How Can Money Talks Improve a Relationship?

Talking about money is one of our most deeply held taboos. Even in close relationships, people avoid this thorny topic. It can be hard to think of a reason to risk spoiling a fine moment with your favorite person by bringing up the subject of finances. And yet, conversations about money can actually help take your relationship to the next level.

You stand a better chance of getting your needs met and enjoying greater intimacy, honesty, and trust when you share your money goals and needs with your partner. Regular conversations help you realize your shared and individual dreams and achieve security through planning and teamwork as you move through life together.

Benefits of Talking about Money

Talking about finances is a key ingredient in couples’ long-term success. Having these important conversations will ensure you create a shared vision, prevent problems, work towards the same goals, secure a solid financial future, stay on the same page, reach your individual goals, and have a healthy relationship.

Communication is a key part of a healthy relationship. Your conversations about money should be an open and honest discussion with your partner about your financial situation and goals.

To Create a Shared Vision

You may suspect that you and your partner have different money goals. It can be tempting to avoid exploring these differences, hoping to prevent conflict. But if you sidestep a review of your life and money aspirations, you won’t know about any tension arising from the differences.

For instance, home ownership might be an important way that one of you defines a good life. The other person may prefer to rent for a lower cost and apply the difference to traveling: their idea of a good life. Finding out that your goals differ won’t necessarily bring conflict. In fact, it’s an opportunity to create a harmonious arrangement that fulfills both your needs.

By chatting about the differences in your desires, you might decide on a middle path like buying a condo, housing that you own but that costs less than a single-family home and leaves enough money for regular travel. Or, you might take turns and focus on one goal or sub-goal at a time. Maybe after your next trip, you can start saving for the down payment on a home.

When both partners have input and feel understood, their shared vision can make their contributions seem worthwhile.

To Prevent Problems

Open discussion of money lets you prevent problems such as having no financial plan, having a one-sided plan, or being unequipped for difficult situations.

If you completely avoid discussing money, years can go by without either of you dealing with financial matters beyond a superficial level. You may end up in debt and with minimal or no savings for retirement, children’s education, or unexpected events.

Similarly, if you don’t communicate about money, one of you might take charge of essential financial duties while the other person is in the dark. Whoever assumes responsibility may do so just to keep the household running. Or, they may be seeking total control over the household finances. In a safe and healthy relationship, both of you know about the state of your finances.

In a marriage and sometimes in other types of long-term partnerships, both parties are responsible for certain debts and taxes, so it’s wise to prevent problems through open communication.

As well, avoiding money talks can mean not being equipped to handle emergencies and difficult situations. If you were no longer able to make decisions, what would you like to happen? How would that solution be paid for? After you’re gone, what would you like to happen to your money? Discussing these issues (and even better, recording your wishes in legally binding documents) makes it easier for your loved one to cope with tough situations.

To Pursue the Same Goals

Shared life goals are an integral part of marriage and other long-term relationships. Saving for the future so that you can both retire early, buy a big-ticket item, become digital nomads, or be debt-free is a meaningful way to plan your finances. It gives the two of you an exciting goal to work towards together.

When you and your partner have the same goal, you can share your vision of what life will be like when the goal is reached. You can talk about the details that make the dream come to life. Working and delaying gratification is easier when someone else is doing the same thing alongside you and when they can make the vision seem so real.

To Secure a Solid Financial Future

People are living longer than ever, but aging is linked to chronic health conditions that can be costly to treat.

When trying to make your money last beyond your working years, you and your partner will have to put money in savings and investments and keep your debt low. If you’re both on the same page and regularly discuss finances together, your path is more likely to unfold in the way you envision it will.

Conversations about money can offer encouragement to stay focused on goals, as delaying gratification can at times be difficult. It takes vision, action, consistency, and patience to have financial well-being and stability throughout your lifetime. You and your partner can remind each other that the reward for this effort is reduced financial stress, uncertainty, and vulnerability.

Talking about money together will also help keep you both accountable for making steady progress towards your common goals.

To Be on the Same Page

Being on the same page means talking regularly, discussing dreams together, and creating money goals.

If you want to make sure you’re of the same mind as your partner about a goal, talking about it is the only way to find out. By avoiding a talk about financial goals, you could be operating under a false assumption for quite a while. Hard feelings can develop if you find that the time and effort you invested aren’t bringing you satisfaction.

As you chat about finances, you may find out you don’t want the same things as your partner. That’s not necessarily a problem because a difference of opinion can be a springboard for a deeper discussion. As you come to understand why a goal is important to your partner, the goal can become something you’re concerned with too. Your partner can also seek this understanding of your aspirations.

You may not end up perfectly in sync about each other’s financial visions, but the process of discussing them will no doubt bring you closer together and may pave the way for striking a happy balance in the future. In fact, 94% of couples who describe their marriages as “great” discuss their money dreams together, compared with only 45% of those in “okay” or “in crisis” relationships.

To Reach Individual Goals

No matter how well you communicate as a couple about your shared goals, you probably each have a few of your own individual goals that simply don’t involve two people. Maybe one of you wants to go to graduate school or start a business.

Discussing individual desires together helps to ensure that both your and your partner’s separate goals can be met, as well as your shared goals.

Imagine having another person at your side helping you make your individual dream a reality. Imagine being able to support your partner in the same way. The efforts and resources of two people with a common commitment can yield remarkable results.

In the end, when you’ve reached your personal goals and become more accomplished in an area of your choosing, you bring more to your relationship, whether financially or in a less tangible way.

Regardless of any particular outcome, when you and your partner share your individual needs, you both feel heard and respected, and the relationship benefits.

To Promote a Healthy Relationship

Not only do regular money talks with your partner support your financial well-being, but they’re good for your relationship because they deepen honesty, intimacy, and trust.

Honesty. Because of the unpleasantness of talking about money, it can be tempting to keep financial details hidden from your partner. Even though some money conversations can feel awkward or distressing, the upside to communicating is that a mature partner is likely to notice and appreciate your honesty and respond in kind.

Intimacy. It’s risky to open up and share about an issue as emotionally charged as money. Everyone grows up hearing certain beliefs about this subject. Some of these beliefs are helpful, but many are damaging and link a person’s economic status to their value, self-worth, or potential.

Many times, you may not even be conscious of how these messages have influenced your thinking. It takes time, awareness, and strength to overcome harmful money programming from childhood.

To share any part of this journey, or how it affects your present-day money mindset, is difficult. But sharing can draw you closer to your partner, enable you to better support each other, and allow you to understand each other’s feelings and behavior around money.

Trust. Because discussing money is such a taboo in many societies, sharing your dreams, aspirations, and attitudes about money requires trust in the listener. We’ve all made mistakes in handling our finances and would rather avoid being judged about them. When you dare to be straightforward about your missteps, you can build trust in the long run, but if you hide financial problems from your partner, you risk breaking down the trust you share.

Money Talks Shed Light on Other Issues.

Rarely is a discussion of finances limited entirely to dollars and cents. A conversation about money can bring up issues of power, responsibility, and privacy in a relationship, among others. Airing these ideas can be momentarily unpleasant but far healthier than denying or hiding them. By talking, you create an opportunity to work on areas of imbalance or discomfort before they have a chance to undermine your relationship.

How Talking about Money in a Relationship Promotes Well-being

Financial well-being is just one part of your overall well-being, a framework which also includes emotional, intellectual, social, physical, spiritual, occupational, and environmental dimensions. All parts are interrelated. When there’s trouble in one area, you can experience distress in any or all other areas.

Money conversations with your partner promote well-being in all dimensions, especially in the financial and social areas. Financial resources, stability, and security are necessary to enjoy a good life in all of its dimensions.

When you can negotiate positive ways to handle finances with your partner, your overall wellness is likely to improve. Financial stress is a factor in mental and physical disease and in couples’ and children’s challenges. It even affects entire communities.

By adopting stress-reducing measures such as paying off debts, lowering expenses, and saving money for emergencies or retirement, you can experience better well-being in your life, relationship, family, and community.

Key Takeaways

In this post, I’ve shared some benefits of having money conversations with your significant other.

I hope you see the many advantages that can be gained when you move past any discomfort about risk-taking and vulnerability.

You stand a better chance of getting your needs met and enjoying a deeper and closer relationship when you share your money goals and needs with your partner. Regular conversations help you realize your shared and individual dreams and achieve security through planning and teamwork as you move through life together.

Talking about your finances doesn’t have to be painful. Money is just one part of your world, but you need to talk about how you’ll use your assets to realize your goals and live your best life. Open, honest discussion allows each person to know where their partner stands.

Through listening and compromise, you and your partner can join forces to make the best use of your resources and work towards your individual and shared goals. This teamwork multiplies your own efforts, speeds up results, and makes the journey more enjoyable.

Resources

This post focuses on the benefits of money talks.  To complement this topic, get tips for how to have financial conversations with your partner in our companion post, Holistic Wealth: Elevating Your Relationship Through Mindful Financial Conversations.

And here are some more resources about how to have successful financial conversations with your significant other.

• When to Have That Money Talk With Your Partner
• Relationships and Money: Money Matters in a Relationship
• How to Talk About Money with Your Partner

Start or Join a Conversation

Thanks so much for your dedication to learning more about financial well-being.

Many perspectives are possible about having financial conversations with a partner. Your thoughts are key to this community. Please share them here. If you don’t already have an opinion at the top of your mind, consider sharing your views on one of these points:

Have you ever benefited from having a money talk with your significant other? How so?

Or maybe you’ve had a conversation about finances backfire on you and cause more grief than it was worth. What happened?

Do you have a question that wasn’t addressed in the post? Comment below, and I’ll give you my best answer.

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Notice

This post is for educational purposes only and is not legal nor any other type of professional advice. You should consult your own attorney, financial advisor, health provider, or counseling professional concerning any issues in these areas of expertise.

Please understand that facts and views change over time. Posts reflect the author’s understanding at the time of writing, as well as the perspectives of external sources for this post.

While maintained for your information, archived posts may not reflect current conditions.

Photo Credits

1 Korney Violin

2 Infographic © Whole Person Finance

3 Roselyn Tirado

4 Toa Heftiba

5 Adam Pluchrat

6 Esther Ann

7 Shingi Rice

8 Christina@Wocintechchat.com 9 Aaron Burden