From saving to splurging: advice for navigating tough money conversations in relationships
Financial disagreements are one of the leading causes of stress in relationships, in fact, previous research has shown that up to a third of all adults in relationships report money as a primary source of conflict. This is because money can be a sensitive topic that is tied to our values, goals, and even our self-worth. Often, partners enter relationships with their own strong beliefs and cultural practices around money that may not be fully compatible with the other’s. But even if you and your partner (or family members) don’t fully align on your financial beliefs, it doesn't have to be a constant source of conflict in your relationship. A high level of agreement is important, particularly around long term goals and visioning, but for shorter term decisions around saving and spending, the art of compromise is key. Today’s blog draws heavily from the work of The Gottman Institute, offering advice that can help you navigate the complex terrain of finances together, to bring greater harmony and less bickering into your toughest money discussions.
The basics of trust and safe communication
Learn how to be an active, non-judgmental listener
The most important thing you can do to prepare for a tough conversation is to get yourself in the right mindset. Take a deep breath, lean into your empathy, and welcome a view of acceptance over solutioning, so that you can fully hear your partner’s point of view before any critical decision making takes place. Defensiveness can sometimes be a concern as well, and we recommend reading up on how to avoid this common reaction before you begin.
Talk openly, do it early and often to build a strong foundation
Practice makes perfect in every facet of life, and communicating with your partner is no different. We’ve written about the power of money dates before, and we still believe that these can be a great way to open the door for better financial discussions. If you’re new to structured talks about money with your partner, these can be a great place to start - pick a fun topic for your first go and see where it takes you. When you feel ready, you can dig into deeper topics. Eventually, you should be able to share your money history with your partner, which can include past experiences, lessons learned, rules you use, traumas, and childhood beliefs around spending, saving and planning. Learning about each other’s money history can be one of the most powerful bonding experiences in a relationship, and will be excellent material for cultivating compassion, understanding and empathy in future negotiations.
Establish your shared meaning and dreams for the future
Without good alignment on your values and long term goals, not only will short term financial discussions be difficult, but the relationship itself may not work. It’s critical to explore an idea that the Gottman Institue calls your Sound Relationship House together, examining each floor and working your way up to levels 6 and 7, where you can develop and ensure a trusting and committed partnership with a shared vision.
Once you and your partner have a good handle on the basics of cultivating a trusting relationship with safe communication practices, you can dig into the tough stuff, but don’t forget to…
Seek professional support if you need to
You and your partner won’t be able to align perfectly on everything, but when you hit hard roadblocks or stalemates for the big things, it’s usually time to bring in outside counsel. Don’t be afraid to consult therapists or financial advisors to help guide you through some of the meatier financial topics. Once you’ve built your strong foundation, you will be better equipped to handle tough topics independently.
Tough topic #1: Monthly Savings
Determining how much to save
This decision often takes days, weeks or even months to align on in partnerships. Our first piece of advice at Mana is to completely avoid suggesting hard dollar amounts or percentages on your first pass conversation. While we ultimately do offer percentage targets and specific budgets to our clients, we never start with these figures in our planning process. This is for two main reasons: 1) arguments can easily become frustrating and unproductive when you are just focused on value X vs. value Y, and more importantly, 2) your savings plan (and associated figures) should be based on your personal values, vision and goals for the future. To have this tough conversation, we recommend starting from a place of union and synchrony, and making a list together of all the things you want to save for. This list can be broken down in different ways: long term vs. short term, or concrete (purchasing a single family house in LA by 2026) vs. abstract (a beach vacation at least once per year). Focus first on generating, and then prioritizing these items together. Once you have your list, you can look at the longer term goals (establishing a joint emergency fund, having enough for retirement, increasing your housing budget each year for the next ten years, etc.) and do the math to see how much you need to be saving and investing to reach them. Then, taking a look at each other’s earnings, you can decide how to fairly contribute to this plan on a monthly basis. At this point in the discussion, it’s essential to be completely honest and non-judgemental with each other about things like debt, bad habits/things you want to change and fixed expenses In a functional financial plan, there should be residual money available to save over and beyond your essential future expenses, which you can both use to achieve items further down your priority list.
Dealing with misalignment and disagreements
Even if your big picture goals are set and agreed upon, there are plenty of day to day budget items to bicker about. One of the best ways to mitigate this is, perhaps counterintuitively, to focus on your positives first. Once you have established figures for essential expenses and monthly savings, make sure those are automated. When both partners automate their share of savings, it takes guesswork and subjectivity out of play, and ensures that your long term goals are met. It also “evens the playing field”, guaranteeing that both partners meet their basic commitments to those goals. Celebrate that in itself as a win, and plan check ins and small appreciations when you reach various savings milestones. You’ll want to build in more opportunities for positive association with saving money and related conversations than negative (in fact, using the Magic Ratio of 5:1 positive to negative interactions around money can be a good rule of thumb here).
Remember also that there are many paths to the same outcome. Often, when there is extra money, one partner will view it as spending cash whereas the other will want to save some or all of it. If your essential goals are being met, it is important to remember that there is no right or wrong answer or decision in this circumstance. For conflicts or disagreements over and beyond essential expenses and savings, developing an acceptance practice to honor with your partner can be crucial. Assuming that your greater vision is aligned, cultivating and leaning into happiness for your partner’s savings decisions can be a beautiful way to express your love for them.
Don’t forget to be flexible
Let’s say you set the “perfect” financial plan together, but suddenly, your partner gets laid off at the same time you get a significant raise. This super inconvenient situation has been the reality for many folks in tech this past year, and similar challenges are always a possibility in relationships. While you can never plan for the unknown or unexpected, you can always be prepared with vehicles like emergency funds. But beyond your practical tools, you also need to develop the mental and emotional flexibility to adjust and move forward in love and support. This can be another good Money Date to have with your partner, imagining how you would handle one or the other losing their job (or getting a big raise), and mapping out some high level guidelines for how to express kindness and stay on a forward trajectory together. In all cases, building a practice to remove pressure, reduce ego and offer forgiveness can go a long way when your relationship faces difficult times.
Tough topic #2: Occasional Splurging
When and how to splurge
The flipside of the savings coin is splurging. Splurging can (and should) be fun and exciting. Splurging however, should not bring pain, shame or resentment into your relationship. Because it is viewed both as enjoyable and also taboo, it’s a topic that many couples find themselves tactically unprepared for. Additionally, because it takes a backseat to essential expenses, it can be hard to find external support or education on how to splurge wisely. If you’ve worked with us at Mana, you know we love to encourage and celebrate a responsible splurge, and we want our readers and their partners to feel the same way. Knowing when to splurge is somewhat easier than how. As a basic rule, all of your essential expenses and planned savings must be accounted for before you consider a splurge. Your non-essential priority expense list should be reviewed first and nothing urgent should be overlooked or ignored in favor of a splurge. For some, building a dedicated splurge fund is the best solution, and setting milestones or dates to allow spending can easily define timelines for doing it.
Answering the question of how to splurge is not as easy and far from black and white, but it can be agreed upon in a joyous manner. We recommend having a Money Date where you imagine what to do with a bonus or windfall. Similar to other types of planning, you can take your fantasies and winnow them down to a prioritized list of real things that would bring individual and shared benefit. You can also think about establishing rules or guidelines about how much to splurge on yourself vs. one another in various circumstances or on different cadences. It’s critical to be open minded and honest when you do this imagining and planning so that realistic expectations can be set together. Breaking your shared guidelines when the time comes to spend is a quick route to losing trust.
What counts as a splurge
Again, this is not an easily answered question. There are some obvious things to exclude from the splurge category: housing payments, taxes, utilities and bills, looming car repairs and daily underwear are all essential items that should be accounted for in your monthly budget. Splurges are by nature special, infrequent, and affordable (to you). Ultimately, you and your partner need to come up with your own fun definitions of splurges (perhaps spun out of your bonus/windfall Money Date), write them down and use them to decide later. A few important categories that we like to remind clients about are: 1) social gatherings, 2) gifts, and 3) charitable contributions. All of these can be great ways to splurge, and should otherwise be planned for and built into budgeting if they are considered more important.
Splurge confidently and celebrate
Elizabeth Dunn, an expert on the psychology of money and happiness, reminds us that one of its key sources is the anticipation (not just the execution) of a joyous event. Taking this empirical advice, we recommend that partners plan for splurges ahead of time; don’t just spend impulsively. Happiness that is shared through anticipation can be amplified and enjoyed together. When the time finally does come to make your big purchase, if you’ve followed some of the advice above, you should feel quite confident about it. Don’t forget to celebrate this moment together and let it grow and strengthen your love.
Relationships come with many challenges, and aligning on the future is a big one. Financial disagreements don’t have to weigh you down in your partnership, and although resolving them takes work, it’s always well worth the effort. We hope that our advice provides some good ideas to help you and your loved ones work through these tough topics with more grace and confidence.
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Madison Elliott is a UX Researcher at Google. Madison consults on data engineering and usability at Mana Financial Life Design (FLD). Mana FLD provides comprehensive financial planning and investment management services to help clients grow and protect their wealth throughout life’s journey. Mana FLD specializes in advising ambitious professionals who seek financial knowledge and want to implement creative budgeting, savings, proactive planning and powerful investment strategies. Madison brings her combined background in cognitive science, computer science and clinical psychology with her professional UX design and engineering experience to optimize workflows at Mana FLD and improve people’s lives.