17. The Financial Conversation Every Couple Needs to Have (But Most Keep Avoiding)
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[00:00:00] There's a lot of conversation happening in a lot of households right now,
but there is one conversation that is not happening. One partner wants to talk about money, about the plan, about protection, about where the family is actually headed financially, and the other partner is busy or avoidant or just not ready to go there yet. And so this important conversation keeps getting postponed and the months keep passing.
And the gap between where the family is and where it needs to be ~keeps quietly growing. ~Keeps quietly growing. If that sounds familiar. This episode is for you, both of you actually, but especially the one who has been trying to start the conversation. Hey friends, welcome back to the household CEO podcast.
It's Callista Anderson and I'm really glad you're here for this one, this episode is [00:01:00] personal, like genuinely personal because I have lived exactly
what I'm about to talk about. I have been the partner who wanted to have the financial conversation and could not get traction. I have felt the frustration of knowing what needed to happen and not being able to get my husband to the table, and eventually after a lot of patience and a lot of persistence, and honestly some pretty heavy life experiences.
We got there and what changed in our household on the other side of that conversation was significant. ~So today we are, ~so today we are going to talk about the two very types of financial conversations couples need to be having, why they are both important, why one of them is so much harder to start than the other, and how to actually get there
without it turning into a fight. ~Before we get into this, ~before we get into it, if this [00:02:00] show has been valuable to you, please hit the follow button and leave a rating. It is one of the most practical things you can do to help this podcast Reach more families ~who needs, ~who need these conversations. I am genuinely grateful for every single person who takes a second to do that.
~Okay, let's get into it. ~Okay, let's get into it. ~So before we get into. ~ So before we get into why these conversations are hard, I want to set something up that I think is going to reframe the whole topic for you. When we talk about financial conversations as a couple, we are not actually talking about one kind of conversation.
We are talking about two very different types, and they require different energy, different timing, and a different kind of readiness from both partners. ~The first time is ~the first type is what I call the immediate [00:03:00] financial conversations. These are the ones about what is happening right now or in the near future.
Things like reviewing the monthly budget, deciding how to pay off a specific debt, ~saving, ~saving for something like a trip, a home renovation, or a new car. Talking about what you owe in taxes this year. Planning for a big expense that is coming up. These conversations are practical and concrete.
They have a clear beginning and end. You sit down, you look at the numbers together, you make a decision, you move on. They can still be uncomfortable, especially if the numbers are not where you want them to be, but they are tangible. You can see what you are dealing with and you can make a plan. Most couples, even ones who struggle to talk about money, can eventually get to these conversations.
They are grounded in the present. The stakes feel manageable. The second [00:04:00] type is what I call the future and emergency conversations, and these are the ones that most couples avoid the longest. What happens if one of us dies? ~What would the financial real, ~what would the financial reality look like for our family
if the primary income earner was suddenly gone, how would the surviving spouse cover the mortgage, the kids' activities, the daily expenses? Would they have to go back to work immediately? Would they have to sell the house? Would the life they built together stay intact? These conversations are not about the budget for next month.
They are about protecting the entire structure of your family's life. If the worst were to happen. ~And they are hard ~and they are hard, not because they are complicated financially, although they can be, ~but because they require us to think about things we would rather, ~but because they require us to think about things we would rather not think about.
Death and loss the people we love [00:05:00] most not being here anymore. So a lot of couples stay very busy having the first type of conversation and never quite get to the second type. And that is the gap I wanna talk about today because that gap has real consequences.
So why is the second type of conversation so much harder to have? ~Because money is emotional, ~because money can be emotional. It never really is just about the numbers Underneath every financial conversation, our feelings about security and fear and control .
And what we grew up believing about money and whether we're doing enough. ~So when you bring up, ~so when you bring up life insurance or what would happen to the family if something happened to your spouse, your partner does not just hear a practical question. They might hear a reminder of their own mortality or a topic that makes them feel anxious
or something they fully intend to deal with someday, but [00:06:00] someday has not arrived yet. In most couples, there is also one partner who is more financially engaged than the other, ~and that gap can create a dynamic where the more engaged partner feels frustrated and alone in carrying the financial. ~And that gap can create a dynamic where the more engaged partner feels frustrated and alone in carrying the financial mental load, and the less engaged partner feels overwhelmed or like they are being lectured when the topic comes up.
Neither person is wrong. They just have different relationships with this material. But here is what I want you to hold onto. Postponing the conversation does not make the risk go away. It just means you are unprepared for it if it shows up.
I wanna share something real here because I think it will help. There was a season in my life when I was losing sleep. And I mean that literally, I would lie awake at night running through worst case scenarios in my head. My husband is the [00:07:00] primary breadwinner in our family, and we had young kids.
And I realized one night lying there in the dark that if something happened to him, I knew exactly what would happen to us financially ~and it, ~and it was not good. ~We, ~we would have to downsize our home, pull the kids out of activities.
~I would have to go back to nursing full-time. Maybe get, I would have to go back to, ~I would have to go back full-time into nursing and possibly work ~more than one job~
~and possibly ~more than one nursing job, and be away from my kids. ~Far more, ~far more than any of us would want. The life we had built together would have to be completely rebuilt under the worst possible circumstances. That weight sat on my chest at night, and it was not abstract worry because I had already lived through loss.
~My brother had passed away. ~My brother passed away at 34 years old, unexpectedly. Just the two of us had grown up together. And losing him was one of the most devastating experiences of my [00:08:00] life. ~And in the middle of, ~and in the middle of that grief, our family had to start thinking about the financial part of death, the final expenses, the logistics, all of it happening at the same time as the most intense emotional pain I had ever felt.
What made the difference for us was that my mom had the wisdom of putting life insurance in place for my brother and me when we were teenagers because of that, when he passed, the expenses were recovered. There was no financial scrambling on top of the grief,
and that mattered more than I can express. ~That experience, ~that experience stayed with me deeply. So I tried to have the conversation with my husband and he resisted, not dramatically, not with a fight. He was just avoidant about it. Busy, did not see the urgency the way I did. The topic is heavy and it requires thinking about your own death,
and he is a surgeon who comes home after [00:09:00] long days, and that's not the kind of conversation he wants to open up late at night. , I get it. I genuinely do. But I also could not unknow what I knew, the nights lying awake, running the numbers in my head, my brother's passing, and what it showed me about what it looks like when a family is prepared versus when they are not.
I have also witnessed other families more recently where the husband died
unexpectedly in his forties with very young children with no protection in place.
~Sure there are. ~Sure there are GoFundMe, but these things are one time things ~and it cannot really support a family~
~and~
~long term. ~And it cannot really support a family long term.
So back to my husband, I kept at it gently, persistently over many conversations, spread out over time, and eventually we got there. ~We got him properly covered. ~We got him [00:10:00] covered. ~And we built a real protection and we built a real protection plan, ~and we built a real protection plan for our entire family.
Then I slept again, not because I thought something bad was going to happen, but because I knew that if it did, our family would be okay. That is what protection actually gives you. Not a guarantee, but peace.
I wanna pause here for a second. If you are the partner who has been trying to have this conversation and cannot get traction, or if you are both open to it, but just don't know where to start, a household CEO audit session is exactly the kind of structured conversation that can help we sit down together and look at your full picture.
What you have in place, what you actually need, and where the gaps are. ~Having a third party walk through that with you often makes it much easier for both partners to engage with the material. Having a third party walk. ~Having a third party walk through that with you often makes it much easier for both partners to engage with the material without it feeling like one person is presenting and the other one is being [00:11:00] corrected.
~So if you're interested, the link, ~so if you're interested, the link to book is in the show notes. ~If this conversation, if this is the conversation your household needs to. ~If this is a conversation your household needs to have, let this episode be the thing that starts it. Okay. Continuing on, let us get practical.
How do you actually bring this up without it turning into a fight or getting immediately shut down?
Lead with love, not fear. And I'm speaking from experience. I was in so much fear whenever I would bring this up. So the way you frame the conversation matters enormously. ~There's a big difference between saying we have no life insurance, and that's a problem. And~
there's a big difference between saying we have no life insurance and that's a problem and saying. I love you and I love our family, and I wanna make sure that if anything ever happened to either of us, our kids would be okay. One sounds like a criticism. The other sounds like what it actually is, which is care.[00:12:00]
When my husband understood that my persistence around this topic was not anxiety or nagging, ~but genuinely. ~But genuine love for him and for our kids. Something shifted. The conversation became less threatening and more real..
Number one, lead with love, not fear. Number two. Pick the right moment. ~Do not bring a heavy con. ~Do not bring up a heavy financial conversation at the end of a long day. When everyone is depleted, find a calm moment, maybe a Sunday morning, a quiet drive, a time when you both have some capacity. Give your partner a heads up so they don't feel blindsided.
Something like, Hey. I've been thinking about something and I would love to talk through it with you this weekend. That one sentence changes the entire dynamic. Number three, [00:13:00] start with a question, not a statement. Instead of leading with everything that is wrong or missing,
get curious about where your partner actually is. ~What would you want to happen for our fa? What would you want to happen? ~What would you want to happen for our family? If something happened to you? What do you want our kids' lives to look like no matter what? Those questions open a conversation, ~statements about what you need to fix.~
~Close one.~
~Statements about what you need to fix. Close them. Close one ~statements about what you need to fix. Closes up conversations.
Number four, start with the immediate conversations first if you need to. If your partner is not ready for the big future and emergency conversations yet, don't force it. ~Start with the monthly budget overview. ~Start with the monthly budget review. ~Talk about paying off a, ~talk about paying off a specific debt together.
Build the habit of sitting down and looking at your finances ~as a team. ~As a team, the practice creates safety and trust around money conversations in your relationship. And from that foundation, ~the bigger conversations become more, the bigger conversations become more, the bigger conversations become much more accessible.~
The bigger conversations become much more [00:14:00] accessible. You are building a muscle together. Start where you can and work toward where you need to go.
And number five, make it a team conversation, not a one-sided presentation. Come into it as partners who are figuring this out together, even if one of you knows more about the financial details, the goals and the values and the decisions belong to both of you equally, nobody wants to feel like a student being corrected by their spouse,
so those are five ways to help start the conversation.
~And just to recap that is lead with love. ~And just to recap, number one, lead with love, not fear. Number two, pick the right moment. ~Number three, start with a question. Start with a question. ~Number three, start with a question, not a statement. Number four, start with immediate conversations first if you need to.
And number five, make it a team conversation, not a one-sided presentation. [00:15:00] I wanna be honest about what is at stake when couples stay stuck in avoidance on the future and emergency conversations because I think the stakes are not always fully felt, and that is part of why the urgency doesn't feel real enough to act on when a family does not have life insurance and loses an income earner, the financial impact is immediate and severe.
one thing I hear a lot is people saying, ~I have insurance at my, ~I have insurance through my work. I think that's great, but most people don't know how much they are covered.
~So I urge you if that's something, ~so I urge everyone that if you do have life insurance through your work, please see what it is because a lot of times it is about two to three months of your salary.
~And I also want you to keep in mind that if you ever left, ~and I also want you to keep in mind that if you were ever to leave your job, that plan does not go with you.
More than half of families experience. Serious financial hardships within [00:16:00] six months of losing an income earner, many households see their income drop by 30 to 50% almost immediately, and then layered on top of that are the final expenses, which can usually run between 15 and 30,000 or more depending on the arrangements.
That is grief and financial crisis happening simultaneously, and it doesn't have to be that way. Think about your specific household for a moment. If your partner passed away tomorrow, what would change financially? Could you cover the mortgage on your income alone? Could your kids stay in their schools, their sports, their activities?
Would you have to go back to work immediately or work significantly more hours? How long would your savings actually last? I'm not asking those questions to scare you. I [00:17:00] am asking them because they have answers, and those answers tell you exactly what kind of protection your family needs.
The household, CEO does not leave those questions unanswered. She looks at them directly, makes a plan, and then she sleeps at night.
~The financial conversation,~
the financial conversation the couples need to have is not really about money.
It's about love. It's cornea as that sounds, but it's true. It's about your kids. It's about the life you're building together and making sure it's protected no matter what. Start with the immediate conversations, if that's where you are, build the habit, build the trust, and then don't stop there. Because the future and emergency conversations are the ones that actually protect everything You're working so hard to build.
~The discomfort of having the conversation is nothing compared to what the alternative, the dis. The discomfort of having the conversation is nothing compared to what the alternative costs.~
The discomfort of having the [00:18:00] conversation is nothing compared to what the alternative costs are.
If you wanna help starting it or if you want a structured space where you and your partner can look at your family's full financial picture together, ~book a household CEO audit ~book, a household CEO audit session would be. We will look at what you have, where the gaps are, and what the right next steps are for your specific family.
The link again is in the show notes, if this episode resonated with you, please share it. Send it to a couple, you know who needs it. Tag a friend who's been trying to get her partner to the table.
That is honestly how this community grows.
~And if you have not all, ~and if you have not already, please follow the podcast and leave a rating. It takes about 30 seconds and it genuinely helps this show. Reach more families who need these conversations. Thank you so much for being here. Until next time, lead your home with intention and take care.
~One thing I often hear is that.~
~One thing I hear a lot is peop, ~ [00:19:00]
