Money conversations with your spouse can be tough. They can be emotional. They can go a little sideways. But if there’s one thing I’ve witnessed in the years I’ve been a financial advisor, it’s that it doesn’t have to be hard. And, frankly, things get a lot dicier when these conversations get swept under the rug.
There are five conversations every couple should have in order to be financially aligned, reduce stress, and plan for a secure future.
Before we dive in, I want to make sure we’re approaching this conversation in a way that creates agency for both parties. I’ve often witnessed that one person in a relationship tends to have the financial skills while the other person doesn’t. And the person with more financial knowledge may dominate the conversation and decision making.
That can be detrimental to the overall success of the relationship because we know that money is inherently emotional. It can be incredibly challenging—especially for the person who isn’t as confident with money. They may not feel that they have a seat at the table because they don’t know what questions to ask.
So, as you approach these conversations, whether you’re about to be married, newly married, or you’ve been married for 30 years, remember: you’re a team. You have shared financial interests and you both want what’s best for your future.
That said:
Conversation 1: What Was Your Early Relationship with Money?
I love this one because it gets into the emotional background of what money means to somebody. I’ve asked clients about this who are in their 50s and they’re blown away because they’ve never been asked this question, nor have they thought to ask their partner.
But the first question is: what is your earliest memory of money?
This can elicit some really interesting stories. Maybe it’s about collecting an allowance from a chore you did when you were three years old. Maybe it’s about a fight your parents had about money. Regardless, the answer gives you a sense of what someone’s early exposure to money was—and maybe a little background about their bias towards it.
Second question: think about your 13 year-old self—what economic or social class were you a part of?
Were you one of the rich kids? Poor kids? Somewhere in between? And how did you know that? What was that experience like?
This is a cool one because middle school is such an interesting time when social hierarchies start to occur. You start to notice yourself in comparison to other people as you begin to tune into your own sense of identity. This question helps you understand how your partner might identify with money.
Last question: as an early adult, what did you learn about money?
Think about the time in your life when you finally flew the coup and weren’t part of your parents payroll anymore. You’re on your own when it comes to making financial decisions. What was that like? How did that time impact you?
Oddly enough, a lot of couples I’ve met started their relationship during those early adulthood years. So this can bring up some fun memories. This is where I’ve seen couples reflect, “remember our first date? I only had $50 in my bank account…” And the conversation that ensues is really about what the dynamic was when you started blending your monetary values within the relationship.
Even if you weren’t together during this time, getting a feel for a person’s early habits and experience with money can offer insight into why they value what they do today.
Opening with this conversation offers valuable context—but it can also allow for increased empathy as you move through the more tenuous financial conversations.
Conversation 2: Does Your Spending Reflect Your Values?
This question digs a little bit into your identity: where do you spend your money?
If somebody didn’t know you and looked at your bank account and noticed where you spent most of your money, what would they say about you—and are you aligned with that?
When you have this conversation with your spouse, it creates a really open dialogue around where your values are.
I’ll always remember a conversation I had with one of my good buddies, who was living in Chicago at the time. He was telling me that he’d been chatting with someone about mountain biking and skiing and it made him seem like a really big outdoorsman.
But then he said to me, “Taylor, I haven’t gone skiing in four years. How could I say all of those things?” Next thing I know, he’s moving out to Colorado so he can start skiing again.
I tell this story because sometimes we identify with something, but don’t really practice it. This conversation with your spouse allows you to consider whether the way you identify with money is actually being practiced. It’s an opportunity to adjust course so that your budgeting and spending habits truly align with who you are and who you want to be.
Of course, not all couples have the same values. So it’s important to approach this conversation without shame, guilt, or story-telling.
This is where it can be important to have a financial advisor or a trusted third-party be a part of these conversations. It can get a little sticky or uncomfortable when judgments get involved. Having a pro on-hand can help keep things from going off-course.
The next question to tackle: how to come to terms with potentially opposing values?
How do you and your spouse come to terms with the fact that one of you might value one thing, and the other value something completely different?
Personally, I have an interesting ‘family money’ origin story that speaks to this:
My dad worked construction when I was young and he’s always been fairly frugal. My mom was a banker and was generally the breadwinner. One day, my dad needed some new boots. He wanted to buy something cheap, but my mom encouraged him to get a nicer pair—Red Wings. This was back in the 80s, so the price difference was probably $30 for the cheap pair, $100 for the nicer boots. Of course, he ended up buying the cheap ones.
Well, a month or so goes by and the $30 boots break down. So he goes out and buys another pair. Then another couple months go by and they fall apart again, so he goes and buys another pair. After about three or four cycles of this, my mom said, “Stop. Go buy the good boots. Because now you’ve spent more money on poor quality boots than you would have if you’d invested in the good boots in the first place.” So he did. And what’s unbelievable is that I’m pretty sure those Red Wing boots are still at my parents’ house. My dad worked those things into the ground, but they lasted.
In my parents’ case, they were looking at finances from two value sets. One wanted quality and the other wanted frugality. That’s a common dynamic you might find when two people come together.
And while you can’t necessarily change your partner’s values, you can discuss various ways you might be able to find some compromise around them. That’s what we’re looking for.
Conversation 3: What’s your take on investment strategy and risk?
This covers a big umbrella—there’s a wide world of investments out there—so this is another situation where it might help to have a professional in your corner.
But one of the simpler questions is: how much cash do you want to have on-hand?
I recently had a conversation with a young couple who had some shared values in that they were both savers, but they had a very different understanding of risk. The husband wanted to place a good amount of money in investments, and the wife wanted to keep most of their money in cash. Her family taught her that cash was king.
This couple was at an impasse, so we had to discuss what level of cash was appropriate to have on-hand, professionally speaking. How much needs to be in the cash reserves to maintain a safety net without holding onto too much, thereby risking the potential growth that comes with investing?
The next question: what does retirement look like?
How much do you want to dedicate to your retirement funds?
If one person says, “I don’t really want to retire,” but the other wants to retire yesterday, then we need to understand what that might look like—and how you’d prefer to save and invest within that structure..
Of course, that leads to overall questions about investments: stocks, bonds, real-estate, crypto—what type of investments do you want to be investing in?
It’s important to get on the same page here because I find a lot of folks will take an experience where they’ve invested in the past—good or bad—and let it dictate how they invest in the future.
For example, a person of a certain age tends to be a little gun shy to invest in real-estate. Even with all the growth they’ve seen over the years, they had a bad experience (usually around 2008 during the Global Financial Crisis). They may have lost a lot of money when the real-estate market imploded and they’re hesitant to get back into it.
Understanding each person’s bias toward investing is going to inform how the two of you can move forward.
Another question that speaks to risk: how much life insurance should you have?
There are people who don’t believe in life insurance and there are folks who believe they should have more than they need.
I remember a client a number of years ago who was newly married, but whose husband would not have a conversation with me. He didn’t want to consult with a professional. He wanted to do it on his own. When I asked what their feelings were about life insurance, she said, “he doesn’t believe in it and we shouldn’t have it.”
That experience made me realize how difficult it can be for a financial plan to thrive when there isn’t an openness within the relationship to discuss all the options. If you can’t get into a dialogue, one person will likely get what they want, sometimes to the detriment of the other.
Having the investment and risk management strategy conversation is important in the context of your joint financial health.
Conversation 4: What are your short and long-term goals?
When talking about your goals, consider both your individual goals and the goals you have for your partnership or family.
Short-term goals might include paying off your credit cards within the next year, buying a new car, or going on a vacation. Longer term goals might include wanting to retire early, buying a vacation property, or starting a business. Just get on the same page with where everyone’s at.
Recently, while having dinner with my wife, we started talking about our future and she said, “I envision us at age 65 in a beautiful home in the mountains. We’re going to be sitting on the back patio with our kids and their kids.” And it blew my mind, not only because I’d never heard her talk about that vision for our family, but because it’s my vision, too. We were able to share it together.
The beauty is that, by knowing this, we can really work toward building that vision together. And we have over 25 years to get there.
Your long and short term visions can and should be a changing, malleable discussion. As I’ve mentioned before, plan to “rent the dream before you buy it.” If you want to travel the country in a van, rent an RV before you buy one. Your vision can be flexible—and it’s allowed to change.
What’s important to remember is that a shared vision is a lot easier to make possible. So if your visions are vastly different, how can you blend them to make them work?
If you have two people rowing against each other—and they haven’t had any of the previous conversations, either—guess what? The goal stuff won’t work. Your boat will be rowed in two different directions and you’ll stall out.
As always, this conversation is great to have with an advisor, who can offer suggestions around how to merge your visions if they don’t immediately align. But ideally, this is a check-in conversation you have with your partner on an annual basis. It’s great to do around the first of the year where you can start goal-setting, re-setting, re-structuring, and getting all the gears in place to set yourselves up for a successful year.
Conversation 5: How will you divide your roles in the financial management of the household?
This is huge. And I put it at the end because the previous conversations are likely to inform the best practice here.
I’ve found every household has a different structure, but oftentimes you’ve got a COO (Chief Operating Officer) and a CFO (Chief Financial Officer). In my case, my wife operates as the COO. She’s making sure our schedules are dialed-in and the flow of household needs are met. As my skills are well-suited for it, I take up more space as the CFO.
Even with our separate roles, we do our best to stay on the same page and inform each other. Just like I need to know when our daughter’s dance class drop-off is, my wife needs to know where our money is going. And we both need to have input. She recently expressed interest, for example, in a few investment opportunities and we were able to have a dialogue about it. This felt great. She has agency around our finances and we get to make the decisions together.
I tend to be the one who takes action once the financial decisions are made. Just like she’s the one who books the schedules after we’ve both decided what activities to enroll our kids in. This is the flow that works for our family.
Understanding your role, both in terms of big strategic stuff and the day-to-day, is so helpful.
I have a client who’s in his mid-60s. His current challenge is that his wife is dealing with some serious medical issues and hasn’t been able to do the day-to-day accounting she’s accustomed to. He tends to be in charge of the big-picture strategy and she puts it all together. We’re talking bill pay, depositing checks, and getting things in the right order.
Because they never had a conversation around their defined roles, he had a very steep learning curve in terms of what he needed to take on once she was unable to fulfill her role.
Use that as a cautionary tale. If something were to happen—separation, medical criss, or otherwise—and you suddenly had to take on your partner’s role, would you even know what’s on their plate? Or would you be scrambling to piece it all together?
If you’re able to have a clear conversation around each other’s roles, it allows efficiencies in the operations of your entire household. This particularly impacts your finances, as just about everything it takes to run a household costs money.
Having this conversation will ease the flow of so many relationship woes. Get those checks-and-balances accounted for—you’ll thank yourselves later.
It’s Never Too Late to Talk Finance with Your Spouse
Across the board, the big takeaway here is strong communication. It really doesn’t matter if you’ve been married for years—it’s never too late to get on the same page. Especially when it comes to your finances. Because when you don’t have clarity around your vision, your strategies, and your values, it’s exponentially harder to stick to a financial plan that reaps the kinds of rewards you both need.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I really do recommend inviting a third-party into the conversation, especially if you’ve been putting off these conversations for years. If it feels intimidating to talk about this with your partner, it’s probably because there are some big feelings at play. I’ve seen long-held resentments around money turn a conversation into an uncomfortable dialogue.
That said, bad blood can be important to unpack. And when it comes to finances, there’s usually a path forward that compliments what both people want.Our culture doesn’t encourage this kind of open money talk. But I do. If you and your spouse are looking to get on the same page about your financial future—and put in the work to build your wealth together—give us a call here at Four Points Wealth Management. I’m open to discussions, love the conversations, and am always happy to help.
Four Points Wealth Management
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