Navigating Money Issues in Marriage: How to Build Financial Collaboration
Money issues in marriage
Approximate read time: 10 minutes
Money problems are one of the most common sources of stress and conflict in marriage. But despite being a frequent cause of tension, financial struggles don’t have to lead to the breakdown of a relationship. Very often the conventional communication tools we’ve been given will NOT work. You might have heard pieces of advice like:
“Communication is key”
and
“Just have an open conversation about money with your partner”
and
“Comprimise is the key to a successful marriage”
Can you feel my eyes rolling right now?
If these standard, cookie-cutter, simplistic tools worked, you and your partner would be just fine right now.
The easiest thing in the world is to see that somehow you’re not using the above “tools” correctly. But maybe you aren’t the problem. Maybe the problem is the tools and strategies you are trying to use when talking about money.
In this article, we’ll discuss why conventional tools for talking about money issues in marriage don’t work, and the first steps to crafting a conversation with your partner around your biggest resources: money.
The problem with conventional communication tools
Let’s meet Sam and Mo, a fictional couple that is fed up with not being able to talk about their finances, much less plan and budget together.
But! Tonight’s the night. They’ve both agreed to sit down and finally, once and for all, put together a budget. They’ve got their spreadsheet open, bank statements printed out, and they’re ready to go.
Sam: “Wait… what’s that?”
Mo: “What? The trip to the store? I told you about that.”
Sam: “You said you were going for a few things! That’s almost $400!”
Mo:“First, we said we were going to stay calm during this conversation, we both agreed, and second, how much do you think it costs to feed this family?!”
Sam:“Not $400 a trip!”
Mo: “We also said we were going to compromise, right?”
Sam: “What’s to compromise on? You said you’d cut back on spending and you didn’t hold up your part of the bargain!”
Make no mistake, Sam and Mo are trying to comply with the simplistic wisdom above. They really are trying to have an open conversation, they are trying to compromise.
But the tools they are trying to use: open communication, making a budget, compromise, aren’t actually financial tools, they are the result of well-built, customized financial tools and strategies.
Understanding the Root Causes of Money Issues in Marriage
Before tackling the issue, it’s important to understand why money issues arise in the first place. Money can represent more than just numbers in a bank account. Money has emotional weight and can symbolize security, power, control, or even love. There are many root causes for money issues in marriage, so in this article we’ll talk about just three:
Emotional decision making/Solving for one thing
The “right” couch is out there, they just have to find it, right?
Here’s another conversation that Sam and Mo had when they were shopping for a couch online:
Sam: Hey look, this one would fit great in the living room, and it’s in our price range.
Mo: Is it comfortable?
Sam: I don’t know, we could read reviews, or see if we can find it in a showroom.
Mo: Yeah let’s do that. It doesn’t matter how much it costs if it’s not comfortable, right?
Sam: Yeah, but if it’s not in our price range it doesn’t matter how comfortable it is because we’re not getting it, right?
Each partner is solving for only one thing. Sam is solving for price, Mo is solving for comfort.
I imagine if you’re playing out the rest of this conversation in your head between these two fictional people it probably got pretty tense right away. Both of them think they are solving for the only right thing, and both can’t understand why the other can’t see reason.
But even if we aren’t in conversation with someone, the conflict between right and wrong persists, even if it’s just our conversations with ourselves.
The outcomes of emotional decision making
Besides just being lighting-fast, emotional decisions are typically present-focused rather than future-focused and heavily driven by strong emotions (anger, fear, hurt, resentment, disgust, etc).
Frequent emotional decision making means we live with a lot of regret because it is difficult to look at past choices and use those as a framework for future decisions. All we can see is that we did not make the magically correct choice.
Emotional decision making also destroys connection and trust between you and anyone you’re trying to communicate with. But the biggest downfall of emotional decision making is that it reinforces to you that you cannot be trusted.
Three indicators of emotional decision making:
Emotional decisions are lightning-fast
When we are dysregulated, stressed out, etc, we tend to make decisions that are incredibly fast. Our stressed out brains are actually quite good at this kind of reactivity. Very often (although not always), those incredibly fast decicisions are only focused on right now. Which makes sense, because we might be feeling an awful lot of pain or discomfort RIGHT NOW. So future focused decisions are not a priority for our stressed-out brains.
Emotional decisions solve for only one thing
We can see from Sam and Mo’s conversation that they are each solving for exactly one thing and cannot solve for anything else. Mo is solving for comfort, and Sam is solving for price. When we are dysregulated and emotional we don’t have the kind of cognitive capacity we do when we’re calm and regulated. So when we are emotional we solve for one thing, and when we are only solving for one thing, we get emotional. And our one “correct” solution looks the only safe way to make this choice, and anyone else’s perspective will look incorrect and unsafe. No wonder Mo and Sam are about to have an argument about a couch.
Emotional decisions are satisfying
Going hand-in-hand with emotional decision making being fast, it’s also deeply satisfying. Finally it feels like we’re getting some work done!!! Our brains are really good at making fast decisions, and it can feel satisfying to pull the trigger on choices (not just financial, but also tone-of voice, word choice, etc).
Lack of transparency
We don’t start off wanting to keep things with our partners. I rarely work with anyone who with sets out to keep secrets from their partner. Intentional secret keeping does happen, but not as often as most of us assume it does.
Whether intentional or not, a lack of transparency around money (also known as financial infidelity) is often rooted in the need to protect ourselves AND our partners. We’re often also trying to protect our sense of normalcy and trying to avoid feeling shamed or guilty.
Intuitively, we hide things we’re ashamed of, and are ashamed of things we hide. We’ve been told by our culture that we are supposed to hide/not talk about our finances, so it’s easy to see why we feel a lot of shame around our money and especially TALKING about our money. The more open we are, the more interconnected we are, the safer we all are to talk about finances. We’ll talk more about how to feel safe in being transparent later in this article.
Scarcity Mindset
Scarcity mindset, deprivation mindset, “depression-era” thinking, are all terms for a similar mindset… namely that our brains think we will never have enough money. In most cases this comes along with time scarcity as well. Distinct from restriction, scarcity is a mindset and state of being, whereas restriction is a tool that is intended to help someone make “good” decisions.
Restriction will reinforce the scarcity mindset, however.
Because scarcity is a mindset, not a choice, you may not even know you are under the influence of scarcity. We are bathed in it, and may not know any other way to look at the world.
Scarcity, similar to perfectionism (link) also tells the lie that if somehow we could make the perfect choices, we’d be safe.
You may see/hear scarcity present itself in two general ways.
- I don’t know when I’m going to have this money again, so I need to save it, lock it down, restrict myself.
- I don’t know when I’m going to have this money again, so I need to use it, spend it, and make use of it now.
You may notice that you are using both of the scarcity strategies above, but may lean more heavily one way or the other. No one is 100% one way on anything.
Naming and bringing forward the two presentations of scarcity can help you understand and be aware of something that might have otherwise felt like a fog.
Bonus fourth root cause of money issues in marriage: Financial trauma
We’re not going to dig into financial trauma in this article (it’s already pretty long), but you’re welcome to read more here.
Effective Strategies for Overcoming Money Issues in Marriage
Understand there are two kinds of financial tools
There are two kinds of financial tools: relationship tools, and system tools.
Using a system tool to fix a relationship concern will not work.
Likewise, trying to use a relationship tool to fix a system concern will not work. It may seem like the simplest thing in the world to try to lean hard into budgeting and restriction (emotionally withholding spending).
This strategy will not work.
I’m sure you can look back into your financial lives and find great examples of the times you’ve tried to stick to a budget, restrict yourselves or shut down “unnecessary” spending only to have either or both of you feeling resentment and/or rebellious.
Work towards transparency and safety
We normally operate from a place of slight, but constant sense of being on guard. And loving someone, or being open to that love means we have to let that guard down a bit. Being on-guard can prevent us from being too dependent on another. But always being a littl on guard can also get us sucked into the trap of hyper-individuality. Those aren’t the only two options, however.
The other option is something called interdependence.
That interdependence means we can do something dependence or hyper-individuality can’t do. It means we are safer because we can ask for help when we need it. We can also learn about different perspectives and carefully evaluate which advice/concepts we implement in our lives and which ones we don’t.
Interdependence does not mean stopping protective strategies like shutting down, yelling, attacking, or being defensive. It means you don’t have to use those protective strategies at all, because you’re safe.

Two steps toward transparency, safety, and interdependence
Be seen
“Being Seen” often sounds like an expectation of others and can come along with a lot of defensiveness. “I expect you to see me and hear me!” would be the rally cry of self-protective and defensive demand to be seen. Like counter-dependence, this instinct can crush connection and interdependence. It makes the responsibility for connection (and by extension safety) someone else’s problem.
Being seen in a way that promotes interdependence means transparency and communication. And transparency requires self-awareness without judgment and self-regulation. Being transparent is also incredibly vulnerable.
We can borrow a tool from Nonviolent Communication (NVC) for help with this, of course. Namely being able to understand and name our unmet needs. Communicating through intent and impact also compliments transparency and vulnerability.
Very often we think we’re communicating directly, but actually aren’t. Direct communication would look more like “I’m feeling uncertain and unsafe about our savings”, not “You need to take this seriously.”
Most of all, being seen/transparent/vulnerable requires self-trust/resilience. If you know you can trust yourself (resilience) then the reactions/actions/behaviors of others carry less risk to our safety and happiness. Being seen also means that you share the responsibility of being understood with the other person, it isn’t all on them.
Be wrong
The easier it is to be wrong, the better connected we are, and the faster we can adapt and change to internal and external circumstances. Being ok with being wrong also means we aren’t falling prey to the Just World Fallacy. Being wrong means that you get a chance to push back on the lie that there are perfectly right and wrong choices to be made.
Perfectionism tells us the lie that if we were perfect, we’d be safe. It also means that being wrong, even in small ways, is unsafe. Perfectionism is arbitrary, and what you think of as the correct/perfect choice your partner will likely have a different perspective. Rather than being able to leverage that differing perspective, this can lead to conflict.
Being wrong means that we don’t hold our “rightness” so tightly as well. That makes us gentler when others are wrong and less attached to our being right.
Being wrong means that we don’t move through the world looking for our failures. It just means we’re open to the idea that we could be wrong. This means openness rather than failure, and connection rather than compliance.
Closing thoughts
What would it look like if you and your partner could have safe, respectful, effective conversations about money? What would you be able to do/accomplish then that you can’t do now?
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