Can we ever put a price on love?

Why it’s good to talk about your financial future Aside from infidelity, more relationships break down over money than anything else. So how can you win when it comes to money and stay in a happy relationship?

Well, the key to is communication – and I don’t just mean talking. Communication means listening too.

Start with the big questions. Do you know what your spouse or partner wants to achieve in their professional life? Are they looking to progress in their career? Do they want to stay in their current job until retirement? And when do they plan to give up work?

Outside work, what does your partner want to achieve too?

It’s important you discuss this now so there are no surprises in store later. Because if you don’t know what each other wants from life, how will you ever be able to achieve it together happily?

Pensions and paying mortgages aren’t exciting, but what they can do for us is. When we attach an emotional feeling to them, the results become far more real and meaningful.

If you said, ‘By forgoing [ fill in your blank] and investing into our pensions, we can travel the world in 12 years rather than 20’, you could both be more inspired to follow through.

That’s why I recommend each month you have a date night to forget your other roles in life and just be a couple again.

Remember, time never stops ticking so we need to make life happen, not just have life happen around us.

From my experience as a financial planner, spending money can cause a lot of conflict between couples.

Secret spending, worried purchases and resentment can quickly snowball.

If you don’t know what each other wants from life, how can you achieve it?

But if you scratch beneath the surface of any money-related argument, it’s not the actual spending which is causing the argument, it’s the breaking of each other’s values.

For example, when my wife Nicky and I first got together, she would come home from shoppingand all I’d see was loads of bags.

I’d link those bags to ‘lack of freedom’. I viewed her spending money like that to me moving away from what I wanted, which was financial freedom.

I didn’t see, at the time, the happiness it gave her. Instead, I assumed my values of financial freedom were not important to her and she was trying to jeopardise them by shopping.

When we spoke about this, she shared her thought that all I wanted to do was invest our money. Needless to say, the talk worked, we started to understand each other’s values, and our relationship with money took off.

We resolved things by putting the Bank Account System, which I developed early on in my career, in place and I encourage all readers to use it.

The system helps take routine thought and emotion out of everyday banking and puts your financial journey on autopilot while allowing you to remain independent.

I encourage you to make your future together bigger than your past and have plans and aspirations, no matter what your age. You are only old when your memories outweigh your dreams.

You can find more about how to set up the Bank Account System in my book, The Money Plan. Alternatively, visit warrenshute.com where there are also free resources to download.