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In this issue, you
get invaluable guidance for couples
in dealing effectively with financial opportunities and challenges.
Your relationship with your romantic partner has many sides to
it. It is a romantic relationship, a physical relationship, a social
relationship, perhaps even a legal relationship, but it is also a
financial relationship. All of this is probably not the news.
However, as you have also probably already discovered, stress in the
financial area spills over and creates discord in the other areas.
This issue of the Emerging Entrepreneur eZine is about dealing more
effectively about finances with someone you are close to.
Money is consistently named as a leading cause of divorce. It
is doubtful that too much money would drive a couple apart. Too
little money may cause some depression and disappointment, but not
necessarily a divorce. The inability to discuss money without
fighting and the inability to contribute to each other's financial
well being is what causes problems.
The safety that we experience in intimate relationships
frequently permits thoughts and feelings to come to the surface that
remain suppressed in other relationships. The best financial
arrangements for your household can be gained by experimentation.
Most people handle money in their relationships the same way that
their parents did. Unless your parents' financial life was totally
harmonious, then it might be worthwhile to experiment a little.
Parental arguments about money often leave people with the idea that
money is not a socially acceptable topic of conversation because of
the upsets that seem to be caused by discussing it.
If you find it impossible to discuss money with your romantic
partner, then important financial decisions and spending behavior
will be determined by your momentary emotions and unconscious
thinking patterns rather than by the effective alignment of your
decisions and behavior with your financial goals. It is essential to
manage your finances in a businesslike way if you desire to achieve
more and accumulate more.
Successful negotiation can be accomplished by having a financial
discussion with your partner at regularly scheduled intervals (the
beginning of the month is usually a good time). At this discussion,
make agreements about who will pay how much of each of the expenses.
This is a reasonably risk free way to do it, even if both of you are
afraid of negotiating, because the agreement only lasts for a month.
At the beginning of the next month you will have had a month's
experience with the agreement you made and an opportunity to make a
different one or just change parts of it.
Many couples find it difficult to discuss money issues in a
straightforward and honest way. A comment I frequently hear is
"Talking about money always leads to a fight." It is essential that
you practice the following suggestions so that you and your partner
can learn to discuss your finances without criticizing each other
and yelling at each other. If you don't, then you won't get much
more money than you already have. In other words, as long as you
believe that money leads to fights, you may conclude: if we have
more money, then we'll have more fights. This conclusion can result
in unconscious sabotage of even the best-made plans to accumulate
wealth.
If the woman is the one who stays at home and takes care of the
house and the man is the only income producer, then it is reasonable
for her to receive a salary for the household managerial services
she provides. If he objects, then she can suggest that he look in
the local newspaper to find out how much live-in maids cost these
days. Conversely, if the man is the only income producer and pays
the rent or mortgage payments; then there is no reason that the
woman should not pay rent out of her salary. I always recommend that
both people in an intimate relationship have their own checking and
savings accounts. Joint checking usually turns into a race--a race
to see who can spend the money first or a race to see who can be the
more martyr-like about not spending it.
It is inevitable that you and your partner will have
disagreements from time to time about money and about other issues
as well. If two people agree on everything, you can be sure that one
of them is doing all the thinking. The purpose of the methods
described in this article is to enable you to reduce conflict about
finances, resolve quickly the conflicts that do occur and to enable
you to contribute to each other in defining and accomplishing your
goals. If the financial values of your spouse are vastly different
from yours then you are bound to have problems unless you can
reconcile the differences. To state an extreme example, if one
partner insists on saving every spare penny to buy a house and the
other insists on spending every spare penny gambling at the local
race track, then resolution of these differing values is an
essential pre-requisite to financial harmony and co-operation. That
two people with such greatly different financial values would marry
each other or stay married for very long is unlikely.
Most couples
already have substantial agreement about financial
values and some differences. Learning to contribute to each other's
financial success involves identification of similar values and
minimization of the conflict caused by differing values. Keeping all
of your money in joint accounts makes each and every expenditure a
source of potential conflict. If each partner has agreed upon money
of his own that he or she can spend, save or invest without
justification or explanation, then the potential for conflict is
greatly reduced. Keeping all of your money in joint accounts is most
often a sign that a couple is not effectively discussing their
finances and is also a source of conflict. Many couples who keep all
of their money in joint accounts do so simply because their parents
did and have not considered alternatives. If your parents had a less
harmonious relationship regarding money issues than you would like
to have, surely it is time for you to consider
alternatives.
Since I first wrote this piece in the 80s, I discovered
that the delightfully irascible Dr. Ruth, famous sex therapist,
also favors the use of
separate bank accounts for couples.
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