At some point in your relationship, you are going to ask the question, should we combine our finances?
We went all in, and we had a season where one of us had no income, and not once did we have the conversation of whose money paid for what.
And today, that choice puts us in the minority.
And we want to talk about what the trend away from combining is quietly costing couples, and what it has given us over our 30 years of marriage.
Welcome to Penned in Ink, a podcast where we discuss marriage and the power of long-lasting love.
So, Michael, how are you doing today?
That's the open you've got for today.
How am I doing?
I'm talking finances, I'm doing great.
I love talking finances, but I'm feeling a little naked because I don't have the iPad on my lap today, you do so.
Right, right.
So that's how it's gonna go.
You're gonna ask me stuff instead?
Yeah, I'm gonna make you share this time.
You're usually hogging it.
I share it, I'll share the iPad.
I was like, I share all the time.
What are you talking about?
No, I meant share the iPad.
Anyway, yes, today we were gonna talk about finances.
It's the second in a grouping of three or a set of three.
So take-- Do you wanna call it?
(laughing) We don't wanna call it.
This is our second episode in this series of three where we're gonna be talking about finances.
Last episode we talked all about learning your partner's money habits, money characteristics before marriage.
Today we are talking about what do you do when you're married?
What do your finances look like?
The big hairy decision of do you combine or not combine?
And I think one of the whole messages through here is that we are talking money for three straight episodes in a row because money is a huge part of building your life together.
And if you're not aligned, it causes problems.
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah, and it's really the fuel for building a life together.
And so it warrants the amount of time we're gonna spend on it.
Yeah, and when we have conflict, it's often around money, but not about money.
It's about communication and disagreements and values and a whole bunch of other stuff that we're gonna explore.
Right, exactly.
Get at it.
That's what we're doing.
That's exactly what we're leading on.
Lead on.
So I said in the open that at some point in your relationship, you're gonna ask the question, should we combine finances?
And our belief is that you should.
Plain and simple, you should in marriage, go on.
But let's first, before we discuss why we think that is, let's explore why a lot of people today are choosing not to combine their finances.
All right, let's take the other side of the argument.
I guess that's a good way to start as any, right?
Yeah.
Well, let's make the obvious reason why you shouldn't combine, you're married.
Don't combine if you're not married.
Sounds really simple, but you'd be amazed how many people mess up from the start and they decide to combine finances really early.
Last episode, we actually mentioned a stat that the biggest red flag in relationship was wanting to combine money too quick.
We would say anything before marriage is too quick.
Yeah, absolutely.
Why do we say that?
Is it just because we don't believe you should combine or is there like a real good reason you shouldn't do it?
Well, I think there's several good reasons.
What you got?
Well, I also wanna clarify that combining finances isn't just about co-mingling your money.
That could be buying a house, shared checking.
There are many different ways that you can combine and we still stand by that we believe that prior to marriage, you don't combine anything.
Yeah, finances means anything that you own or anything that you have in your bank accounts.
So don't buy a house with somebody you're not married to.
Not because we're morally against it, but because the law says it's really hard to get out from a marriage or get out from a relationship where you've combined your finances, bought a house together with someone you're not married to.
Yeah.
Talk about an ugly situation.
So beyond single, how are we gonna go through the discussion of why you would maybe not combine finances?
So we did a little bit of research and looked into, well, why do people not wanna combine their money?
And we kinda came up with four different areas that we felt the things that we read fell into.
Different groupings, there we go.
Fell into different groupings.
So what's the first one, Michael?
All right, so the first grouping is this concept of independence.
I wanna retain my independence.
I wanna stay in control of my money.
And that takes several different forms.
It's simply the, I don't want to run approvals through someone else, right?
One to say, or I don't want someone micromanaging and looking at my decisions.
Did I spend too much on my coffee?
Did I buy an extra pair of shoes?
Sort of keeping that decision autonomy is one of those.
The other one, another one that comes into there is, and this is really relevant if you're getting married later in life, I might already have my own bank accounts.
I have my own auto pays on my bills.
I have all these systems that are already in place that are familiar and comfortable.
I don't wanna change those.
And then the last one that sort of falls under here is a little bit of a nuanced area, but it's income discrepancies.
Let's say one of you make significantly more than the other.
That can bring all sorts of feelings of either, I mean, honestly, it's range.
Feeling dependent on somebody if they bring more than to the house, feelings of guilt, because I don't earn as much.
There's a whole bunch of different reasons that people cite.
So those are the first ones that people cite often about keeping independence.
What's the second collection we talked about?
The way that someone manages their money, their style, and then conflict.
And different spending habits.
Is one person a saver?
Or is one a spender?
That is a different style.
They might not want to mesh that because they're different.
Another one is they could have conflicting financial goals.
One might be an aggressive investor, and then somebody else is more conservative and just kind of dumps everything into savings.
One loves crypto, one loves bonds.
That would be a little bit of a conflict.
Right, exactly.
And then the last one in there, it simplifies, they feel it simplifies budgeting.
You split the share, you have, these are our shared expenses, we split them, and then the rest I do with my money what I want to.
Blends into a little bit of autonomy and keeping my own independence.
But there's the, how do we actually manage money?
It's really simple.
We figure out how we pay our joint and everything else we do our own.
So relationally simple.
Okay, so those are the first two.
What's the third one?
All right, third one is legal and protection.
So let's say that you are already through a marriage.
You might have alimony, you might have a court judgment, you might have child support.
Some of those things, the law might say you need to keep your money finances separate so that you can pay and they can track those sort of funds.
So there's some legal reasons.
Addiction and financial infidelity.
These are some of the truly, let's call them financially harmful areas that people will use if you have a legal judgment against you and you owe a bunch of money, might not be wise to combine.
And if you have experienced financial infidelity, it's really hard to argue that you should combine finances with somebody who steals your money.
Right, like fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
Exactly, and then I think there's also real world around do you have outstanding defaulted business debt or do you have extending lines of credit that are maybe in conflict?
So there's some maybe some legal reasons around there.
And then the protection piece, the last item in there is maybe you've seen your parents go through a financially hard breakup and you just don't want to get caught in a situation like that.
That's cited quite often.
There's one more area that we first explored was the last area.
That's the family and estate complexities.
So people get divorced and they get back together.
If they get together with other people, blended families.
There's concern around their inheritance lines.
If you have a kid with somebody, how does that get blended when you join with somebody else?
If I keep it separate, we know that my kid's getting my inheritance and maybe our kids together get something separate.
Yeah, and there's also like responsibilities for who pays for the kids.
And I guess some marriages embrace stepchildren more than others do.
And so if you really want to keep individual child expenses or you have a sense of equity in there, that's another one that's cited often for that.
And then people cite inheritances.
It's a hard word for me to say, inheritances.
So if my parents leave me something, they're my parents, you know, I want to keep that separate because that's mine.
So inheriting, yeah, your estate.
Yeah.
Yep.
Maybe a big deal if you have big estates potentially and you have like generational wealth.
Right.
You don't have generational wealth.
It's probably not a big deal, but we're not disclaiming these things.
These are why people cite for keeping separate.
Right?
Absolutely.
So several of those are significant legal and financial reasons behind them.
Others are personal preference and a few of those are relational fears.
So there's a whole lot of reasons why people choose to stay apart on those things.
Now, I was actually recently watching a, yeah, I was watching it, it was on YouTube.
I listen and I watch a lot.
But there's this financial guy that you might be familiar with, Ramit Sethi.
He's got a Netflix show.
His whole thing is around building your rich life.
And he was talking to this exact topic about combining finances or not.
And one of the things that he, and he does a lot of financial counseling for couples.
So he talks to hundreds and hundreds of couples.
That's sort of his whole thing.
And he said one of the common trends in there is that people who tend to stay separate with their finances never really made a decision to stay separate.
They sort of just held onto their patterns into marriage and fell into managing money that way.
So his guidance is make sure you're making the choice to stay separate and that you're not just avoiding change or going with momentum.
And then he also made sort of another point that I think was really relevant and worth sharing.
I did link to this video in the description.
So if you want to watch it, it's a pretty nice little video.
But he talks about regardless of how you choose to manage, communication, open dialogue and sharing with your partner is critical if you're going to have success.
Or in his words, if you hope to build your rich life, you have to be working together on this, regardless if it's separate or not.
I like that rich life, it has different connotations.
Well, he has made millions of dollars using that phrase.
So he likes it as well, I'm sure.
(laughing) Yes, when it benefits him, yes.
When it gets you a Netflix contract and multiple books, I'm sure he likes the rich life as well.
Yeah, absolutely.
All right, let's move into some story sharing.
Cause I think that's the case for why people say that they keep things separate.
We're going to tell some stories of why we don't, why we combine.
Absolutely, which brings us to our Inked Moment, which is a segment where we talk about something personal related to the topic, something that we went through in order to give you an idea of where we sit on the topic.
Yep, so we're going to talk about a time where one of us had no income.
I'm raising my hand for those of you that are just listening, that would be me.
We have twin daughters and we had them a handful of years into our marriage.
Melissa and I were both in active careers and we had a decision to make when you get the surprise of blessing of twins into your world.
And then you have the reality of, oh yeah, crap, childcare and everything.
Yeah, so tell us that.
Yeah.
I painted the picture of where we were.
What was the decision?
Very nice.
Well, we decided because it was something I also desired.
So that's why I kind of fell into the "I" that I was going to stay home.
I was shortly under my career.
Counselors in their first year out don't make a whole lot of money.
Oh, hey, we haven't introduced ourselves.
Oh no.
I'm Michael, here with my wife, Melissa.
The important part is, Melissa's a mental health therapist.
So when she said she was into her job as a counselor, she's a counselor.
Right, exactly.
And I alluded to some stuff I've learned in my practice, but this is not professional advice.
Just need to get that out there.
There you go.
So now they know when you say, oh, a counselor, now they know you're a counselor.
Okay, yeah, probably should have done that or there.
Anyway, as in my first year, you don't make a whole lot.
And I think in many careers, your first year out.
So I'm pregnant.
Then toward the end of my pregnancy, I started having difficulties and had to stay at home.
Wasn't getting paid during that time.
And it made us think, okay, well, what are we going to do?
Once the girls are here, I already knew I was going to take a few months off, but what are we going to do?
And so that led to numerous discussions about what are our options.
So give us the financial decision behind there.
So you already said you had desire to stay home.
You were okay with that.
I did.
And you didn't make a lot of money.
Right.
Give us some like real numbers on what childcare for two infants look like at the time.
Keep in mind they're 26 now.
So this was a few decades ago.
I was just going to say, back in 1999, the cost for two infants for a year at minimum was $15,000.
And what was a first year, second year, third year counselor roughly making?
I mean- About 10,000 more than that.
Yeah, so not a whole lot of cost difference for the decision to put them into someone else's care or to stay home.
Correct.
And so I started thinking about, I want to see the milestones I want to be, and it makes more sense if I'm not making as much for me to stay home.
So let's talk about what that did to us financially, because this is a financial episode, not a parenting episode.
So you can decide, you can talk all about should parents stay home or not, and that decision.
But really it's a financial decision in this case.
So we've established that it was going to be a little bit of incremental money if you continue to work versus not.
What that meant to me was I was now all of a sudden a sole earner.
So my work pressures became really intense because I needed to stay employed now.
What did that do to you from a dependence and emotional and whatever standpoint?
For the most part, I would say 95% of the time I was like, this is great, I'm enjoying this.
It was hard work, twins, but this felt right to us.
But there were times where I got a little bit squirrely about not financially contributing to the home.
I knew I was contributing to the home, but I wasn't financially.
There was no money coming for me into the home to pay for things.
We then had yet another little pressure that happened in there, which was when the girls were three, you were still stay at home, we picked up and moved across country for a job.
And it was a job that I had that got, let's just say it got relocated.
The company I was with got purchased, their headquarters were on the East Coast.
So we had a decision to make of I go find another job or we move across country to retain my job.
And from my perspective, that decision played out the way it did for two reasons.
Much like the decision to stay at home, you already had sort of a natural inkling that you would like to do that.
And then the math backed it up.
We had already talked about, would we live in Oregon our entire lives or would we like to live someplace else?
So we already sort of had a, hey, we wouldn't mind the idea of trying to live someplace else.
Then we had a financial job decision of go back into the market and try to find a new job.
And this was shortly after 9-11, the economy was a little questionable, although I was super highly employable, but it was easier to keep a job than to find a job, I think is an easy way to summarize that.
So we combined the desire to live someplace else with the opportunity to move across country, but also I needed to keep a job.
So it had a little bit of influence of like, hey, yeah, let's just do this.
We'll move across the country to do that.
So I think that's another time where our decision-making was slightly impacted by the fact that you weren't working and we had sole income and move forward.
Anything else you wanna share on that story before we close up the Inked Moments segment?
Yeah, looking back on that time between us, what really stands out are the things that didn't happen.
We weren't keeping score, we weren't saying you brought in this, you brought that.
It was us.
There was no friction about it.
There was no accounting of how we made it through that time because we were together.
Yep, so that's our Inked Moment.
Now let's talk about our case for fully combined finances.
We are fully combined and that has worked very well for us.
Treating everything as a single pot has simplified our life and made it easier for us to share a vision of our life together.
We are a team, but we're a team made up of two individuals working together.
It doesn't mean losing yourself, but rather supporting each other in our goals.
Makes sense.
I agree.
I'm glad you agreed.
So let's step through the four areas we covered about keeping finances separate and talk about how we think those work for keeping them together.
Cool, so now we get to try to slap down some of those reasons why people stay separate, right?
Is that the negative way of saying what we're doing here?
Yeah, honestly, I think there's, we've already covered a lot of those things, but let's just talk relationally how they work for us.
So the first one is that whole preserving independence.
Now throughout our working lives, we have had significant differences in our incomes and we've done two things that have helped us navigate that.
Income for us has never been a measure of value, right?
Income is just the dollars that come into our house from our occupations.
It doesn't measure our worth.
It doesn't measure our value in the relationship and it certainly doesn't measure our contribution to the relationship.
You alluded to, we told the story of a time where you were home raising the kids.
That's tremendous value, but I wouldn't say that my contribution as a parent was less than yours.
It was just different.
So why would I say that your contribution to the finances was less than mine?
I mean, dollar wise it was less, but was it less value?
No, it was our household.
So that's the first thing.
And the second thing is different income does not mean different power or input on decisions.
So because I for a period of time was making all the money didn't mean you didn't have a say in finances.
And even when you went back to work and have been working and there's still a discrepancy in money, I don't get more of a vote or less of a vote because of what I earned.
We have equal votes in those.
And those are two very intentional things that we've done that have helped us preserve independence.
Agree, disagree.
Do we walk that line well?
And I think it's just really healthy.
If somebody has more power just because they bring in more dollars, I don't know.
That is just an extremely unhealthy dynamic.
Well, and even if it's not an intentional dynamic, it's a reality dynamic.
If you are not combined and you keep things separate, one partner has more resources.
And if one partner has more resources, they're going to have more options and more opportunities because you have more resources.
It's just simple math in that case.
Relationally, if you choose to combine like we have, it only really works if you maintain equal decision, equal value, and you realize that the dollars coming in is just the tool.
Again, it's that fuel that allows us to build the life we're looking toward.
So let's talk a little bit about how those things actually show up for us.
And another way is that we keep independence.
I don't like this term, but I think you hear fun money.
Ticked around a lot, untracked money.
We're very good about doing budgeting, more so in the last 10 years than we were in the previous 20 years of our marriage.
We were a little more loose with the structure, I think in probably more like 15 years or so.
We've been very structured on it, but we've always retained some amount of money that was untracked.
And that's just to give you the ability to buy your gas station snacks or your fancy coffee or your whatever you like without having to justify it in the budget or whatever.
But we've done it in a way that's an agreed upon amount of untracked.
Yeah, and it feels good, you know, because we were at a time very regimented and keeping track of absolutely everything.
So to be able to buy a soda at McDonald's and not have to write it down or account for it, I think that was free.
And I think that falls into what your spending personality are.
I think it was really important for you.
It wasn't really important.
I didn't really care about it.
But for you, I think it was much more important that you have that.
And there's actually some funny sort of ways that people, there's lots of good debates about, okay, let's say we have a set amount of money and we don't spend it each month.
Is it okay to keep your fund money and build it up over months and then build something and buy something big?
I would argue yes, some others are like, no, it's supposed to be spent in a month.
So like, even within the fund money categories, you can have sort of different approaches to it.
I've heard some very funny discussions about-- Interesting.
And he never spends his fund money and then he goes and buys a thousand dollar gaming station.
I think, well, so what?
It was a spending money for 10 months.
Like, who cares?
And so yeah, so that's why we're getting into the weeds of that.
I think another one, and I think this is, people maybe don't realize this, but we mentioned we're very budget oriented.
We work from a budget, but we each sort of manage our own categories in that budget.
So give me an example of a category you manage that-- Groceries.
You don't like to grocery shop.
I actually enjoy it.
So I know how much-- You pick a boring one.
I mean, groceries.
I thought you were gonna go for household.
Household's a bigger catch all.
No, but I don't know the grocery.
I don't know if there's just something about it.
I don't know.
It means more to me than the household one.
Isn't that funny?
I guess it is, but I mean, the household catches more things that I have no visibility into because I don't really care.
That's very true.
We definitely, household can be anything from a gift.
Is it somebody's birthday this month?
We need to do a gift to paper towels at BJ's.
Right, so we have very big broad buckets that we manage from.
We don't get down into the minutia of these things.
But the point there is that you help me understand what do we need in this category we call household, more groceries.
We set that into category and I basically walk away.
The only time we revisit that is if there's an issue that we have to adjust it and we have to put more into it.
I think that another way that we do this is we always work from a position of good faith on this.
If that budget item is wrong or needs to be adjusted, we don't just do it.
We come back to each other and we make that adjustment together.
Is that?
Yeah, absolutely.
And we've had to make adjustment over the years.
I know you don't like the grocery category, but for the grocery in particular, the girls left the house.
It was just the two of us, but our budget actually went up because of how much food costs these days.
And so we've had to modify those because I would keep overspending in that month and feel terrible about it when in actuality that wasn't an appropriate amount anymore.
Yep.
And the other thing we do to sort of close the loop on keeping autonomy and your own independence is we have a certain threshold dollar amount that if the expense is below that, just do it.
We don't have to coordinate on every single decision we make.
Now that threshold is something we agree upon and we adjusted over time.
So our threshold 25 years ago was different than our threshold is now, but we always have had in our joint money managing or combined finances, we've always had some autonomy to just make a real world decision.
You shouldn't have to check every single transaction, but if it's above a certain threshold, then we agreed, again, good faith, we're gonna come to each other before we spend that money.
So I think those are the things we would say that how a all together works for preserving independence.
What's the next category we wanna pop into?
Managing money styles and conflict.
And for us, it really has helped greatly that we're aligned.
We're both savers.
It's something that we do.
Yeah, if you're in a relationship where you've got a big spender and a big saver, that would be a little harder to navigate, but we have the natural slant and bent to be savers.
Yeah, very much so.
Long-term thinkers.
And I think us being fully combined kind of gives us a structure in order to work together because we don't always value the same things when it comes to spending.
Yeah, so some people look at the, it's a conflict because we don't necessarily align.
For us, that's a feature of being all together.
If we don't align on our goals and our plans and our priorities, we don't wanna ignore those and keep things separate and just go our own ways.
We actually wanna come together and make sure we create alignment.
And being combined sort of forces us to create that alignment.
There are times where we disagree on the big things and like directionally where are we going.
And then there's times where we have small little priority differences.
So let's address the big directional issues first.
If we go back to probably 15 years ago, girls were teenagers and we had a whole bunch of priorities and they ranged from, we were trying to pay off the debt on the house, we were trying to do some household upgrades, we were trying to do a little bit of travel because there was some urgency around some timing and some family trips, et cetera.
We had a whole bunch of things.
Let's just say there was a bunch of things on this list.
And I had my thought of what was the number one priority.
You had your thought on what the number one priority was.
And we weren't necessarily aligned clearly on what those were.
So we went through an exercise that I think helped us resolve this.
And that was, you and I sat down, we made a list of all the things we think are gonna take more than a couple of dollars to dress.
And we didn't try to hash out together what order.
We just did a very mathematical sort of thing of like, "Hey, you take this list of 15 and rank order them.
I'll take my list of 15 and rank order them.
And then let's come back together and see if there's really super alignment.
And if there isn't, let's figure out how we address it." And when we came back, when we found out like the top four or five, they might've been slightly different orders, but the top five was aligned.
Okay, so we don't need to negotiate on those anymore.
We're aligned on those.
And they were all sort of big enough buckets or whatever that they just slotted in.
The next one is where we sort of negotiated.
And that comes down to a little give and take and which ones could we happen quicker or which ones was there an urgency?
Was there a deadline on any of them?
Right.
That's a way that we sort of helped make sure that we were aligned on the big things when there's conflict.
The other area that I think is kind of important to explore here is that we're often, our values sort of align.
Like what we want to spend our money on doesn't always line up.
And they can be some very small little things.
You got any examples of things where we don't align?
I mean, there's some really, I think there's some funny ones of-- Okay, I'm gonna start with a little one, which is my fancy soaps versus your quality socks, right?
You don't care what kind of soap is coming out of your dispenser at the sink.
I'm crushed if we don't have foam scented soap that smells like whatever holiday we're celebrating.
If I don't get my pumpkin spice soap this fall, I'll be very upset.
No, I don't care about that at all.
And then I don't care too much about what socks I wear.
I'll go to Target and just grab a 10 pack for 20 bucks.
Right, my brother-in-law got me some nice socks like 10 years ago and he broke me.
I can't wear socks that aren't that nice.
So yeah, my socks are nice.
So we're not aligned there and that's where the household budget where you don't care where things go, I get my fancy soaps out of that.
Something bigger is I kind of like to drive a nice car.
You could give, can I swear, a rat's ass about what car you drive.
Yeah, I drive a beater.
Right?
Because I spend money on travel.
Exactly.
I would rather, like not that you don't like travel, but I really like travel, so I would rather take an extra trip or go spend some holiday time away than worry about a car.
Absolutely.
So we accommodate both of those in our budget.
We do.
We give a little grace on things that we don't necessarily agree with, be it the fancy soaps or the expensive or nicer cars.
I wouldn't say expensive cars, nicer cars.
By intentionally working together in a single budget to create alignment on there has not only allowed us to sort of get our individual tastes in there, but it's allowed us to hit some big goals and it's allowed, honestly, it's allowed you to hit bigger goals quicker than if we had kept our money separate just because there's an income earning discrepancy that we've had for most of our careers together.
By going all into one bucket, we both accomplish what we're looking for.
Yep.
What's next?
Perfect.
Protection and legal risk.
And dare we say, we're gonna take a stand on this, we view this one to be the strongest area of argument for keeping things separate.
If somebody has alimony, past legal judgment or an addiction, those are valid reasons for keeping your money separate.
There were two in that list though that gave us pause and made us think a little bit more.
One of those listed in there was debt.
And if you're carrying previous debt loads and that sort of stuff, you might wanna stay separate to retain your independence on your debt.
One could make the argument that credit scores and what your financial goals are based on credit scores, there's an argument to not combine on those.
For us, A, it wasn't an issue.
We both had debt.
We had tens of thousands of dollars combined of student loan debt.
And we, from day one, combined those and we worked on those together because again, we were building a single financial house, a single set of goals, and it does me no good to leave you behind in debt while I finish mine in our perspective.
Now, one could sort of argue that student loan debt is quote unquote good debt and there's no spending judgment on that.
Although I would say that going into hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loan debt, which some a lot of people do, that is a problem.
And that is equally as bad in my book as some of the consumer debt or the car debt or those things that people have labeled as bad debt.
But I think a lot of people will say, well, they've destroyed their credit and they've got all this consumer debt.
They need to stay separate financially.
Our counter argument is more of a philosophical argument, which is we are one, we're one family, we're one unit.
I want to help you get out of that.
Now, if you're still digging that hole and you're doing all that, that speaks back to that money character and all those red flags.
Maybe we shouldn't be considering marriage, but if I'm willing to marry you, then I'm willing to lean into the debt and help you get out of it.
That all again assumes that you're a good partner who's faithfully working to get out of that.
So just be really mindful of that.
And the second one that caught my eye in that legal one was what you saw your parents go through financially and the scarring financially that maybe came out through their divorce.
I can live that one.
I live that.
My dad has been divorced multiple times.
I've seen him get wrecked financially multiple times through that.
So I have a very clear understanding of what watching a parent go through divorce and finances looks like.
And I can get the sense of, oh, I want to protect myself from that.
And I'm going to think that keeping separate is the way to protect myself from that.
For me, it was a little different.
I took that as motivation to really understand and be aligned with you before we got married.
I was really clear.
I think we were very clear on how we wanted to build a life together and what that looked like to the point where I was very confident that you and I were going to build something together.
Still always the chance that it doesn't work out.
Yes, that's the thing.
But for me, seeing my parents experience was the motivator to make sure you and I were aligned not to put up systems that kept us from co-mingling.
Not to belabor that, but I think that was just a different way of looking at that.
One more section to dive into.
Family and estate complexities, blended families.
That's another area that we believe is a reasonable concern.
Would you agree?
Yeah, I mean, yes and no.
Again, it's a philosophical of, if I think I'm going to marry somebody and I love them enough, some people do want to keep the stepchildren treated differently than maybe their own biological kids.
I believe that if I love the person enough to bring them into a marriage, that I'm going to love their kids and I'm going to support their kids.
For me, I don't personally think that others would have disagreement.
The other part that falls into here is inheritance.
Inheritance is another whole huge topic around finances and things.
I think it might even justify its own episode at some point, digging into how do you structure your money and your inheritance and how do you hand money to your kids.
This, for the sake of combining, I think we're talking about if we inherited money.
A lot of people cite the desire to keep my inherited money, my family money separate from the marital money.
All I can say is for us, that wouldn't happen.
If we inherited, it would go into the same bucket and whatever our priority list is, that's where the money would go.
Right, absolutely.
Because I was thinking, one of you wins the lottery.
Are you not going to share it with your significant other?
I think the answer is yes.
I mean, if you're maintaining separate finances, yes.
Why would, did you spend the $20 on the lottery ticket?
No, you didn't win that.
Right?
Oh, that's just craziness to me, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, again, a lot of these are, come down to are we building one house together or not?
And for me, the concept of, I mean, I love to travel.
We've already established that a few different times.
You don't make as much money.
I like to go on travel trip with you.
So if you can't afford it, are you not coming with me?
Or am I loaning you money to travel?
Talk about changing the dynamics of how we go celebrate and spend time together in something that I very much loved.
Now all of a sudden you're feeling dependent on me or I don't know, it's just a, so the dynamics there.
It's like, what are you trying to build together?
So we believe one key to our continued success with having combined finances is that we talk regularly about money.
It isn't a rare topic.
It's a pretty frequent, not just when we're having issues, but even just to stay on the same page, even when things are going well.
If you just wait till you're having issues, that's a problem.
You have to talk about it when things are going well.
And that's something we do.
We have created good connections around finances, not just bad ones.
We work hard to normalize talking about money between us.
It's something that we just do.
Well, that's a good segue.
Let's talk a little bit about bad connections because no matter how you choose to manage your finances, there are gonna be times where there are issues.
What do you do if a partner spends irresponsibly?
It never happens to us.
Right, right.
Not frequently or recently for that matter, but it comes down.
Let's, here, let's talk about what's worked for us.
Perfect.
We can't speak for others.
Let's speak for ourselves.
We cannot.
You don't attack them.
You started a conversation about what your goals are.
You plan to get back on track for reaching those goals.
And if the irresponsible spending happens again, you come back to the plan.
Hey, we talked about a plan.
We agreed upon it together.
This doesn't seem in alignment.
What's going on?
Yeah, so instead of attacking each other, which really is gonna just, it's just gonna become a personal fight.
What we try to do is we try to revisit the plan, make sure we're aligned, and then we always reference the plan as why are we not accomplishing this?
But it does make me think, I mean, we can sort of put all the niceties around the conversation, but the underlying thing is that we have to trust each other to try to execute on these things, and you have to be a trustworthy person if you're managing money together.
And if you're not trustworthy, you're gonna have problems in there.
And then what about financial abuse?
Okay, so irresponsible spending is just a thing that we're all gonna happen, and it's gonna happen in your relationship.
Financial abuse is another whole category, and it's a big spectrum.
It goes from very, what seem to be, appear to be innocuous sort of things, all to very destructive things.
So let's just step through a little bit of what financial abuse looks like.
It can be something as simple as demanding receipts and super tight controls on spending.
We've already talked about how we're very intentional not to control each other's spending.
That is not why you're combining finances.
Withholding money is another one.
If someone uses money as a controlling factor, doesn't give you access to money, that bridges over into financial abuse.
Forbidding your spouse to work outside the house.
You see, there's a pattern here.
You're talking about control.
You're talking about all these sort of things that in an abusive relationship, this is just applying them to your finances.
And I think it can even keep going.
It can go into identity theft and lots of things that are really just harmful and very toxic.
Now, if any of that sounds familiar, we wanna be really clear.
This is not something a podcast can fix, and there are people whose job it is to handle financial abuse and other types of abuse.
So it'd be kind of neglectful if we didn't give you a resource to sort of, if you're experiencing something like this, a great resource is the National Domestic Violence Hotline.
There, they have professionals that can help this.
So real quick, we'll put this into the description, show notes and stuff, but you can always call 1-800-799-7233 or text START to 88788, or visit them online at thehotline.org.
So we cannot prove that our system or any financial system survives a bad faith partner, only that it maximizes a good faith marriage.
Now, no matter how you choose to manage your finances, communication and transparency are the keys to long-term success.
When deciding to combine or not, make sure you do the following.
Make sure you discuss it, come to a fair agreement, remember that fair doesn't necessarily mean 50-50, and check in on your decision every six to 12 months.
If you decide to stay separate, revisit it.
Maybe you'll decide to combine at some point.
If you combine, revisit it.
Keep discussing your decision to make sure that it's working for both of you.
So combining can be all in, it can be hybrid, and you could choose to keep everything separate.
But from our perspective, separate accounts with full visibility and communication beats joint accounts that involve secrecy any day.
And when you are running your house on the day-to-day, communication must happen frequently.
We meet personally at the start of every month, set our budget, and then we meet again halfway through.
Every time we meet, we set an agenda, we know what we're gonna talk about, we review our progress, we celebrate what we're building together because hopefully you will be having wins in your finances, not just struggles.
And we always make sure that we're aligned on what our goals are, willing to make adjustments as we go.
Yep.
Let's get into our Pen to Paper.
Let's give some action on this.
We said transparency is super, super important.
Let's give them something to take home on this.
In our Pen to Paper segment, we give you a practical challenge or reflection to help you write your own lasting marriage story.
And our challenge for today is to help you be transparent with your finances.
Run what we call the full picture test this week.
Can each of you independently write down every account, every debt, and every balance range that your spouse holds, or if you're fully combined, what you hold together.
And if you can't, understanding these gaps in your knowledge is the assignment.
Yep, goes to the whole communication and transparency is absolutely critical.
How do we do on this front?
Better now than we used to do on this front.
Absolutely.
So what's our secret?
We are fully combined.
Fully combined.
So how do we do this?
How long would it take you to do this if I gave you this task?
If we did it, five minutes.
And why would it take you just five minutes to do it?
I will tell you why.
Because we have everything in one place and we both have access to that and we know what the spreadsheet means and we also have a hard copy of it, or old school.
We are very good with actively managing our estate and making sure that we are sort of taking care of each other by having our wills updated, having our financial plan.
We have kids, so we've been very intentional about making sure that they're taken care of and that that's all aligned.
And for the transparency and clarity, we have a spreadsheet that lists every single asset we have, every single thing of significance, doesn't list the 50 pair of shoes that one of us might have.
That would be me.
I don't have 50, but anyway.
We'll count later and we'll give you an update on that.
I bet you it's closer to it.
But that is a shared doc.
We both know where it is.
We both can access it super quick.
And just for records, just in case the cloud goes down and the internet's down, we do have physical copies and that's not because we fear technology.
It's because it's a good idea to have them printed out.
Gosh, I would hope not.
You're in the tech field.
Yeah, exactly.
So that's our Pen to Paper segment.
Okay.
Before we close out things for today, we want to share one more thought.
Michael heard this question in podcast.
He was listening to recently and it resonated with both of us.
Does your financial system communicate, we're building one life or I need to protect what is mine from you?
And that answer is not found only in how many accounts you have.
It's found in the trust, the transparency and the shared vision you create for your financial house.
Healthy, long lasting marriages build wisely with your spouse because you are one team.
In our final episode of this three-part series on finances and marriage, we will explore what combining money looks like under pressure.
We'll share real stories of debt, single incomes, different priorities and what you can build with a shared vision.
With that, we want to thank you for joining us and we invite you to connect with us by joining our free Penned in Ink community.
Here we share free digital guides and occasional updates to help you build your own long lasting love.
Click the link in the description to join now.
Also remember to share a comment, ask a question and let us know your thoughts on today's topic.
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Thanks all.
Thank you.
(upbeat music)
