Merging Into Life: How To Talk to Your Partner About Money

[00:00:37] Kiersten: I mean, after 10 days of vacation, to come back and just buckle down. I wanted a smoother landing. In my smooth landing, I was like, all right, let’s go get some drinks. Let’s go out. Let’s go on a date. And you were like, “we just did that, for 10 days.” And so, it led to a much bigger conversation around how we were managing our finances, because, at the time, we were making the same money. So, he’s like, where do you have all of this money to continue to spend at this level? And I was like, “credit cards, duh”.

[00:01:12] Julien: Hello and welcome to Merging Into Life. We are so excited to be partnering with AAA Northeast to guide you through a miniseries all about planning for your financial future. I’m Julien.

[00:01:22] Kiersten: And I’m Kiersten, and we’re the hosts of the “rich & REGULAR” podcast. Together, we’ve paid off over $200,000 in debt and have been helping so many others do the same. Today’s topic is one that we have a lot of experience with, because we do it all the time.

[00:01:35] Julien: Yeah, today we’re talking about money and relationships, more specifically how you can have more effective conversations with your partner around your finances. Our guest today is Dr. Abby Medcalf. She’s a psychologist, author, podcast host and speaker who specializes in relationship dynamics. She brings a rare blend of clinical insight and real-world advice, plus an MBA that helps her talk about money as comfortably as she talks about emotions.

[00:02:05] Kiersten: Thank you, Abby, for joining us. In your own words, can you tell our listeners a little bit about you and who you are and what you do?

[00:02:12] Abby: I have sort of an odd background that I have a master’s in counseling psychology, the MBA and then I have Ph.D. in organizational psychology. So, I have this blend of therapy and counseling as well as business and coaching. And I put that all together on my own podcast and my books, etc.

[00:02:30] Kiersten: One of the things that I love about your work is that you have said that financial conversations can actually improve a relationship, can improve the intimacy and make you feel closer. Why does that happen?

[00:02:43] Abby: When we think about relationships, you know, to have a truly intimate relationship, meaning emotionally close. An emotionally close relationship, you have to have trust, and the only way to have trust is to have vulnerability, and this sort of transparency with how we talk to our partners and what we share. And not honesty, I always separate those two, it’s not about honesty, it is about this transparency, right? It’s real openness. And clarity, and when money, I think for many reasons, you know, there’s people have money shame, different money backgrounds. I think money is often not talked about much. I can’t tell you how many people have come to me and I asked them about money. I’m like, oh, how are you guys doing financially? Where’s the money go? I always ask those questions, and they’ll say to me, wow, you’re the fifth couples council we’ve ever seen and no one’s ever asked us about money? If you think about why people divorce, money is in one of those top categories. So it’s crazy to me that it’s not even mentioned But once you get past that and just keep at it, the close that you know common goals really going towards something together. We are a partnership, right that that to me. It’s the only reason i’m married like why else do it? We are competing in a couple. If we have secrets in a couple, then we’re in a lot of trouble. You know, it’s your turn to take away, take out the garbage. It’s your turn to put up the dishes. It you’d spent money on this. Now I get to spend money on this, all that division and not seeing yourselves as a shared resource is the problem or for keeping score with our partner. If I’m keeping score in a game, I got to tell you I’m pretty competitive. I want to win. And if I’m winning and my partner’s losing, then we’re not winning as a couple. You throw kids in the mix and forget it, right? That is really when the keeping score really starts. And money is just one of the many ways that this shows up. 

[00:04:45] Julien: Kiersten would tell you she can probably tell you maybe five or seven of the things that you said that maybe triggered me and made me think of conversations or hostile conversations. I’m sure you have a term for whatever a financial argument is. I, too, have found it very interesting that there are some things that people would never talk about on the first date. When exactly should people have these first or these early conversations about money? I know I’ve tried it on like the first day, and that part didn’t work. I can’t speak for everyone. Maybe it was me. But what do you think is the right time and exactly how should people be approaching those conversations for the very first time?

[00:05:25] Abby: I think in the very beginning, it’s about observing. I wouldn’t even start the conversation because there’s already a conversation happening. So, what do you usually do on a first date? Often you meet for a drink, or you have dinner or something, right? So, one of the first things I’m watching, I’m thinking of my husband, I was watching, first of all, just what he ordered. If you’re sitting there, if you order a little soup and the other person’s like, I’m having the lobster and whatever, you’re sort of like, OK. This person’s not vibing with where I am right now, right? Did the person mention, “hey, I’m going to treat,” you know, or “hey, I really am hoping that we each pay our own.” And I’m not saying you should test people. Don’t ever do that. If you want to be clear up front, be clear up front. I’m always looking at how people tip. I grew up in the restaurant industry. So, I, and I worked in it for many years. I’m all always about what’s happening with the tip and how, obviously, this person is treating our server and that kind of thing. But that’s not money. That’s just observing, right, how they are in general with who’s around them, how they treat people. You notice first, and then you have the conversations as you go. But I wouldn’t have the conversation necessarily of, you know, how much do you make? I mean, you could. I don’t see anything wrong with that. I think it’s more about how do you like to spend your money? That’s one of my favorite, that was one of my first questions to him. I said, how do you spend money? Like what’s your favorite thing to spend money on? My favorite thing is spend money on his food, because I am a foodie. My Gary hates, he would take a pill every day if he could, no interest in food whatsoever. But that was a great conversation for us, right? My Gary will not spend, I’m not making this up. He will not spend $100 on a pair of sneakers. Like, will not. Like, to him, it’s outrageous. And I’m bougie as they come. But you have to decide. One is not right and one is not wrong. And I always say go into every conversation looking to learn something, not prove something. So, if you can go in with real curiosity, like, you know, what, tell me about your Louis Vuitton. What does that mean to you? And to him, it’s outrageous. And, so, we had to discuss how that would look and what is important to me and why. And it was really great for me to think about why. Like, why is that important? Why do I have all those bags? You know, not to be defensive about it, but to really ask myself about it. Am I trying to prove something? When you can’t go in without being defensive and having money shame about it? And just saying, well, because I like it, what does that even mean? Why did, you know, it’s wonderful to know why you like something. Why is food important to me? Why is anything important to me? You know, what is that? Let’s learn about our partners. Let’s be curious what interests them and you know. So those first money conversations, I would say are like that.

[00:08:08] Kiersten: Love talking about money because it reveals so much, and I think your answer just touched on such an important point that the money itself, the conversation about the money itself isn’t the taboo part. The part where people get it wrong is the mindset.

[00:08:24] Abby: What I hear the most from couples, they’ll say, “oh, he’s a spender, and I’m a saver.” And my first reaction always is everyone is a spender. There is not a person alive who doesn’t spend money. It is this idea of someone’s good with money, someone’s bad with money. These labels that we put on each other and or sometimes ourselves because of our own money shame, right? Because it definitely, if you looked at Gary and I, you would say, “oh, she’s a spender, and he’s a saver.” But he spent, there’s lots of things my man spends money on. Like there’s lots of things he enjoys that I think are crazy, like Spartan races and triathlons and things like that. I would never spend a penny on that, because I’m wearing stilettos right now. I can’t run in those, right? And yeah, his ratio of what he earns to what he saves is higher than mine, and we’ve worked that all out. We’ve talked about it.

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[00:09:10] Kiersten: There’s been so many times, as you’ve been talking about you and Gary, that I hear Kiersten and Julien, because we are opposites in a lot of the same ways. Even the way that we grew up. I was the one who grew up comfortably. Julian grew up very differently. And we brought a lot of that baggage into our relationship. And once we started to unpack it in front of each other, I actually felt a lot of shame because I struggled with debt, and I struggled with spending responsibly, and I struggled with not believing that there was never going to be an end to the good times and the income and the things that I wanted. So I want to spend some time talking about shame and what you’ve learned from different couples in terms of how to navigate it. Is there a time where shame could actually be useful or helpful? Like should you, is feeling a little bit of shame ever a good thing?

[00:10:02] Abby: No. Because shame is a fear-based emotion and no relationship was ever made better with fear ever in the history of relationships. That’s like people tell me, “well, my anxiety helps me get productive at work.” I’m like, “no, we need another way, right?” I don’t want ever shame to be a motivator. If my butt is looking too big, and I think I got to get back to the gym, and I’ve got to cut down on the Oreos, right? But that’s not from shame. That’s from like, I want to be healthy. I want, like, how I feel in my clothing. So, I wouldn’t want money to come from there either. I would want that to feel like it’s because I love myself that I want these things or that I want to save. One of the things I say a lot is never take action from negative motivation. Always take it from inspiration. Because when we take it from negative motivation, somewhere it starts to fall apart because we transmit that. One of my favorite pieces of research ever in the history of all the research, and I’m a research junkie, is from Timothy Wilson. He found that our conscious brains process information, and this will relate back, I promise. Our conscious brains process information at a rate of 40 bits per second. While our subconscious or unconscious brains process information at a rate of 11 million bits per second. So people don’t hear what you say, they hear what you mean. And we all know we’ve been there where someone was talking, saying all the right things to us, and we were like, “I don’t like this person.” Like I’m getting a funky feeling, right? What’s the problem? It’s because that 11 million bits is picking up on what I call the wobble. There’s something out of sync. And it’s from fear, probably the person’s ego, or they’re trying to manipulate me, or maybe they’re a narcissist, who knows, right? I just know there’s a wobble. I just know that what they’re saying isn’t aligning with something I’m feeling. So, you can think something, right, like I don’t wanna have debt, because it’s a bad thing or it’s, and who would wanna have debt? Debt isn’t necessarily a good thing to have, certainly revolving debt. So, you could say that. But if there’s a part of you that’s kind of like, but is it really so bad? Or if somewhere it’s a belief that my worth in the world is based on my transactional quality of what I have, then that’s a wobble.

[00:12:27] Julien: In our experience, and not just in our relationship, because we were able to rebound after that first financial conflict. Because all this talk about opposites attracting, but I think when it comes to money, when you’re such in opposition in terms of your values, how do you help people to rebound? Right? Like, let’s say they’re listening to this podcast, they are all excited, they go, and they try to have that first conversation, and they don’t want to be like us and have that lead into an argument. But then that person is just resisting, right. Like, how do we help people get over that hump, get over those first arguments?

[00:13:05] Abby: There’s a few questions in there. First one is really, how do you have the money conversations? How do you have any conversation? I always say it’s like painting a room. You know, if you’ve ever painted a room, you know that you spend 90 percent of your time getting the room ready. And if you do that, if you tape off all the corners, if you put a tarp over everything, if you, you know, no one wants to spend the time doing that, right? You know if you sand the walls, if you if you all that stuff, the painting takes 2 minutes and looks amazing at the end. But that’s what you have to do in the conversation. You have to prep yourself first, first and foremost. If you really can’t wait to say something to someone, I usually tell people it’s not the right time to say it. One of my other little slogans, my hubby calls them a therapeutic jingles. I have a lot of these, right? You have connect to correct. So, you have to be connected first if you want to have a correcting conversation. When we’re fighting, I don’t want to do anything for you. Exactly. I really don’t. If you just told me that I spend too much money, and I’m stupid, and I am whatever, which I would never put up with, but let’s say you did. I don’t want to change. But when we’re connected, and I feel this real lovely space and that’s just sort of brewing, and you might say, “can we talk about something?” So, timing and tone, right? Timing is that you’re connected first. And I know a lot of people are like, oh, we’re getting along. I don’t want to rock the boat. And it’s like this. No, this is the only time to talk about it. The only time you should be, right. Then you set your intention. I really want to talk to you about money. And I know money can immediately feel fine. I know my heart is racing just saying it to you. This is where you get very transparent. And it’s my intention to really listen. It’s my attention that I learn something from the conversation. It’s my intention to truly understand sort of your take on money, and I hope you would have that with me. I always say the one and the most pain needs to change first. So, if you’re the one who’s really having the pain here, it’s going to be on you to listen. And when you do that, and it’s my intention that we both walk away really feeling heard, no matter what else, that both of us feel heard. Because I love you, and I want us to have a future, and I know money has to be part of it, and I don’t know how to get there yet. So, I want to figure it out together. Here’s what you do. Here is how you set it up. You know, set up the room to paint. Because having this conversation on the fly, you’re shopping at Office Depot, and all of a sudden, it’s like, “you spend too much money on nothing, “because you picked up the pen with the feathers on it, and they’re like, “you spend too much money garbage.” It’s like this is not your time. This is not time to have the conversation, but that’s what happens. People are like, well, you bought this yesterday. We start keeping score, right? And no one’s winning, no one is winning. So, if you can, you can say, “you know what, I’m going to buy the pen now, and we’ll talk about it later.” Or put the pen back for now and we’ll talk about it later. But either way this isn’t the time or place and that has to do with mindfulness. That’s a whole other thing, which to me, is the No. 1 thing you have to have in your relationship so you know this. But regardless, it’s really about having the intention going in. We go in trying to learn something that proves something that I honor that we have different preferences, and I’d like to learn more about your preferences, just be very clear about where you’re focused. And you will problem-solve better.

[00:16:28] Kiersten: What advice do you give or do you coach your clients with to help them address a fear of conflict or at least see conflict as a necessary part of any financial relationship or relationship in general? Because one of the things that I had a fear response to in our relationship early on was conflict. I had this idea of what a healthy relationship looked like and certainly what a healthy financial relationship looked like, and it was one that was free of conflict. It was one where he handled everything, and I just got to do what I do.

[00:17:03] Abby: By the way, I think conflict avoidance is probably the biggest issue we have today, period. Businesses, personal, everywhere. And the texting in relationships makes me insane. Should never be texting anything but logistics. Texting is not connecting. If you have to use an emoji or a cap to say what you mean, then you should take it off of text. But it’s so easy these days to text, only text logistics. I grew up at a time when we didn’t have phones. Like, I don’t know what to tell you. We lived, we were fine. And I think we were better off in a lot of ways without this like pacifier in our mouth all the time, and that will avoid a lot of conflict right there. But your second thing is that you have to rethink what conflict is. I would say there’s no, I bet you two don’t really have conflict. It is a disagreement. It is not.

[00:17:49] Julien: Not anymore. I mean, yeah.

[00:17:51] Abby: Yeah. But get over the word conflict, you know, just saying it, right, makes you think, ah, I don’t, oh, no, no, no, no, no. It’s about, and I would say if it’s consistent that you’re disagreeing all the time, then yeah, I would say, slow your roll. That’s usually what I say to clients who, you know. If there’s a lot of that kind of back and forth all the time, kind of about everything, slow your roll. You’re going too fast. You’re not, you’re not being mindful in your moments. You’re not thinking enough, because a lot of it you could probably let go.

[00:18:42] Julien: Big thanks again to Abby Medcalf. You know, when I think back to our very first conversation. I really, really wish I had the insight and the temperament that Abby kind of coaches people to have, because I certainly know that we would not have said half of the things that we said during that conversation. I really, really wish that I had the insight that Abby is offering on this podcast because I would not have come in as hot and heavy and ready to bombard you with that conversation so consider this an apology.

[00:19:16] Kiersten: I’ll take it. Yeah, I think what Abby is really good at is reframing what healthy conversations look like even in conflict. It’s like you don’t realize how many times in your life you’re going to have to relearn how to have a conversation with someone that you’ve known and loved for a long time. And this isn’t just true of like romantic partners, even with your family or with your kids, you evolve. And you have to be able to revisit conversations, leave room for places where maybe someone’s changed their mind, or you’ve changed yours. I want to say battle, but that feels like a very aggressive term, but you really have to fight to get to the other side of that conflict, because what’s there is just so rich and juicy and healthy and necessary for the relationship to be sustainable.

[00:20:01] Julien: Yeah, it may start like a battle, but I think once you two get on the same page, then it can kind of turn into a little bit of a dance. You know, you’re moving to the same beat as opposed to conflicting and bumping heads all the time or stepping on each other’s toes.

[00:20:14] Kiersten: And a dance battle sounds way more fun than a regular battle.

[00:20:18] Julien: There’s that part.

[00:20:20] Kiersten: All right, guys, we’ll link to Abby’s financial meeting guide and budget template in the show notes. And if you’re ready to sit down and have that talk with your partner, maybe start with one of her favorite lines, which is, “tell me more about that.”

[00:20:31] Julien Yeah. Thanks for listening to Merging Into Life, brought to you by AAA Northeast. If you like what you heard, subscribe, leave a review and share the episode with someone who needs it.

[00:20:50] Kiersten: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast do not constitute financial advice and are not necessarily the views of AAA Northeast, AAA, and or its affiliates.