We talk a lot about handling money fights and financial conflict on this blog. But there’s another kind of conflict I often see in couples that doesn’t happen frequently, but when it does, it tends to all-consuming: couples who struggle with difficulties in financial decision-making.
I’m not talking about making minor financial decisions, like which bank to use or whether you should order takeout for dinner.
Instead, I’m talking about major, life-changing decisions. These sorts of decisions don’t come up every day, or even every year. But when they do, they can be debilitating if you and your spouse aren’t on the same financial page.
Here are just a few of these types of difficult financial decisions that we’re going to talk about in this article:
- How much house can we afford to buy?
- Should I change jobs or change careers?
- Should we relocate our family from one part of the country to another?
- Should we send our child to daycare, hire a nanny, or should one of us leave the workforce and become a stay-at-home parent?
- Should our kids go to public or private school?
One thing to note at the beginning is that all of the above questions have financial implications… but none of them are purely financial in nature. They’re bigger life decisions that touch on your values, goals, and dreams as a couple.
(If you’d prefer to listen to this article, you can get a podcast version of this post here: Money and Marriage Podcast Episode 143 – Difficulties in Financial Decision-Making)
Why Are These Types of Decisions So Difficult?
I’ve seen these types of decisions paralyze couples in just about every financial situation you can imagine. I’ve seen couples get stuck for months, or even longer, facing difficulties in financial decision-making when they’re hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, have millions of dollars, and just about everything in between.
And I’m no different. My wife and I faced a few of these tough choices back in 2017 and 2018, as I shared in Episode 2 of the Money and Marriage Podcast. One of the reasons I became a Certified Financial Therapist-I™ Practitioner and decided to focus my work on couples is because of a few lessons that my wife and I learned the hard way back then.
There are several reasons why couples often struggle with these big, life-changing financial decisions when they come up:
Often, they arise out of the blue
If you go back to the list of examples I mentioned above, there are certainly some instances where you can prepare yourselves to face the decision in advance.
But more often, I find that these choices tend to sneak up on couples.
I’ve seen several cases over the past handful of years where one spouse was presented with an unexpected job opportunity that would involve relocating their family. I’ve also seen a few times when a spouse has a baby with the intent to send the child to daycare, but then one of the parents gets a strong, unexpected desire to stay at home with the child once he or she is born.
If you have time to prepare and plan in advance, it can be a lot easier to set yourselves up for success with this type of difficult financial decision-making. But when you’re caught unaware, it’s very easy to struggle to make the right decision – or to focus on the right criteria to make a good decision.
Your priorities and your money scripts might cause you and your spouse to prefer different solutions
We’ve discussed before how your money scripts – unconscious, partial truth beliefs about money that typically develop in childhood – drive your financial decision-making.
And we’ve also discussed that you tend to attract your financial opposite when it comes to your money scripts.
So, if you and your spouse have differing money scripts, and money scripts inform the conclusions you arrive at when making a financial decision, it stands to reason that these opposite money scripts can cause big-stakes decisions to be really difficult.
It’s not uncommon at all to be on opposite wavelengths with your spouse when it comes to money choices. This can be a challenge regardless of the scope of the decision, but when you’re faced with a huge, important choice, it can create big issues in a marriage.
These are emotionally-charged topics
Questions relating to your home, your careers, and your family are all highly personal topics that tend to be emotional for many people.
It can be difficult to focus on the most important things when you’re emotionally overwhelmed, so it’s important to have implement the right strategy to help you both process the emotions related to the decision and give you space to think through the right decision.
This can be very difficult to do, even when you and your spouse have each practiced strategies to address the emotional side of the decision. And in most families, at least one spouse doesn’t have a ton of experience in doing this work, making the financial decision-making especially challenging.
There’s often an imbalance between spouses when these decisions occur
Sometimes this imbalance is a power imbalance. If one spouse is presented with an incredible job offer that comes with really long work hours, frequent travel, or even a relocation, that spouse could accept the job even if their spouse has reservations. (This is not my recommended strategy, for obvious reasons, but it could happen).
Unless this sort of power imbalance is handled appropriately, it can lead to the spouse making the decision feeling resentful toward their spouse if they don’t get their way, and it can lead the other spouse to feel insignificant, out of control, or along for the ride if their spouse overrules them.
Even when there aren’t power imbalances at play, though, these sorts of difficult financial decisions often have one member of the spouse being much more emotionally invested in the decision than their spouse.
Maybe your spouse really wants to buy a bigger house and you feel indifferent to it. Maybe your spouse has a strong desire to move closer to their parents or siblings, and you… don’t find this to be an appealing option. Maybe your spouse wants to leave their job to take care of your young kids, but you’re really nervous about the implications of going down to one income.
These sorts of imbalances happen all. the. time. It’s important to have a process in place to help you both make the right decision for your family – together.
If you and your spouse are struggling with one or more of these types of financial decisions, a financial planning process infused with financial therapy techniques can help you get unstuck and move forward with confidence. If you’re interested in learning more, I encourage you to schedule a free breakthrough session with me.
Two and a Half Exercises to Reduce Difficulties in Financial Decision-Making
I use each of these exercises with my financial planning clients when big or unexpected choices come their way.
You can’t, and shouldn’t use all of these exercises for every big decision you face. But, my hope is that the next time you’re faced with a huge, difficult decision, you will pull out these exercises and pick the one that you think applies most to the specific issue you’re struggling with.
Exercise One: “Pencil It In”
This exercise works especially well when you feel stuck in analysis paralysis mode. If you’re constantly weighing the tradeoffs and feel yourself getting twisted in knots trying to make the right decision, you should try this exercise.
Here’s how it works:
1) Pick one of the options you’re considering. Ideally, you’d pick either the most likely scenario, the one that you and your spouse are most in agreement about, or, in some cases, the “dark horse” candidate.
I had a client who was debating between moving to one of the big East Coast cities, but they each were also drawn to the idea of moving to Austin, Texas, even though they didn’t have any family ties there. In their case, I suggested that they pick the Austin scenario.
2) Take out a piece of paper, and write “We are going to __________________” using a pen.
3) Then, take a pencil and fill in the blank with the scenario you chose in step one. Following the example above, “We are going to move our family to Austin, Texas at the end of the year”, where “move our family to Austin…” is written in pencil.
4) Put a one-hour time block on both of your calendars two or three days from now where you can continue the conversation about the decision.
5) In those two or three days, you should not debate the decision at all or wonder what you’re going to do. You should act as though you’ve already made the decision. You don’t need to worry about what to do, or analyze the options. Just act as if the decision has been made.
6) When you meet with your spouse during the time you chose, talk about the thoughts and feelings that arose over the past few days. How did it feel to sit with the decision that you penciled in?
Often, I hear couples express feelings of relief or a sense of peace in the choice that they made; this is a good indication that it might be the right choice for your family. Other times, a laundry list of issues or frustrations arise, which is a good clue that it might not be the right choice.
7) If needed, repeat the exercise with a different option you are considering.
A few notes about this exercise:
- Neither you nor your spouse are committing to a specific outcome or decision when you complete this exercise. Which is why we write the decision in pencil, rather than pen. (Fun fact: pencils have erasers… or at least they used to when I was in school. I feel old even wondering if they still use pencils in school anymore…) You have every right to change your mind when you complete this exercise as does your spouse.
- This exercise, then, gives you permission to make a change… but it also lets you sit with the idea that the decision has already been made, so that you can see what feelings arise.
- By taking the decision off of the table for a few days, it alleviates the back-and-forth discussion, analyzing the options, and running the numbers that can paralyze couples into inaction or cause them to make the wrong decision that they regret six months later. Instead, it allows you to sit in the reality of what making the choice you penciled in would mean for your family, and give you the chance to talk about what comes up.
Exercise 2: Review Your Mission Statement
When companies are faced with difficult financial choices, they use the company’s mission statement to help evaluate which option is most in line with the company’s values.
This is an incredibly effective tool to use to guide decision-making because it can serve as your proverbial North Star. It’s easy to get bogged down in the details and emotions when you’re faced with a tough choice, but if you have a mission statement to help guide you along your journey, it can maximize the chance that you make the right decision for your family.
The problem, of course, is that this method involves actually having a mission statement. Which, for most couples, isn’t the case.
If you haven’t taken the time to identify your family’s most important values and priorities, you can’t consistently incorporate them into your decision-making process.
Your family mission statement doesn’t need to be much. A couple of bullet points illustrating your family’s most important values will do the trick.
It typically won’t take you more than an hour to develop, but it will help guide your future difficult decisions for years to come.
I include an example of a mission statement that I’ve seen work really well for a couple, and two guided exercises to help you and your spouse develop a mission statement of your own, in my book Marriage-Centered Money: Get on the Same Financial Page and Achieve Your Life Goals Together. The mission statement chapter (chapter 9) is my favorite chapter in the whole book, and you can grab your copy for just $10 here.
BONUS: Get a Quick Win
This won’t be applicable to every difficult financial decision you face as a family. (Hence why I suggested there were “two and a half” exercises in this section rather than three.
But if it’s possible to apply this exercise to your situation, it can be a big, big help.
If you’re ever feeling stuck, try to focus on one small part of the issue at hand and focus all of your energy on completing this one small part of the decision.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed when a decision is huge. If it’s possible to break the issue into smaller milestones, focus on one part at a time.
When light is unfocused, it can light up an entire room… but when it’s focused, it can be used to cut through a diamond. There’s immense power in directing all of your focus on one thing at a time.
What’s one thing you could do in the next few days to get a quick win under your belt? Pick something, accomplish it, and move to the next part. And sometimes, “just” getting a quick win under your belt can break you out of the analysis paralysis mode to help make the entire decision easier. It might seem contradictory to suggest that you can accelerate your progress by slowing down… but it’s not.
A Neutral Third Party Can Help Difficulties in Financial Decision-Making
For couples that are struggling with a big decision, it can be very easy to lose sight of the forest from the trees.
And unfortunately, it can sometimes be difficult for the people who you trust most in your life to give impartial guidance when it comes to the types of decisions we’re talking about in this article.
(Go ahead, ask your in-laws if you think it’s a good idea if you move further away from them and let me know how that goes.)
A marriage counselor, financial planner, or financial therapist can be a great resource to help you and your spouse evaluate your options, prioritize the most important things to your family, and make a choice that’s right for both of you. If you need help getting the conversation started, you can book a free breakthrough session with me whenever you’re ready.