5 Tips to Remove Stress From Your Finances – Tip 4- Talk About Money

Hi, Matt Blocki with EWA. Today we are talking about five tips to remove stress out of your finances. Fourth tip to share around removing stress out of your financial life is to simply talk. And so what we found when we sit down with a couple, there are conversations that should have been had years ago that we then have which don’t always start out smooth, but are so necessary to ensure alignment between spouses or partners to make sure that the financial plan, the philosophy is aligned.

So, some examples of this if you’re getting married, talk about how are you going to get a prenup? Is there a difference in income? Is there a difference in wealth? Is one family expecting an inheritance?

Are you going to have separate bank accounts? What’s your value of saving? What’s your philosophy? If you have kids, are you going to fund their college? Are you going to have skin in the game? Maybe one spouse had it fully paid for, maybe one spouse didn’t have it paid for.

They found the value in working hard to get the student loans paid off. One spouse that did have it paid for found the value of starting ahead in life and not feeling that stress early. So there’s no right or wrong answer other than the answer always is to talk and make sure that you’re this is a good test because money is one of the most stressful topics that exist.

It’s a good test of compatibility in a relationship as well to see how good of a listeners you are to each other. If you’re already married, also talk. Unfortunately, there’s lots of stresses and money is one big one, especially if you’re married with kids, jobs and priorities and all these different competitions that occur is getting in a room and talking and sometimes.

A financial advisor can help talk through what are the stresses, what are our priorities? Because a lot of times life happens so quickly that initially priorities aligned and then they’re completely different as life gives us perspective and we progress.

Maybe you have kids and you need to talk with your kids. I think one of the most valuable things you can teach your kids is about money, is the responsibility of saving versus spending, of how to prioritize.

Maybe you’re on your second marriage and you have obligations to your first marriage and then you have a mixed family. Now, sometimes these conversations simply talk, talk through. If there’s not talking, we’ve seen a lot of assumicing.

So basically assuming something that’s not true, that other person’s thinking or prioritize someone else over you. So talking is always the solution. And then the other thing I think is really important is there’s a thin line between helping and enabling.

So for kids, for example, if you’re funding all their college, leaving all this money, there is no greater gift than adversity. There’s no greater gift than letting your children face adversity, go through adversity and problem solve.

Something I think is really lacking in the world. So helping can be incredible. Coming out of school without debt can be incredible. But knowing the individual and knowing, is this helping or is this actually turned into enabling?

A lack of motivation or the lack of creating their own disciplines that made you so successful. You’re taking away that from your kid. You’re trying to help them so much, but you end up actually hurting them by doing so.

Talking is always a solution. Making sure the spouses, kids, alignment is the key word here. And then gifting is another great conversation as well. What charities are most important, what family members?

Maybe there’s a disagreement between partners of what you value. So again, the solution to all this is talk. So. Believe it or not, whenever we go through a new potential client and we talk about priorities and we talk about goals, spouses always surprise each other and they always come out that they know each other better, because these conversations very rarely happen behind closed doors.

Money is a very taboo subject, but it doesn’t have to be. The more open dialogue you have in a very safe environment, the more productive and safe and secure your financial plan and your relationships will be moving forward.

Thanks for watching our tip today. We look forward to bringing our fifth tip to you very soon.