorneys, but the point is, we felt cared for and understood and taken care of by this person, and she's the one we wanted to help us. So we paid her what she was asking for. We were happy to because she was providing a service that lessened our anxiety and helped soothe our pain.*

You may check out my website, get on the phone with me for the consult call, and really feel like I'm the person you want to work with. Before you say, "We can't do it, he doesn't accept insurance," I encourage you to consider what you'd do if an urgent legal issue popped up that you needed to take care of. You wouldn't be able to use insurance, and you'd probably come up with the money for an attorney you trusted to do quality work with you. You would take stock not only of the money, but the value. Money is about what you're giving. Value is about what you feel you are getting in exchange for the money.

That is what I hope you will consider. We didn't feel we were paying the $2100 for proper paperwork to be filed at proper times, we felt it was for peace of mind, knowing we could trust them for the guidance we so desperately needed at a time in life when we were already grieving, and lost. What was the value of that consolation and peace of mind to us? What were we willing to pay for it? I don't know that for sure, but I know it's at least $2100!

Research shows one of the most important things in whether people move forward in counseling is whether they feel they click with their therapist. You can use money to pay for time spent, for a therapist's knowledge and training and overhead, and costs. But money cannot buy "click." If you find that sense of click with any therapist, I encourage you to consider very carefully not just the cost of that click, but the value of it. Anytime you do any transaction where the value you get out of it exceeds the cost you pay for it, you come out on top.

*I know there are some people that, in a similar situation, would just have to say, "Whatever terrible things may happen in the future because we couldn't pay an attorney to make sure dad was set up properly, we'll just have to deal with that if it happens, because there's no possible way in any possible world we could pay over $2,000 to have this done." If people have insurance and it's a choice between using it and getting help or not using it and continuing to hurt, I say use it! The point of this article is that many people are in a place where they can consider value ("click") and maybe just haven't thought of it that way before.