Getting Your Partner on the Same Money Page

Hey there, real quick before we jump into the episode, listen, if your earnings treadmill hasn't set you free yet, running faster won't either. Listen, hustle without principles just going to burn you out. So here's what I want for you. I want you to join me for my money machine experience live. It is three free trainings. Deep dive into how to escape the treadmill and build a money machine that actually works for you. All right, grab your spot here by going to moneymachinelive.com and I'll see you in the free training. How do you have good money conversations with your significant other, your wife, your husband or your partner? You know, see, here's the interesting thing. Money is one of the biggest friction points in relationships today. In fact, it is the number two, number two cause of divorce behind infidelity. And in this episode, the Affluent Entrepreneur show, I did something special, actually. I have been doing this money mentorship series over the summer and we talked about this whole issue of how do you have good conversations around money that brings you together to a common goal and a common process versus separating and creating friction? And so in this episode, it's a shorter episode, but it really digs into how I see these conversations should be. So if you're in a relationship, should be in a relationship, want to be in a relationship. This is an episode for you. We're going to talk about how to navigate creating a money conversation that brings you together versus separating you. Welcome to this episode of the Affluent Entrepreneur Show. I hope you enjoy it. I'd love to hear back from you afterwards what your thoughts are. Here's.

This is the Affluent Entrepreneur show for entrepreneurs that want to operate at a high level and achieve financial liberation. I'm your host, Mel Abraham, and I'll be sharing with you what it takes to create success beyond wealth so you can have a richer, more fulfilling lifestyle. In this show, you'll learn how business and money intersect so you can scale your business, scale your money and scale your life while creating a deeper impact than living with complete freedom. Because that's what it really means to be an affluent entrepreneur.

And I'm having a conversation. Some, you know, people came up to me.

And one, one in particular that kind of hit me and I thought, I thought I we would just start off on this conversation about how do you.

How do you get your spouse on the same page?

Oh, my God, that'll be great. We'll talk about it.

How do you get your spouse or your significant other on the same page? And her situation was There was, there's a difference in, in age and.

And the question is like, okay, and he's approaching retirement. She wants to make sure that she has that, that gift of retirement.

But in some senses that's dependent on her ability to earn because of their situation. And so how do you have that conversation and it doesn't matter.

Where you are? I think that when we talk about money, when we talk about finance, when we talk about our financial future, the key word in there is future. The key word in there is that what we're talking about, there's nothing, we'll talk about the money and everything. But the reality is that the only reason we want the money, the only reason the money matters, is to give us the life that we want, the life that we deserve to, to fulfill our dreams, to fulfill our missions, to fulfill the movements that we want to do. And so, so too often what I see and where it becomes a challenge is, is people will start off.

With the conversation down at the money level. And what, what we want to do is if we're going to have conversations, we don't talk at the money level. We talk at the, the life level. We talk at the vision we want for our world, the vision we want for our life, how we do this together.

And, and when, because, because if the money's there to fund our future, if the money's there to fund our vision, the money's there to fund our lifestyle, then we have to start with lifestyle and then work backwards.

To the money that's necessary to create that. So the plan and the vision inform the tactics and the strategy, not the other way around. And this is why in the affluence blueprint or anytime I work with my, my in the masters group or in my, with, with my elite one on ones, we start with, where are we going in there. And so the conversation really needs to come from the place of, hey, honey, you know, what do we want for our life? Stephanie and I, every year.

During the holidays, because it's usually the downtime where we're slowing down a little bit and we're looking towards the year. We, we have appreciation and gratitude for the things that we accomplished, the things that we enjoyed, the things that we were blessed with. And then we look towards the next year in respect to our, our overall vision. Say, what do we want that to look like? Where do we want to travel? What things do we want to get behind? What are the things that, that matter to us? And we talk about that. And when we come to an agreement on that Life journey, it's much easier to then come back down to, okay, how do we make this work? How do we, how do we make it come to life? And what, what can I bring to the table? What are, do you bring to the table? What, where, how are we going to do this together? So we're walking.

Side by side. Not, not one person in front of the other, but side by side. We're having this conversation and, and now the tactics and what we do with money is informed and directly related to the outcomes we as a couple are trying to create. And I think the mistake and where, because money is one of the biggest stressors in relationships, it's the second cause of divorce behind infidelity. And the reason is we're talking about money instead of talking about life. And what we really need to think about is how do we talk about life first and the money to support that life second?

Because if we can get agreement at the higher level and the direction, it's so much easier to sit back and say, all right, do we really need that? Because does that get us closer to, to our goal? It's that whole idea of, of the, the rowing team that they, the, the UK Rolling Team rowing team. They, they did not.

They went repeatedly to the Olympics and never won. Never won, never won. And, and they had a coach that came in and they said, our theme for this year.

Will, will be this. And the filter we look at is will it make the boat go faster? So whether it's a workout, whether it's nutrition, whether it's an exercise, the question that we answer is, does, does it make the boat go faster? If it doesn't make the boat go faster, then we don't do it. And in that year they won the goal. And I think that we, we get caught up in all these other things, but if we get really clear on the outcome, if we get really clear on the, the destination and what we really want in our life, not what the Joneses say, not what the neighbors say, not what the parents say, not what social media says, not what anything says, but, but to you, to sit back, say, what's success to us? Is it a tent in Montana? Is it a yacht in Monaco? Is it some high rise penthouse and in, in, in Brooklyn? I don't know. But no one has the right to tell you what your, the success in your life, the enjoyment in your life is going to be. And as long as it's moral, ethical and legal, who cares? You get to live it. Ronnie Ware wrote the book Seven Regrets of Dying. One of the biggest regrets was, and she was a hospice nurse, so she watched people in their last days, and she said, one of the biggest regrets is people getting to that time and realizing they didn't live the life that they were supposed to live.

Y' all were given a gift. You all are a gift to this world. You all have talents and, and skills and special things that you get a chance to bring to people. And it's, it's, it's your responsibility to give it to the world. No one else can do it. And I think that we tend to try and look at, well, I got this degree, so I need to go this path or this is what my parents look. If, if I did what my parents expected, I'd be a freaking doctor, okay? And the only problem with that is I can't. I can't deal with blood. So I'm out. So what did I do? I became an accountant. The furthest thing from a doctor.

And so, so I think that, that we need to look at it from that perspective. And now we can then make some choices financially to support that journey versus versus saying. And, and we're getting barraged with ads, with marketing, with, with everything. I mean, and I'm not exempt from it. Like I said, I swiped up and bought a 900 copy maker off of freaking Instagram. All right? Go figure. All right, so, so I'm not exempt.

And, and so, but, but when you have the plan and when you have the vision, it makes it easier to make the decision because we're not making emotionally based decisions. We are making direction based decisions in the process. And so, so if you're in the situation where you're sitting back saying, I want, I want to, I want to bring closeness into our relationship. And yet money conversation seems to.

Seems to separate us and put friction in there. Then we need to have a different conversation, a different level. We don't have the conversation at the money level until we agree at the life level first. And I think that's important. I did an episode with Corinne Acapura interviewing her, because what happened with her is that she.

She went through some of the stuff and she. One of, one of any time, if anyone's ever seen me do a money keynote, one of the first, the first takeaways that I tell them, I said, here's your next step. If you're in a committed relationship, want to be in a committed relationship, should be in a committed relationship. I want you to go and have a conversation, a real money conversation with, with that person. I want you to bring them into the. The journey with you. So you're doing this journey together. And so she wrote me a text saying, I had. I had that conversation. And we both realized that we were. We were cheerleading each other from the sidelines instead of championing each other on the field. And what we've decided to do is champion each other on the field. And the great thing is, we've been together 20 years. We have a wonderful marriage, but this whole conversation brought us closer together. And in fact, after 20 years, we just booked a second honeymoon. And I. And. And I think it's really important to realize that money doesn't have to be divisive in a relationship when we do it right. It doesn't need to be the second biggest cause of divorce. It can be the. The thing that coalesces us towards a mission, towards a vision, to a life that is meaningful. And everything that we talk about, everything that I'm. That. That. That I'm about, yes, is about money, but it isn't about money itself. If it is just about money, that's a material possession. It's a scorecard. It's a statistic. It doesn't have any meaning if it doesn't give you the life that you want. And so that's. That's how I would approach it. If you're. If you're sitting back saying, hey, I want to have a conversation with someone, how do we do it? Start at the life level and then bring it down to the money level. So hopefully that helps, but.

And that's it for this episode of Building your Money Machine, where we help you learn how to master your money, eliminate financial stress, and live a life of choice. If you found this valuable or helpful to you, here's what I'd love for you to do. If you do me a favor, go to Apple, Apple Podcast, or wherever you're listening to this podcast and rate and review the show. It helps us tremendously to keep us at the top of the list so we can continue to get this information and this message out to people, because I truly believe that financial freedom is your birthright, and I want to help each and every one of you claim it. Thanks so much.