Ep. 21 How to Talk Finances With Your Partner (Without Fighting)

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💬 Do you and your partner avoid talking about money because it always turns into a fight? You’re not alone. Money is the #1 reason couples argue — but it doesn’t have to be that way.

In this episode of the Net Wealth Nest Podcast, Jim LeBoeuf shares practical tips on how to talk about finances with your spouse or significant other without fighting. From setting financial “date nights” to building joint goals and avoiding blame, Jim walks you through real strategies to build financial trust and teamwork in your relationship.

You’ll learn:

✅ Why money conversations are so hard for couples

✅ How to talk about money without blame or shame

✅ The power of financial transparency and shared goals

✅ How to set up financial “date nights” that actually strengthen your relationship

✅ Red flags (financial secrecy) and green flags (teamwork & celebrating wins) to watch for

Whether you’re newly dating, engaged, or married, these tips will help you and your partner get on the same page with money — and start building financial stability and wealth together.

👉 If you’ve ever searched: “How do I talk to my partner about money?” or “How do couples stop fighting about finances?” — this episode is for you.

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Transcript

Jim 0:31

Welcome to the Netwealth Nest podcast. I am your host, Jim LeBoeuf. Thanks for joining us again as we help you build your financial stability and grow your net wealth. Today we are going to talk about money and relationships, and specifically we're gonna focus today's conversation a little bit on how to talk about finances with your partner without fighting. Look, I, I get it. Money is the top reason that couples fight, but it doesn't have to be that way. There are individuals that I've talked to and worked with that are working with their spouses and are trying to figure out their way out of that paycheck to paycheck cycle, and there are a lot of different reasons that they might be struggling or have worry about their finances. But the top reason that those that have significant others or spouses, their top worry is upsetting. Their spouse are getting into a fight and they typically try to avoid that. So let's talk a little bit about why those conversations can be hard, and then we will talk about maybe some strategies and practical tips that you can use with your significant other or spouse to have those conversations make it a little bit easier. So. As we dive in, why the conversations are hard, different money backgrounds and different ways that you were brought up definitely impact how you look at money, how you spend your money, and what you do with it. Um, It can even impact the way you gain income by having a different mindset around money. There can be opportunities where maybe somebody's a saver, somebody's a spender. That actually happens more often than not. and also there's this sense of shame and guilt, or even secrecy, especially in newer relationships around money. And around debt, and that can go both ways. Somebody that's making a lot of money and really has their financial life in order. I've seen newer relationships where that individual doesn't want to get taken for a ride by somebody who might not be good with money and is potentially using that relationship. To bolster their lifestyle In the same regard, I've seen people that have racked up a lot of debt that are scared that if they share that information with their, um, their boyfriend, their girlfriend, their their spouse, they will get, shamed by that individual or it could lead to a breakup in the relationship. And so there's a lot of. Anxiety that sometimes goes with, having those money conversations with your spouse. So let's talk about some ideas for maybe that first conversation. Maybe it's a newer relationship where the relationship is starting to get serious and. You're starting to think that this could be a, a long-term relationship for you, and it's important to have that shared type view on how you're going to attack your lives together and money, and, uh, the way you spend money and how you, protect yourself financially. And Bill financial stability should be a big part of that long-term vision. So, starting with. talking about that and just even the basics of just trying to have an open conversation around like, how do you view money? Like what do you look at when you're thinking about money? Do you like to spend money? Do you like to save money? Where do you like to do those things? Maybe there's certain things you like to spend on, certain things you like to save. For all of those, just starting with what are your kind of financial outlooks So I wouldn't recommend going too deep in that first maybe conversation. Um, but it could be shortly after where you have more deep and you start thinking about, Hey, I've thought about, you know, the conversation we had maybe two, three weeks ago or a month ago around how we view money. And I kind of brought that up and, and as I feel like this relationship is growing, I really feel like we, maybe start. Putting some goals together that we really wanna go after And so it could be something around, like, I'd love for us to talk about like what are our five year goals? Like, where do we think we want to be in five years? Maybe that's, um, where we wanna live. What do we want to own? Do we want to, own a house as an example? Do we want to, travel a lot over the next five years? What do we wanna do? and that can help guide where you start to need to. Fit together, how the financial stability and how your financial goals play into your life goals. You wanna try to use eye language as much as possible versus blaming. So, um, you know, if there's not a plan and you feel maybe your spouse likes suspend pretty liberally as an example, instead of saying like, you spend too much, it should be like, I feel anxious when I don't know what our plan is or how we're attacking our plan. Right. It's not necessarily the spending that's the problem. It's the, if we have goals and we have plans, like how are we executing, how are we gonna get there? And if we don't have those, maybe that's where it makes me nervous. And so that's where I want to go after and have that type of conversation. That's a really great way to, start that conversation and start to build up a plan. If you are the version of a person who maybe is a saver and you are in a serious relationship with a spender, The other way to look at that too is if you are the spender, it's not, you know, you always don't want to do anything, or you don't wanna spend on anything or any of that. It's more of like, I feel that we both work really hard for what we are given and what we do, and I wanna make sure that while we're together, we're enjoying the fruits of our labor at the same time, it might not mean that we, don't do things to. Be financially responsible, whether that's saving, whether that's investing, whether that's, you know, looking towards assets. But I also don't want to save every little penny that I have and never get to experience some of the fun things that I'd really like us to do together. Again, putting the, the. The emphasis on the I and how you feel versus blaming the other person is really, really key in these types of conversations. And then the other thing is pick a time where everything is neutral or in relatively good order. If you're in the middle of a fight, especially if you're fighting around something about money, that is not the time to have that conversation. Okay? Pick a time where you can set it up. What is a good recommendation is doing like a financial date where you, maybe you go out to eat together and you say, Hey, I'd love to literally just. This daytime for us to talk about like some financial goals we have and, and, and kind of talk through that together. Great. Go to your guys' favorite restaurant or a really good restaurant, whatever it is. And you know, it, it should be an enjoyable experience. It shouldn't lead to anxiety. It should be basically goal planning and setting up the stage for what the couple wants to do together. What they want to work towards, what they want to strive for, from that standpoint. So practical steps on what, you can do one of them I just mentioned. It's those money dates and I recommend you do those relatively frequently and frequently as a kind of a vague term, but you know. A couple times a year at a minimum. Once a quarter is nice. Some couples do it once a month, which can be aggressive for some people. but find something that's comfortable for the both of you. But it is something you should regularly visit, not only to make sure that you are working towards your goals, but to also celebrate as you do see progress. And then also like level set if something was a goal and then it becomes not as important to you, maybe a lifestyle change happens or whatever, those are times to address that. you typically see, younger couples or newer couples travel, maybe travel a lot together, but then if they have a child, their goals do change. They shift, they're thinking about different things and maybe travel becomes less important and it's more of a different goal. Not always but. If it does, and you're having those regular meetings, there's an opportunity for the two of you to get on the same page and talk about it together. budgeting together is always important. I do recommend you have some sort of shared account where you're paying collective bills together. And again, this is if your relationship has gotten to that point where you're serious or if you're married for sure, like you should have some sort of account that you both are putting money into in some way, shape, or form that allows you. to pay your bills. And so as an example, my wife and I have a checking account that we both have access to and the, almost all of our bills come out of that one account. now there are other small things like she's got her own credit card that comes out of her own account. I have my credit cards that come out of a different account. Like all of those things happen, but we have kind of like one big. pot that, like our mortgage comes out of, our insurance, comes out of, all of our, you know, utilities or bills. All of those things come out of that account. And then, we have separate accounts off to the side for each of us that we use for, the random purchases that we make or whatever. Being transparent about that is also key. So understanding like where, you're at, my wife and I are in the position. We've worked really hard and we've been very blessed where we don't have any debt besides our house. and so we both know that for an example after me paying off a lot of debt personally, that I brought to the relationship in the early beginnings and working really hard to get rid of that. We just have our home and. My wife knows that if I. Am not gonna pay my credit card at the end of the month for whatever reason, which I do not do. but if that ever happened for whatever reason, she would know about it. And the same is for her. If she got into a position where she was financially maybe overspent or something was gonna be, not the normal of kind of what we've level set together. She would let me know that. And so that's just really important to be transparent, be able to share what your credit report is. If you do have debts, you should be sharing those with each other. it took me a while to share that with my wife, but I eventually did and. It kind of unburdened me and got us all on the same page of also like I was gonna get rid of that debt as fast as I possibly could, to help us have a brighter future and, go after the things we wanted to do. And so I really worked hard to do that. Making sure that you are being transparent around that, that you are sharing those debts, your credit reports, all of those things, what your savings are is really, really important. And now every month, my wife and I have a day that we, that I have assigned, that we kind of collect all the data from all our accounts. And that's also how we track our net wealth as a couple, and as a family. It just works out. When you're that transparent, you're doing that thing, you're working, you're striving towards the same goal, and, really when we started tracking our net wealth just a few years ago. My wife wasn't nearly as excited as I was about it, as I watched it grow month in and month out, and I'm a little crazy. So I got in there and I, I really wanted to see every single month and we're seeing a little bit of growth as we pay down different things like our house and as we continue to save money and put different things aside and invest more in all those things, I got really excited. And we've seen that compound growth over the years really start to take off for us. And as we did, and she saw those results, now she has gotten more excited about every month the results where it used to be. I would always be like, Hey, I need to get your balance from the account. And she knows like towards the end of the month is usually when I do this. She's like volunteering that information to me of like, Hey, here we go. Here's all the stuff. So that she knows that I will go into the spreadsheet we have and calculate it. And again, it's just that partnership now where we're on the same page, we're moving towards the same goals. We understand each other. We're not ashamed of where we've come from or what we've gone through. And we know that if anything goes awry, we're confident in relying on each other. and that saves fights. We don't fight about money. We know what our goals are. We know when we are, achieving our goals. We know when we slip up and we just keep moving forward. And so the last thing is kind of red and green flags to think about is you are in a, especially in a newer relationship or as the relationship, it maybe is starting to turn a little bit more serious and you wanna start having more serious conversations. Red flags are, are typically around like, hiding everything, right? That, that financial secrecy, the refusal to plan, the, some people call it financial infidelity, where, individuals have these counts that they're squirrel away money that they don't want you to know about. Those types of things are just typically not going to breed trust in a relationship and can lead the fights even if it's a good thing. I've seen fights. Where couples, where one of the couples was saving a bunch of money on the side and didn't let the individual know about it. And maybe they were saving it for a good reason. Maybe it was a future vacation or whatever. but that partner was really frustrated because they're like, well, it felt like we were struggling for so long and you were putting all this money aside. Now we have all this money. We could flow on a vacation, but like you never even asked me about it or asked me what I thought or took me as a partner. I'm supposed to be your partner. And I wasn't in that situation. That's where the fights kind of come up. Green flags, teamwork, celebrating wins together. Uh, excitement around, being able to share, wanting to have the same priorities and be on the same page. I. Even if they're not excited about all the financial stuff, again, I kind of talked about, my wife and how I'm the financial guy and I get really excited about the numbers and all that and she's not that, but like she also knows that I get excited about that, so she like likes to see me get excited and is happy when I'm happy. Like those types of things are all green flags that you should be looking for as you're starting to get into a more serious relationship and you start having some of those conversations. So as a recap, Having conversations can draw some anxiety to people, but it doesn't have to. If you have a plan and your, your plan is really focused on, you know, understanding first and foremost, again, in a newer relationship, like what are your thoughts around money? How are you brought up? when you get money, do you like to spend it right away? Do you like to save it? just really kind of broad brush strokes on how individuals, uh, view money and, and view the spending or use of money. And then as maybe a relationship progresses or gets more serious, or we're talking about marriage or we are married like, and we're starting to talk more about money, it's about having the conversation at a good time, not in the middle of a fight, not right after a fight like it should be. Maybe a setup date in the future is, it's a really good way to do it. But, Having that in a neutral moment and then talking about what do we want to accomplish? Let's build our plan together. And the financial piece is just the toolbox of our plan and how we're gonna execute our plan, whatever that plan might be, And so my challenge to you is if you haven't had any of those conversations, try to schedule a time where you can do that, even if it's a newer relationship and you're like, Hey, like, let's go on a date. Let's go out to dinner. you know, we've, we've been dating for a few weeks now. I've got some more questions for you. I wanna learn a little bit more about you, whatever. And that could be part of your conversation. But if you've definitely been in a relationship for a long time and you're, progressing into a more serious relationship, or if you're already married or already in a very serious long-term relationship, maybe like, Hey, I feel like we haven't planned a lot. let's set up a date. Let's go out, wherever we like to eat together, one of our favorite restaurants, and let's talk about. Like what we want a future to look like and what that means. so that's my challenge to you do that if you haven't already. And again, I'd love to hear any other comments. Or advice you might have around having these conversations. we're all here to help each other and, help each other grow, our net wealth and really, again, build that financial stability. If this is helpful, please follow our YouTube channel, go on our podcast. If you're listening through Apple or Spotify or iHeart. Podcast, whatever you're listening to, I'm on there on their Netwealth Nest. come join us and listen to our new episodes. Subscribe. Please, rate our podcast. we want to get to more people, and by you reviewing us and rating us and following us, it allows us to have a larger reach. your comments are also super appreciated as we use those comments to build our future content on things that are on your mind and what you'd like to talk about. So appreciate you joining us today. I hope you have a great day. My name's Jim. Bye everybody.