When you marry someone, you pledge for richer or poorer. And yet, money drives couples to divorce with alarming frequency. In our experience, there’s a lot of ground to cover in between richer and poorer, and open communication can be key to creating a strong financial foundation. The following guide can help you jump start critical conversations about money, whether you’ve been married five months or 15 years.

Start big: What’s your money mindset

To get on the same page about money, it’s important to understand where your spouse is coming from and where you want to go, together. These foundational conversations can make it easier to work through day-to-day money problems or conflicts over big purchases later on. 

Conversation one: Look backward

Many of our core beliefs about money come from childhood, but we don’t always make that connection as adults. Talking about our history with money can be as simple as acknowledging that one spouse grew up wealthy while the other grew up working class. Most of the time, however, you’ll need to go a bit deeper.

In our experience, couples who come from different socioeconomic backgrounds might have different perspectives on saving, spending, debt, and more. The following prompts can help you start to uncover those differences.

• What kind of family vacations did you take, and how frequent were those trips?
• Did your family discuss budgeting? What was the tone of those conversations?
• How frequently did your parents discuss saving for the future and goals?
• Did you discuss big purchases, or talk about spending in general, as a family?
• How did your family view debt?

Your goal is to understand where your spouse is coming from with regards to money. If they never had enough money growing up, they might spend more freely out of gratitude or they might focus on having a sizable emergency fund just in case. Understanding the why behind certain money hangups can help you find practical ways to address them.

As you go through each item, ask follow-up questions. For instance: Is that something you want to continue, or are you hoping to do things differently? This will lay the groundwork for your next conversation.

Conversation two: Look forward

While you might come from different financial backgrounds, your financial future is connected; it’s important to get on the same page about what you want it to look like. Here are a few questions to get you started:

• When do you want to retire, and how will you know you’re retirement ready?
• What do you want retirement to look like? Do you want to travel, move somewhere warmer, focus on the grandkids, or something else?
• What big goals do you have outside of retirement? Do you want to buy a house? Is it important for you to fund your kids’ college? Do you want to travel the world?
• What is your backup plan? Have you thought about what you need or want out of retirement if you fall ill or if your kids move to different parts of the country?

Married couples spend a decent amount of time planning for the future, but it’s easy to skip over the pragmatic aspects of those conversations.

If you dream about seeing the pyramids one day, it’s worth discussing what a trip to Egypt would entail and how much it would cost. Simply having the second half of that conversation can be the difference between a 50^th birthday cruise on the Nile and silent resentment that your dreams never materialized.

Create a framework

After your first two conversations, you may need to have a few follow-up discussions to work through any sticking points or get on the same page. It’s important that you keep an open line of communication on these topics. 

The next few conversations we suggest work best when you understand your partner’s mindset and are on the same page about shared goals.

Conversation three: Priorities

Not everyone likes the word budget. The dislike can be so intense that some couples avoid budgeting conversations all together. We find it can be helpful to reframe the conversation: Discuss your priorities.

At the end of the day, your budget is about aligning your money with your priorities. Do you want to emphasize living comfortably now, living comfortably in the future, protecting yourself against emergencies… and so on.

Start by pulling up a rough framework of your current expenses along with a financial wish list. With that in mind, ask each other:

• What are our necessities? Go beyond the surface on this question. Housing is a necessity, but do you need to own a home? For some people, the answer is yes—equity and stability are very important.
• How do we balance the present and the future? Focusing exclusively on the future such that you forget to enjoy your life can put strain on a marriage. But spending like there’s no tomorrow can, too. Go through a few examples. Spending a lot of money on a fancy new car could delay a future goal, but if you spend hours commuting each week, or if you use the car for family road trips, that present-day payoff may be worth it.
• What constitutes a big financial decision? For some people, a $500 shopping trip isn’t worth discussing with their partner. For others, it’s a significant expenditure. You can’t realistically discuss every single financial decision with your spouse, so work together to agree on a boundary: At what point do you need to be included in the conversation? You may not see eye-to-eye on what that threshold is at first, so make sure you work together to come to an agreement.

While you won’t leave this conversation with a new budgeting spreadsheet, you should leave it with the tools to tackle your spreadsheet in the future. If you simply trouble shoot money problems as they arise, you’re essentially playing financial whack-a-mole. Building a framework for budgeting conversation now can save you a significant amount of time and stress over the course of your marriage.

Conversation four: Logistics

We tend to see spouses start to delegate financial tasks in the natural course of things. But it can be helpful to take a step back and discuss roles and responsibilities with intention. For instance:

• Who will pay which bills? From which accounts?
• Who will oversee your bank, investment, and retirement accounts?
• Who will handle planning and budgeting overall? What about for “one-off” events, like vacations or holidays?
• How will the person in charge of each line item ensure the other spouse knows what’s going on?

The key to these conversations can be playing to each spouse’s strengths versus any preconceived notions or expectations. If one of you enjoys organization and thrives on a schedule, it makes sense to have that person handle bills.

Regardless of how you divide ongoing responsibilities, it’s important that both spouses have access to key information and shared accounts. It can help with transparency and communication throughout your marriage; it’s also critical to protecting your spouse and family in case of an emergency.

Keep the conversations going

Transparency and honesty are key to many of these conversations. As such, it’s important to revisit many of them on a regular basis. Priorities tend to shift gradually over time, meaning you may not realize how far you’ve drifted from your initial conversations about money until problems arise.

Schedule regular check-ins to help avoid unexpected hiccups. Consider quarterly meetings where you review your priorities (and from there, your budget), as well as touching base on your long-term goals and how the division of responsibilities is working out.

A financial advisor can help facilitate these conversations. Involving a financial advisor early on can help you find practical solutions to any sticking points. (For example, if one spouse is insecure about money, an advisor can help you plan an appropriately-sized emergency fund to help assuage that fear.)

The routine check-ins you have with your advisor can also help you prompt more regular conversations with your spouse. Ideally, these conversations will feel productive—a time to regroup and make sure you’re on the same page—versus stressful.

If you and your partner are repeatedly running into the same money issues, an advisor can help guide you through some of the conversations in this article and help you connect with any additional resources you may need.

Curious about how working with an advisor might help ease the financial strain in your relationship? Set up a consultation.