Welcome to The Finance Gym Action Plan for a Better Life with Money video series. My name is Stacey Powell, and if you’re ready not just to know better, but do better with your money, then you’ve come to the right place.
Lately, we’ve been talking about our relationship with money and how it impacts our financial life. Today, we’re going to be talking about one of my favorite pieces of advice for couples, and that is to have monthly money date night.
I don’t care if you’ve been married for 50 years, if you’re a newlywed or if you’re thinking about getting married. Having a money date night every month can make a huge impact on your financial life.
Here are a couple of reasons why:
1. The only time you talk about it is when you’re trying to solve a problem, a big enough problem that requires the both of you to talk about it. It’s usually frustrating, stressful, ugly. So that’s your framework for how you show up to any conversation about money because most of your conversations are kind of icky, and frustrating without any simple solutions.
If you consistently talk to your significant other about money, your goals, and your dreams, you’re laying a framework in your head that that’s your money conversations are good. Not just icky stuff.
Then when the icky stuff happens, you’re much better equipped with a shared language and know how to work together. So that’s reason number one.
2. It’s a stereotype, but I think it’s a true stereotype. In most couples, you’ve got the person that loves spreadsheets, loves accounting software, loves all that stuff and figuring out. Then you’ve got this person over here who wants absolutely nothing to do with any of it and is so happy that the other person is going to do it all. So there is one person making the vast majority of the decisions and actions around your money. While that might be convenient, it isn’t best. Here’s why.
I tell my clients all the time. Imagine I’m your accountant. I’m going to give you a ton of advice. I hope you’re going to take most of it. But I also hope you’re not going to take all of it because my framework – I’m conservative. I’m not always going to take risks. I’m not always going to go for the quick path. I’m going to spend 6 hours on a spreadsheet when I should have only spent 1 hour on a spreadsheet trying to make a decision. I should have followed my intuition more, right? That’s my framework.
Another person’s framework brings great value to your financial decisions and so bringing your two heads together is actually important and better. You might think you’re not good at money, but that’s not true. That’s the story you tell yourself. You have great value to balancing out your partner.
It’s not the end-all-be-all to fixing your money situation. It’s only part of the equation. So those are my top 2 reasons why it’s really important to have money date night with your honey. Keep your marriage together, going strong, and being fun.
So if you would like to join me and more of these conversations, you can Subscribe to these videos. You can join us over at Team Do Better on Facebook whenever you can come in and talk about money, and you can also sign up for our newsletter at TheFinanceGym.com. So I want you to sign off and schedule your first money date night.
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