Couples who are just dating or married generally have a ‘what’s mine is your‘ approach in their relationship, however this should not be the norm when it comes to the financial aspect of their lives.
Instead, couples should have meaningful and thorough discussions about money to get a better understanding of each other’s financial situation, good or bad.
Neil van der Walt, Marketing Manager, DebtSafe recommends the following tips to help couples kickstart and continue the conversation about finances:
1. Instead of treating financial conversations as a taboo point, discussions about money should be something that couples should do regularly.
“It is never too early or too late to learn from yourself and your loved one when it comes to finances,” Van der Walt said.
2. Partners in a relationship should be empathetic towards themselves as well as their significant other, and never jump to conclusions about their loved one’s financial situation.
Van der Walt said that assumptions can ruin the trust that couples have within their relationship and can add negative connotations to a discussion that would have initially started with good intentions.
3. Practice makes perfect - this means that couples should start with basic finance questions and slowly learn how to improve their questions by adding more details to the discussion points.
The finance questions can range from:
– how did they understand the money concept as a child?
– when did they experience the actual value of money as an adult?
– what has led to becoming over-indebted?
– what are your personal financial goals?
4. According to Van der Walt, regular communication and conversations about setting financial goal are crucial.
Couples can set up a monthly catch-up with their loved ones or in more complicated cases they can have a weekly discussion about finances.
Van der Walt said: “As your relationship develops, your understanding of your financial situation, your partner's journey, and your mutual, aka couple goals, grow. Plus, you will create a vision of what you need to do and start actioning to be where you want to be together.“
5. Partners in a relationship should not avoid the topic of debt. Instead it should be an essential part of their conversations, and they need to figure out what the degree of indebtedness is.
In some cases both partners will be managing their debt situations well, and in other cases one or both partners are struggling with their debt situations.
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