187. My Spouse Won't Talk About Money -- Now What?

Money conversations in marriage can feel complicated, emotional, and easy to avoid. In this episode, I’m sharing the most common questions I got after speaking to a room full of moms about unity in marriage and money.

We’re talking about what to do when your spouse doesn’t want to talk about money, how to budget when your income changes every month, why money conversations get defensive so quickly, and what happens when one spouse carries all the financial stress.

I’m also walking you through my simple framework for healthier money conversations: the 3 Ts — Time, Tone, and Turf. Because before you ever talk about the numbers, the way you start the conversation matters.

In this episode, we cover:

• What to do if your spouse avoids money conversations
• How to handle budgeting with variable income
• Why defensiveness shows up around money
• How to stop carrying financial stress alone
• The 3 Ts of healthy money conversations: Time, Tone, and Turf

If money has been a source of tension in your marriage, this episode will help you start having calmer, healthier, more productive conversations so you can build together.

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Transcript

Audio Only - All Participants-35 0:00

Hello, my legacy builders. This week I had the pristine honor of speaking with a group of moms, all about building unity around money and marriage. Now, this is a special group because it's actually my old mom group that I got to speak in front of. But after, after some time away, it was so nice to go back and be there with all of them. So when the talk ended, I got up and I gave what I thought was pretty good. New speech. When it ended, several women came up to me. And we started chatting and what struck me was that almost every conversation circled around the same theme. Three questions I'm gonna talk about here today that I got from them. But a lot of them are right around the same thing. One mom said, I know we need to talk about money, but my husband doesn't wanna sit down and have the conversation relatable. Another set. Our income changes every month and I don't know how we're supposed to budget. Yep. I've been there and another mom quietly admitted that every time she brings up money, he gets really defensive and eventually then she stops trying. If you're listening today and you're like, that sounds exactly like my house, you're not alone. It's what my house used to sound like too. Money conversations are one of the most emotionally loaded conversations couples have. Not because couples are bad with money, but because money touches security. Identity and responsibility. Today, I wanna walk through the three biggest tensions that couples run into when they try to talk about money. And I'm gonna give you a simple framework that can make those conversations go a whole lot smoother. Before we get started with into answering the questions that I was asked, there's one tool that I wanna give you that's gonna make these conversations dramatically easier. I call it the three T's. It's time, tone, and turf.

Laura 1:52

You are listening to the Money and Legacy Podcast with Laura Sexton. I'm helping families pay off debt, grow wealth, and build a legacy without sacrificing what matters most. This is where money feels easy.

Audio Only - All Participants-35 2:06

The three T's of a healthy money conversation. Before you ever talk about the numbers, you need to focus on how the conversation starts. That's what these three T's are all about, time. First of all, friends do not ambush the conversation. Money, conversations go badly when they start in the middle of a stressful point. You know, the worst time when we're trying to get the kids out of the door for school, it's not the time to bring it up. Also not the right time during another argument. An argument is not the time to bring up. Well, you didn't. No, no, no, no, no, no. That's not the right time. Late at night when everybody's tired and spent a horrible time.'cause now I'm tired and now I'm angry. Or I'm half asleep and I'm not paying attention. And then you feel slighted. Another time to not have this conversation right after looking at your bank balance, you will attack instantaneously because you see something that you don't like. Another really bad time for all of us moms is while the kids are running around now, I think that it's important to have conversations. About money in front of your children. I think it's important to have arguments in front of your children because I don't want them to ever think that, oh, mom and dad never fight. And so a good relationship is one where there's never an argument that's not really healthy. But I don't want you to have a knockdown, drag out brawl. I don't want it to be a situation where you're just going after each other and fighting, like that's not what we want. I think there's a way to do healthy conflict, and I think that there's an unhealthy way to do conflict and a lot of times with money, because our identity gets so triggered. We become angry and defensive more than we become, willing to accept something that is said about us. And so I think you should try this instead. Try something very simple. When you're in these moments, try something very simple like, could we set aside 20 minutes this weekend to look at our finances together? Now this is going to change the conversation from an attack in the moment to a planned conversation, and that gives both sides time to plan whatever it is they think they need to say during an argument. You're in the heat of the moment. You're not gonna say the right thing late at night, you're tired or you're not even listening. You have to make sure that you have a planned conversation, that you are able to. Converse without attacking. And that leads us to T number two, your tone. You should be curious and not accusatory. Now, tone is often where these conversations are gonna fall apart. If the conversation sounds like you spent too much money and you always do well, the other person's gonna immediately feel criticized. Even if you don't attack like that and you're like, look, you spend too much money and you always do. Instead, you should try curiosity. All right, hun, help me understand what happened here. Or I'd love for us to feel more peaceful about our money. Can we look at this together? Curiosity lowers defensiveness. Now, I also don't want you to come in and ask the question in an accusatory fashion you spent. Way too much money on guests. Can you help me understand what happened here? Okay. See, do you see how that tone is not the right one? It's, Hey, hun. Seems to me like you spent a lot more on groceries this month than you did last month. Can you help me understand, what was different this month from last month? That's going to invite you into a conversation that's going to give you a chance to really dig into the root of the issue as opposed to accusing, at which point the other person just becomes immediately defensive. The third thing, and I think this is very important, the third T is the turf. Choose neutral ground where you have the conversation actually matters. Money. Conversation should not happen in the car. In passing from opposite rooms while someone is distracted. And sometimes there's one place in your house where you're just gonna get more heated, and I'll give you an example about that in a second. For most of us, we should sit down at the same table, laptop, open paper out, no phones at all, nothing that's going to go ding and distract you. But neutral ground helps the conversation feel like teamwork. Now I had a client who every time she would sit down at the kitchen table and talk about money, she'd get very, very angry. It was a very interesting situation and it stemmed from a childhood memory that she had of her dad sitting down at the dining room table to do the bills on Sunday, and he would just get incredibly angry and worked up. So we found that for her and her spouse, they could not have the money conversation at the dining table. They had to go outside. But once we moved to the conversation, to their back patio, and they'd sit on their furniture and they were listening to, the birds chirping or the crickets or whatever, they could have a, like a calm conversation about their money. And so that became their weekly rhythm. They'd grab a cup of coffee, or in the evening they grab a cup of wine and they go sit outside and they'd have these conversations. These three things matter a lot to what I'm about to tell you. I'm about to answer the four most common questions I got after my Unity speech that I gave, and so I wanna answer them for you because if they're common in a room full of 125 women, I'm going to assume that they might be common for you as well. Question number one, what if my spouse refuses to sit down and talk about money? This is one of the most common questions, period, not just after this conversation that I had. Many couples will fall into the pattern of one spouse being worried about money and the other avoiding conversation. One worried spouse is going to push really hard and the other one is going to withdraw even more. Sometimes this looks like disinterest, but it actually is fear or shame, or the other person is holding so much on their plate already. They can't simply take another thing on. Many people are going to feel like they've made a mistake. They don't understand money. Well, they're already failing, so they avoid the conversation entirely. Instead of starting with, we need to talk about the money. Try starting with, I want us to feel more peaceful about money together, or I don't want either of us having to carry the stress alone. Money conversations work best when they feel like teamwork and not an interrogation. This is a great place to come in with curiosity. If you are the spouse that's doing a. All of the money coming in and saying, honey, what would it look like for us to do this together? Is there something that you can take off my plate in this arena and something I can take off your plate in another arena? That's a really great way to go about this. Or if you were the person that doesn't have anything at all to do with money, going to them and saying, honey, I would really love it if I could be involved with the money. What would be one simple thing that I can do just in the beginning? I just wanna do one simple thing to get started so that we can do this together so you're not doing it all by yourself. You can even blame it on me, say, I heard this lady talking about how when one person carries all of the financial stress that it can make them, angry or defensive. And I, I know that if you're carrying it all by yourself, you might become resentful of me for not helping. And I just wanna make sure that we are the healthiest team that we can be. Blame me. I, I'm happy to be your mutual bad guy. Let's talk about the second question, and I get this all the time, especially when I work with actors or people in real estate. I get the question, how do couples handle a variable income? Uh, that's not exactly how the mom asked it. She said something along the lines of, our income changes pretty drastically every month. How are we supposed to budget that? Again, this is very common for commission jobs, business owners. People that make most of their money based on overtime, seasonal income, that kind of thing. The mistake that many people make is trying to build a budget based around their best month. Happens all the time. I happen to be one of those people where I'm like, I'm going to plan to make X number of dollars and it's gonna be amazing. Like last year I was, I got to a point where I was like, oh, I'm gonna hit 10 K month every month But when you start making it in your brain, if you make anything less than that, you start to think that you're failing. It's crazy how your mind works. It's girl math. I don't. The best thing that you can do is build your plan around your lowest reliable month. Think of that as your baseline income. The baseline should cover your food, your housing, your transportation, your essential bills, and then if anything extra comes in, above and beside that, you should decide ahead of time and intentionally where it goes. Any of the extra money can go towards paying off debt, saving for future expenses, investing. It's very important though that you also save up a hill and valley account, especially if you are a business owner or you're in real estate, things like that, that have huge swings. You wanna have a hill and valley account or seasonal work, people that do seasonal work where you're, you build decks and you're really busy in the summer and you're pretty not busy in the winter. That would be a really great time for you to build up a Hill and Valley account for your business and business Reserve spending. Two things that are important, the Hill and Valley account is for your personal income. So for at home and the Hill and Valley account says when we have those big, big months, I'm gonna put some of that money aside and the Hill and Valley account. So if we hit a valley, one of the low months, I have money set aside that can supplement that. Retained earnings in your business. Say if the business doesn't make a set amount of money, I'm still gonna be able to pay myself and my employees. Consistency does not come from a predictable paycheck. Consistency in your home, hitting your goals at home comes from a predictable plan. If you don't have a predictable plan and you need help setting that up, please feel free to reach out to me. I'd absolutely love to have a conversation with you like I did with this mom. Question number three. What if money, conversations turn defensive? I really had to think about this one. It's been a very long time since I've been in a money conversation with my husband where either one of us got defensive, but it does come up. So I was thinking about it and I asked her some specifics. I'm not gonna share those with you here. And I had to think about it for a hot minute because oftentimes when I have a couple that I'm working with. One of them starts to get defensive. I shut it down really quickly because there's no point in sparring with each other. I don't like fighting each other. I'd rather us fight together towards, defeating a common enemy. When this happens, though, a money conversation is going to be a trigger. It's gonna trigger. Feelings of failure. You don't think I did enough for you? You don't think I work hard enough? It's gonna trigger fears of judgment like she doesn't think I'm a good enough husband. It's gonna trigger some past mistakes, maybe some shame rearing its head. If someone hears you overspent again, what they're often gonna feel is You think I'm irresponsible. That is why the tone matters so much in the three T's, because if you go in instead of blaming saying, why did you spend this much money on this thing? Instead, you wanna make sure that you were saying statements about yourself. They need to be I statements, not you statements. Help me understand what happened, or, I would love to make this easier for you next time. Can you tell me where the roadblock was here? Can you tell me what obstacle you came up against that made you make this decision? Curiosity is gonna invite your partnership in instead of creating a conflict. Question four, what happens if one spouse carries all of the money stress? Really what she was asking was, Hey, I do all of the money in our family. What should I do? What could I do? How can that change? That's essentially where she was coming with this question. This is another thing that I hear all the time, and that's why it was. One of the main key points in my talk, you wanna have unity in your marriage. You wanna have unity in your money so that you can have unity in the way that you raise your family. Many husbands will feel like they're carrying the full financial responsibility for the family, and sometimes that's because they are carrying the full financial responsibility for the family. I think of my best friend who has. Completely abdicated her role in making the budget. Looking at the numbers, she doesn't want to, and you know what? For her family, that works just fine, so we're not gonna change anything. But I do think that for 99% of the families, the best way to do it is for you to have some sort of buy-in. You need to be able to know how to go and pay the bills, should something, God forbid, happen to your husband. When one person feels like the entire weight of the financial responsibility is on them, stress will build quickly. Money should never be just one person's job, even if one spouse handles the bills. Both partners should understand the income, the debts, the goals. You need to be able to log into the accounts. Money works best when both people are building it together and money works worst when one of you is intentionally in the dark. At no point in time should one partner be able to turn off the money so the other partner cannot get the things that they need. Unless the person that's trying to shop has an addiction of some sort that is draining the bank account and puts the whole rest of the family at risk. And by that I don't mean you went and bought gas twice this week. You should have only had to buy it once. So I'm turning your credit card off. I don't mean you spent too much on groceries. I gave you a hundred dollars to feed our family of five and you spent two, that's not what I mean. A hundred dollars to spend a, to feed a family of five, especially here in Southern California, is highly unreasonable. Can it be done? Sure. But the key here is that money problems are rarely. Math problems. In fact, I would say they're never math problems. Money problems are mindset problems. They're conversation problems. The goal isn't to solve everything. The first time you have a conversation. It's not a one night conversation. We're done. The goal is to start talking again, if you're one of these people, it's like, well, we don't have money fights because we just don't talk about money, and I like it that way. Let me tell you, the conversation that you're not having is the one that will save your marriage if you are constantly walking in separate directions. If one of you is walking in the light of knowing what the money is and the other one is walking in darkness, you might be parallel, but it's possible that one of you is walking in a direction away from the other. This is a very simple, not easy necessarily, but a very simple way for you to walk in tandem together. If you're wondering where to begin, start with one simple question. What do we want our money to help us build? That question alone can open the door to some really powerful conversations, and I think that you should have a dream meeting. You should have a dream meeting, and that means sitting down. No electronics, lights turn low and let's dream in pictures. Spell it out. I wanna be able to see each blade of grass. I wanna smell the smells that you're smelling. I wanna know exactly what you want. And the reason for that is because if we can dream it, we know exactly what we're walking toward. Even if we have those days where we're walking parallel with each other and then our courses veer off a little bit, we know where we're ending up, and our courses will go back together and end in the same place. We don't always, as couples, we're not always reading in the same paragraph. We're not always reading on the same page, but we need to be in the same chapter of the same book. If after this conversation you were realizing that you and your spouse could use some clarity or some guidance, or you just need help getting the same chapter, I'd love to help you. It's very easy to schedule a clarity. Call with me@accelerateyourlegacy.com slash clarity call, and if today's episode made you think of someone who needs to hear this conversation, please share it with them. Because when couples start building together, money stops being a source of tension. It becomes a tool for building the life that you really want, and I really want you to get there. Alright, legacy builders. That's it for this week. Go out and make a difference.