Communicating with Your Spouse

Good communication is vital to having a healthy relationship with your spouse. It can also be crucial to establishing financial plans that will allow you both to make the most of your lives together. Things like buying life insurance coverage, drafting wills, and deciding where to live after retirement are not always intuitive.

These are things that need to be discussed and agreed upon together. Sometimes, it is easy to allow one spouse to handle the majority of the finances. Over time, these habits persist. Neither person in the marriage thinks there is anything wrong with having one person pay the bills or make financial decisions. Yet, sometimes situations arise where both people in a marriage need to discuss what they would like to do when it comes to finances.

Buying a house, for example, is a big undertaking for a married couple. A healthy couple would not approach the purchase by having the spouse who does all the bill paying take up the task of searching for a home, putting money down on one and surprising the other spouse with their choice. The purchase is too large and the impact of where a person lives too important for something such as this to be handled by only one person in a marriage.

Yet, essentially this is what happens in matters such as retirement planning, saving or life insurance purchases when a couple is not able to communicate honestly and openly. It can also, unfortunately, occur with spending money in a marriage. One spouse seems to spend more than another and does so to the other spouse's dismay when they discover large credit card bills arriving in the mail. There must be a degree of communication involved in a marriage when it comes to finances.

Discussing Sensitive Matters

Often, a couple may feel that money is such a material thing it is not something that affects the relationship. Yet, quite the opposite is true. A couple must be able to learn how to discuss money matters and decisions without fear or guilt. So many large decisions that are made by a couple together, like where they will live when they retire, are not things that can be comfortably left in just one spouse's hands.

A couple may not always agree upon things that concern money, but they should always endeavor to communicate in an open enough way that they can at least reach an understanding. It is important to disclose to your spouse anything that affects them especially when it comes to money or plans for the future that involves money. Things like buying life insurance should be handled by both partners.

Perhaps one partner can handle most of the details with selecting or purchasing a plan, but not without an understanding on the part of the other spouse as to what is being purchased and why. It is not always convenient for both partners to sit down each month and pay bills, for instance. Yet, to have one partner be aware of a serious financial issue at the expense of the other, can have dire consequences.

Communicating with your spouse honestly about money or anything else is important to having a happy, healthy relationship. Even if there are some issues that seem sensitive or that you are afraid may upset your spouse are best handled with open and honest communication. Both people in a marriage are entitled to have a say in anything that affects them. It is better to be aware of what your spouse is feeling so money problems or large money decisions can be handled more efficiently.

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