PODCAST EPISODE 237: Why Spouses Should Plan Together

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Unknown Speaker 0:09

Hello and welcome to your business your wealth. My name is Paul Adams. I am the CEO and founder of sound Financial Group and today I am joined by Corey out on the road with maybe the most picturesque setting he’s had behind him for one of our episodes. Cory, where are you?

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I am here in Northern California, just a day’s drive from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

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I don’t know why that’s important, but I thought someone would get a get a kick out of knowing. Knowing that.

Unknown Speaker 0:42

Yeah, so it might be the most beautiful I have had some other beautiful settings behind me in my, in my travels, I feel like a reporter on location. Yeah, right now. But thankfully, there’s no hurricane behind me. It’s just the

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the nice, you know, fog of Northern California burning off, which is

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tea in my hand bundled up just a little bit. But excited to excited to be here from the road. Yet. Well, today, I think is going to be kind of a fun, little conversation, because we’re going to take some relationship advice from Chris Rock and apply that to your finances. Now, the reason that this financial advice from Chris Rock I think is so useful is it kind of takes a funny approach to looking at it. There’s a little bit of course language, we’re bleeping out. But what I think everybody can get is the reason why we are currently in the 13th show. That’s right, yeah, we just crossed over.

Unknown Speaker 1:41

But what we wanted you everybody out there to be able to think about is it’s it is one, if you know, if you’re single person, you’re able to make all your own financial decisions, all your future plans probably even more important that somebody who’s single gets a chance, you know, divorce, single, etc. gets a chance to have work with a coach and advisor because it opens up the opportunity to have a second set of eyes, look at what you’re doing. Because the more money you make, and the more assets you accumulate, the more high consequence any mistakes are. And so when you have a spouse, you sort of have another person sort of looking at your paper, if you will, but that person may or may not have the background expertise. And then the other problem is you both bring whatever financial baggage, you have the financial conversations just based on how your life’s gone up to that point. Right. And so I think what we should do is pause here for a second Cory, let’s share the clip with everybody. And then we’ll go from there. All right. Oh, relationships are tough, really not the only tough when one person’s working on two people can move a couch real easy.

Unknown Speaker 2:52

One person can’t move it at all. You in a relationship. Try to help you right now. Rule one, stop competing. Her success is your success. And your success is her success. Number two, there is no equality in a relationship.

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We will tell you that.

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You’re both there to serve. You are in the service industry. Okay, you’re in a band. And when you’re in a band, you have roles that you play in the band. Sometimes you sing lead, and sometimes you’re on tambourine. And if you’re on tambourine, play it, right?

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Because nobody wants to see a mad embrace.

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So

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what I love about that is it’s like the two big things are one, you’re both in the service industry, you’re both serving one another, you’re certainly serving your future aims that you’re working on. And everybody plays roles, and they’re not necessarily equal. Like in my house, my wife runs all the monthly bills.

Unknown Speaker 4:05

And I run all the long term investing and planning.

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But we talk about both together. Right? I love it. You know the very beginning with that couch metaphor. He’s saying it’s not about how strong you are, how good you are, like most of the all the couches we have if it was something I was benching like I could probably bench the weight of any of our couches, but they’re long and awkward. Doesn’t matter how strong I am. I mean, I could try I could probably get the out out the door, but I would do significant damage to the couch or the the process of doing that. I think that’s what he’s what he’s getting at there. Like it can be hard if you just try to do all by yourself, but I love that both being there to serve everybody. It’s not 5050 If everyone’s 100 100 That’s when I’m relationship

Unknown Speaker 5:00

It works really well. Yeah. Yeah. And think about as it relates to planning. So with planning, can one spouse do all the planning?

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Potentially, yeah. But how much damage is getting done going out?

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Because now let’s think about what kind of damage that is. That means one person is going to have to tell the other person if they’re the only one doing long term planning. At some point, you might have turned your spouse, we just can’t spend money on that anymore. Well, why? It’s like, well, now to answer that question would mean, I got to bring you up to speed on the last four or five years of financial planning we’ve been doing. This is not a quick, you know, because it’s raining outside kind of answer. It’s because there’s something big we’ve been working on in the background. And this conflict, this level of spending conflicts with that, or we can’t get the new car right now, or whatever it is, and how it will show up to the spouse that’s not involved in planning. Or like a bunch of cats won’t, or shoulds, which don’t feel good to anybody

Unknown Speaker 6:11

ultimatums, you want to run into problems, real fast relationship of any kind, ultimatums, are a great way to Yeah, well, and so what can we do? You know, so if you’re listening to this right now, and your spouse hasn’t been with you, in the planning,

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we’ve got a couple of ideas we could share with you of conversations you could have with your spouse to bring them into the conversation.

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Now, we’ll talk about ways to entice them as well. But just metaphors and examples that you can use. And I’ll give one, that’s the one that sits most with me. Where I, I think you could think about somebody say, Well, you know, when once you know, once we’re retired, then I’ll pay attention, or once we get over 50, I’ll start paying attention that says one spouse to the other spouse.

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But that would be a little bit like if I looked at my wife, and said, Hey, you raise those kids. Now our kids are an inevitable part of our future, as a couple inevitable.

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But if I said, you just get the kids going until they’re teenagers, because I do great with teenagers, and then I’ll start working with them. Well, one, I won’t know enough about him, I won’t have enough relationship, it’s not going to go well between me and the children at that point. Because I won’t have had all this history. And I actually know a story of a grandfather that said that about his grandkids I’m not really interested in while you’re young, I just want to work with them when I’m a teenager, or when they’re teenagers.

Unknown Speaker 7:47

And I didn’t want to hang out with them. It’s exactly right. There was no relationship for them to build on once they were teenagers. And fortunately, the friend of mine who this was his father in law,

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could see far enough down the road, let him know that’s probably not going to work. But it’s no different with money. If you have one spouse has been working on your planning for the last 15 years, then they know all this background and the whys behind everything, but you don’t have any relationship to it. It makes it very difficult to onboard even later. The other thing that it does to you, so you’re probably the spouse that handles the money if you’re listening to this, right. But should you share this episode with your spouse that doesn’t participate at all in your planning conversations? This is something that just from me, okay, this is not coming from your spouse, but from me, of 25 years of working with clients. And that is that there is no way your spouse can win if you’re not involved.

Unknown Speaker 8:47

Yeah, because they get to retirement and you guys are able to retire and you’re financially secure. That’s what you expected them to do. So what do they want a cookie for getting all that handled?

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And second, could be if it falls apart and doesn’t work in some way.

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And you can kind of imagine what those arguments look like, like how, how come we don’t have enough money? I thought you were in charge of this retirement? Well, I couldn’t because you kept buying cars and vacations and and then the to end up going back and forth with one another. And you wonder why it is that a finances are the biggest reason for divorce. And B we end up with a lot of people divorcing after the age of 60. I think they call them great divorces. And and some of the like you could see why that might happen. Because how do you live the rest of your life with a person that you thought now? I think it was a bad assumption to think your spouse would just handle the retirement planning. But how do you live the rest of your life together with the person that screwed up that one job that

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and that can lead to those divorces later in life, which is a huge destructor of wealth on top of maybe not having planned as well as you’d liked to begin with.

Unknown Speaker 9:58

So that’s you know, I

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I think the spouse that doesn’t participate, they tend to get the like glazy, I’d really fast at a lot of numbers all in one spot, which is a certain personality type. And it’s just the one that likes looking at the numbers can be. Now it can also be just the one that doesn’t like it, the least, I can say like, if I get pushed into it. So I think one of the things I’ve found in getting the other spouse involved is to not start with the numbers of it. But the Where do you want to go together, like dreaming about life, and what’s important, so that anything you do or don’t do, inside of the numbers later is not about depriving ourselves but about moving towards the thing that you you want, like, we really want to be able to go on these vacations with the kids when they’re a little bit older. So we’re going to not spend as much money in these other places right now, to put it towards that so that it’s putting it towards something not just, oh, yeah, it’s been in demand in cars. Right, that should never be there. The reason was, You’re right is that the The trouble is, if you guys are not on the same page with what these future plans are attempting to achieve, then all it can be is the list of cans, shoulds don’ts from the one who is handling the long term planning. And, and the other part is, if you’re not participating in it, then the aims that you have that you want to have achieved will only get achieved with your money by by like coincidence, or by accident, rather than by design. Because if if your spouse doesn’t have your input, and your financial coach doesn’t have your input for what you want the future to look like, then you won’t get there. And almost no one fully understands this stuff when they start engaging in it. Like I remember one great example for everybody here is a friend of mine, who is a CPA was a client of mine for like three years. And suddenly in the middle of our client meeting, he says, You know what, Paul, I’ve heard you talk, it was one particular concept I taught called velocity of money. And it’s the idea of how we use money multiple times on somebody’s balance sheet. He’s like, it’s been three years that I’ve been a client implemented everything that we worked on. And for the first time, after three years, I really understand what that means. I only sort of understood it the last three years. So it’s not something that you can feel like, I think sometimes people show up to a financial meeting and feel like they should know all the distinctions or feel like they shouldn’t ask questions, like a ask the questions be, make sure you get your aims, your goals for the future heard by both your spouse, and by your advisor. Because if you’re,

Unknown Speaker 12:53

let’s say your aims are way off that you’re like, hey, I think we should have an $8 million home, in retirement travel the world on vacation on a cruise line,

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have to Tesla’s in the driveway plus a collectable Lamborghini in the garage. And then you know, then you start looking at numbers like well, we make $300,000 a year. And we probably can’t achieve all that. But it you will inevitably just be disappointed otherwise, because you just didn’t have the right assumptions to build that future upon.

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But we can achieve some amazing things. And one of the most amazing things we can achieve together with your spouse, or that you and your spouse can achieve together with an advisor is the ability to put together well grounded assessments of what the future can look like. So that you get those winds and start moving toward that future that you’re colonizing. Instead of ending up in by accident, you know, like you wouldn’t have a vacation that your spouse planned where you had zero input. And yet the 20 to 30 years of quote unquote vacation of financial independence and being able to have a work optional lifestyle

Unknown Speaker 14:05

is getting planned right now. And if you’re not a part of it, you really should consider digging in and helping your spouse lift that couch. Because right now they’re trying to wrestle it out the door by themselves. And no matter how you slice it, I have never had the let’s say the one spouse that’s the primary decision maker.

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I would say it’s more than half the time the man but not always the man.

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And you’re having them try to wrestle this couch out the door. And there’s none of them we’ve ever spoke to.

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That doesn’t want the non financial spouse in those meetings. Right reason they will tell the advisor is because they’re saying and I’m talking to the kind of, would you call it the one who hates it the least sometimes it’s

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the one that hates it the

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least

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it puts them in a position where they can’t take good care of you.

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Because they’re trying to take care of how you feel right now that you don’t want to be in the meetings. And we love for both spouses be in the meeting, and we advocate for it. And I want you to know that your financial spouse is advocating for your current comfort, and they don’t want to upset you or piss you off.

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Because they gotta be with you the rest of the week, and don’t want to have you drug into a meeting and all that like

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for your financial spouse, if you said, Hey, I’d really start to start to like learning those meetings can I started attending them, even if you don’t work with our firm, you work with somebody else.

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I think 90% of time you’re going to see the spouse that’s been handling all these things kind of light up. Because you might not know how to move the couch. But if you’re willing to learn, you can make a big difference in helping get that mission achieved. Because taking two is a lot easier than one person wrestling with it for the next 20 or 30 years. And then they’re probably the one wrestling with it for decades into retirement too without your help. Well, and you mentioned great divorces, if you think about it, if if you’re not moving together somewhere, you’re not moving somewhere together with your spouse right now. You may be slowly drifting apart. And so slowly, you don’t realize it until all of a sudden you realize you’re past arm’s length. That to hang on to each other. I think that’s where people get 2030 years into a into a marriage where it’s kind of like boiling a frog, but it’s just that one degree shift every day. So money is not every part of relationship, although Money, money tends to touch more other parts of relationship than any other parts of relationship tend to touch others, right? It kind of weaves in all these places, because it’s the fuel for how we do a lot of things. So it’s not the only thing that needs to get solved. But solving the money may help bring you close enough together so all the other pieces if you’re having some other other issues. Yeah, I think that’s really well put core. Well with that we hope this episode has given you at least a humorous look and maybe kind of a fun episode you can share with your spouse if you’re the one primarily listening to these. And we just hope that this like our other episodes has been a contribution to you being able to design and build a good life.

 

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