Renewing Your Marriage Vows – Financially

Ok, so until NOW, you two have worked just fine together. Sure, he’s a sort of sloppy spender who runs a credit card balance every once in a while, but you keep the household accounts neat, the bills get paid, and you never (ok, rarely) bicker about money.

But NOW it’s different for everyone. Even if you’re not facing a bout of unemployment yet, money is tough. He had to take furlough days; you’re not getting a bonus; your home equity line was cancelled; the gutters need replacing; both kids need braces. It’s not so easy running the His, Hers, and Ours money system. In fact, you’re starting to chafe about his weekly golf game, and you’re fretting you’ll need to work until age 75 to make the retirement plan a reality. You’ve started arguing about money.

Before your arguing makes money problems worse, you need to change the way you work together. You need to re-marry under new partnership terms. As you’re reading a personal finance blog, I suspect you’re pretty money-aware. I’m a financial planner, but here’s the financial awareness I didn’t have until I co-wrote my book, The Family CFO, with Christine Larson.

While interviewing scores of couples across the country, we discovered that successful couples (not necessarily rich, but successful in the sense that they regularly achieve their financial goals) were identical in three crucial ways:

1. One checking account. Successful couples combined their finances completely, whether they were on their first marriage or not. They were united as partners. Each knew where the money was coming from and where it was going.

2. Delegation of responsibilities. Just because they both knew what was going on didn’t mean they were both writing checks and auditing the electric bill. Instead, one clearly took on the role of Cash Manager and paid all the bills. But that partner also reported to the other regularly on where the money was going.

3. Unified goals. Most important, however, each partner in the successful couples could state their three most important money goals at any time. Was paying down debt more important than maximizing the 401K? Was the kids’ tuition more important than a new car? These couples were focused on the trade-offs and comfortable with those consequences.

Interestingly, these couples weren’t argument-free. But they did argue about strategic, not tactical, issues. Regularly, they got together and talked about the trade-off in working longer or enjoying a bigger home now. Those chats weren’t always comfortable. One partner’s dream of an early retirement often conflicts with the other partner’s wish to enjoy life a bit more today. But the successful couples fought at that level and not after festering with resentment for years over the weekly golf game. When successful couples agree on a financial goal, their spending followed on a daily basis. Even the spender in the couple (savers almost always marry spenders!) agrees to take his lunch to work if he knows it’s part of the plan to afford something else.

So, here are the new marriage vows for this new economy:

I, Financial Worrier, take you, Financial Agnostic, to have and to hold, in employment and in hardship. I promise to argue about the big things and to act consistently on our conclusions in the small things. I promise to trust you and to combine our checking accounts. I promise to report to you regularly on where our money is going and when we might retire. I promise to involve you in our finances in ways that highlight your strengths.

I, Financial Agnostic, take you, Financial Worrier, to have and to hold, in employment and in hardship. I promise to argue about the big things and to act consistently on our conclusions in the small things. I promise to trust you and to combine our checking accounts. I promise to listen to your regular reports and to respect that our resources are limited. I promise that I do want to retire someday. I promise to take on the financial responsibilities that are mine, even if it just means inviting you to the 401K session HR puts on annually.

Now, pop open a bottle of the bubbly!

By Marie Claire Allvine