Financial Intimacy in Relationships: Benefits & Risks

Let's set an early-life scene: you've just started dating someone new, and you're excited about them. You've got a big date night planned, and you're ready to get intimate. You light some candles, and you both open up a spreadsheet.

We're talking about financial intimacy. It may not sound very romantic, but authentic and transparent conversations around money can stir up deep feelings and strengthen your connection as a couple. Working together, stopping the cycle of sabotage, complementing each other's weaknesses, and capitalising on strengths are all amazing benefits of relationships as a couple-hood that can be yours.

This guide is not meant to be theory only. Your “Financial Intimacy in Relationships” starts here.

The Benefits Of Financial Discussion

What types of money conversations you need to have with your partner depends largely on where you’re at in the relationship.

Here’s a rough outline of some important topics to cover depending on the stage of your relationship that will help you to focus where you need the most helpful throughout the benefits financial discussion guide.

Discuss new topics you've yet to broach as a couple, use the list below as a rough guideline.

Discuss money maintenance issues, this can include things like updates to categories like the monthly expenses, savings goal, debt payoff goal, etc.

Objective Bonus, build intimacy through a fun experience. The bonus part? That's where you’re going to build both your financial and emotional intimacy in your marriage.

Open And Honest Communications

Financial intimacy requires an in-depth understanding of your unique financial circumstances as a couple. It is impossible without one relationship pillar, communication.

Initiating open lines of communication early on in your relationship can help build a strong foundation of trust for the future, but it’s never too late.

The more you know, the more prepared you are in relationships to handle any challenges or changes that can come down the line. Discuss your assets, expenses, financial goals, and wealth-building strategies. Be aware of who has access to certain records, accounts, and financial documents in the relationships, and whether that access is equal. By doing so, even if you ended up divorcing your spouse, you are less likely to feel blindsided by the financial implications.

Rethink Marital Agreements

In today’s complex world, entering into a legal agreement before or during a marriage is viewed much differently than it was in the past. The term “prenuptial agreement” (prenup) is no longer a dirty word with a one-sided connotation. A prenup is a partnership agreement that functions just as it would in a business relationship.

When both partners bring a lot to the table, which is the case for many modern couples, a smartly prepared prenup can be to everyone’s benefit. Postnuptial agreements (postnups) are another option for married couples whose financial situations have changed since they wed. A postnup can account for unpredictable circumstances within a family business or major liquidity event—things that may have not been considered before the marriage began.

Lean on Your Whole Team, Not Just Your Partner

Just like you would with a successful business partnership, assemble and listen to your team of trusted advisors. Well-chosen representation can ensure that both spouses experience the benefits of financial intimacy, no matter at what stage the relationship is in. Preparation and proficiency are the keys to getting what you need, and the best advisors excel in both.

Developing your financial intimacy may not sound very romantic, but the results could surprise you. Authentic and transparent conversations around a topic as private as money can stir up deep feelings and strengthen your connection as a couple.

Risks Management

After you start talking financial discussion in at least a semi-comfortable manner with your partner, it’s time to figure out the foundation to risks management to your couple's financial system.

Combined Finances - You’ll have a joint checking account, joint savings account(s), plus a way for each person to spend/access these accounts.

Separate Finances - Two separate cheque accounts, two separate savings account(s), set up expectations of who will pay what bills. Let’s be real for a second here though – you cannot keep your finances completely separate from one another if you’re living together, engaged, or married. Even if you keep everything physically separated, your financial life is now somewhat tied to this person, even if just this person’s ability to hold a job and pay their share of the rent. Keep this in mind!

Hybrid Combined + Separate Finances - This looks like some combination of joint/separate checking accounts, and joint/separate savings accounts, with each person, having equal access to the joint accounts.

Along with actual money talks with your partner, reading through your options should help you figure out should be married couples have joint bank accounts, or should married couples have separate bank accounts.

Counsellors can take couples through an exercise where they individually fill out whether they’re the Maverick or the Goose on 10 different money roles, and then they compare answers.

After that, they need to hash out who will take the lead for each role be the Maverick and who will be the wingman, Goose. Even if you’re the wingman? You need to at least be kept updated about a role. No “head-in-the-sand” partners here.

Money Roles You Need to Cover Include:

- Bill Payment Overseer

- Office Manager (filing/organising financial life)

- Manual Bill Payer

- Financial Juggler (for when money needs to get moved to cover the unexpected or mishaps)

- Tax Prep

- Insurance Price Comparison Shopper

- Investment Overseer (the person in charge of investments)

- Savings Goal(s) Tracker

- Spending Tracker

Remember, take advantage of one of the best perks with couples' finances: choose the person most capable of completing each task. You want efficiency wherever you can.

Equality

You and your partner should have equal say and equal power in financial decisions.?

Seek therapy when there is an imbalance in the relationship. Sometimes a partner who makes more money believes they should have more say in decisions. Other times, the person who is more anxious or frugal about money gets more say.

If this imbalance isn't equalised, both couples can end up with hurt feelings. It can bring up a lot of feelings, sometimes inadequacy, sometimes resentment, sometimes a lot of feelings about dependence. If we treat these feelings as, you know, they're all welcome, they're all valid. They're all something that we can acknowledge and process. This is how talking about money can help us grow closer emotionally.

Inclusivity

The old "my partner handles the money because they're better at math" won't work here. Both partners should be active participants in financial decisions. No one has sole control. No one gets to opt-out.

Neither of those works in the long term, because what it does is it kind of sticks the one partner in some ways, even if they're asking for it with all of the risks if something goes wrong.

Money mistakes happen, and if one person is solely in charge, there's too much room for blame and resentment instead of connection.

Transparency

Information around finances should be shared openly. This doesn't mean you have to merge all your assets or pore over each other's credit card statements.

We can still have areas of negotiated privacy. We can still say, you know, we both agree to put this much money into the joint account. We agree that these are joint expenses. And then this is the amount that we have leftover for making our personal decisions.

Access to information serves as a safety measure, so everyone knows what financial decisions are being made.

Sustainability

The financial plan that you and your partner come up with must be something you both can stick to long term.

For example, a couple who had that high need for control and safety with money, and the couple had some debts, and they wanted to just put every resource that they could toward paying down the debt. That made sense when it came to the math, but then the other partner felt like this plan had taken all of the joy out of their life.

That's not sustainable because it builds resentment. In a worst-case scenario, an unsustainable plan will cause one partner to act out. They will do things in secret, often running up debts. This kind of activity, as you can imagine, is destructive in relationships. Both partners need to compromise to come up with a sustainable plan.

Flexibility

Whether you've been promoted or lost your job or are starting a family or a business life changes, and so do our financial situations. If the financial plan isn't working or your situation changes, be open to change.

Sometimes we see a couple struggling to find their financial footing after a big life event. There was a couple that was eight months pregnant, and they had kept everything separate. For them, it was a point of pride and independence. But now they were running into a situation where that arrangement just wasn't sufficient. And the way that I asked about it was to say, like, who does the baby belong to, financially?

The absurdity of that question helped the couple see that their financial plan needed to be altered to accommodate their needs as a growing family.

Finance As Form Of Romance

The path to finding financial intimacy in relationships starts with creating a new financial blueprint. Whether you're in a brand new shiny relationship or you are just moving in together or have been married for years, this process offers numerous benefits at any stage of the relationship.

Take some time to sit down with your partner and talk through your feelings about money. That vulnerability is a really important part of intimacy. The messiness, the part that we're still figuring out, like when we can share that with another person? That's really where that magic connection happens.

No matter your background or money type, a healthy relationship is possible for everyone. You just have to start the conversation and really, what could be more romantic than planning for your future together.

Once you know the meaning and values each partner assigns to money, it’s easier to figure out a joint version of what you want and what money messages you want to pass down to your children. That knowledge enables you to be more compassionate and understanding, which means less fighting and more productive money conversations.