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.
FSA or HSA? Low deductible plans or high deductible plans? Copays, coinsurance, deductibles? All the terminology can make it challenging to select a plan that’s a good fit for your needs. That’s why so many people end up blindly choosing a plan because “it sounds good,” it’s what their co-workers chose, it looks the best on paper, or it’s the cheapest.
It’s almost Valentine’s Day! Last year, I took a look at how to make your Valentine’s Day more meaningful by giving your partner a gift aligned with their love language. This year, since so many Valentine’s Day marketers seem to emphasize quantity over quality, I invite you to give a gift that lasts — or at least doesn’t end up draining the Earth’s resources. Don’t get me wrong — I love the sweet, slightly cheesy, expressions of chocolate, flowers, jewelry, and cards. But they can also be incredibly wasteful, as they are often cheaply manufactured and quickly thrown away.
Can we all agree that the stock market can be really confusing? Before I started my job as a financial educator, I knew next to nothing about stock market terminology, or how to interpret what I’d hear on the news. Since I’m not planning to be a day trader (and I’m guessing you aren’t either), my biggest goal is to use the stock market to my advantage to increase my retirement savings. Over the last five years, these are the six things I’ve discovered you need to know to be a savvy investor:
For a couple of years now I’ve been following a community called BossedUp that aims to help women beat the cycle of burnout and create happy, healthy, and sustainable careers. So often becoming the “boss” of your own life — or even succeeding in your career — is framed as a solo activity. But BossedUp chooses a different framing, inviting us to find our tribe, create communities of courage, and, most importantly, “lift as we climb.”
In 2020, I am encouraging the couples in my Date Night Club to start the year by setting just one goal for themselves. You heard me right: just one. And in fact, the easier that goal is to achieve, the better.
Now, I’m not lazy and neither are the couples in my Date Night Club. But I am convinced if they can reach one goal — create one win in their financial life — that will give them the confidence boost they need to propel them forward. It’s a lot like the debt snowball method: paying off the smallest debt first and letting that psychological and financial momentum inspire you to keep tackling your smallest debt until you’ve paid off everything you owe.
Over the last two years, I have had the privilege of walking beside Michelle Boss (aka The Money Boss) as an accountability partner. Over that time she’s grown from being a fellow financial coach into a mentor and friend. We’ve never met in person, but we check in every two weeks via phone. We share our highs and lows, celebrating and encouraging one another along the way.
So often I hear people say, “I’m not good with money.” Why not, I’ll ask. They’ll usually tell me about a money mistake they made: “Right out of college, I got too many credit cards and landed myself deep in debt,” or, “I’ve never made saving a priority; when I get money, all I want to do is spend it.”
Ever since I can remember, I loved giving money away. It started with the first $20 I earned from babysitting … I couldn’t wait to share some of what I’d made with my youth group charity fundraiser. As my income has grown, I’ve taken pleasure in giving larger gifts to organizations I care about and finding new causes to support.
The other day my husband texted me about a few different clothing items he was looking to buy to round out his wardrobe. Since any talk about spending makes me a bit anxious, his text set off the panic bells and a stream of irrational thoughts: “Where would this money come from? Would spending in this way get in the way of our savings goals? Did this mean we could no longer be as generous as I wanted our family to be?”
Who can you be most honest with?
About two years ago, a friend from college and I decided to start writing emails back and forth to keep in touch. We had used this technique after college to help us stay connected after she went off to grad school in Colorado and I moved to the Twin Cities, but now that we were living in the same city we still struggled to stay connected other than the once or twice a month we are able to see each other in person. As two introverts, we’ve found there’s a lot we can say in writing that we can’t seem to get into when we meet in person.
Last year, my dad gave me one of my favorite Christmas gifts I’ve ever received: a box full of recipes and supplies to cook a decadent dinner for my husband and me to enjoy. It was carefully curated, with specialty dried pasta, summer sausage, crackers, and expensive chocolates — he even tucked in a few food and cooking items I would never buy for myself. It was so my dad: As a master chef and baker he always knows the best recipes and the finest ingredients to make them. But it was also so perfect for me as someone who enjoys spending time in the kitchen. I don’t need more things at this point in my life; I love experiences. And what could be better than spending time cooking a savory pasta dish on a cold, snowy night?
Aah … the four little words that have ruled most of my adult financial life.
In graduate school — when I couldn’t afford anything beyond basic necessities — I wore those four words as a badge of honor. Unlike so many of my peers who didn’t live within their means, they helped me be clear on what was inside my budget and what wasn’t.
I can’t tell you how many people have given my husband and I “the side eye” for selling our house and moving to an apartment. We downsized before the age of 40 and moved back into the city from the ‘burbs. In many people’s minds, we exchanged the “American dream” of home ownership for slavery to a landlord. Instead of investing in a home we’re now just throwing money away, right? Wrong! This is just one of many financial myths that I’m busting in today’s post.
For most of the couples I work with, there seems to be one person who’s more money-minded and another who isn’t. In most cases the person who isn’t money minded wants to be a part of the money conversation – they want to set goals together as a couple but they lack the financial confidence to really dig into the numbers with their partner. Similarly, the more money minded partner longs for the partner to be a part of the conversation but they just can’t seem to bring him or her to the table.
When I got my first full-time paycheck, the last thing on my mind was retirement. I was so excited to be able to pay my bills without stress and not have to check my bank account every time I went out with friends. It was such a relief to finally be in a viable financial position! The one thing that weighed on me most financially was my student loan debt. For the first time, I actually had to stare the numbers in the face and make a solid repayment plan. It felt like this enormous monkey on my back and I wanted it off as soon as possible. So I decided to make a beeline toward repaying my student loan debt with any extra money that came my way.
Sometimes the smallest questions can lead to the biggest changes.
For me, it started with a road trip, too many hours in the car, a needling desire for change, and one small question: “What if?” And it ended with a brave decision to sell our 4-bedroom suburban house and move to a 2-bedroom apartment in downtown Minneapolis.
One of the hazards of dating a financial blogger is that you have to — I mean, get to — talk about money a LOT. Right from the beginning, my now-husband learned that there was no financial topic that was off limits for me. Thankfully, he was a great sport about participating in these conversations. It took us awhile to find an approach that worked for us, but by the time we got married we knew just about every in-and-out about each other’s financial lives.
