Episode 32. From Fiscal Friction to Marital Makeover: Navigating Money Matters Together
Financial stress can significantly impact marital satisfaction, yet many couples struggle to navigate this critical aspect of their relationship. In this two-part episode of Marriage iQ, we explore the intricate connection between finances and marital happiness, offering valuable insights for couples at any stage of their journey.
Drawing from our personal experiences and extensive research, we delve into the surprising benefits of marriage on financial stability, how childhood experiences shape our financial attitudes, strategies for overcoming financial conflicts in relationships, and the importance of shared decision-making in financial matters.
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Hello, you scintillating lovers there. Dr. Hastings here. This episode is going to be over two weeks. It's very important, and we didn't want to leave anything out, so we hope you enjoyed. It's on finances and marriage. It's highly advisable to listen and then get your spouse to listen, too. Welcome to Marriage iQ, the podcast for the intelligent spouse.[00:00:29 - 00:00:31]
I'm Dr. Heidi Hastings.[00:00:31 - 00:00:33]
And I'm Dr. Scott Hastings.[00:00:33 - 00:00:51]
We are two doctors, two researchers, two spouses, two lovers, and two incredibly different human beings coming together for one purpose. To transform the stinky parts of your marriage into scintillating ones, using intelligence mixed.[00:00:51 - 00:00:52]
With a little fun.[00:00:55 - 00:01:04]
Hello, lovers, and welcome to another scintillating week of Marriage iq. How you doing today?[00:01:04 - 00:01:33]
Well, it's really great to see you again. It's been so long. Ah, the love of doing this podcast for the love of all the people out there. Yes. We love you so much, and we're so glad that you're joining us. Back again, Heidi. Dr. Hastings, I know you so well that I can get your blood boiling with just one word.[00:01:33 - 00:01:34]
Oh, you think so?[00:01:35 - 00:01:36]
Yes.[00:01:36 - 00:01:37]
And what word would that be?[00:01:37 - 00:01:45]
Well, I don't think anyone's gonna know how this relates to the show today, but we'll figure it out in the end.[00:01:45 - 00:01:47]
Are you going to tell them? Are you going to tell me?[00:01:47 - 00:01:48]
Well, I don't know.[00:01:48 - 00:01:49]
All right, let's see.[00:01:49 - 00:02:11]
No, that word is bitcoin. So having said that, there's a history there, right? Yeah, we'll get to that a little bit. So, Heidi, what is the number one reason that people in America get divorced?[00:02:12 - 00:02:19]
Well, given that intro, I would guess money.[00:02:20 - 00:02:30]
Well, nope, it's infidelity, actually, number one. But. Okay, we're not talking about infidelity today.[00:02:30 - 00:02:33]
We talked about that. Lots of episodes so far.[00:02:33 - 00:02:37]
We are talking about one of the other leading causes of divorce.[00:02:37 - 00:02:38]
Okay.[00:02:38 - 00:02:40]
And that does happen to be money.[00:02:40 - 00:02:54]
Well, that's a sad statistic. It's a very sad statistic that it's one of the leading things. But money also really combines well with marriage. There's some good news to it. You want to hear what some of the things are?[00:02:54 - 00:03:06]
I can. You know, money is. It's good and it's bad. Right, Right. How do we tame this wild beast today? I think we're going to talk a little bit about that. Right. In marriage, we are.[00:03:06 - 00:03:40]
Those who are married. Research shows have higher income than singles, which makes sense. Right. They're putting two incomes together. But even if one person isn't working they seem to have higher income, they have greater financial stability, they have more financial assets and more wealth accumulation and they're more able to save for retirement. So do you have any idea why some of these things might be more so for married couples than for individuals?[00:03:40 - 00:03:46]
Well, I think that when you pull together resources.[00:03:46 - 00:03:47]
Yeah.[00:03:47 - 00:04:12]
And you're able to efficiently utilize things as a married couple, whether it's grocery bills or paying rent or gas, things like that, and you're still able to bring in that extra income, why then it just makes more sense that you would be financially better off than if you're single.[00:04:12 - 00:04:30]
That's good. And that's true. There is one other element though, and that is that a committed relationship allows two individuals to have more trust in investing together, in pooling those resources for long term kinds of investments.[00:04:30 - 00:04:31]
Okay.[00:04:31 - 00:04:46]
Whereas if there wasn't necessarily that commitment level, then they may say, hey, you keep your money, I'm going to keep my money. And therefore they don't have as high of income or financial stability.[00:04:46 - 00:04:47]
Okay.[00:04:48 - 00:05:02]
So with all of those wonderful opportunities for wealth and for financial stability that come with being married, it seems like we're set right as married couple. We can ride off into the sunset and enjoy life.[00:05:02 - 00:05:17]
Giddy up. Woo hoo. Yeah. Wait a minute. Well, I came first. The chicken or the egg? I know we've talked about chickens and eggs a whole lot and I don't.[00:05:17 - 00:05:19]
Know it's one of your favorite topics.[00:05:19 - 00:05:31]
I think you get tired of hearing. You're like, we talk about that a lot. I'm like, well, it's because it's important. So what came first, the chicken or the egg? Well, maybe it's not the marriage that makes a better financial manager.[00:05:31 - 00:05:32]
Okay.[00:05:32 - 00:05:56]
Maybe it is. We don't know that. It's like what came first. If I'm just a normally marriageable person and I happen to be good at finances or do I get better at finances that makes me a better spouse? Well, maybe it's both. So tell me a little bit about these, more about these studies that you're seeing, Heidi.[00:05:56 - 00:06:07]
Okay. I looked at probably four or five different studies that showed that between 70 and 85% of adults are stressed about money.[00:06:08 - 00:06:08]
Yeah.[00:06:08 - 00:06:40]
If that's really true, how is that impacting their marriages? Some of the stresses that they're dealing with have to do with income or job security, inflation, which we're experiencing right now. Credit card debt, saving for retirement. How are they going to come up with beyond living just day to day to save for those emergencies? So a lot of Adults out there are really experiencing a lot of stress surrounding.[00:06:41 - 00:06:45]
I smell intentionality brewing.[00:06:46 - 00:07:17]
I would also like to add that there's a lot of financial stress for poor college students, for those newlywed couples, for those early in their marriage or who've taken on the long haul of a graduate degree program or something like we did. We got married the last year of our undergrad, and then you had seven years of med school and residency, and we were living below the poverty line. Yeah, we were during that time. And having children, so that can cause some stress.[00:07:17 - 00:07:22]
I mean, I could see how other people would think we're broke, but I didn't feel broke during the time.[00:07:22 - 00:07:24]
Those were some of the happiest days. Right.[00:07:25 - 00:07:46]
Speaking about happy days, I think it's important to go back because we talk on this podcast about who we are, identity, our history, how we grew up. Like, we both had different views of money growing up. Right?[00:07:46 - 00:08:00]
Right, we did. And so when we came to marriage, there was a lot of baggage or tradition or mindsets on both of our parts that influenced how we came together. Should we tell them a little bit about that?[00:08:00 - 00:08:06]
I think we should. I think that this plays a bigger role than people give it credit for when they come into a marriage.[00:08:07 - 00:08:08]
What their financial history is?[00:08:08 - 00:08:09]
Their history?[00:08:09 - 00:08:09]
Yeah.[00:08:09 - 00:08:24]
How did they grow up? Their parents, their siblings? How did they think about money? What did they do with money? How did they handle it? And then you put two people that might be very, very different about that. It can be filled with some problems.[00:08:24 - 00:08:27]
So for me, I'll tell about me, you tell about you. How's that?[00:08:27 - 00:08:27]
Okay.[00:08:27 - 00:09:59]
Okay. For me, I grew up in a family with nine siblings, and my dad was a social worker and didn't make a lot of money. He had a lot of job satisfaction in helping people, but didn't make a lot of money. So we really had a tight financial situation. We grew a lot of our own food, we produced a lot of our own food, and we didn't take big vacations other than to go to family reunions every once in a while. So I had kind of finance scarcity mindset a little bit. And then combine that with my first marriage, where there was probably some. What's a good way to say it? Financial infidelity? Well, yes, some of that, but also some financial irresponsibility that really impacted my credit score, and I didn't know things that were happening that were going on, and so I had some baggage with that. Then also, after going through a divorce, there was a lot of internal pain and Suffering that every once in a while would use a credit card to get something for myself, take a trip to visit a sister or to by music that made me feel better or, you know, some of that is normal. But doing it on a credit card when I didn't have the means to pay back more than the minimum payment every month was probably not as responsible as I should have been, but, you know, used it for helping me feel better.[00:09:59 - 00:10:04]
So, yeah, I think some could say like coping or self care. Right, right.[00:10:04 - 00:10:09]
So that's, that's how I showed up financially. That's my financial history. Tell them about yours.[00:10:10 - 00:11:23]
Well, I, like, you were kind of in a lower, I suppose, social economic household. Mine was probably upper, but not rich, upper middle class. Probably upper middle class. And I had seven siblings and we lived in a nice house. It wasn't like the biggest house or the best house or. But we didn't ever have problems with scarcity as far as food scarcity as far as clothing or anything like that. For some reason. I don't know, we're all different. Quite a unique family. But I did kind of at an early age start thinking about financial responsibility. And I know we came together, there are already a lot of things that we both had to deal with because you came from a, you know, a divorce with a daughter. And maybe sometimes finances were secondary. But I remember coming into the relationship thinking, we gotta get these credit card bills paid off. Right.[00:11:23 - 00:11:24]
And we've got to have a budget. We've got.[00:11:25 - 00:11:30]
I don't know, like, I always thought that you thought that was fine, but maybe you didn't think that was okay.[00:11:30 - 00:12:03]
No, I did think that was fine. It was just every month or every week. I can't remember if we did budgeting every week or every month at that point. But whenever you would talk about it, I would feel this immense shame and embarrassment that I had used credit cards to make myself feel better, to survive. And so I felt like we can't do fun things because we're going to get this paid off in six months. Like we are nose to the grindstone, working hard to get that paid off. And so I felt a lot of guilt and shame about that.[00:12:03 - 00:12:23]
So, and that's interesting because I don't, I, I looked at it as, you're just taking care of yourself. And it's part of my duty as the husband now to get it paid off. And I didn't feel that way. I didn't feel bad towards you at all. I just thought she needed this.[00:12:24 - 00:12:28]
Today's the first time that I've ever heard you say that.[00:12:29 - 00:12:31]
Well, I think that's really cool.[00:12:31 - 00:12:38]
That makes me feel like I wish that I hadn't experienced so much shame about that.[00:12:39 - 00:13:23]
Look, you had to go through a lot of trauma with your first marriage. I just didn't want that to be continuing into our marriage, that kind of trauma. I figure whatever you did, it was for a good purpose. And look, when I look back at our first days of our marriage, I just remember. Just wonderful. It was so wonderful. Like everything was just bright and shiny and I just. I don't know, I just don't look at that as something negative. I mean, we got it paid off in six months. I remember how you ate peanut butter.[00:13:23 - 00:13:27]
And jelly sandwiches every night at the OR instead of.[00:13:27 - 00:13:40]
Yeah, it was free. So I mean, I just remember. Yeah, when we did get it paid off, it felt like this huge weight off my chest. Off our chest, anyway. I mean. And it was a great feeling and.[00:13:40 - 00:13:46]
It was good for us to work together to solve a problem, to accomplish a shared goal.[00:13:47 - 00:13:48]
So.[00:13:48 - 00:13:53]
And then we started budgeting and that was really good.[00:13:53 - 00:13:58]
I don't think. Did we. I think we did some in med school, but it wasn't.[00:13:58 - 00:14:02]
Well, we had much. We had hardly any money at all.[00:14:02 - 00:15:22]
Yeah, we just didn't. And then in residency, we had to start budgeting because of our salary. I think they paid us well. They paid us 36,000 a year. And then I did moonlighting. I made probably another 10 or 20,000. So that was. We did okay. And we made it work. Of course, that was 20 plus years ago, but we did. We made it work. We had a budget. I think some other issues came along later. Right, right. We lived in a rural Arizona for 10 years and we kind of started maybe butting heads a little bit on priorities with our finances. And you were very. Well, you were very passionate about sharing, sharing money, giving, giving, giving, which is really awesome. I was very interested and very passionate about getting student loans paid off and, you know, house paid down, paid off. Oh, and really looking at. To retirement and saving up money for that.[00:15:23 - 00:15:29]
You were looking towards saving money for retirement. Well, this was one of our sources of.[00:15:29 - 00:15:41]
I think that it depends. Conflict. It depends on the year. Yes. At some point I was. I know there was another point where I was going to make millions of dollars with this business idea.[00:15:41 - 00:15:42]
Right.[00:15:42 - 00:15:51]
That. So I didn't need to save for retirement. I think that's where you really had some real frustration with me.[00:15:51 - 00:16:00]
Right. Because first of all, that didn't pan out well, look, and it cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for it to not work out, which is fine.[00:16:00 - 00:16:11]
Everyone we talked to, they thought this is the best idea. They just. We had a few investors. It was a really, a great idea.[00:16:11 - 00:16:11]
Right.[00:16:11 - 00:16:32]
It was a way for people to save money on their health care by they bid on their radiology or their medications, like a, you know, like they're bidding on it. Like a Priceline online. Yeah, Priceline, how Priceline used to be, anyway. And it was a great idea. Too early.[00:16:32 - 00:16:35]
It was a very good idea.[00:16:35 - 00:16:38]
And it cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars.[00:16:39 - 00:18:09]
And we made those business decisions together. But I felt like having the balance of giving to those in need was really important to me. And so we did have some real conflict, not contention, but conflict surrounding that until we eventually, I think, came up with the idea that part of our budget would include money for me that I didn't have to be accountable to you for. And I could do whatever I wanted with that. If I wanted to give it to other people, that was fine. And so that was a compromise that took us a couple of years to figure out. But ultimately, I think it answered the really significant feelings that I had that my voice didn't matter as much when it came to making those financial decisions. So there's a study by Dr. LeBaron Black that just actually came out this year, and she found that unequal decision making power when I comes to finances creates an imbalance in relational power, which then weakens the marriage. And it especially does that for newlyweds. And I see when I work with couples, when I'm noticing power imbalances, often the very best way, well, the first way to go and the, and the best way to correct that is by having shared balance of power. Shared power in decision making in all things financial.[00:18:10 - 00:18:14]
And I don't recall ever saying I'm going to exert power over money.[00:18:14 - 00:18:21]
No, no, you wouldn't have done that. It was my interpretation because like we talked about, we come to the table with our financial history.[00:18:22 - 00:18:37]
Right. And yet there still was some imbalanced financial decision making in regards to that. And I didn't know it. Like, I didn't know any better. Right. We just lived our lives just kind of reactively.[00:18:37 - 00:18:40]
Right. So how did we turn it around then?[00:18:40 - 00:19:29]
Well, how did we turn it around? Look, we still had a budget in residency, we had a budget when we lived in Arizona. I think that we didn't really begin changing the way we look at money in such a fundamental way until we heard of this Guy named Dave Ramsey. And I'm pretty sure most people have heard of this guy. He has a radio talk show and he just, he helped us by listening to him and by reading his books. And from that, when I read that first book, I can't remember the name of it now, but he said every dollar has to have a name. And that just stuck with me. It stuck with me.[00:19:29 - 00:19:30]
Has to go in a category.[00:19:30 - 00:19:49]
Yeah. Like you have to assign every dollar to something. And that really did something to me. Our budgeting changed and it was more consistent. I think it was more spotty before that. But it really helped us bring together and start becoming more intentional.[00:19:49 - 00:19:53]
Right. And taking stewardship for money.[00:19:53 - 00:20:05]
I mean, look, if I'm not making that much money, I can still say, this goes here. I have that power to put it in that bucket. And that, that feels powerful. That gives you power. It's a rush.[00:20:05 - 00:20:09]
And it helps us move towards financial goals as well.[00:20:09 - 00:20:36]
So we also have another thing that helped us turn it around. We talked about marriage retreats back some weeks ago as the secret sauce to a successful marriage. And every marriage retreat we talk about our finances from a 30,000 foot view. So it's not, oh, how is our budget doing? Which is also very, very important.[00:20:36 - 00:20:38]
We do that weekly in our house counsels.[00:20:38 - 00:21:48]
What do we want to do with our money? And I will have to say eventually, I still remember the moment where I just thought in my head, I have to make a decision. I can keep butting heads with my wife about how she wants to give money away to other people in need and I want to pay off loans and other things and this is not resolving. And I still remember the moment in my head where I finally decided that this is now what I want to do. I want to take a part of my money. The moment before I thought it was ridiculous and stupid. When we're in this much debt, why are we doing this? To the very next moment, this is what I want to do. It was a very hard thing to do. I'm telling you, this was hard. We were sitting on an airplane between Mexico City and Dallas when I decided this in my head. And ever since that moment, it's been so much better. And I will tell you, and the.[00:21:48 - 00:21:52]
Other parts of our financial goals have better aligned.[00:21:52 - 00:22:20]
Right. And so. And this is not a reason to give money to other people. But it's true when you give, you receive, but you don't do it with the expectation of receiving. Sometimes it is still a little hard. However, it's part of the budget. Now I don't even think about it. It goes to other people, it goes to other organizations, and we still were able to pay off all of our other debts.[00:22:20 - 00:22:54]
That's right. There are a couple of other things. We did take a personal finance course together that taught us better how to work through all of the financial discussions as a team, work through it together rather than just one person being in charge of this. You used to be in charge of most of the creating budget types of things and then holding us accountable. I was more responsible for paying the bills. But when we started to do things jointly and have discussions on how to revamp things in a way that worked for both of us, that really is where we started to take off, I think.[00:22:55 - 00:23:06]
Yeah, that finance course, that was kind of hard, but it was also really helpful. You've looked at some research on financial things and satisfaction in marriage. Do you want to go through that?[00:23:06 - 00:24:01]
Sure. This is a compilation of a lot of different studies. Dew, Carol, Wickley are some of the biggest ones, and Lebaron Black, there are several others. But compositely, higher satisfaction in marriage is linked to better management of finances. And that includes budgeting, saving money, investing, being well insured in areas that just helps people feel safe and it allows them to have greater marital satisfaction. Little or no debt is another one. Being able to communicate together about finances, living within our means rather than spending every single penny that comes and overextending ourselves. Higher satisfaction is also linked with lower levels of materialism, meaning that we need things.[00:24:01 - 00:24:03]
Stuff, stuff.[00:24:03 - 00:24:11]
On the other hand, lower satisfaction in marriage is linked to money when either one or both of the partners really values possessions.[00:24:11 - 00:24:15]
Things, things. So getting a trend there.[00:24:15 - 00:24:23]
Materialism had a negative association with marital quality even when both spouses were unified in wanting things.[00:24:23 - 00:24:25]
So both husband and wife want that.[00:24:25 - 00:24:35]
We have the same value. We have that value, but again, their marital satisfaction was lower if it was focused on things rather than experiences.[00:24:36 - 00:24:48]
To our audience. Let me let you in on a little secret here. Buying a bunch of stuff will not produce more long term joy in your marriage. Shocker. I know, right?[00:24:48 - 00:25:21]
Well, in one of my graduate school classes we talked about this. It just requires so much maintenance of the stuff that we lose the ability to maintain our marriage. There's another interesting study about that, and this probably isn't too much of a surprise, but when both partners are stressed about money, that impacts their relationship in the bedroom. Actually, shocker. I know. I saw a few studies on that. Stress about money impacts our sexual relationship as well. So.[00:25:22 - 00:26:18]
Well, the problem here is the word linked. So it's like that chicken and the egg problem, right? Am I more satisfied in marriage because I budget better, or does improving my budget skills cause me more satisfaction in my marriage? In the end? Hey, it's probably both. To some degree. I may be already happy, and a good budgeter to boot. If I'm unhappy, then, and I happen to work really hard at becoming a better budgeter, will that automatically increase my marital satisfaction? Probably. I'm a stickler on this. I really want to know cause and effect, not just association. So that's why this podcast is really important for every married person and every person thinking about marriage. Because we can always become better at whatever we do, regardless of what our starting point is.[00:26:19 - 00:26:37]
And that's the end of part one of our episode on finances. In Part two, next week, we're going to explore navigating conflicts over money, developing financial intimacy, and learning how to better communicate about our finances. Trust me, you're not going to want to miss this one.[00:26:38 - 00:26:46]
And remember, the intelligent spouse knows that to change from a stinky to a scintillating marriage first requires a change in themselves.[00:26:47 - 00:27:16]
Thank you all for tuning into Marriage IQ. We hope today's episode has sparked some valuable insights. Remember, the conversation doesn't end here. If you get the chance, we'd love to have you leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. It really helps us get the word out about Marriage IQ. Thanks again for listening. Keep exploring and we'll catch you next time on another exciting episode of Marriage IQ.
