Money and Love: An Intelligent Roadmap for Life’s Biggest Decisions

I think about the intersection of love and money a lot. “And” being the operative word in that sentence. As someone who pays attention to the cultural messages around money, far too often I hear sentiments along the lines of: “Money and love just don’t go together”, “When it comes to love, money should not matter”, or “If you just love each other, the money stuff will work itself out”. While it is (thankfully!) no longer the dominant message for women that your (assumed to be male) life partner is responsible for all of the money decisions you may face as a couple, it’s important to remember that generations of women were raised this way. On the flip side, the dominant social messages around men and money still typically revolve around being a provider and taking care of your wife and kids, financially and otherwise. Let me be clear, these messages are dated, heteronormative, and don’t support any of us when it comes to navigating our individual, and if true for you, coupled journey to financial agency and wellness. When it comes to love and money, my belief is that most of us could benefit from an upgrade of our navigation skills around this topic. Which is why when I encountered a new book on this subject by an author I recognized, I was quick to reach out to her.

Money and Love: An Intelligent Roadmap For Life’s Biggest Decisions, by co-authors Myra Strober and Abby Davisson, was published earlier this year. My connection to Myra goes way back. Decades, in fact, to when I served on the board of the National Council For Research on Women. And let me tell you, Myra is a legend. She was the first ever woman faculty member at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and among other things, “led thousands of students through the hugely popular Work and Family course that eventually inspired [Money and Love]”. Myra partnered with a former student and social impact executive, Abby Davisson, to bring this book to life. They make it very clear that its purpose is to serve as a guide to help the reader navigate love and money decisions. I certainly found their framework useful, and I am excited to share it with all of you. For those of you who like getting to the bottom line, here it is: “Few aspects of our lives are as fundamental to health and happiness as love and money, and yet historically, they have been pitted against each other.” If this may be true for you, it is high time to kiss and make-up, and realize that love and money really do go together.?

Welcome Myra and Abby. First and foremost, thank you for writing this book! I found it incredibly helpful, and so my first question is, “Why this book? Why this topic and title?”

Thank you! We’re so glad you found the book useful. It was inspired by a course Myra taught for nearly fifty years at Stanford Business School called Work and Family. The course was a popular one, and students would write to Myra years later telling her that it prepared them for life better than any other they took in school. Abby and her then-boyfriend Ross took the course when they were second-year MBA students fifteen years ago, and it gave them the encouragement and tools to have difficult but crucial conversations about money and love. After Abby and Ross married, they returned to Myra's class as guest speakers for a decade. When Myra retired, she and Abby decided to write a book together to take the lessons of the course to a broader audience.?

Funny story about the title – in our proposal and manuscript drafts, the book was called Love and Money. But when it came time to design the cover, we reiterated to our publisher that we didn’t want any pink on the cover because we intended the book to be for people of all genders. Our publisher suggested that if we really wanted men to read it, we should switch the order of the title to Money and Love, because men would be more likely to pick up a book that listed money first. Initially we laughed, but when we tested the idea with focus groups, we realized our publisher was 100% correct. So Money and Love it became!

Thank you for sharing that. I am going to make that switch too! You say in the book that “there are no courses in high school devoted to decision making, and there is no curriculum that teaches us how to organize alternatives and consider consequences”. Share how that observation comes into play when it comes to money and love??

Not only are decision making courses absent from our schools, but we also do everyone a tremendous disservice by perpetuating the conventional wisdom of leaving romantic decisions to our hearts and making financial choices with our heads. That’s a huge mistake, because love and money decisions are intertwined. Decisions about love (such as whom you marry) have career and financial implications, and decisions about money (such as how much to spend on housing) have relationship consequences. We’re much better off if we acknowledge the fact that money and love are interconnected and consider them jointly when making decisions.?

Heck yes! They are deeply intertwined, and the more we acknowledge this, the better. So what is the 5Cs framework that you introduce? I should note that I totally agree with what Adam Grant said in your book, in that “the best advice doesn’t specify what to do. It highlights blind spots in our own thinking and helps us clarify our priorities”.?

These decisions can feel overwhelming. They also tend to either be made in haste or over-analyzed to death. Together, we developed a simple framework to help people cut through the complexity, slow down their decision-making, and feel more relaxed and confident about their decision-making process. Our framework has five steps, and we call it the 5Cs.

• Clarify what’s important to you: to make an effective decision you must first understand what you truly want and what you don’t.
• Communicate: as you clarify what you want, open up a two-way dialogue with others involved in the decision.?
• Consider a Broad Range of Choices: few decisions are strictly either/or, and one key to better decision-making is broadening your alternatives.
• Check-in with Friends, Family, and Other Resources: sharing your thought process or reaching out to others can bring new insights.
• Explore Likely Consequences: weigh the short-term and long-term consequences of different choices before you make a final decision.

This framework is laid out in a linear fashion, but these steps are quite iterative. For example, first you clarify what’s important to you, then you communicate and listen to what’s important to the other person, which may cause you to re-clarify what you want, and so on.?

I loved what you said in the book that “by skipping planning, you significantly increase the chances of NOT getting what you want”. I would add, as a planner myself, that the planners in a relationship can often get shamed by their non-planning romantic partners, claiming that the planners are not being spontaneous or are being unromantic. Knowing that “opposites attract” is often true in romantic relationships, talk about the importance of planning and how to navigate that tension.*?

Planners sometimes need to work extra-hard to make planning more romantic for their non-planning partners. So try planning over a romantic dinner, but be sure to tell your non-planning partner that you are going to combine romance and planning. Don’t just spring it on them, as that’s neither good planning nor romantic. Or plan while going for a walk in a beautiful location (river, lake, ocean, and/or mountains all work well). And be sure to have a serious discussion about the merits of planning separate from planning about anything specific. Also, be flexible. Give the non-planner some “wins”. Try some activities without any planning, perhaps giving the non-planner partner the ability to not plan a vacation for you both. Concede that some less important activities, those that don’t involve life’s major decisions or aren’t taken at prime vacation time, can sometimes be quite successful without any planning.?

In the book you introduce the 5Cs framework, then apply it to major life/love decisions that have huge financial implications, such as dating and mating, whether or not to get married, whether or not to have kids and how many, housework, buying a home, navigating career and family, divorce, and caring for others, just to name the big ones. And wow is that a lot to take on. But what I appreciate about your book is that you lean on the framework because you cannot possibly give advice for every possible situation. Talk a little about how you came up with the questions in each section and found the stories to make them come to life.?

Ideas for many of the chapters – but not all of them – were drawn from sessions of the course Myra taught. Additionally, some of the exercises at the end of each chapter were inspired by exercises that were part of the course, such as the exercise at the end of the housework chapter, while others were original questions we developed as part of our research.

As we considered the audience for our book, we wanted to make sure that it included a broad range of perspectives – certainly broader than those of the students at an elite university. As part of our research, we developed a survey about making big life decisions, which we circulated widely. We were able to collect hundreds of responses, many of which turned into the stories we told in the book.?

The survey responses also prompted us to include topics that weren’t part of the course. For example, the most popular decision that was included in the survey that respondents wanted to discuss was about where to live and when to move. There was never a class focused on the topic of moving, but because of the outpouring of interest in the topic, we included a chapter on moving in the book.

Do you have one favorite story or scenario from the examples in the book that you would like to highlight?

It’s hard to choose a single favorite, but one story high on our list comes from Chapter Nine, The Senior Years: Caring for Elders. The story comes from Nadine, who was in her mid-fifties when her mother, who was in her mid-nineties, began to experience problems with her heart. Nadine was her mom’s primary caretaker, while her brother provided no care at all and rarely visited. However, her mom’s Will gave both siblings an equal inheritance. As her mom’s condition worsened and Nadine’s care increased, she became increasingly angry about her mother’s decision to give her brother an inheritance exactly equal to hers.?

Nadine used our framework to decide how to handle her growing resentment. First, she clarified what she wanted and came to the conclusion that she was willing to bring up the subject and risk her mother’s anger. Second, she chose a quiet time to communicate with her mother and made sure she wasn’t accusatory.?

But despite her efforts, when Nadine brought up the subject, her mother was quite irate and told Nadine to mind her own business. A few days later, however, her mother brought up the topic unprompted. She explained that if she gave her son a smaller inheritance than she gave Nadine, he would think she loved him less. And since she loved her two children equally, she could not do that.

Nadine was unhappy with her mother’s thinking, but grateful for the conversation. After her mother died, she told Myra, “I think if not for that talk, I would be really angry with my mother. But now I am only a little angry. And I do understand. So I’m glad I raised the question with her.”

What are your hopes for this book and this work? I read that you are teaching a course together using this framework. Can you tell us more about this?

We hope this book helps readers feel more confident in their decisions, and enables them to pursue more purpose and meaning in their lives. We are heartened by readers who have told us that this book feels like a wise friend sitting next to them on the couch, guiding them through stressful times.?

We also hope that it empowers people to be change agents, going beyond solving their own money and love challenges, and helping to shift the laws, policies, and culture that contribute to the suboptimal choices we still face when it comes to money and love decisions. The importance of becoming a change agent is the focus of the last chapter of our book.

Additionally, we’ve launched the Money and Love Institute, whose mission it is to help experts facilitate more deliberate high-stakes decisions. As part of the Money and Love Institute, we have several course offerings for those who want to go deeper in this content, we’re speaking and leading money and love decision-making workshops, and we’re collaborating with experts – such as financial advisors – who want to better support their clients in their decision-making.?

Finally, our wheels are turning about a possible sequel to the book…stay tuned to learn more!

A huge thanks to you both, Myra and Abby, for your thoughtful answers!?

So, how are you feeling reading this? What is showing up for you? Did an example of an unresolved money conflict pop into your head? Or perhaps land in the pit of your stomach? One did for me (well actually many did for me) while I was writing this piece, and when I applied the framework, it really did help. Additionally, if you did not catch last month’s newsletter on financial trauma, I encourage you to pair that one with this one. Since writing the September newsletter, we hosted the Trauma of Money? founder, Chantel Chapman, in Utah for two live workshops. The quick summary of those workshops is HOLY MOLY. There is so much to unpack in both of these topics, but here is what (to channel Oprah) I know for sure. Our relationship with money is complex. How it plays into relationships of all kinds is complex. And given the important role money plays in our lives, it is worth our time to get curious about it and invite in new tools to help us navigate our journey to financial wellness and financial freedom.?

As always, I would love to hear from you.

*I have been married to the same person ( GREG ) for almost 30 years. We make all major financial decisions together, and as we are both former traders, talking about money, markets and more is something we have always done. Our careers normalized that for us.