Talking about money can be hard at the best of times. For me personally, it never really was. I grew up learning to save in my Dollarmites account ( remember those?). I enjoyed being generous with friends and family when I could, and I got comfortable with a budget early. I remember putting a pair of Levi jeans on layby with my very first paycheck from selling fried chicken and chips. I’d been taught that if I wanted something, I needed to save for it and we never spent outside our means.
In my thirties I came to understand that investing was something I could learn, and I did. It took time and some deliberate effort, but it was accessible to me. I was ok not knowing and felt comfortable trying to learn.
As I talked about in a recent episode of This Complex Life, not everybody has that same capacity to just pick it up, or the belief that they can even try. The relationship people have with money isn’t just about literacy. It’s about what they grew up believing money meant, what it was attached to emotionally, and what it would take to feel safe enough to change.
What I can see now, looking back, is how much my own money story shaped what I expected from a partner. Not everyone has the experience I had. For a lot of people, the money conversation is one they’ve been avoiding for years, and when it does come up with a partner, it rarely goes well.
Research commissioned by eHarmony found that 58% of Australian couples say finances are a major cause of conflict in their relationship. A separate Relationships Australia report named cost of living as the number one driver of relationship pressure in this country for the first time ever. If money conversations feel harder right now, that’s not just you.
What I do see a lot in my work is that when couples fight about money, they’re almost never actually fighting about the money itself. They’re fighting about what it means to them. Safety. Control. Fairness. Having influence.The worry that you’re not going to see eye to eye.
The fight about who spent what is often a fight about feeling included, or respected, or unappreciated if you feel you’re carrying more than your share.
Every one of us brings a money story into a relationship; no one has a neutral relationship with money. Mine was shaped by what I watched growing up, the habits I developed, and the things I was taught to value. Your partner has their own version. Most couples have never compared notes on any of that, and that gap is usually where the conflict lives.
Research on more than five and a half thousand couples found that the pattern of the money conversation predicted relationship outcomes, not the financial situation itself. You can be financially comfortable and do this really badly. You can be genuinely stretched and still navigate it well together. How you talk about it matters more than how much you have.
Before any budget or spreadsheet conversation, I’d encourage you to start somewhere more open. Ask your partner what money means to them, not what they want to save, but what it actually represents.
Ask what they’re most afraid of financially. Ask what they learned about money growing up.
Those conversations feel simple but most couples have never had them. The answers explain more than any spreadsheet could.
Watch your tone too. Asking ‘why do you keep spending so much?’ is going to shut things down. Saying “I’ve noticed we see money differently and I’d love to understand your thinking” opens things up. Curiosity is not a technique. It’s just the only thing that actually works.
Talking about money is uncomfortable for a lot of people. The discomfort of having the conversation is almost always smaller than the cost of avoiding it.
