Why do couples fight about money? Money in itself cannot be an issue. Money is this inanimate thing that is used to create a way of life; how good or bad this life is rests in the eye of the beholder. So couples never really fight about money, they fight about all the other things that money may trigger in them. Money fights are fear fights, disguised in a number of different ways.
In every couple, there are power differentials in a variety of areas. Nothing is ever 50-50 — child rearing, cooking, earning, planning — someone always is at least slightly in charge. So when it comes to money, it is important to recognize the differential. When one client is the sole provider as well as the family bookkeeper (regardless of how well-intentioned), power is often quite lopsided. The non-wage earner has little money of his or her own, and the money that he or she spends is being reviewed by the person making the money.
This is inherently unfair. No matter how accommodating the breadwinner is, he or she controls the purse strings. After being in thousands of client meetings, one thing is clear to me: Each person in a relationship should have some money that is completely their own.
One spouse was very uncomfortable with his spouse having some money just for herself. He shared everything — what was his was hers. He was afraid that if she wanted her own money she must not trust him, love him, or she was planning to leave him.
None of that was the case. She simply wanted to have full authority over a portion of their pocketbook. The husband did not see himself as controlling, yet his resistance to her wish was certainly controlling. Often whoever keeps track also keeps score. The score keeping may be subtle, but it invariably exists.
Once the husband quit making it about him and began seeing what she needed, he moved himself out of the foreground and into the background and became supportive of her separate account.
He was soon giving her any type of reimbursement or special check that he received for her to deposit. Money was not the problem — fears around control, security and independence were the underlying factors.
We work with another couple who spend too much, acknowledge this to be so, but are unwilling to make the spending changes necessary to become more comfortable. They own a too expensive home, take too nice trips and spend far more than they should on wants rather than needs. The nonworking partner feels her husband should be more successful; the husband, who is doing well but not great in his career, feels that his wife should appreciate the efforts he is making. Rather than accept where things are, they spend through assets at a clip that will force them to eventually pare back.
When this happens, they will have to directly confront why they were making these choices. The spending creates a false image of success that causes them to continue to spend. When the money is gone, what will be left? That is their fear. They are constantly bickering about money, but if that was the real problem, it could be readily solved by living according to their means.
We have encouraged the couple to enter counseling so that they could work through the real issues rather than making money the distraction from the problems.
One of the areas where we see a lot of couple discordance is over inheritances. A simple rule of thumb is that an inheritance always goes to the inheritor. The inheritor gets to decide how that money is going to be used, and they don't have to decide for at least a year. This usually drives the other spouse crazy.
But why? Again, it usually isn't about the money. In this case it is often about the interpretations that the non-inheriting spouse has about intent. How come what's mine is ours, but what's yours is yours? That's not the right question. Losing a parent is intensely emotional and a rite of passage that often requires adjustment.
An inheritance feels like a connection to that parent, and the assets also often come with the memories and the lessons that the parent tried to instill.
To simply turn that over into the family budget short-circuits the grief process and can lead to regret.
If the inheritance is something that has ongoing costs — such as a cabin — then a couple conversation needs to address how to fund those ongoing costs or whether you can afford to keep the property, but the conversation won't be settled by reason. Again, this is where the non-inheriting spouse needs to step into the background rather than the foreground, regardless of how unfair it may feel.
Inheritance also triggers fears — not necessarily of death, but of what kind of life have we lived and how much of it do we have left. Every money decision has some level of emotion attached to it, and inheritance is usually about a level nine.
Ross Levin is the founding principal of Accredited Investors Wealth Management in Edina.
