These days, a whole industry is helping the wealthy get a grip. These are not your father's financial advisers: Their eyes are not focused solely on the bottom line, but on ferreting out their clients' values. They ask not "How much money do you want to make?" but "Who do you want to be?"

Who Are We? Twenty-eight percent of King County households own stock, and the average holding is nearly $55,000. Nationally, the number is 24 percent at a value of $49,000

Steven Goldbart, a psychologist with the Money, Meaning and Choices Institute in the Bay Area, works with several families in this area. Newly wealthy clients often seek help to resolve a money-related personal conflict or to sort out their values to "do something pro-active" with their wealth.

And though it may seem that everyone talks about money these days, talking about your own is a "taboo topic," says Goldbart.

"It's much easier to have a conversation about what you do in bed with your lover than to talk about what you do with money."

Helene Robertson, a Seattle wealth counselor, recalled a conference for women of wealth a few years ago. In small groups, they were encouraged to speak about their net worth.

Many cried or shook, Robertson recalls. "A lot of people said they'd never said it out loud before."

Sometimes Goldbart helps people get over a fear of spending. For others, he'll help prepare an "ethical will," specifying the values and mores they want to pass on to their children.

The newly wealthy are "trying to get comfortable in their own skin," says Joan DiFuria, Goldbart's partner. "People are looking for meaning. They're hungry for connection."

Dianne Juhl, 42, a former teacher and librarian who left Microsoft in 1998 after 10 years, doesn't just give money to groups that work on domestic violence. She sits on the board and runs support groups.

And Juhl, whose Midwestern farm background didn't prepare her for this world of wealth, doesn't just send information on investments and philanthropy to her nieces and nephews. She flies them every summer from Minnesota and Maine to her own production, "Cousins' Camp," where they learn the principles of sound money management and take part in a public-service project.

The newly wealthy, says Hopelink's Benson, don't write a check and disappear. "They're asking tougher questions. They want to get more involved."

Values checks

The newly wealthy are asking tough questions of themselves, too.

Sometimes it seems that nearly every purchase brings a round: What will friends think? Is it extravagant? Is it responsible? Does this fit with the way I see myself?

Hafer calls this ongoing dialogue with herself "values checks," and they're often spurred by a seemingly innocuous object.

A pot for plants, for example.

She found stone planters she really liked at $700 each. Resin pots, which she didn't like as well, were $90.

And the dialogue began: She could easily afford the $700 pots, but her conscience asked nagging questions.

She bought the $90 pots.

"Seven hundred dollars was an awful lot of money to pay for something I was going to put dirt into," she explains. But more important: "The $700 ones are a kind of caving in to upping your lifestyle closer to your income level, raising the stakes on your lifestyle."

Many talk about that slippery slope. A Lexus SUV, a yacht, a splurgy vacation. A couple of steps, they worry, and you're sliding down the slope to faux Italian villas and bottles of wine so expensive you should be able to drive them.

Goldfarb, whose home isn't poorly furnished by any means, with Roche Bobois couches and lots of sparkling art glass, has a rule: "I don't want to buy it unless I'm OK if I don't have it. I don't want to get dependent on an object," she says.

"The more things you own, the more things own you. I hear my friends who have these huge houses complain, because now they have to manage a gardener and a housekeeper."

The best "things" she can give her children are self-sufficiency, Goldfarb says, and encouragement to embrace their passion. At the end of the day, she wants them to be grateful for what makes them unique – not for a house on the water.

It's not lost on these wealthy that much of their money came from the ephemeral world of stock prices and dot-com dreams. Some think the stock-price free fall is a needed wake-up call.

"We live in this virtual world where you work hard and you're only as good as the most recent technology," Goldfarb says.

The tough times building her business, her parents' divorce, the death of a close friend from cancer last year – all help her focus on what's really important, she says.

"You realize that things are fleeting; you realize that a situation might not be the same situation 10 years from now. We could be the poor people tomorrow. And what are we going to be left with? Ourselves."

Carol M. Ostrom's phone message number is 206-464-2249. Her e-mail address is costrom@seattletimes.com

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