Early in her financial planning career, Cygan noticed that clients who had healthy relationships with their money were much happier overall. Being rich didn't automatically lead to happiness, and being happy didn't automatically lead to becoming wealthy; the relationship was much more complex. She devoted many years to researching and pondering the relationship between money and happiness, eventually deciding to share her findings in this book. She concluded that money doesn't buy happiness, but it definitely impacts it. The dilemma was to determine just how money impacts our happiness. The Joy of Financial Security is grounded in research, but it also includes personal stories from Cygan's clients and from her own upbringing. These stories make the advice authentic, and help the reader understand how to implement the financial advice and the happiness strategies into their own lives. She shows that taking control of your finances is not rocket science, and that anyone can become a wise investor simply by developing a financial plan and using discipline to follow the plan. Topics such as money messages from your childhood, managing your human capital, good debt vs. bad debt, and a sustainable withdrawal rate during retirement are practical for anyone wanting to take their finances to a higher level.