Relationships and Money

I’m not someone who gets along well with numbers. I’m just not. I’m sure that’s the reason that the relationship based approach to finance that is expressed in the book,
 Till Debt Do Us Part. Balancing Finances, Feelings, and Family, by Dr. Bernard E. Poduska 
was so surprising and refreshing to me. The introduction to chapter two was so powerful to me that I would like to share it.

“It does not take us long to realize that we do not enter marriage empty handed; we carry a lot of ‘baggage’ with us. For instance, we bring our levels of self-esteem, our willingness to adapt to change, our attitudes toward life, and our expectations and values.

“Unfortunately, many newlyweds tend to bring to their marriages a fairy-tale belief in loving happily ever after, a belief seemingly based on this supposition: ‘We have been good. Therefore, only good things will happen to us.” This belief seems to blind them to the fact that their relationship will undergo radical and usually unexpected changes. One partner may even naively ask the other to ‘stay just the way you are.’ (If this were to happen, the partner making the request would someday be married to sixty-year old spouse with the maturity of a twenty-year-old! Not a pretty picture.)

“What usually prompts such a request is the desire to perpetuate the happiness the partner feels at that moment. Many erroneously assume that the state of being happy is static rather than dynamic, or changing. But life is change, and happiness is not fully appreciated in the absence of sorrow and hardship. Two people who go through life’s ups and downs together grow in ways neither may foresee. Because each partner changes, they do not just celebrate and annual anniversary but rather what could be called a ‘remarriage.’

“Two people celebrating a fiftieth wedding anniversary, for example, are not the same two people who married at age eighteen. A pioneer woman who built sod huts, plowed fields, bore and buried children, fought off Indians, dug wells during droughts, and twice nursed her husband back to health would not be the same debutante her husband first met in a quaint St. Louis sitting room. Having been through such adversity together, however, they would most likely end up loving each other in a deeper, more personal way than when they first met. She would have changed, he would have changed, and their love would have changed. And with each change they would recommit- redeclare- their desire to be married to each other.”

In order to make it through all of these changes and adjustments that life will inevitably hand to us, it is important for us to understand some things about the 'baggage' that each of us bring into our relationships. Some of this baggage comes in the form of unspoken rules and expectations that we bring from each of our families. By talking about these expectations we can do a better job of valuing and respecting each others perspectives. This is especially true of money issues.

Taking time to explore the following questions as a couple can open your understanding to the expectations and rules that you and your partner bring to your relationship. Even if you have been with your partner for a long time, these questions might turn on some light bulbs for you as you think about your partner's financial behavior.

'Your-perspective-matters-to-me' questions:

1.       Do you think your family was materialistic? In what ways?

2.       Could you ask for financial support? How did family members respond when another family member made a request for help?

3.       How did you and your parents express affection for each other?

4.       How did your parents express affection to each other?

5.       Were you allowed to express your feelings? Which feelings and to whom?

6.       How did your parents express approval or disapproval?

7.       How did family members respond to change?

8.        What kinds of roles were assigned to males and females?

9.       How did your family evaluate success? In terms of money, degrees, land, social status, or possessions? In other ways?

10.   How did your parents feel about debt?

11.   How did your parents manage the family finances?

12.   How openly could you talk about finances?

13.   In which socioeconomic (middle class, upper class, etc.) group do you think your family belonged? During which period of your live?

14.   What was your parents’ attitude toward both husband and wife working outside the home?

15.   What was your family’s attitude toward saving and investing?