Episode 1: Why Do Couples Fight About Money?

Hi, I'm Dr. Magna Mohambre and you're listening to Spark, a relationship and sexual wellness podcast where we believe the grass is greener where you water it. Today we're going to talk about money and the role that it plays in romantic relationships and marriage. We know that research suggests that money is one of the biggest sources of conflict for couples next to things like housework and children and sex. Disagreements surrounding money can create a lot of stress and tension between partners which then can seep into other areas of the relationship and generate feelings of anger and frustration and resentment that can potentially threaten the stability of the overall relationship. So today I'd like to welcome my first guest, Jonathan Grolo, a friend of mine who is a financial planner that regularly works with couples to help them manage their money. Welcome to the show, John. Thanks for having me, Magna. So can you tell us a little bit about what you do in context of money and relationship well-being? Yeah, absolutely. So I am a personal financial planner. So many people are fairly familiar with the concept. You walk into a storefront, sit down with me. We talk about your goals, dreams, hopes, desires. I support people with investing and insurance. But more importantly, I focus on behavior. And as much as the numbers are a big deal, as much as the numbers matter, when I look at financial planning, a lot of times it's how about the numbers make us feel as well as the actual results of the numbers. You know, what's the point of saving a million dollars if you are miserable every day getting there and it's not going to get you anything you want? So in my mind, I imagine couples seek out a financial planner not only to protect their money, but also to protect their relationship. I mean, at least that's how I would approach it. So based on your experience, would you say that that's an accurate impression? Not at all. Really? Yeah. So most of the couples that come to us come because either there's something they're missing, they know there's something missing, they might not know what it is as far as, you know, we feel we should be investing or they come to us because we got married, we heard you need to buy insurance. They come to us because kind of one of those stories out there, one of the jokes we have internally in the industry and even with a lot of our members is we are the relationship counselors, we are behavioral, you know, two spouses sit down, I want to buy a car, let's buy used, let's buy new, you know, and you end up in the middle of that discussion. And so it's interesting because that's quite often where we end up going is supporting each other as we determine those, sometimes it's determining those financial differences. Sometimes it really is navigating much like a counselor. Yeah, so they're coming to you thinking that they're just going to talk about money. But you, it sounds like, are already prepared that underlying the money is going to be different relational issues that start to come to the surface that you kind of have to help them navigate. And it absolutely can. It kind of depends on the depth of the relationship that we create with the couples. You know, some couples come in, hi, I want to invest and they do it and they leave and that's really the only conversation. While I focus a lot more on the planning, why do you want to invest? What's this for? Well, you know, oh, I want kids, I want a house. And now all of a sudden we have two different goals, we have two different priorities that both involve saving. But again, timelines, how to get money, how to use money might be dramatically different. And all that plays into optimizing, because that's really my goal at the end of the day. If you give me a dollar, how do I optimize it for you to reach your goal? And so if a couple's not on a similar page or understands each other are on different pages, it's really hard to get the full buy-in from all parties involved to feel confident in their financial strategies or their financial situation as it sits. So would you say, do you ever find yourself in a situation where you guys are talking about one thing, like, okay, what are we going to invest in? And then it starts to get a little heated and intense because they're disagreeing, and then, you know, maybe the tone has suddenly changed of the meeting. Very much. I can actually, so one of the unique things I do is I have a behavioral finance certification, behavioral financial advisor, and as part of that, a lot of the work I do is a values exercise, really early on in the program. And it's really easy to do a values exercise with an individual business owner or with a young individual or with a divorcee that's retiring, they're pretty confident about their values. But when it comes to a couple, and you can look at a couple in many different situations and a romantic couple especially, they might not have sat down and gone through what values are the most important to them truly. And it's not saying they're not on the same page, but it's, "Oh, for you, a number is more important, and for you, the other individual in the couple, the feeling that that number creates is more important." So is the word money more important to you, or is the idea of wealth more important to you? And it really does become a lot of how do we want to think about this because we're not going to come to a complete consensus. So I like what you're saying about values, really underlying the way that we each individually think about money, manage our money, and then you join together with another person in a relationship or a marriage, and suddenly you guys need to kind of compromise and find some common ground on how you're going to treat money in your relationship. Well, and one of the things you said that I think really resonates a lot with the work I do, you said you need to compromise. Do you? Do they? Do they realize they do? I think for my parents, got married, money got merged. I don't know how it happened for my parents. I wasn't really around at that point. But that's kind of the common thing that many of the younger generation right now grew up with. Mom and dad have everything. They share everything. Everything's together. Maybe there's a hidden account somewhere. That's always one of the funniest things when we discover that and money, and maybe sometimes I bring it up because no one told me it was a hidden account. But now with younger couples or just really just kind of more of a different mindset, it's why do we have to merge everything? Why do we have to do everything the same? Why do we have to agree on everything? And that's even where with money I talk a lot about what's equal doesn't necessarily mean equitable and sometimes that can be really hard in a relationship when it comes to finance. So yeah, you bring up a good point that the way our parents or our grandparents' generation handled money within marriage might look very different than the way younger couples who might be a little more egalitarian where the wife is also working and they don't necessarily need to merge everything and can have something separate and something's together. So on that note, I'm curious to know, and I'm sure you work with a variety of couples in terms of age, but what are some of the most common issues that you've observed in the couples that you work with today? I think some of the most common issues are different levels of education. One spouse, and I'm going to say it this way, thinks they know everything about investing in finance and the other one thinks they don't know anything. Now usually both ends of that spectrum turn out to be not true. You definitely know something about money. You definitely probably do not know everything about money. When we work on the absolutes, I think we can all understand that. That can create a lot of conflict. I think another part comes to how individuals deal with money. When you bring two individuals together into a relationship, if we go to the total stereotype, man pays for everything on the first few dates, now it's becoming much more common. Let's split stuff. You pick up some, I pick up some, and then you start to get into, as you're more involved in a relationship, and maybe there's some expense sparing, maybe sharing, maybe you're living together, well, is it still the same if we're both picking up the same amount of stuff and you're making twice as much as I am and do, as a man, the woman makes more and do my friends make fun. These are all the things our society has created. One thing I think that I've seen maybe even in the past seven years is do these stereotypes being broken. It doesn't have to be that way. It doesn't mean it's that way. Yeah, my wife makes more awesome for me, and I still participate and I still contribute. So I'm hearing you say either they have differences in who's supposedly the expert on money and what they want to do it, but I'm almost wondering specifically, I'm thinking about what sorts of things would people want guidance on? Well, they're earning money, they're spending money, they're saving money, they're investing, retirement funds. Is there a specific area, one of those that you find to be like a trouble area more than others? How to do it together. That's really what it comes down to every time. Because you just hit on tons of different areas, and the problem is when we have any couple, it doesn't matter what that couple looks like. How do we achieve this goal together, understanding that you're a spender, I'm a saver. You make more than I make. I have a business and you have expenses, you don't. It's really the biggest hurdle I run into is getting two totally different individuals to come together on the same idea and to buy into a strategy that works for both of them. Because you could take it to, let's go to diet. If two people that are both vegetarian meat, it's very easy for them to come together. But if someone only eats meat and someone only eats vegetables, it's tough to turn that a vegetarian, turn that into a relationship sometimes. But it takes extra work, but it's totally possible. And getting the two people on a similar page or understanding that you can operate on two different pages. Every time, that's the biggest challenge. Once you break that hurdle, investing is not a problem. Saving is not a problem. Spending is not a problem. Earning is not a problem. Because there's an understanding and I find it comes down to the root cause of most relationships. We don't talk about money. Right. And that's a big goal of this podcast today and we have a workshop coming up later this month on money and how to handle it with your significant other. I think that we kind of have these implicit assumptions we make when we enter relationships and we think people just handle money the way we do and then we don't talk about it. And then we end up waiting until a problem arises and we disagree or we have some sort of issue and then suddenly it's like, oh gosh. And unfortunately, the topic of money doesn't end up just being about money. Like you were saying earlier, it has to do with values and it can be deeply personal and it can bring up a lot of emotions that we don't even realize are there underneath the issue of money. I'm curious, have you noticed patterns? So for example, attitudes that men tend to have versus women or maybe younger couples versus older couples or those who earn more money versus those who earn less money. Of course, we can't draw conclusions about everybody, but have you noticed patterns in your clients? I absolutely have. And I think it comes down to in the older generation quite often it's the man's responsibility to understand the finances. Even if the woman or I'll even say the, it's usually the woman in the relationship or the female personality in the relationship, the less dominant one in the relationship, they might pay the bills, they might handle all the day to day things, but the man is responsible for the money. And with the younger generation that can be true, but what I usually find is usually it's very much dominant and more passive personality in the relationship. And it doesn't matter in this case, man or woman. There's some couples, I don't call the husband because I want to get something done. I want a decision. And quite often he might even be the one that makes all the money or the wife's making all the money. It doesn't matter. It's very much in the younger couples. I'm finding it's more of the personality and quite often it's also someone wants to deal with it and someone doesn't. And that's one of the biggest challenges I have and I think couples have when one's willing to, you know, who wants to cook dinner tonight? Well, if it's always the same person, eventually this is going to be a problem. And with money, it seems that it's usually assigned and it's very quite often not equal amongst both. And if it is, that's usually where you have the healthiest financial relationships. Right. Interesting. So I'm thinking about our listeners and I'm imagining, you know, many of us are on the same page going, okay, money is an important topic. We need to talk about it with our partners. Where do they begin? What would you recommend that couples do to manage their money before their money starts to manage them? I think you just put it amazingly. Most people do not manage their money. They just let it run their life. You know, money is a tool at the end of the day. It gets us things. But we don't treat it like that. And I think the first thing is talking to your significant other. You know, we talked to our significant other about so many other topics that, you know, once we're even taboo, but money still is taboo. And for me, you know, I know with my wife now, conversations we have is, what was money like as a kid for you? And because there's no right or wrong to that. There's no judgment. There's no, and start with that because if, you know, think about it from a relationship standpoint, what were your mom and dad like growing up? If you grew up in a divorced household, you know, where mom, Harvard resentment, dad, you know, long lost love got away, that could probably affect your romantic relationships and finances are the same thing. If you grew up in a household where there was more money than anyone knew it to do it, then you never held back. And now you're dating the love of your life that grew up in a scarcity mindset, you know, had enough, but never had extra. And you don't know that about them. You might accidentally be very insensitive to their needs. Oh, I'll pick up this $100 bill. And people are like, Ooh, you're spending $100 on me. I'm not worthy. Why would you do this? And it's subconscious so often. There's so many books out there, there's so many things, I mean, talk about it, talk openly, remove the judgment, you know, look at a lot of past experiences, because when it comes to finances, past experiences tell us a lot. And the really cool thing about past experiences too is they're just that it's not who we are in the future. Yeah, it helps us understand how to support people in making that change. It's one of the most important questions I ask when I can't figure out what's going on with a couple. I finally say, what was money like for you as a kid? What was money like for you early in this relationship? If you want to see an empowered person, looked for someone who's divorced and their spouse previously handled all the finances, I don't care which role it is, they will own their finances like no other. They'll want to learn, they'll want to get educated like no other. It's actually incredible the transition that happens. And then the thing is you mentioned you're holding a workshop, hold them regularly because attending financial conversation workshops, you know, there's tons out there for how to budget, how to this, how to that, how to this, but figure out where you two actually are financially, figure out your understanding. Because just because I know how to buy stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs, and I can rattle off all these fancy words half the listeners might know or might not know doesn't mean that I'm going to be able to support you doing it. But if it's important to me and I believe it's important to us, I've got to find a way to bring you over there. I've got to find a way to bring you along with me because one of the important things I believe in a relationship is no matter how the relationship sends it's the end of the day. You know, the podcast started like it. Money's gonna be a big deal. And you can't get away from it. You can get away from diet, you can get away from exercise, you can get away from so much. But you know, money got me here, money's sitting me here, money will get me home. But I don't think about it for one second because I know what my plan and my tool is. And with a couple, get a plan, figure it out, check in on it, update it, talk to each other about it. Yeah. And that will, it'll relieve all of those financial tensions I truly believe and those financial intentions exist everywhere in your house if it's not good. Yeah, I like that you said, you know, talk about it, especially specifically what money was like for you as a kid. And I find it really meaningful that you pointed out that although the way money was handled in the past likely shapes the way we think about it and handle it now, it doesn't dictate how we have to handle it in the future. That we have the agency to change how we think about money, how we feel about money and how we move forward in our relationships with money. And that's that's a really powerful thought there that we can, we can control it. It doesn't have to control us that we can change, just kind of shift the story around money. And then as you mentioned, educating, educating yourselves, you know, go out there, find the information, sign up for workshops, take classes, seek a financial planner if you're able to and have them help walk you through it. Is there anything else that you would suggest to our listeners? Be intentional. You know, so many things we're intentional about, you know, we're intentional about our romantic relationship where, you know, when you when you talk about love languages, we're intentional about our love languages. You know, I know my wife likes gifts. She knows I like to be touched. But so often we're not intentional about our money. And when we are, it's about my money and your money, not our money. My wife and I went to the bank yesterday and deposited cash. We did it together. We knew what was going on. We're intentional. We, we don't question each other because I have a client, she does money Mondays. She sits down, she turns on good music, she pours herself a delicious drink and has a great time dealing with her finances. And by bringing intention when it's time to bring intention to it, I really, really strongly believe it will remove that lingering effect that happens the entire rest of the week, month or year. And if you do it with the person you're in love with, it's just going to make it more enjoyable. I'm not saying it's going to be easy 24/7, 365. It's coronavirus year. Money's not great for everybody right now. But the people that have been intentional and understood and adapted and made changes as their situations changed, they're feeling okay. And I think that's the biggest thing. Be intentional. If you ignore it, it's only going to get worse. And this is one of those things you can't ignore. It will exist in your relationship. That's really great. Money Mondays. And I like the idea of making it a positive experience, making it fun. It doesn't need to be something we dread. It doesn't have to cause anxiety. Money is a reality in our lives. And if we ignore it, if we run away from it, it will chase after us. So better to confront it up front as an individual as well as as a couple and create some fun traditions around it and get ahead of it so that down the road you're not having to untangle a mess that could have been addressed early on. Absolutely. Very cool. Well, we've got a workshop coming up, as I mentioned earlier, later this month called Money with Honey, where we are going to dive a little bit deeper into the topic of money and its role in relationships and really some concrete ideas and strategies of how you can work on money in your relationship. What can you do to get ahead of it? So check out our website, sparkwithmagnon.com, to learn more about that and sign up. And I want to thank you, John, for being with us here today. I really appreciated your insight and your suggestions for our couples. Thanks for having me. And just kind of in the world of financial advisors, just a little bit of disclosure. These are ideas and thoughts. It's not personal advice. The biggest thing you have to do is you have to be an individual. You have to seek individual advice. There's not a cookie cutter sheet for everybody and get support where you need to get it from the proper people. Talk to your tax advisors, talk to your planners, talk to your counselors, but also know that money is a big deal and it can show up in so many areas. Thanks for having me. Thank you so much.