Money Talk for Couples: Finding What Works for You

Money can bring couples closer—or quietly build tension over time. In this episode, Nikita & Adam Van Deusen dive into one of the biggest relationship questions: Should we combine our finances? And if so, what's the best approach for us?

They explore the three main approaches couples take (fully combined, partially combined, or fully separate), break down the pros and cons of each, and share tips for navigating this conversation with curiosity and mutual respect. You’ll also hear practical tools and ideas—from budget apps to financial agreements—to help you and your partner stay on the same page.

Whether you’re just moving in or years into a long-term partnership, this episode is your guide to building trust and making money work together.

Resources:

• Common Cents: Bank Account Structure and Couples’ Relationship Dynamics
• Money for Couples (By Ramit Sethi)

Transcript

Speaker 0:01

Welcome to the Third Decade Podcast, where we believe every young adult deserves the confidence to take control of their financial future. Whether you're just getting started or you're well on your way towards financial independence, we're here to give you the tools and guidance you need to build a life that aligns with your dreams. Let's turn financial uncertainty into opportunity. Together.

Nikita 0:24

Hi there, Decade Community. I'm your host, Nikita Wolf, and today I am joined by volunteer financial mentor Adam Van Dusen. Thanks for joining us, Adam.

Adam 0:33

Hi Nikita, glad to be here.

Nikita 0:35

So I'm excited for today's topic because we see this come up a lot for couples in our program, and I guess alumni, obviously as well, who have a change in circumstances and maybe have a long-term partner who they're wondering how they should merge finances. So, really what I want to talk about is how and when and what our options are for merging finances as a couple. So, um, as we all know, money is one of those top predictors of issues in relationships. And I think there are lots of things that we can get ahead of on that front. Um, so I wanted to talk today. Adam has really interesting perspectives on different options for this. So I'm excited for this conversation. So in today's episode, we're going to be talking about the different ways that couples handle money, um, maybe some of the pros and cons of each of those, and just communication tips and questions to ask before you actually, you know, pull the trigger and merge finances in whatever way feels right for you or don't. So let's start with the big question. Um, Adam, what should we do? Do we combine finances or do we not?

Adam 1:44

Yeah, it's it, as you said, it's a big issue in relationships. If you're, you know, maybe you just got engaged or you're moving in together or got married. Um, there's so much going on. And then there's this big money question. And, you know, what happens sometimes is that sometimes people just end up in a default option. It's like, this is what we were doing, and we just do it. Or in the beginning, we just did it this way without thinking about it, and that's what happened. And I I think we've found, um, at least anecdotally in my experience, and I think there's some research to back this up, that that's often um can create challenges, and that taking a more intentional approach uh to having active discussions with your partner and making decisions that uh make the most sense for your particular situation uh often lead to the best results. And and we can sort of get into maybe the process of how you might go about doing that.

Nikita 2:31

Yeah, I something also that I've experienced firsthand, but also I'm sure it um it depends for other people, is the age in which you get married or that you merge finances with somebody might make a big difference. Because I think maybe a 20-year-old who is getting married really young. I was 21 when I got married to my husband, and thankfully things are still going great. So, you know, we're we maybe aren't part of the typical statistic about really early marriages, but when you're 20 and you're getting married, you might not really have much in the first place. So it doesn't feel like you're letting go of anything to default into a fully combined situation. However, when you're 35 or 55 or you know, much further down the line and you have a career and you have assets and you have a house and stuff like that, I know I would feel a lot more protective, I think, if I was having to start from scratch where I'm at and and thinking about merging with somebody. So I'm sure some of that impacts the merging process as well and how people feel going into a relationship and whether or not they want to merge things.

Adam 3:34

Yeah, absolutely. And as we'll talk about today, I there really isn't one right answer for everyone. Um, we'll talk about some of the research that's just one thing or another, but depending on your stage of life, depending on you know things you've experienced. So, for example, someone who had previously been in a relationship that was um maybe someone had taken advantage of them, uh, taken their money, they might be much more likely to want to keep their finances separate in a subsequent relationship. Uh, whereas someone who hadn't gone through that might be much more willing. Um, and that could totally work for both groups. So um, we'll talk about some of the different structures and options and things, but I think just um by thinking about these issues and having the conversation um both internally and with your partner um is really a great first step and can get you on the right track for whatever whatever that means to you.

Nikita 4:24

Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about maybe some of our options. What are the main approaches that you would that you could take?

Adam 4:32

Yeah, so there's a a few different ideas. So some people might think of having their finances be completely joint as much as possible. Um so this would be um though those taking a step back, actually, I should say there's sort of two ways to approach this. So oftentimes when it's discussed in the media or elsewhere, it's talked about well, the sort of how do we handle our money physically? Do we have a joint checking account that we spend from? Do we have separate accounts and so on and so on? But I actually think it's worth taking one step back from there and thinking, um, as I was saying, sort of psychologically of how you want to treat your money. So you and your partner, do you, and and you you each can answer on your own and then have a discussion, is do you want to think of your money uh as a partnership as psychologically your money together or your money as separate individuals? So for example, no matter what kind of accounts you use, if you think of your money as a whole psychologically that that my money is yours in the opposite way, for example, it might not matter where the money for the rent payment or the groceries come from, because it's a whole pot of our money. Whereas in the other way, if you think it of your money as separate, then that's gonna create that's going to create different circumstances. So now, yeah, you might need to find a a way to um fairly divide up the different expenses because uh you're thinking of this is this the money that's coming into me is mine and that's yours, but we are gonna share some expenses. So I would really encourage folks to think of if you're sort of entering this situation, to think to yourself first, well, do I want to have this as a shared pool of money, or do we want to keep things separate, even if we have a maybe a combined um bank account that we put some money in? I think that's a really good first step.

Nikita 6:17

Yeah, and taking that a step further, you might have feelings one way or another on how you view it psychologically, but you want to make sure your partner is in alignment with that too. Because if one of you views it as fully combined and the other one views it as separate, like you're gonna come up against some roadblocks. I'd say probably pretty quickly. So having that open discussion early on. Yeah, absolutely.

Adam 6:40

So yeah, and then once you've had that discussion, and so um, then you can sort of get to the next level as well, how do we wanna manage our money? I I say sort of physically, but in terms of the accounts, where payments come from, uh items like that. So, for example, at one level, um, you might have fully joint and combined as much as possible. So you might have you'll open, let's say, a joint checking account for the two of you, and all of your money goes into that account. So my paycheck, your paycheck, anything else that comes in is all going into that joint account. And then we'll just pay all of our expenses from that account. We'll pay our mortgage from it, our rent, our groceries, whatever it is, comes from that account. Um, maybe you have uh joint credit cards. You can um both be on the same um credit card account uh or separately. You could have a joint investment account or savings account. All of these things can all be joint. It's worth noting that there are certain accounts that are only individuals. Um so most of your retirement accounts are only in your name. So IRA stands for individual retirement account. So that will be an only one. So I might have an IRA, my partner might have an uh another IRA. Um and so you can have the discussion of you know how much you want to contribute to each. Maybe you move the same amount of money from the joint checking account to each IRA if you're making contributes to that, contributions to that. Um but in this way is um putting all your money in sort of this one pot and working from there. Um but with that, um, I and maybe we can get into this, or there's some sort of upsides and downsides of uh doing it that way.

Nikita 8:11

Yeah, I I think something I'd really like to touch on, whether it's now or later in the episode, is is ways that you can protect yourself against potentially, I'm you know, not to I I'm not gonna sugarcoat it, financial abuse at the end of the day. And I see this happen unfortunately a lot with women. Um, I love advocating for women's involvement in their finances. I think so much of the time, especially historically. Like my grandmother, I don't, she would never think about being the one in her household to be taking care of the finances. It's always been my grandpa. And that has been very normal for a very long time. But we also see the ways that that has really hurt people in the long term and hurt retirement. So you already kind of mentioned it, but um, yeah, I had a friend specifically who is in a great relationship and they were contributing towards an IRA. And then I was like, why don't I I like I don't think you guys aren't gonna work out, but I think it's just a great idea. If you guys are looking at that as us money, just split it down the middle and each of you contribute to your own IRA because we don't always know what's gonna happen if you know in the event of a separation, how assets get divided up. But you want to make sure that both of you have income. And yeah, that's my little tangent for a moment.

Adam 9:26

But yeah, I think that's a great point. And I think we'll talk about that in sort of the next style is um maybe being almost entirely joint, but then having your own separate account, like a separate checking account. And then we we'll get into maybe how you move money to and from because you do want to make sure, even if it's only in your name, that you're being open about that. So one of the more common things the term often uses financial infidelity, is you have a secret savings account that your partner doesn't know about. Um, so uh, in which case, especially if you're treating things jointly, that's money that you could be using for something, but you're sort of keeping it to yourself. Um, but being open and saying, hey, I'm gonna keep a separate uh savings account for myself. I want $5,000 just in case something happens. I want money that's in my name only. And I think that makes a lot of sense. And being open with it, um, it makes it makes a lot of sense that way.

Nikita 10:15

Yeah, definitely. Do you want to to touch on the next option for combining um or not combining finances?

Adam 10:23

Yeah, well, uh maybe we can get into some of the pros and cons of the the joint side, maybe as people are thinking about it. Um is that okay? Yeah, definitely. Why is on the mind? So so having the joint account is actually one of the things that sort of has some research backing. So there have been surveys over the years that are that you know ask people, you know, how do you keep your finances joint, separate, et cetera, and then how happy are you in your relationship? So all of these surveys pretty much found the same thing, that people who are more likely to have people with joint accounts were more likely to be happy in their relationship. But this is a a prime case of you say correlation versus causation. The idea that these two, while these two things are related to each other, it's not necessarily that one is causing the other. So you might imagine that people who it's not just that you have a joint account that's causing the marital happiness or your happiness in a partnership, but perhaps it's another factor. Perhaps you both are very trusting of each other, and that's why you got the joint account in the first place, is because you both trusted each other, and that trust is a very good sign for your relationship. So there's there's other factors that could be involved. So some other researchers did a really interesting study, um, this was pretty recent, where they took people who had just, you know, were entering this phase, they're either getting married or engaged, moving in together, whatever it was, and they separated them into three different groups and they told them what to do. So they told one group, you all open up a joint checking account, keep everything joint. They told another group, keep everything separate. Your own separate accounts, you know, you can each contribute to the rent, whatever it is, but keep everything separate. And then they, the third group, they didn't give any instructions. Um they said, you know, you can just do whatever you want. And so they f and they tracked them over time to see what happened. And it turns out they found that there was actually a relationship between the couples who were uh treating their finances jointly um with uh happiness down the line, satisfaction with their relationship. So that was a really interesting finding because it took out, because they were randomized into the different groups, it took out some of those sort of confounding factors that could have also played into this relationship. So um it's it that's an interesting finding, but at the same time, there's potential downsides of this um joint um being very, very joint with your finances. One is, again, it's you're putting a lot of trust into the other person here. If you're putting all your money in one pot, you both have access to it, could pull the money out, you know, do something with it that you don't want the other one to do. So um, that's a big element. Another thing that can happen here too is when if both money is in one um pot, let's say, it can be tempting to sort of nitpick the other on their spending, right? This is this is our pot of money that we have. Why did you spend $50 on this, $100 on that? Like, no, we need to cut this and that. So if you're gonna do it that way, it can help to have a very um specific plan for how you want to handle, you know, who's tracking what expenses and as it goes along. Um, so for example, um, for some couples, the way it works is let's say you you work out your monthly expenses and you see, okay, we have enough room where let's say each of us can have $100 of you know guilt-free spending money. So each month, you know, you each get $100 out of that um, you know, the joint pot, and you can spend it on whatever, no judgment from the other person. So um, you know, I have my things that I want, my wife has the things that she wants. Um, we don't judge each other. So that's one way to sort of get around that hiccup. But um, you know, being joint requires a lot of trust and a lot of communication um to make sure that it's still working uh for both partners.

Nikita 14:04

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think you pretty much covered the things I was I was gonna say about that as well. My my husband and I have kind of touched on a few different methods because as I said, we got married really young, so we kind of reached this point where exactly like what you said, I think it was my husband maybe was the first to experience this feeling of like, well, I don't like feeling like I have to ask to, you know, buy a video game that's maybe gonna be 75 bucks. Right. Um, where at that point, like our you know, we were in college and I'm like, I feel like we're broke, why are we spending money on this? But he's like, but this is how I want to spend money. This is like what brings value to my life. And so kind of figuring out like ways to creatively have money in separate accounts that like the the way that we've structurally set it up is that like we have our own savings with a pool of money that you know we have for each of us. And if there's uh an expense that we're not in in agreement on with each other, basically, we can just kind of override, be like, great, well, I'm gonna use the the money that's in my account for that then. And then anytime, you know, if we need to shuffle money into those accounts periodically throughout the year, if we've got maybe a surplus of money and we want to kind of hit reset and maybe send $400 to each of our accounts again, or uh both of us uh on independently have uh some side endeavors that we can make extra money on. We can buff up those accounts that way. So we've this has evolved over the years, but yeah, just a another uh idea throwing out there of a way that that I've charted that territory too.

Adam 15:32

Yeah, I think that's great. And and sort of a related idea too is sometimes um you might set uh a limit of you know, ask free spending. So if it's under $20, like you don't have to ask the other person, um, you know, as their income or whatever goes up, maybe that maybe that goes up to 50 or 100 or or something beyond. But that way, again, you said you're like, oh, I'm getting this candy bar. Do I need to like text my my partner to see if it's okay? What a nightmare, can you imagine? Yeah, so so that's something that might work for you um as well, depending on your situation. Yeah.

Nikita 16:02

So are we ready maybe to talk about the the the other solutions we have for combining or not combining?

Adam 16:09

Yeah, great. Um so yeah, so so maybe a middle ground here. So let's say you don't want to be fully joint in that way. So another way might be is you keep separate accounts. So you have your own checking account, you have your own savings account, and so does your partner. Um, and then you maybe you have a uh a joint account um sort of in the middle. So maybe you can um there's a couple of ways to do that. So you could either uh each contribute a certain amount of money into the joint account that's used for your expenses or things, or you could just put your paychecks into the joint account and then sort of take some out for each of your own spending. This sounds similar to it sounds like what you do, Nikita, which is um having money in the middle and then pulling money out, either certain amounts at certain intervals, and then use that for your own spending. So um, in this case, it's nice. You have this sort of joint pot of money, you're still experiencing that jointness, but you also then have some uh freedom and flexibility on your own of the money that's sort of only in your name. Um it sounds like is that sort of what you do and has that worked for you?

Nikita 17:13

That one is a we did do that at a certain point, but that's not currently where we're at. I do want to ask the question though, because I think this is a great opportunity to ask this equal versus equitable split. If we have a partner who maybe makes 100K just themselves and the other partner makes 45k, it doesn't necessarily feel very fair. Let's say their monthly expenses total 4,000 a month, 2,000 a person is impacts them very differently to contribute into that joint account. So, what might you suggest for somebody in that situation or some version of that situation to have more of an equitable approach rather than an equal approach?

Adam 17:52

Yeah, yeah. A couple of great points come off of this. So, right, so one is the idea that, and this is again, to have this conversation up front before any animosity or or issues build up. Um, just as you were saying, if you have very unequal incomes and you're trying to split up the expenses, as you said, if your rent's 2,000, the 1,000 for the one person means a less than the 1,000 for the other person. Um and so maybe you do it on a percentage basis. So um if I make, you know, uh 60% of the income and my partner makes 40%, maybe I pay 60% of the rent and 40% of the rent. Though another issue this brings up, though, is going back to that issue of psychological um jointness um versus separateness. So the way we're talking about right now, this would be in the case of if you think of your money as separate from each other. Um so this is my money and your money. And because our money's separate, we need to think of a way that we're splitting all of these bills up, um, whether it's equally or maybe if our incomes are equal or equitably if our incomes are far apart. Now, if you were in in in the case you could have this style of accounts, sort of one joint account and your ones in your own, and also psychologically think of your money as joint. So you you put all your money in the middle and then you send, you know, a couple hundred bucks to each of your separate, um uh each of your separate accounts for sort of your own spending, um, as it were. And then everything just gets paid out of that um that middle account. But it doesn't matter if I pay this bill or you pay that bill, because we think of the big pot of money as the same. So this is where these two concepts of like the psych the psychological jointness versus like the physical jointness um intersect and interact.

Nikita 19:31

Yeah. So how about that? Maybe we'll I'm sure there's more than three options, but we'll call it a third option of just not set uh keeping everything completely separate. Like I know I've had friends that I like see Venmo transactions for like that week's groceries. Could we talk maybe about that option and and maybe pros and cons of it?

Adam 19:52

Yeah. So in this case, let you say you have no joint accounts at all. Um, and in this case, you're very likely thinking of your money as psychologically separate as well. But so in this case, this is where you're gonna have some joint expenses. So you're gonna want to have these conversations we were talking about of who's paying what. Maybe you see all your bills and it comes out that let's say go back, one one person is 60% of the income, one person's 40%. So if they pay for the rent and groceries, that's 60% of the expenses, and then you know, I'll pay for the um, you know, uh housing expenses and our pet expenses and whatever it is, and that's that's 40%. So I'll pay those bills from my accounts and you pay those bills um from your accounts. So um, in terms of the depositives of this way, um, it gives you full independence. Your your income that you're earning from your job is going into your account, you're spending it, you're you know, you're gonna owe your communal expenses, and then you spend whatever you want out of it. You know, they're not seeing what you're spending on. You don't have to worry about you know transferring money out of the account every month or them, you know, picking on uh the the limits of of how much you're spending. Um though the downsides is this um can take um it takes uh maintenance to do, let's say. Um, you know, as your income every month or every year, you know, as your income changes and your expenses change, are you then adjusting who's putting what percentage in? Um you might do that to make sure it still uh feels fair. And then, you know, perhaps more qualitatively, and I think this was sort of the finding from the study I mentioned earlier, is when you're in this situation, it might feel less joint, right? That you're almost back in this roommate situation where you have sort of co-expenses, maybe that you're splitting up, um, as opposed to a um, you know, a long-term relationship where you're sort of in it together. But again, there are many reasons why you might do this. Um, it people um I think you'll see this a lot with uh second marriages um before, uh, where you know they might have gone through um, you know, had an experience where money was taken out of joint accounts, or as you're saying, like a financially abusive situation. Um, I I think that's a possible thing that people. could see. So definitely pros and cons uh to doing it that way as well.

Nikita 22:04

I think it's also worth saying here that I think whether or not a couple has children can greatly impact maybe even the feasibility of that third option, especially. Like I can't imagine um having our our twin babies right now and like Venmoing my husband for like the diaper. Like how do you even I I don't know like you have to be combined at a certain point. I'd say at least partially combined once you have kids or I don't know how you would make that work. I feel like it would be so laborist to to keep things separated and truly fair.

Adam 22:37

Yeah. Yeah no I think that makes it that makes a ton of sense. It's and again as your different expenses it's one thing if you're just splitting the rent but now if you're spitting groceries and everything else that's um it's going to be a little bit harder to maintain but but for some people that might be worth it.

Nikita 22:53

So I know money talks can be a really beneficial thing for people and also I think depending on the person maybe can feel a little intimidating.

Adam 23:01

Could you maybe outline for us like how to have a good money conversation different approaches for that yeah I mean I think um so first off just being interested in having the conversation you've taken a big first step because uh a lot of couples have gone a long time without even talking about money. Like I said they just sort of defaulted into something and that's what they do and then one day one of the partners is like I have no idea where our money is or you know I don't know how much um is coming into our account every month. So by having the conversation and being uh open um with your partner I think is a is a good practice. So um I think to start out with um you know it might be a good idea if you can share and feel comfortable with each other sharing your experiences with money in the past. What was your background growing up? Did your family have an abundance of money? Did they have a shortage of money? And how has that um impacted your um attitudes towards money today? You know you hear stories of of people who grew up during the Great Depression that for decades and decades after that left scars on them financially that they didn't even if they had significant wealth they still didn't want to spend for for fear that something like that might might happen again. So you can imagine a a variety of situations your partner might be coming from and I think that's not only good to to get that in the open um for um conversation purposes um but also will help you empathize with them um to to to know where they're coming from. So you know when you're having an argument over something like I want to spend on this but they don't want to spend on that well it's not because they're trying to like hold me down or they don't respect my interests. Maybe it's because again they had a situation where their money was so tight and they didn't have enough to eat at some point in their childhood and they don't want that to happen again. I think it can help um help you be more uh understanding of each other. So I think that's a um a good first step.

Nikita 24:51

When do you think is good to start these conversations within a relationship you might not have the conversation on your first date but within the relationship when do you feel like that becomes appropriate?

Adam 25:02

Yeah so I mean you know putting my financial planner hat on it might be as soon as you feel comfortable too because money is such a big thing that goes on again, you know, not the you're not laying out your uh you know checking account and investment account balances on the table uh at your first date as you said um but uh you know at times of transition if you're thinking of moving in together or before getting engaged or um hopefully almost certainly before getting married those can be good occasions to check in and and it can be in stages. You know perhaps earlier on in your relationship you're talking more qualitatively about money. Do you do each of you um am I a saver or a spender? What are some of my financial goals? Maybe you're in sync. Maybe you both have a goal to um achieve early retirement or to be able to live in another country or whatever it is. That's those are good things to explore because you might find your goals are on totally different wavelengths. And if they are um that's probably something to work through. And then maybe as you get more serious maybe you're considering getting engaged maybe that's when you put the numbers on the table the uh you know say hey here's what I have in checking here's what my student loan balance is everything else going on. And that way you're being open with each other and and knowing what um each of you are getting into and it's probably going to depend on the couple at the the time you feel most comfortable doing that. But but I think in general you know by the time you're ready to get engaged married or married you should have a hopefully have a really good sense both of you know your partner's um money values as well values goals as well as exactly what their situation looks like both separately and together because that might inform again how you decide to um you know handual handle your finance at the level of jointness or separateness of it.

Nikita 26:49

Yeah definitely those are all really great points. I know I've also heard of the concept of like a money date um do you recommend like a specific cadence of that what that what that can look like I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

Adam 27:01

Yeah and again this I would say it's gonna vary by couple um for my wife and I we do this uh once every quarter so once every three months uh we check in we look at uh the status of our accounts to make sure um we have enough in our uh respective checking accounts looking at um some uh account balances uh as well as we're checking in on our spending so um use one of the the budget tracking apps so we can see it was our spending this quarter sort of in line with our goal that we might have sent at the our set at the beginning of the year. Now uh you could do this monthly uh maybe if you're just starting so we've been doing this for many, many years, so the quarterly works for us. But as you're just getting started out maybe you start checking in every month or so just to keep that communication going. I think the key is is to find a way that you can commit to doing it regularly. So once a month, once a quarter, um, because if you start skipping it then you might forget and then it kind of might spiral downhill from there. So whatever works for you. But but when you do this um I would encourage you to um do things that um make it a more enjoyable experience. So there's some people who just love talking about money and there's some people who really don't like talking about money. And I find often in partners there's one of one and one of the other. So one might be excited to talk and and maybe not the other one. So in that case try to find a way to to make it enjoyable. So for example uh be sure to share your financial wins like look we exceeded our savings rate for this month. We're doing great towards this financial goal. Also try to pair the sort of money date um with an enjoyable activity. You know do it right before you go out to dinner or like a you know a date date for the night um that way um or do it over a bottle of wine. Some people like doing it that way or beer or whatever um or just a nice meal at home whatever it is that you really enjoy. So it's not seen as necessarily a psychological chore but but something that can be enjoyed and sort of nurtures the conversation um between you.

Nikita 28:54

Definitely and if if you do find that one partner is uh very like you said it's usually like one in one it's like I've seen and I listen to Ramit Sadie's podcast and I think we'll talk about him a little bit later but uh oftentimes he talks about how like one person might just like railroad a conversation and really dominate that space. What are some like approaches, soft skills maybe to bring into a conversation about money if you're maybe not necessarily the same money personality.

Adam 29:26

Yeah it's a good point. You know oftentimes uh you might refer to it that one person is just the household CFO as it were you know the household chief financial officer and the other one isn't. You know there's probably some couples where both people are really into into money but as you said there might be one or the other. And so I think the responsibility is on uh both sides in this case. So if you're the CFO, you know, maybe you have your spreadsheets that you really like and things like that. And maybe your partner doesn't want to dig in the spreadsheets, but it can help to be open with them. You know, here's what our financial situation is. Maybe they don't want to get to the nitty gritty but at least at the high level um and and maybe while they're not trying to talk about every getting down to the specific cent on every account um the the non-CFO partner might be interested in talking about your goals. Hey we talked about going on this big vacation next year. Are we still on track for that? And then as a CFO you're in a good position to be like yeah our savings has been been doing really well we're on our way to do that. And then if you're sort of the the the non-CFO like I I totally get it people either don't like discussing money or it makes them feel uncomfortable. So trying to shape the conversation in a way that at least makes you aware because again you don't want to end up in that point where it's 10 years down the line and I don't I have no idea how much money we have or where it's located. So um so so being engaged and engaging on the areas that are of interest to you might be a good way to help keep the conversation going.

Nikita 30:48

Yeah yeah that's a great point.

Adam 30:51

Why don't we pivot and maybe talk about some of the tools that our audience could use to engage in these conversations and just like financial management within uh a a joint circumstance yeah um so there's uh a few different areas you you're probably familiar with a lot of the sort of um uh wealth trackers um that are there that will help you um you can load up all your accounts to it so you can see your checking account your savings account investment account loan um balances in there and both partners can share in that so you always have that update on your phone knowing where different balances are on on the budgeting side you also have uh a lot of uh budget tracking tools um that can help you track your expenses so you know it automatically you'll connect your credit cards your debit cards to it and it'll ingest all of the transactions and then you can categorize them that can be an easy way to do that you know monthly or quarterly check-in as it were to looking at your balances looking at those expenses did we spend more than we expected to less than we expected to um thinking about um analyzing if your money is reflected with your uh the way you're spending reflects your values and what you find that's most important to you as a couple um those can um I'd say those two sets of tools uh can be helpful for uh not only tracking but keeping the conversation going. Yeah yeah definitely do you have any favorite budgeting apps that maybe even you use personally can I put you on the spot yeah so I use YNAB personally um this is one so some of these apps are free some of them are paid this is a paid one um I think it's about $100 a year or so uh I find it really good for expense tracking um you like like I said you can connect all of your uh checking and savings accounts into it put the uh expenses in the different categories that you want and it gives you a good picture to see if you're on track um to your goals and you know you'll you'll get your income in there too so seeing this month did we spend more than we brought in or hopefully vice versa that you're bringing in more than you spent um and it's a good way to compare it over time. You know, this year how did our spending look this year compared to last year? So so that's one um that's been um very helpful for me. How about yourself have you do you use any of the the wealth tracking ones the account balance I the only app that I use is Projection Lab.

Nikita 33:06

And I bought a lifetime membership to that uh right before they like more than doubled the lifetime cost. So I was very grateful for that. But that's I'd say probably a bit denser than our typical audience would do. Like that's more of someone who's like you know pretend financial advisor like really really loves this stuff or is on the path to like financial independence retiring early. So projection lab is what I use but I am like the old school girly who uses Excel. It is intense. In June of 2018 I set out to like actually track everything that I spend and now I feel like it's been seven years and I'm like I can't stop because now if I stop then I've like broken the streak. But I honestly I I've heard great things about Winab and I feel like slightly inclined to use it but then I'm like it's a hundred bucks that I don't need to spend because what I'm doing works. And I don't know I don't know whether or not I'd save a lot of time doing it. I know that the investment of learning the software on the front end is maybe a little bit heavy but not you know unmanageable but that's that's my complicated answer. I use Excel. I wonder at times if I should actually get with the program and try out YNAB because I know a lot of our students are referred towards that as well and it's it's a pretty user friendly software and it makes beautiful charts and my Excel sheet looks much more trashy than that. But um it works for me. So that's what I've used all these years.

Adam 34:35

Yeah yeah and I should say there's different levels of depth you can go into a tool like YNAB. So I primarily use it for this expense tracking which maybe is like level one. Level two though is actually setting a budget and then assigning your income to different budget buckets. So for example you know especially if um you know maybe you want to make sure that you're only spending $200 on eating out a month like that'll hold you to it because you're moving your money into that bucket and you're like oh okay we only have 20 bucks left um and there's two weeks left in the month well we better we better cut back. So there's there's different levels of uh that too but I I like Excel. I use Excel for for a bunch of stuff too.

Nikita 35:09

Yeah. I like projection lab not for anything I don't even know that they offer anything expense tracking wise but it's more of like retirement planning.

Adam 35:17

Yes I use it too it's just a it's a very good consumer face there are very few consumer facing financial planning softwares out there and that's one of them and it's great.

Nikita 35:25

I really like it too I was just happy to find something consumer facing that actually does the Monte Carlo analysis or the they call it chance of success but um it's very nice to creep for a future episode maybe we'll have to talk about it I would be happy to talk about projection lab. Uh Kyle the uh founder of that company is very accessible we might even be able to get him on well that's fine I could I could try.

Adam 35:47

I was going to ask you though so I mean I feel like there's gonna be a lot of our listeners today are being like okay they've talked about all these options but but you guys you know seem to be the experts what do you do with your partner? I don't know I don't do you want to I'm happy to talk about what what we do in terms of jointness and separateness. I want to talk to you and then I'll go after that. Oh okay yeah so you know in thinking about this so so my wife and I we think of our money as joint. So you know we talked about this before we got married. We're gonna think of this as as sort of one big pool of money. And so but but with that we've you know elected not we actually don't have any joint checking account at all. I have my own checking account she has her own checking account um and part of this was sort of her convenience reasons in the sense that um I didn't want to get in the situation where you're keeping enough money in the account that you might overdraft it and you know who's taking what money out of it. So in this way she has her um checking account she sets her bills up for auto pay it goes in we do that but I I do the same thing in mine. I have mine so my credit card bills and things like that um come out of it. So at different times one of us has paid the the mortgage or the rent from our um uh checking account the other ones paid other bills um we have kids nowadays the daycare bill is even more than the the housing bill as it is so um you know we've had to adjust for that as well um you know we have a joint um investment account but then we also have our separate uh retirement accounts so um it's in some ways it's really nice in that it is uh fairly low stress um because we uh so we each have our own separate money that's in our accounts um which is good that way um we're not sort of um you know we did the way I sort of sort of said before if this expense is under a certain amount that we don't have to ask the other ones so we're not um you know eyeing every single thing quite as much so um that's turned out to um to work for us um great how about from your side so as I said I think we have literally done like every version of this I would say maybe I was right now I'm 30 and when I was maybe 25 I think we started getting to the point where we wanted to try to view it a little bit more separately and it I would probably identify myself as the CFO of my household so we still had access to being able to like view each other's account balances and transactions and stuff just from a convenience standpoint.

Nikita 38:04

But I was finding it so hard to like separate things out and make it like equitable and like shuffle money this way and it just like wasn't it was so tedious. And honestly I don't think it ended up actually making either one of us happier and and because we got married young we'd kind of started from a combined place. So after sort of swinging to the opposite end and being like that is this is this doesn't feel like we're working towards a common goal as easily and we're being like more protective about our our money and it didn't feel good to either of us so it we really tried and it just didn't feel right for our relationship. So um I want to say maybe 27 or 28 we decided you know we're we're in it for the long haul. You know we've we knew that but like we're ready to to merge and figure out a way to still give us that feeling of independence which is really what we ultimately were craving was that like that money that is ours that you don't get to tell me what to do with um and what I described earlier in the episode with that is is kind of how we handle that. But now especially with babies uh we we're very joint and we just have the only the only independent piece of that is really our own personal savings which is earmarked as we get to spend this money how we want to and as I said if if we have extra money throughout the year and one of us or both of us see that account as maybe lower and we want to buff it up a little bit we can kind of equally split out and maybe send a few hundred bucks to each account so that we can buff that money back up as like a personal discretionary, you know, spend this money however you want to kind of account. But trying to think there's anything else to to mention on that front. I would say I I feel like this version is working really well for us and I I view it as probably our long-term solution and it also feels very simple from the perspective of of financial planning. And um as far as like retirement goes I know we talked earlier about the IRA thing we always are very intentional about contributing a set percentage of our income into accounts that are earmarked as our accounts. We don't have any like joint brokerage accounts because we are not maxing every other available personal account before that I know that is an option for people who who want to use a tax advantaged account um or I don't know that what I just said makes sense but if if you've already maxed out all of your tax advantaged accounts you might choose to do a brokerage account that's joint. We're not in that place but um some people might be and um yeah I hope that answers the question and and makes sense. I think I just rambled a little bit.

Adam 40:43

No but I think that was a really good example of what we were saying is that it could change over time. You know when you when you have this initial conversation maybe you're on the you know in getting engaged or about to get married you're not making a decision for life necessarily a couple years in if it's not working out for you accounts can be closed accounts can be opened you know you can you can change things around so you know maybe some listeners here have been married for a while already and you might be you're thinking to yourself you know maybe this I maybe this isn't exactly what I want to do or maybe there's a different way. Could be an opportunity to open up the conversation with your partner and be like hey what if we tried um it being a little more joint less joint whatever some of the options separate um one joint account separate accounts um as it were um as I said there's no one right solution for everyone who's out there so um keeping that communication open and making changes when necessary I think could be a good idea. Yeah definitely well put I know we we mentioned Ramit Sadie earlier I would love to talk about his book briefly maybe as a potential tool for people who are navigating this conversation um as with as a couple so you want to talk about that a little bit yeah yeah he's an author uh podcaster he has a Netflix show I think um and so he's written a book called Money for Couples which I think does a good job of uh you know introducing some of these conversations questions to ask your partner uh as well as setting up a potential system for um handling your finances as a couple he's very big into automation um and so for example creating a so having your your um paychecks automatically go into a joint account that every month sends money into your separate accounts that auto pays your bills things like that so you don't have to touch it so if you're the kind of person who wants to be very hands off with it um that design could really um work with you because there's um a lot of automations in there but other people might want to be a little more hands-on so I think that book is a really good potential resource for um getting the conversation started and understanding what types of uh questions to ask and conversations to have with your partner yeah and it's his second book his first one that he wrote was called I Will Teach You to Be Rich.

Nikita 42:50

And I believe his Netflix show was called How to be rich or something like that. Something along those lines yes he's honestly it was it was a fun show. I recommend it. If you have Netflix like check it out kind of dip your toes into the world of Ramit's uh perspective he i if you ever hear me say like you know how you live your rich life that's definitely something I think he popularized in in recent years. Um I really love his work and and he makes great resources. So thanks for bringing that up and and definitely encourage you as our listeners to check that book out. So um yeah as we said this conversation evolves it can change you don't have to do the same thing three years from now that you're doing today you gotta figure out what works best for you and I it's it's most important as a couple to build your financial foundation on trust and communication and openness. And yeah I I hope that today's conversation has been helpful for our listeners.

Adam 43:48

Do you have anything else you want to add today Adam before we wrap up uh no I I really appreciate the conversation um Nikita and and hopefully listeners you know it I think the biggest thing is just to take that first step. You know, opening up the lines of communication with your partner and getting the conversation going. You know, again, it doesn't have to start with laying your spreadsheets on the table. Um, it can just start with talking about your experiences with money, talking about your um money goals. Um, that can be a good way to sort of get the ball rolling to uh better communication as a couple.

Nikita 44:18

Yeah. Definitely. Well, thank you for coming on. And if you listened to this episode and got something out of it today, I encourage you to share it with a friend. And as always, please check our show notes. We will share everything that we've talked about today and and maybe a little bit more as far as like a step-by-step guide of like how to have one of these money conversations and how to approach this conversation in a relationship. So thank you, Adam. Terrific. Thanks so much, Nikita.

Speaker 44:44

Thank you for joining us on the Third Decade Podcast. Remember, building your financial future isn't just about dollars and cents, it's about empowering yourself to live the life you want. If today's episode gave you new insights or inspired you to take action, we'd love for you to share it with someone who could benefit. Together, we can turn financial uncertainty into opportunity. Until next time, let's continue to embrace the journey ahead and take control of your financial future.