Money Matters for Couples: To Combine or Not to Combine

All right, Gary, today we're going to be talking about love and finances. And most importantly, when you're a couple, should you combine finances? Now, before we get into this, I just want to tell you a little bit of story that I don't. I don't think, you know, but before, Jess and I were dating for about five years, and we got to a point where, like, it's time to move to a new place. We've been living together for like three. We're like, should we buy a house together? And we ended up doing it. And it was one of those moments when I was signing the paperwork for the house. I'm like, oh, I just got married. I was already going to marry her. But it was one of those moments that really clicked in my head. When we're sitting there with the mortgage guy, or whoever it was, and I'm signing the hundred stacks of papers, I'm like, oh, I'm totally in it. I get what everyone was saying. And in so many ways, finances are how we get married to a person, you know?

Yeah. You know, marriage is like one of those big commitments. Right. And so there's a lot of ways to make that commitment without a ceremony and walking down the aisle and all that stuff that goes with it. I'm not saying we can do away with that, but it was the same for my wife and I. It's like, you know, we live together in graduate school, and so as soon as we started living together, we weren't married. But like, we're like. And the other thing is, in graduate school, we were both dirt poor. Like, you have absolutely no money, so there wasn't a lot to commingle. But at the same time, it's like, whatever we had, we might as well co mingle. And it's still like, to this day, like, my wife will say, she's like, you know, one of the big mistakes I made was taking on your student loans because I had to pay my whole way through college. And so she's still, to this day, I mean, it's been 20 plus years. And she's like, we are still paying off your student loans. I'm like, I know. And she's like, I. I wish I would have known. Like, you had so many student loans. And I was like, well, it's just kind of. But it's like as we weren't married, but it's like, you're right. As soon as you start mixing the finances and like, splitting bills or just kind of like putting all your money in a pot, Together, like, you're basically in it, right? And so, you know, what happens is there's, there's a lot of potential complications with that because, you know, as, you know, like, you know, you look at like the top five things that couples fight about. Money and finances is always on the top five list. You can't avoid money and finances as a top five thing. So I'm really glad we're talking about this today.

Yeah, I think it's big. I mean, for those who don't know, my mother was and still is a divorce attorney in her 80s now. She's turning 80 actually this year, which is really exciting. And she's still practicing divorce attorney. And so growing up, I, you know, most people talk about, I don't know, religion, sports, whatever. We didn't talk about any of that stuff. My mom would come home for a long day of work and tell me about her divorce that day that she, like, facilitated, obviously without details and stuff like that. And so much of it was just finance related. And you're like, oh, God, all right. And I, I really did swear to myself. I think that's what's led me to this profession. In many ways, it's not just ironic. Like, you just realize how important love is and how it really is a very logistical thing as well. I mean, it's not just all romance and, you know, love and this beautiful ceremony and all this stuff. When you get married, it really is a business contract that you have with another human being. So you want to make sure you get it right. Not only just pick the right person, but even when you do pick the right person, have some agreements in place when it comes to finances so that you do set yourself up for success. So I think the way we'll treat this, I'd be curious to kind of. I don't know how you want to run this, but I think we should think about this before you get married and after you get married, because I think those are two very distinctly different moments in a relationship. And I'll just come out and say it, even though I didn't follow this rule. And it's rare that I'll give advice that I, generally speaking, didn't follow. Before you get married, I would not recommend combining finances or buying a house or sharing a car or frankly, doing like. I do recommend living together, but keeping your finances separate. But other than that, other than living together, I would not recommend buying any major things together because once again, once you start making these major buying decisions, you're really in trouble. I'd Be curious on your, your thoughts on that at least before marriage.

Yeah, I think before marriage you have to be more careful because anything you're doing that becomes hard to undo creates inertia. Right. It's kind of like tethering you to this relationship, which if it's a fantastic relationship, no problem, no worries. But as we talk about all the time in love strategies, it's all about mitigating risk. Like, you gotta like assess the risk and make sure you're not being too risky with your decisions. And as soon as you're like, oh, we'll buy a car together or we'll buy an expensive purebred dog together, right? It's just like it's the dog and it's like these things are just hard to disentangle and like, who gets it? And it's like that's where all that divorce attorney stuff comes in. Because, you know, as much as we want our relationships to be just magical and romantic, there's practical stuff that goes with it, you know, and it's like you said, it's a little bit of a business arrangement. And so, you know, if you don't have that long term commitment now, I'm not maybe as hardcore about like it has to be marriage, but it's like, you know, until you have to be sure in your head, like this is forever before you start commingling. And considering the commingling of finances, I think. What do you, what do you think?

Yeah, I mean, I, I, God, I don't like to take too hard a stance and be too fundamentalist on anything. But this one I'm pretty strong on in that the difference is as a man versus a female, like I, I was the one, we'd already talked about marriage at this point and it was really on me to pop the question, frankly at that point. And I kind, and I, I knew by the time we're buying the house, I'm like, I'm definitely going to marry this girl and this is going to happen. But as a female, if you're in the position when you're with a guy and you're not sure if you're actually going to get married and he's being questionable about that, I wouldn't be messing around. I mean, that's just not something you want to be hoping that he kind of changes his mind and, oh, once we actually own a house together, we buy that beautiful dog, oh my God. That's when everything suddenly changed. He's going to want to marry me now. Let's not do that because like you said, when, when there's inertia, you want to be able to get out of bad situations easily. And once you start intermingling and entangling your life in this way, it's so difficult. And certainly just on that, this token, I hate to say it, I don't think there's a major issue for those who follow our stuff, but it's worth saying, never give a man money. All right? Don't just be giving, especially if you just started dating him. But in general, don't give anyone money, don't lend anyone money. Don't do any of that stuff. Just hold the line again until you're married. So, yeah, I guess I am pretty fundamentalist about this point.

I would also say, you know, don't give money. Don't ask for money either. Right. Like, and so it's like, even if you need it, it's, it just, it's like that whole thing about, like, friends and money. It's like, you don't want to start lending friends. It just, it complicates things in a way that you want things to be complicated. And it's like, there's one more point about inertia is it'll. The problem with it, with inertia and like these kinds of money things, it's like, yes, there's the complication of like, having to undo some of the things that you've done. But once you start sharing bank accounts, buying a dog together, buying a house together, like signing a mortgage together, it's. You will start staying in a relationship for the wrong reasons.

Yeah.

And those are not the reasons to stay. Like, but. And that happens when the relationship's not going well. It's like, oh, you know, we don't get along. I feel like I'm settling. They're not nice to me. You may even be with somebody who's emotionally abusive. But it's like, we live together and it's, you know how hard it is to like, change bank accounts and all that. That's not how a relationship. Like, that's not the forever relationship that you want. Right. And so it's it. We're talking about money today. But it's like, that's just a broad based principle of like, don't have other things decide your relationship fate, other than the things that should decide your relationship, your fate. Like, is your relationship fulfilling? Right. And so don't, don't let money kind of do that for you.

Yeah. And I think you can have a great relationship with someone and be with them. For many years. And like, just as an example, I know we're going to talk about couples when they're married, but I, I think that this is an important point. Like, and I just think of how Jessica and I handled this when we were together for, I want to say 6, 5. We were together for 5 years until I proposed to her, and then we were engaged for three years because of COVID So we would have been married sooner than that. But, you know, we know how that went. So it was five years of being actually pretty precise about our housing expenses, about vacations. I mean, it got to a certain point where our income became like a pretty large difference. Like, I made a lot more, frankly, than she did. So it got to a point where I would pay for more vacations and things like that. But it was always very much so openly discussed or even dinners and things like that. Like. Yeah, but we would be very intentional and open conversation about that stuff. And I think a lot of people just try to avoid that as much as possible. And then before you know it, you just start to kind of like share your money and share your bank account. So that's what worked for us. And, you know, it, it's. It's always been a healthy relationship when it comes to money, in our relationship, at least.

Well, you know, it's a. Which came first thing. It's like, it's healthy because of the money. But like you just said, how many times you use the word communication, right? And it's like we, we started this off by saying that money is like one of the top five sources of relationship conflict. Well, you know why? It's one of those things people are uncomfortable talking about. And so if you don't talk about things, it creates bigger problems. And so money is just one of those things, like, particularly when you're dating, like, you should have those kinds of conversations. Like, is your partner somebody who likes to just buy all kinds of stuff? Are they. Or do they refuse to buy anything? Or, you know, what are their long term financial goals? Are they ambitious? Do you want somebody that's ambitious? Do you want somebody that, you know, cares about their salary? You know, it's. Those are all conversations that are uncomfortable. But like, that's what relationships, strong relationships are built on. You gotta have, you gotta be willing to have some of those uncomfortable conversations because what you hopefully will find is that you have a lot more common ground than differences.

Yeah, Yeah. I think that that's something that was easy for us because we're both relative. I mean, we're Spenders in, like, entertainment and things like that. But we're generally speaking actually quite frugal in many ways. So that really helps being on the same page. But anyways, I know you have a lot of interesting research when it comes to combining finances. Is it related to being married or is it just in general as a starting point?

Yeah. So, like, you know, we kind of said that we're going to split this up into, you know, long term and short term. And so a lot of the research on this is kind of helping answer the question about how couples long term should navigate their finances. So it's like once you're going from that short term relationship to that longer term, whether you're married or just a longer term commitment, there's this fundamental question, like, should couples combine their finances or should they keep everything separate? Now, you know, the keeping things separate argument basically goes, well, some people make more, some people make less. Right. One partner makes more. And so it's like, you shouldn't combine it because that's not fair. You can kind of have separate accounts and maybe share certain things. And it just makes it a little bit easier if you have problems. Right. If you have problems. Again, we were just talking a lot about inertia. We were talking a lot about, like, disentangling and all that stuff. So keeping things separate. If things go south, it's just a lot easier to like, extricate yourself from that situation. Right. So that makes a lot of good logical sense. And I think a lot of people are very strong in favor of keeping things separate. The other way to go is if we're in this together, we're going to share a life, we're going to share everything. What's mine is yours, which yours is mine. We are just going to take my income, your income, put it in a joint savings account that pays for everything. Everything, you know, everything's equal, everything is shared. That simplifies things in a lot of ways. Right. So there's some practical simplification there. But if things go poorly, that's a major mess. I mean, that's why divorce attorneys exist. That's what, you know, like, like you just said about your mom and like what she deals with. It's like that's mostly what they're dealing with is like, how do we get out of this messy? Like everything just kind of like it's, it's, it's hard.

Yeah.

And so you're creating this problem. So the thing that I like about research, right? It's like I always, I'm A big fan of, like, using science to help people improve their lives. Right. And so we just laid out two different paths for couples to follow is, like, keep things separate, combine everything, and both make logical sense. And there are definitely people listening to this podcast right now who feel strongly about one or the other. Like, I know one's, right? The great thing about science is we don't just go on a hunch, right? We ask hundreds of people, and if not thousands of people. And so there's a couple of studies that shed direct light on this that, you know, if you can indulge me in a little bit of, like, nerdy, like, science talk for a minute, I.

Would love nerd out so hard. I want to hear it.

Here we go. Ready?

Let's go.

Adjust your pocket protector. Here we go. So the first study, the one study was two. And the recent studies, too. Okay, so there's a. There's an old one from, like, 2010 that basically says combine things. It's especially good for women. That was done with a lower income sample. Um, the interesting thing about that older study was that basically they found most people do combine, right? The majority of people combine. Only about a fourth of people are separate. And like a tenth of people just don't have any accounts. Like, they just. I don't know if there are money in a mattress people or whatever, but back then, money combined really especially helped women, which. Okay, that's long time ago.

2010.

2010.

That's not that long ago. That's only 13 years ago.

Yeah, that's a teenager's life span.

Yeah. That feels like yesterday to me.

And I know that's. I. I have to remind myself of this all the time.

So true. I'm like, I was talking about this stuff 13 years ago. Geez, I'm still doing this.

I was alive when this study was published.

Okay, so that's a long time ago. Got it.

So that's relatively a long time ago. 2022. All right, so this is just one year ago. This one is recent. I said, you know, the benefit of science is we can ask a lot of people. Like this particular study, they had 38,000 participants across six different studies. They ran these things multiple ways, and they basically just asked people, like, are you combining your finances are keeping them separate? And they also did it cross culturally. So this wasn't just Boston, New Jersey. Like, this wasn't just the U.S. this was the whole entire world. So individualistic countries, collectivistic countries. So individualistic. That's the US Collectivistic is Like Asia, where it's like we, us, together kind of thing.

Sure.

What they found those same two options, separate or together. Pretty clear together was better. Right? So combining the finances was better. It made people some of their findings. They felt better connected to their spouse, they felt more stable. The couples themselves had more positive interactions. The couples referred to themselves as we, us and our. They also thought of their partner as more of a friend, and they treated each other with more kindness. And again, that was cross culturally, 38,000 people. So, you know, yeah, science can't necessarily tell you exactly what to do. That's going to be 100, right. For each person listening to this. But like what we talk about all the time in love accelerators, like, we're setting you up for success. So this is the way to play the odds. And combining things seems to be the best. Now the one criticism, that's38,000 people with the one criticism of, of that science. And this is the nerd. Here comes some nerdy stuff. It was all correlational. So they just asked people, like, what do you do? And like, is that better? So if you ask people, like, hey, are you, are you going to combine, like, there might be something already about your relationship that makes you a combiner, and it might actually be like that stuff that's helping you. Okay, so last year or this year, 2023, I mean, it was this.

Sorry, just so I understand what you're saying, because I want to make sure everyone else you're saying, is it correlate? Is it causation or correlation? Is that what you're saying for the relationship?

So with this particular study, yeah, if it's 38,000 people, it's correlation in the sense that, like, I just asked you, like, Adam, are you, are you pulling your money together, keeping it separate? And so if you're someone who actually combined your finances, it's possible that you're doing that because you already have good communication, you're already satisfied, and it's that that's actually helping your relationship.

Not correct.

Okay, so in this past year, this, this study just came out within, like the last four weeks or so, six weeks, I want to say they kind of solved that problem, which is super cool. Instead of asking people what they naturally did, they took a whole bunch of people and they randomly assigned them and they said, hey, you guys, over here, you're going to pull your finances. You over here, you're going to keep them separate. And so this solves that whole problem of like, is it something else going on? And so what they found was the people who put their finances together. So one of the things we know about marriage satisfaction is if you're not, like, in courses or learning about relationship, your marriage satisfaction starts high and just naturally goes lower and lower over time. It's. This is true for everybody that doesn't take action to learn about the relationship, improve it, and all that kind of good stuff. So if you kept your finances together, it slowed down the decline, right? So if you put things together, you're slowing down the decline. When you put things separately, you have that same decline. Right? So there's a major benefit there to putting your resources together. And so the. The researchers, because they did a whole bunch of different studies, again with a bunch of. Bunch of people, and these were all newlyweds, it turns out. The people that pulled their money together, it allowed them to get their financial goals aligned, Right? It allowed them to feel better about how their partner handled money. Like, they had to have, basically, they had to have a lot of these conversations about, like, what are you spending money on? What should we spend money on? Like, you, like you mentioned earlier, like, you and Jess both like to spend things, but you both like to spend it on the same, like entertainment and travel, right? So that's aligning your financial goals. And so you can, you know, like, that's important. It also creates, when you have shared finances, it creates something that we call in the research world, more of a communal orientation instead of exchange. And so exchange orientation with money is like when you go to a store and you hand over $20 to buy something, that's an exchange, Right? So it's very transactional. It's very business. Like, generally, that's not how you want your romantic relationship to be. You want your romantic relationship to be communal, which is this idea of, like, you pay for this now, I'll pay for it in the future. Right. And so it's like, we're not worrying about, like, I'm up $20 on you, you're down $30 on me. And, like, it's not that kind of tight accounting. It's just like, it'll all work out in the end.

Right.

And that communal orientation is much better for relationships.

Interesting. I. I can definitely see all this. And I. And I think even just of course, when you're married and in a relationship, when you're married and you've been together a long time, of course communal makes absolute sense. I don't know how someone could keep their finances separate in the way discussed, but it sounds like a lot of People do. So I think we've answered that with science. But even when you're in a relationship and it's been three to six months in having that, you can have, I think, a communal mindset with that person where it's not transactional, it's not tit for tat, it's just like, hey, I got this, you got this. And, you know, you just kind of make it work as a team without fully combining. I think you can do that without actually sharing bank accounts and buying big purchases together. I mean, and that's certainly what Jess and I did for many, many years. I don't. Did you, you and your wife combined finances when you were living together?

Yeah, I mean, we were like 22 years old and living, you know, in a little shack, literally in grad school with no money whatsoever. And so it was really easy to combine. You know, I got nothing, you got nothing. Let's put all of our nothings together and, like, then we're fine.

How romantic.

You know what, though? It's really funny because I say all the time, like, that's still my, the favorite place I've ever lived, like, as a couple, like this little, like, shack on the Long Island Sound. It was fantastic.

Well, it's, it's also probably indicative of where you're. You were in your life and your relationship. And it was so exciting. I mean, the last place, the first place Jess and I lived together that is like, not the happiest, but it's like, I don't know, I look back on it so fondly. I mean, I've only lived in one other place, which is my home now that we live in, but it's like, yeah, you're carefree.

I mean, and it's like, you know, there's some. I say this to people all the time. It's like there's something about spending a decent amount of your life, like, very poor almost, right? That is really helpful and it kind of gives you just a better perspective on money. But what I like about, you know, this whole conversation about money is like, money is, is a, is a foundational thing in relationships, but it also, it bleeds over into like some of these other principles, right? And like that principle of like that communal orientation. I love exactly what you said about it, which is you can adopt that mentality before you're married and, like, just completely separate from the finance thing, right? Like, you shouldn't have a score keeping mentality in your relationship, whether it's about money or whether it's about acts of Kindness or sex or any of those other types of facets of a relationship, like, don't keep a scorecard. You start keeping score, everybody loses. And so that communal orientation, which is, we're in this long haul, we're. We're focused on the future. If you're doing a little bit more today, I'll do a little bit more tomorrow, or this. You have a bad week at work this week, like, you're really super stressed. I'm going to pick up the slack this week because I know you're going to. You're going to have my back later. And that communal orientation, like, you know, it's not just money, it's all facets of relationships.

Yeah. Feel like all of this is so well and good, unless the man is not making more than the. The woman in the relationship. And I don't mean that from a 1950s sexist perspective. I mean this actually from the female perspective, because we work with so many women. For example, before you just take that clip and send it out there and I go viral as, like, the sexist person. That's not what I'm saying. One of our clients, I don't know if you were on this Mastermind. She has been dating this guy for, like, four months. He has a very good job on paper, but she found out when they went out one time that she makes about four times more than he does. Were you on that, that Mastermind? And she's like, I don't know what to do. Like, what, what do I. What do I do now? Like, I. I make more. And then we find out she actually has a really good income, and he just has, like, a, you know, average income. And, and for the title, I'm not going to give any specifics, but, like, for the title, he probably should make a little bit more than he does, but he doesn't. And the thing is, for women, even though societally we progress so much and women are doing so well, more women are even going to college and so on and so forth, doing so great, there's still that kind of primal part of our brain that's like, the man should provide. And when the man isn't providing, that's where I feel like all these issues come to play. So I don't. I don't know the answer to that because I'm not a female, and I don't know what that's like to be in that dynamic or be in that type of relationship as a female dating a male who makes less. But there's something that I've seen with all of our female clients when they're with a guy who doesn't make a lot of money, where it just totally turns them off and it can break down the relationship.

Yeah. I think so much of that is it's a violation of expectations. Right. And so it's like people, I don't know, it's just like society has conditioned us to, you know, guys make more. And so, you know, I, I do remember that mastermind. And I think ultimately what we ended up suggesting to her, I think I might have said this, but it's like she's very, very worried about this. But if she was a guy, she wouldn't be worried about this. Right, right. And so it's, it's just, it's very new and a violation of expectations for her because she happens to be the one with more money. But it's like how many relationships work perfectly fine where the man makes more money than the woman, so it's less about the male, female roles and just like one person's chances are in any relationship, one person is going to make more. It's sometimes going to be drastic, sometimes can be like. And guys are just kind of like more accustomed to being the one making more. And so. But it. Does it actually matter? No.

Yeah, but like is the. But there is. I shouldn't even pose this as a question because I don't believe it's even a question anymore. There is a primal driver for a woman to want to be with a man who has access to resources. And when a man is not able to provide and he's just not, he's not doing as well as she is or her. Maybe it is her expectations, it's an actual turn off. Like she, like there's something about the level of respect that a woman can have for a man, you know, if he's not able to provide for her and the family, it just seems to erode the relationship. And I don't have an. Again, I don't have an answer to that, but I've just seen it so many times over and over again. This doesn't come from a place of judgment as a man or anything like that because I really think, and I'd be curious on your thoughts, like, do you feel like that's hardwired into us or do you feel like that's more of a societal thing? I'm curious on your thoughts on that.

So I mean, one of the things I should say is like just as a background, like I'm a social psychologist. Right. So as A social psychologist that's all about context, your, your upbringing, your surroundings. And so it's very much baked into my education, schooling and like world perspective that it's, there's very few things that are hardwired. Like there are some hardwired things. And so it's hard to disentangle what's hardwired from not. But I think, I actually think it's societal because I think there are plenty of guys who view it other like it has to do with like, you know, just kind of like your views on like sex roles. Right. Like what should women do and what should guys do? And it's like depending on how you grew up, how you grew up and how it was in your family is probably more of a determinant than like who your biological parents were.

Right.

And it's, it's hard to know the difference because your parent like so often like what the modal thing is. Like your biological parents give you the genetics and then they raise you. So it's like that nature, nurture thing, it's all the same. Like you can't separate them. But you know, you societies, if it was hardwired, it would be the exact same everywhere. And it's generally that same way everywhere. But like, I mean we. This is a whole nother. This is a rabbit hole.

But I know, sorry, I'm putting you down. Right? No, Gary loves to prepare for these. I love just throwing a.

But so no, because I'm like, how do I turn in like a three hour lecture into three minutes? Yeah, all that stuff. So you know, you would say like, oh, if you look across the globe, is it generally like this where men earn more than women and powers? Yes, but those are also power dynamics that are based on physical strength. And it's like, yeah, that's all been going on in the world for hundreds of years.

Right.

And so it's still, again, it's still like, it seems hardwired, but it's still contextual societal, your surroundings.

Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean maybe we disagree on this. I mean, yeah, obviously these are very difficult, difficult to entangle. But I do think if you could have a group raised on an island without any societal output, women are still attracted to powerful men who can provide and take care of. And when they don't, there's something that is massively unattractive where she's putting in more than he is. Like as a man, a lot of men are very okay with putting in more and, or like making more and feel like that's Part of their ego and their identity. Doing that because they want to be the provider, whereas the female is less. Is actually maybe turned off by that. It feels like on a very visceral level. And maybe that is societal, maybe it's not. I'm not sure. But, like, my. My general experience is that there's something to that. And the reason why I'm just bringing this up, and I didn't mean to go down this rabbit hole, but I think it's kind of a fun topic that might get me canceled on the Internet, but it's worth it. The reason why I'm bringing it up is just because I think that does play into this, where a lot of this stuff is easy when the. When, of course, it's easy when both of you are doing well, but it's. It's easy when the man is doing well, but when the man is not providing. That's where this stuff gets really, really hard, you know, and then the female's like, whoa, I'm working on these hours, and I'm working on these hours. I'm putting on this time. I'm making all this money, and this guy's not doing his. Not bringing his, you know, his A game here. And I think that that's where the female just loses respect for the male in the relationship.

Yeah. And I think, you know, I mean, one of the. So I, you know, I kind of said I'm a social psychologist, and so if I happen to be an evolutionary psychologist, I would be much more like, yes, it's probably hardwired. And all the data shows that it's very hardwired that women want resources. And it's like you said, you put people on an island. You know, women are going to gravitate towards people who have resources and can care for them and protect them. But it's also, whoever's physically less strong is also going to gravitate towards that. So, I mean, it. It kind of gets complicated. But I would say, like, that kind of stuff does make women seem like, you know, they're like, in a really negative way. Like, like not the gold digger, almost like you're really going after. But there's also tons of research that. That shows exactly what you're saying. Like, when men make more than women, those relationships are more stable. Like, there's research that shows that that is the case. There's also research that shows couples are more stable in. In heterosexual relationships where the female partner is more physically attractive than the male partner. So all this stuff goes both ways. And whether here's the, here's the bottom line. This is kind of where I get to with students about this stuff too is like we can argue about where it comes from and it's interesting. Like it's an interesting, like kind of thought exercise. But on some level it doesn't matter because we got to live with these people.

Yeah, totally.

So like, it's worth having an appreciation. Understand like, you may not agree where people are coming from on this, but you have to know where they're coming from on this. Right. And so like, it's not a right or wrong, it's a learn the different perspectives because people are operating under different sets of rules and guidelines. And so you just want to understand and appreciate all those things.

Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I think it's, it's interesting. I don't think it's really reflects negatively on males or females. It's just such an interesting. You and I have such an interesting perspective working with so many females and getting such a raw side of things. And I used to get a raw side of things from men and it was just very rare that when men are dating, they're looking for a woman who has access to resources, who has money or wealth. It's not typically on their list. Whereas women financial security is very important. I think honestly I would actually encourage men to be looking more so on that. Like, I less so judge women on that front. I was judging men on like guys, you don't want to be with someone who's not at least someone on the same financial level as you or at least can think the same way about their finances as, as you do. Because if you, let's say, make a lot of money and then you're with someone who's doesn't have any understanding of how money works or finances, and they're just spender, spender, spender. That's going to be a hard life for you. And that goes both ways. So.

Yeah. And so I think you know, when you're talking about like how you and your partner think about money and like what you should be looking for, this is another one of those, like, common sense problems that people fall into when it comes to money, which is there's a widespread belief when it comes to attraction that opposites attract. And so the data actually shows that that's generally not true when we think opposites attract. It's actually there's a lot more similarities. We just kind of notice the opposites. But there is one particular context and it relates to money, where people actually actively look for an opposite. And that's in this idea of spenders versus savers. Right. And those are exactly what they sound like. Someone spends money like, they just. They like buying things. They like stuff. They. They just like having things. The savers like the numbers in the bank account. They like that safety and security kinds of thing. And so there was a research paper, really well known one, that's like, looks at what do people want in a partner. And so what you were just saying is, like, you want to, like, find someone who's like you, which is. Right. But what people do when it comes to this is like, if you're a spender, those spenders look for savers, and those savers look for spenders because they both see something in the other person that they find appealing. Right, right. The spender sees the safety and security of the saver. The saver's like, wow, those spenders look like they're having a whole hell of a lot more fun. Right. It's like, I just have, like, money in the bank and they actually do things. And so what they found was those people, when they get together, like, they do find each other because they want that, but it's aspirational and sadly it just, it doesn't work out. Right. Because they end up, have. They end up, guess what, Fighting about finances. And so those fights and those discussions about. Because it's like the spender always wants to spend, saver wants to save. And it's like they both kind of want that other thing, but that's not who they are.

Yeah, right.

And so it creates this conflict that erodes relationship quality. And so really, the best. You know, people always ask me this, like, so if you had to, like, magically, like, make a couple, like, what's the best possible combination? The best possible combination is two savers.

Two very boring people.

You know what I'm saying? Two. Two savers who, when they spend, want to spend on the same things.

Yeah, yeah. Two people on the same page. I. I totally agree. I mean, two spenders, God help us. That. And I think that that's actually the majority of certainly Americans are like, you look at the data on that. Oh, my God. I think it's like 80 of Americans live paycheck to paycheck or something, and.

Credit card debt and all that kind of stuff.

Oh, just absolutely staggering. So, yeah, I think hopefully if you guys get anything from this, it is to have these conversations certainly before you get married, before you live with someone, before you make a big purchase with a person that you can't get out of even before getting a dog or a cat with someone. I mean, once you start making those investments, have these conversations, be open with people, be aware of their spending patterns. And one thing I didn't actually mention as well that do want to throw in here, I think it is so important is that if you are attracted to men who do have access to resources and regardless of where that comes from, but let's say you are attracted to that, be wary of the guy who's got the Rolex and the Porsche, because I know plenty of Wall street guys who might make a million dollars a year and they'll spend a million two a year to make it themselves look really cool. And then I know some teachers who make $100,000 a year and have $1,000,000 for 1K. Now I'd rather be any day with the teacher than the guy on Wall street with the Porsche who is in debt because he's doing too much cocaine every weekend or whatever it is. Okay, so it's, it's really easy to get tricked by what people show show you with their purchases. And usually the biggest spenders are the ones who spend and then they look like they're big spenders.

So, yeah, there's a lot of spending that is done to mask insecurity.

Yeah.

Right. And so, you know, it comes down to something we say all the time is like, what is your love vision? Like, what is it that you really want? Like, are you in this world, this dating thing to find long term lasting stuff? Because that 401k is long. That's long term, right? The Porsche, that's fun. And, and so you just have to know authentically what you're really after because, you know, otherwise you'll get distracted by the shiny object.

Objects. Absolutely. All right, good stuff, Gary. Well, hopefully all got a lot out of this and we'd love to hear from you guys what you think about this. So let us know in the comments and we'll talk soon. All right, bye.

Thanks, Sam.