IS MONEY RUINING YOUR RELATIONSHIP?

[00:00:01]This topic really goes for everybody if you are in a relationship, because your financial goals are not 100% only yours, right? You have someone else to consider, and if the goals are shared, if they’re communicated, and if you’re both doing your part. Working towards those goals, you are setting yourself up for tremendous success, right? In accomplishing the financial goals, but also in having a rewarding relationship, right, and reducing friction. However, if those goals are not shared, or they’re actively ignored or fought against, or that you just don’t have alignment. Right. You will have a much harder time being successful and meeting those financial goals, or you’ll have a harder time of having that robust, full relationship. And I think we have capacity here to do both.
[00:00:58]You are listening to the Pilot’s portfolio, the show dedicated to guiding professional pilots towards a future of financial success and stability. Fly along with your host Timothy P. Pope, as he provides financial planning insights and answers to your burning questions and dives into real life stories from fellow pilots who share their successes and cautionary tales. The pilots portfolio takes off now.
Tim:[00:01:28]Welcome to this episode of Pilots Portfolio Guys. This is the Financial Planning show for professional pilots on the show. We dive into all aspects of your financial life. We help you chart a smarter financial path, make great financial decisions, maximize your money. Maximize your life. And we hope, help you accomplish your financial goals. My name is Timothy P. Pope. I’m a certified financial planner and principal at 360 Aviation Advisors, a GA pilot. I actually got to fly today a little bit. That was fun. Flew with one of my daughters. She surprised me. She’s like, hey dad, can you do some steep turns? And so we did some steep turns to the left and right and she’s like, oh, that was fun. I used to be afraid of those, but she liked them, so I got to fly some ga. So that’s good stuff. Alright, before we get started in the meat of today’s conversation, I do have a quick favor to ask of you if you love the content, please leave a review. If you’ve got feedback that you want me to hear about the content, please leave a review.
[00:02:43]Wherever you listen to this show. Please leave a review. That would be great. Now, in today’s episode, we are talking about relationships and money. Is your money ruining your relationship or is it enhancing? How is it enhancing your relationship? You know, this is a topic I’ve not discussed on the podcast previously. We talk about it a lot in practice, but on the podcast we haven’t talked about it. And I think it’s an important one. I mean, here’s the thing, right? This is a show for professional pilots, yes. This topic really goes for everybody if you are in a relationship, because your financial goals are not 100% only yours, right? You have someone else to consider, and if the goals are shared, if they’re communicated, and if you’re both doing your part. Working towards those goals, you are setting yourself up for tremendous success, right? In accomplishing the financial goals, but also in having a rewarding relationship, right, and reducing friction.
[00:03:48]However, if those goals are not shared or they’re actively ignored or fought against, or they, you just don’t have an alignment, right? You will have a much harder time being successful and meeting those financial goals or. You’ll have a harder time of having that robust, full relationship. And I think we have the capacity to do both, right? To meet our financial goals and have a robust relationship as well. But sometimes, you know, folks will end up choosing one or the other, the financial success over the relationship, or the relationship over the financial success. I think we have the capacity here to do both. So as a professional pilot. You have an opportunity to make a tremendous amount of money over
your career, right? Depending on the type of flying that you do, your seniority, how hard you want to grind, or even if there’s extra flying available for you to do. You have a great opportunity to make a lot of money year over year, and then that compounds right, your wise investment decisions. Time makes that even larger.
[00:04:57]The challenge is that your job requires you to leave home, right? That’s why you get paid. The money that you do is so you will leave. Home for a few days, a few nights, that kind of thing. And so with you being gone from home, those that you leave behind, you just automatically have this additional burden to bridge that gap with communication. You’re gone, you’re not there for everything. You’re not there for all the decisions or folks are gonna make the best decisions that they can at the time. When you’re not there, they may not always be able to consult you and so on. So you’re just gonna have to communicate a little bit more. And particularly about finances. And here’s the thing too. There’s a lot of different dynamics in families. A lot of families are dual income, and so you’ve got both spouses working, but even within dual income families, there can be income parity. Where both spouses make around the same amount, or there could be large income disparities.
[00:05:59]One spouse makes way more than the other one, and that income disparity will certainly affect the relationship, right? So we’ve got dual income families, we have single income families. And so here’s the thing, when you think about your money and your relationship, there’s not one simple solution. Personal finance is just that, it’s personal. But I will tell you, you do have one secret weapon that will most certainly help, and that is communication. And communication has two parts to it, right? So speaking and then listening. Note that we have one mouth in two ears. Okay? So can you tell I’m a dad? All right. So. You know, we’re listening for what’s said. We’re listening for what’s not being said, and we’re asking follow up questions and boy oh boy, is that hard to do well, but if you can do it well, I believe that that’s going to be your superpower when it comes to managing your relationships and the impact that money has on your relationships. So let’s talk about just a few examples of how money can be a wedge or introduce friction in relationships, right?
[00:07:15]One example is when we have different money personalities. So one person is a saver, the other person is a spender. That’s a big one. And I think it’s easy to see how. That can drive each other crazy, right? The saver could come off as cheap or stingy or miserly, or maybe even no fun, right? While the spender could come off as reckless and not taking the family’s financial goals seriously. So this could clearly introduce some friction into the relationship. So what can we do about it? Well, one, you can communicate. You’ve gotta communicate to see, well, what’s important to everyone? How can we accomplish our goals together? The truth is probably somewhere in the middle between the super and the super spender. As a planner, I’ll tell you the truth is somewhere in the middle, and as a family, you guys are gonna have to acknowledge that, hey, there are different seasons in life, so there may be some seasons where. The family can’t spend as much, and the natural saver might take the lead during those times. And then there’s going to be times where the family can spend more.
[00:08:27]And so the saver’s gonna have to relax a little and the spender can flourish. And I think a lot of times in our mind we think that we can reach this perfect state and then once we reach that state, it won’t need any more work. But I think the reality. Talking with so many couples over periods of time is that there’s a constant back and forth, right? There’s a constant balancing that has to happen. It’s the communication, you know, that’s gonna keep everything valid. So that’s one thing when we have different money personalities. One person is a big spender, one person is a big S right Now, if both folks are somewhere in the middle, hey, you know what? This is probably not an area of friction for your relationship, and that’s great. Let’s take a look at something else. What about when one spouse. Isn’t
engaged in the financial planning at all, and they leave all the decisions to the other spouse. You know, I’ll tell you, when my wife and I first got married, I was super excited to share the work that I do and then how it could help our life together.
[00:09:34]But guess what? She was not interested. She was like, hey. Isn’t that what you do for a living? And I’m like, well, yeah, of course. And she’s like, okay, so cool. I don’t wanna learn your job. And I’m like, oh, okay. Well I perhaps can see that, you know, there’s not really a need to duplicate efforts in that way. So I’ve been doing our financial planning ever since. Surprise, surprise. But you know, there could be a lot of issues. With this setup, when one person does all of it and the other spouse, the non planning spouse, we’ll call it, kind of leaves all the financial decisions to the other spouse. There can be a lot of issues with that. And one issue is the partner who is tasked with doing all the planning, either forgets to communicate or doesn’t know how to communicate or just. Quite frankly, just doesn’t communicate and using both parts of that communication, the speaking and the listening, you know what the family shared goals are.
[00:10:35]At first, you gotta do all the gathering. Like, Hey, what’s important to our family? Right? Like, here’s the things that are important to me. What’s important to you? Okay, there’s that. And then involving, I mean, look, if it’s been delegated to one person, then there’s not a lot of involving in creating the solutions, but you’re still gonna have to get buy-in. From the non planning spouse ’cause otherwise. Like when you come up with a course of action, it just may not go well. ’cause sometimes, here’s what happens, the planning spouse kind of has their finger on all of the financial items for the family. So they know how you’re tracking towards goals. They know what risks they’re trying to mitigate, and maybe they know what debts they’re paying down and you know how the investments are going and so forth.
[00:11:19]Right. They’re considering all that. So then when new ideas, particularly new expense ideas get introduced, what can happen is they can say, well, no, we’re not gonna do that. Or, no, I don’t wanna do this. And if you say no without explaining, and you do that often enough, that can start to generate some resentment. And the non planning spouse, if everything keeps getting shot down over time. It could be resentment or the non planning spouse can say, hey, forget it, and then just go spend the money, either cash or on credit, right? And then we’re really gonna have a point of contention. So it’s confession time here. So I’ll tell you. Before I recorded this episode, like I was preparing to record this, I had to go and fix a conversation that my wife and I had the other day because I’m like, Tim, you’re about to sit behind the mic and talk to everybody about how the importance of communicating in relationships, but you just failed at this.
[00:12:20]The other day. And so look, full transparency, I eat my own cooking, right? So like my episodes, there’s no hypocrisy in it. So I did go and fix that before I recorded, and I’ll share with you, I’ll tell you, not a big deal, but it happens. We were driving the other day and my wife’s like, hey, I’ve been thinking about this new activity that she wanted the kids to do. And so she’s telling me about the activity and then of course, and it’s gonna cost this per month. And so I’m listening and I responded, and I just said, I’m not interested in paying that, and that’s all I said. So guess what? Conversation was over, she got quiet, I was quiet. Like whatever we were driving in the car. One of those awkward, like the rest of the drive was awkward, right? Like, and I knew I failed in that moment. Like I didn’t ask any clarifying questions. Like, hey, like what interests you? Or maybe what interests the kids in this activity? When do you, are you thinking about having them sign up for this activity? Is there any activities they’re currently doing now? You want to drop so they can start this new one and, you know, gather and I can hear that, and then share, well, hey, like I’ve been thinking
about this, this, this, and this for our family, and then kind of work through it. I failed. I didn’t do any of that.
[00:13:32]I just said, hey, I’m not interested in paying that. That was kind of the lazy way of handling that and I didn’t feel great about it. So, before recording this show, I went and I said, hey look, you know what I, I’m, I’m sorry. I should have asked additional questions of you. And by the way. Here’s some things I’ve been thinking about for us. And I just wanted to express that. And you know what? She was so thankful. She was like, hey, thank you so much for me expressing, you know, my thoughts. So yes, communication can be a challenge, right? If one spouse just delegates everything to another and is not really involved in the financial planning. And this is just a little bonus kind of getting away from the relationship piece, but just a tidbit for you to stick in your back pocket and think about if you are the planning spouse, you owe it to the non planning spouse to be super organized with your documents and to outline what your strategy is for the family because if something happens to you unexpectedly, not only will they be going through grief, but they’ll be navigating the financial things for the first time, and it will be like reading Greek. Just be super organized with your work there.
[00:14:43]The other thing that you can do. If you’ve been delegated with the financial planning in your relationship is you work with a financial planner and develop that relationship, and you and your spouse are part of that financial planning relationship with your planner. So if something happens to you, your spouse already has someone that they know they can go to, and then the planner can step right in and help them figure out what’s next. So that’s a bonus.
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[00:16:14]Alright, here’s something else that will definitely cause some friction in your relationship and that is hiding. Accounts are hiding financial transactions, hiding credit card accounts, hiding investment accounts, not being forthright about tax liabilities. You name it. You know, folks hide a lot of things. Folks will also hide investment financial transactions, right? So maybe one spouse has a completely different risk tolerance than another, and usually it’s like the lower risk tolerance, right? And so the spouse with a higher risk tolerance. Will, you know, make an investment that they know the other spouse wouldn’t approve of. Now when it goes up, then you know, it’s easy. They win, right? But when it goes down, it brings a lot of anxiety, like, Hey, how can I explain this loss? Right? So we’ve seen that before. And so, you know, when we just think about this, like if one spouse is hiding some financial aspect, whether it’s money, whether it’s accounts, whether it’s transactions from another spouse, when it’s found. There can be very much a tremendous amount of hurt and mistrust. And then the natural next question is, okay, well goodness, like what else are you hiding? So if you are going to be in a relationship, just acknowledge that money is such a personal aspect. Like folks have visceral and emotional responses and connections with money.
[00:17:41]So if we’re going to be in a relationship, number one, we, we need to understand that. But number two, we should probably agree upfront. Like, hey, how much each partner is gonna get to know and how folks are gonna operate with it, right? So like, you know, if folks wanna keep some personal play money or play account, like whatever, like disclose that and say, hey, like, I’m gonna have this account over here and you know, it’s gonna be my account. And we’ll talk about that, about setting up accounts and so forth. When we’re hiding it and it’s not known, when it does come to light, that can cause a lot of trouble. So what are some things that we can do? Make sure that money is not ruining your relationship. Number one is communicate. I’ve been talking about it, the whole show. You’ve gotta talk about money. You’ve gotta be open about what your goals are, your concerns are, what your frustrations are. But here’s a key point. Here’s a pro tip. Maybe let’s not talk about what our frustrations are while we’re frustrated, because that’s just not a recipe for success. But also talk about what your joys and successes are, right?
[00:18:43]Hey, like when we were able to do this together as a family, this really brought a lot of joy to us that can help understand the big why, you know, why we’re doing all this. And here’s the thing, when we communicate, don’t make the mistake that I did. As someone who has been delegated by my wife to do the financial planning, some of the mistakes that I would make in communication is, well, number one, she’s super busy. We have five kids. Okay? She’s super busy. So one mistake I’d make is like catching her in between like task or activities and being like, hey, dah, dah, dah. And like she just doesn’t even have the mental capacity. Like, no, she’s not interested. Not that was the wrong time. All right, so find the right, right time to do it. The other mistake I would make is like I would spend so much time working on our case, like whatever, projections or what, whatever, and I’d work through all the issues and I’d come up with a solution, and then when I would go to communicate, I would just communicate the solution well. Probably even for somebody who says like, hey, I want you to take care of it.
[00:19:51]When I come with a solution, Hey, we’re gonna do this, this, this, this, and here’s what that means for you, da, da, da, da. Like that pro that doesn’t, you know, that just feels like being told what to do and that that’s not great. Okay? So, you know, when we’re communicating, we’re asking questions, we’re clarifying and asking follow up questions to make sure we understand. We’re inviting our spouse to offer solutions, and then of course, we’re being ready with our own solutions, right? That’s our superpowers. That’s number one. Number two, structure your accounts, whether your bank account, investment accounts, your credit cards, structure those for your success and success is whatever is going to help you accomplish your financial goals.
[00:20:34]And sometimes if that’s relieving anxiety, bringing peace, if that’s gonna help you accomplish the goals, structure them in that way. So with dual income, there’s so many ways to structure it, right? I’ve seen so many things with, with different families. You know, a lot of folks decide to like split the bills and so there might be a house account that they both make contributions to, and then other money stays in their individual accounts. They make their own, you know, retirement investment contributions. So, sometimes with dual income families, all the money goes into a single account and then it’s divvied up from there. So I’ve seen that work with, with single income families. I’ve seen similar things with this, either a single account or, you know, creating separate accounts and so forth.
[00:21:18]I’ll tell you how we’ve arranged our accounts for our family. So as I mentioned, my wife said, hey, look, that’s what you do. She wanted me to take care of it. I’m like, okay, cool. No problem. Now guess what? It’d be no surprise to you as a financial planner, I prioritize long-term goals. She prioritizes more of the tactical day-to-day things, right? Like it’s just, it’s a factor of how we’ve split our responsibilities. She’s a mom. We have five kids. She’s with
them all the time. That means she’s very acutely aware of what the kids need. Uh, what the kids want and what might enhance her experiences at home. Me, I leave for the office every day and I have other commitments, so I spend far less time at home than she does. So for me, it’s outta sight, outta mind. As a single income family, for years, all the money would come into one account, right? And then it would get divvied up from there and, you know, the bills would get paid and you know, we’ve got our day-to-day expenses and then the investments would come out and so on.
[00:22:20]Well. I like to think about and to track our long-term, you know, financial goals and. I care a lot less about the day-to-day transactions and things, or I shouldn’t say I care about it ’cause what I’m about to say is I, I cared a great deal of seeing it. But, so what would happen is I, you know, I would have all of our goals in mind, but then I would see. All the day-to-day stuff like Amazon, Amazon, this, that boxes here, there I’d pull open the credit card app and you see Amazon charges here and we’re eating out there and so on. Or they’re eating out like I’m at work. They’re doing this, they’re doing that, they’re going to this place. I kid you not. I would look at those transactions and I’m like, okay. I’d feel my blood pressure going. My AME is like, hey man, if you want to keep your ticket, we’re gonna have to do something about this blood pressure. That’s a real story, but we’ll talk about it on a different day. So anyways, I’d open up the credit card app. I’m like, how is this stuff helping our goals? And when you see an Amazon charge, I don’t know if it’s a toy or I don’t know if she’s buying in bulk and it’s supporting the family.
[00:23:29]I don’t, I don’t know. That was giving me some grief and being some friction in our relationship. So we took a look at the, like the last three years of budget data, month by month. And hey, here’s the averages of all the things that she usually takes care of. And that was giving me grief just because. I wasn’t in the mix, I wasn’t in the day to day. So like some of it sometimes was stuff we talked about and I just forgot, just ’cause I’m doing all this other stuff, right? And we discuss and I asked, I’m like, hey, like, so here’s the averages of all the things that you handle. What kind of buffer would you want to put on top of that? And I think she gave me a buffer, and I think I went a little bit beyond that buffer. And I said, okay, cool. And we set up an account so when we get paid, boom, all the things that she typically takes care of goes into the account that she manages. I don’t see it. And all the stuff that I usually take care of goes into account that I manage.
[00:24:24]And guess what? I have a lot more peace. Our relationship doesn’t have that same budget friction, if you will, which is awesome. So you’ve set up your accounts the way that you need it, for you to be successful. Also, keep in mind, different states will have different laws, some community property versus separate property. Is this an inheritance from one spouse? And so how does that need to be handled? Has there been trust issues previously? And if we set up separate accounts. Then would one spouse just need to have more communication or more transparency to make the other spouse feel comfortable? Like I said, there’s so many factors and you’ll have to work out what’s best for you, but I think tackling the issues versus avoiding them. Is a great first step. Another thing that we could do to help ourselves be successful and make sure that money is not ruining our relationship is number one, give each other space to develop new habits, right? So, we don’t turn over a new leaf, most of us cold Turkey, like right away. So give each other space to develop new habits, but then also know thyself, right?
[00:25:36]So we talked about the money, personalities, and then create a framework. Create a system where somebody can be themself and be successful. So the less change that you have to do, the more successful you’re going to be, right? And people can be really successful when things are easy. So I just shared an example of how me seeing. Transactions that were not necessarily tied to our long-term goals was frustrating, and so we
created a system that we both know works. You know, the day-to-day stuff is still getting taken care of. I just don’t have to see it, and I can focus on the things that I like to focus on. So. Create a system where folks can be themselves and they can be successful with that. I wanna end with this. Fidelity has, I think this is kind of funny, I’ll tell you about this. So Fidelity Investments, they have done a couples and money study. They first started. This study in 2007 and the most recent data that is out is 2024, and they surveyed about almost 3,600 people. And so it was 3,588 individuals that was 1,794 couples age 18 or older, married or in a long-term committed relationship.
[00:26:51]And you know, they go through things like a 90% of couples say they communicate well, but 25%. Partners resent being left out of financial decisions. So, you know, I think when people self-report, they always report themselves better than what they actually are. But here’s what I’m gonna share from this study. Uh, I thought it was funny. And it’s called money habits versus relationships scenarios. Okay, so, they went through three. Relationship scenarios and almost did a would you rather, right? Like, and so here, and I’m gonna go through them. I’ll tell you where I fall and as we go through, just maybe think about where you fall. The first one is binge watching versus money secrets. Nearly one in five. So that’s almost 20% of people would prefer that their partner make a major financial decision or major financial purchase rather than watch their favorite TV show alone. Yeah. I gotta say I’m gonna fall in the 80%. On that, right?
[00:27:53]Let’s talk about this financial purchase. I will watch something by myself. Okay, here we go. Here’s the second one. Texting the ex versus credit card debt. More than one in four. That’s more than 25% of folks would rather discover. Their partner has been texting an ex. They’d rather that than discover that they have debt on multiple credit cards. I’m gonna have to be in the, I guess, slightly less than 75% on this one. We’re not texting an ex. Tell me about the credit card debt. I think we can figure that out. But texting the ex, that could get expensive. More expensive than the credit cards. In more ways than one. So we’re not texting the ex there. Alright, here’s the last one. Wedding ring versus paying the bills. So nearly half of couples prefer their partner not wear their wedding ring when leaving the house compared to them not paying the bills on time. Alright, so this is almost split 50/50. I’m gonna be in the camp where we are going to pay the bills on time.
[00:29:03]Who cares about the wedding ring. She can speak with her mouth and say what the wedding ring says. And you know, quite frankly, the five kids in tow also probably speak volumes as well. So we’re gonna pay the bills on time. We can leave the wedding ring at home. That’s okay. I thought those were fun. I wonder where you would fall. That’s gonna wrap up our episode today too, is money ruining your relationship? This is a big one. It’s an important one because a lot of life satisfaction come from these two things. Our money and our relationships, right? So we certainly don’t want one sabotaging the other. Guys, thank you for joining this show. We want to hear from you, so send us your questions. We’re gonna an episode to consolidate listener questions and feature those and get those questions answered. So. Whatever questions that you have could be about your airline, your airline contract, your situation info@pilotsportfolio.com. Send in those questions, wanna get those answered for you.
[00:29:56]And also wanna take a moment to thank our sponsor, beacon Relocation. They help us bring you this show every two weeks. So big thanks to them. So that’s gonna do it for this episode, guys. Thanks for following along, and we will see you. On the next one, thank you for joining this episode of Pilot’s Portfolio. If you found this information helpful, spread the word and share it with a pilot button. Or if you have questions and there’s something that you would like to hear discussed on the show, send us an email. You can find the address in the show notes for those of you who are ready to learn how we help professional pilots with
their financial planning needs. Schedule an appointment. Until next time, keep the shiny side up and we’ll see you on the next episode. Pilot’s Portfolio is hosted by Timothy P. Pope. Timothy P. Pope is principal owner of 360 Aviation Advisors. 360 Aviation Advisors is a registered investment advisory firm regulated by the state of North Carolina in accordance and compliance to the securities laws and regulations. 360 Aviation Advisors does not render or offer to render personalized investment or tax advice through pilot’s portfolio. The information provided is for informational purposes only and may not be suitable for all investors and does not constitute financial, tax, investment, or legal advice. All investments involve a degree of risk, including the risk of loss.