Money Disorder

- Joanna Coles, The London Times

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Do you worry a lot about money? Do you suffer from buyer's remorse? Have you ever been in nagging, persistent debt or had an overdraft that you could never seem to shrug off? And do you have a magic number, a sum in your head, that would make everything better?

"Everyone has issues about money," says Ron Gallen, New York's leading money doctor, gunning his elderly Honda down FDR Drive, which flanks Manhattan's twinkling East river. We're heading for Wall Street, where Gallen is due to give a seminar on what he says is a new disease affecting thousands of Americans .The symptoms are varied but can make the sufferer feel completely out of control; he calls it "money disorder".

"I coined the term." he says modestly as we swing into the financial district and the sky suddenly disappears , replaced by a silver crown of skyscrapers.

"Everyone has a magic figure." he continues, tossing the car keys to the parking attendant and striding off so that I have to skip and hop to keep up . "It might be half a million dollars , $2 million , $10 million . It's the figure that will allow them to say 'OK. I'm outta here, I'm never gonna work again !'

"Well you know what ? Even if you get that figure , it doesn't work like that . I had a guy come to me recently , he'd got a $3 million bonus and he was crying . I said ' How come you're crying ? You just got $3 million dollar! ' And he said 'Yeah well, it doesn't feel like I thought it would'. "

Briefcase slapping against his thigh . Gallen tunnels his way through the lunch time crush of Wall Street worker bees, still talking as he goes. I mean , here we are." he yells, stopping briefly to check the address before spinning through a gold revolving door, "In the middle of the biggest boom of all time and what do we have? A record number of personal bankruptcies. Two million this year alone, Two million! That's one in every 55 families."

He stabbed the lift button marked 9 and we are sucked up to the blue-chip offices of Harris Rothenberg, which organized employee counseling programs for several of the cities' top companies, including Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Deutsche Bank, Citigroup and New York's 20 top law firms. From Harris Rothenberg's oriental-style board room you can see the yachts slapping against the waves in the harbor. Around the table 10 counselors are waiting, yellow legal pads poised, to learn more about the addiction to money that Gallen says is undermining the American way of life.

"Actually, I was going to take today off but I came in specially because I was so fascinated to hear this," says Glenn Shephard, pumping Glenn's hand. "It's a very pertinent topic," adds Irene Roberson, another counselor. " I had a client on Monday who was talking about all the money he was spending and he didn't know why," Gallen nods, it sounds familiar; wherever he goes, he hears the same thing. When it comes to money people feel increasingly out of control. Their credit cards are over extended, they are juggling cards to field the debts, and they don't even want the thing they are buying.

"The No.1 problem in relationships is money," adds another counselor, sitting down and plucking a Hershey's chocolate kiss from a plate on the table. "Absolutely right," says Glenn. "By the way, let's get one thing straight. I'm not here to tell you that if you save X amount a month, you will have $1b by the time you are 65. I'm the guy who says 'Here's why you are never going to stick to that'."

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