Lately I feel like I’ve been stuck in a season of waiting. My husband and I have been dreaming of putting down roots in the Pacific Northwest since the first time we visited Oregon seven years ago. While we are just months away from making that goal a reality – we hope to buy a house sometime this summer – we are still in transition. In addition to waiting as we search for the right house, I spent the fall waiting to get an appointment with a doctor about a health concern I was dealing with, spent the winter waiting for medical tests, and am now spending the spring waiting to fully recover from surgery.
It’s not uncommon for couples to have an income gap between partners – in fact, it's the norm. According to data from Morning Consult and Insider, nearly three-quarters of Americans reported they had some income imbalance with their partner before they started dating. And while that imbalance can flip-flop as partners change jobs or receive a raise or bonus, at times it can be significant. This might happen when one partner retires, decides to go back to school, or opts to stay at home with the kids. This might also happen when one partner gets a big promotion or receives a large inheritance. How can you manage your finances so this imbalance in income doesn’t throw your relationship off balance? Consider these steps:
I’m a big fan of the Financial Feminist podcast. A few weeks ago the host, Tori Dunlap, shared a money hack that she had heard about from another financial educator on Science Finance: Before making an impulse purchase, ask yourself: “How many ‘taco dollars’ does it cost?” That particular financial educator really loved tacos, so he judged each purchase by asking, “How many tacos could I buy for the cost of that item?” Concert tickets: 20 tacos. Cupcake: 1 taco. Fancy hotel stay: 83 tacos. Then, he would ask himself: “Is it really worth that many tacos?”
My last post on things that can jumpstart your financial life in 5 minutes or less got me thinking about one of the most effective steps I ever took during our marriage: asking my husband an icebreaker question about our life together. That word icebreaker is key: these are questions designed to get conversation going, not shut it down. And that means the question has to be open-ended and asked with a spirit of genuine curiosity of learning what your partner thinks.
Long-time readers of this blog are familiar with the four money personalities I discuss: the giver, the saver, the spender, and the acquirer. Over time, though, I’ve learned that while people tend to understand the first three, they often stumble over the last one. On first blush, people generally thought the “acquirer” referred to someone who liked to accumulate or collect things. However, that couldn’t be further from the truth. The acquirer was someone focused on how money came into their life, not what was done with the money after it was received.
I visited North Minneapolis for the first time during my graduate school orientation. One day of orientation was devoted to visiting different organizations in our community that related to our course of study. My group had the opportunity to visit a church in North Minneapolis and walk the neighborhood with their pastor.
I grew up in the suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri. For the first twelve years of my life, my family lived in a beautiful, 3-bedroom home in a historic, upper middle class neighborhood. The neighborhood was filled with plenty of green space, a school with a playground, and even a fountain. It was no secret that outside of this idyllic neighborhood, though, this area of town wasn’t the best. Case in point: Even though there was an elementary school just a few blocks from my house, it was never a question that my brother and I would go to private school (as did just about every other kid in our neighborhood). The school district was known to be one of the worst in the area. So for preschool up through sixth grade we commuted to a local Catholic school about 20 minutes away.
Did you know that white families have a median net worth that’s almost 10x higher than that of Black households? I’m embarrassed to admit that up until a few weeks ago, I didn’t. I’ve known for a long time about the wage gap, but I never knew about the racial wealth divide.
Am I doing my work to become an anti-racist?
Like many white Americans, George Floyd’s death was a wake-up call for me. Not that the work of racial justice wasn’t important to me before, but it was something I was able to compartmentalize due to my own privilege. If the last few months have taught me anything, it’s that we can’t afford to silently support this cause from the sidelines. To shift the tide of systemic racism and dismantle white privilege, we all need to be willing to step into the ring and actively engage not just in the aftermath of a brutal murder but every single day.
