When Your Money and Marriage Clash

Well, I'm John Fuller and on today's episode of Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, we're going to explore how your money can impact your marriage. John, that sounds pretty intense, right?

It does, yes. Hopefully, we're not living in that space, but maybe some are and money can be a touchy subject for husbands and wives. It always ranks as number one or number two of marital conflict and today we want to talk about that. Most, if not all, of the decisions we make usually involve money.

Purchase this, don't purchase that. Maybe like a car or maybe like just a vacation or something else you got to do as a couple. Money's involved. It's a part of our everyday lives.

We've got to get a handle on it. Yeah, and you know, there's a reason why I think most couples in their wedding vows, say for richer or for poorer, that means something. And today, again, we want to equip you to be able to manage your money in such a way that it reduces, it may not eliminate, but it will reduce conflict in your marriage. Yeah, and Taylor and Megan Kovar are here. They're authors, speakers, and financial planners who have a passion to help couples and families achieve financial freedom and a peaceful home, which is a good goal and also a thriving marriage. Taylor and Megan are known as the money couple. They've written a book called The Five Money Personalities, speaking the same love and money languages. And you can learn more about the book and our guests at the website.

The link is in the program description. Taylor, Megan, welcome to Focus. Thank you. Excited to be here.

Yes, thank you so much. How did you two get involved in this? I mean, it's not like I don't think you wake up or you get married and say, honey, I got an idea for us. Why don't we become financial coaches and planners?

Yeah, it was not an overnight thing. And I am a certified financial planner. So my wife, Megan, she's more of a stay at home mom. So she is along for the ride a lot of times. Well, on the finance side of things, she's much more the writer and I'm more the speaker.

But she is a tremendous asset when it comes to working with couples. Well, hang on a second. I got it. You know, you can lay out the financial plan. Yeah. But if Megan doesn't do it, so you must be a good partner in that when you have agreement on this plan.

Absolutely. We learned early on that we did not speak the same language when it came to money. And we needed a lot of help in order to get on the same page.

So this is how some of this was born. In fact, we did a little research in the book and found that you you like Mustangs. I was a Camaro guy. I did like Mustangs. I did. You actually wanted to buy a Mustang.

I did. Yeah. So, you know, being young and in love. So Megan and I started dating at 14. So we had practically raised each other.

That's awesome. And we put dating in quotation marks because at that point there were no cell phones, no Internet. I mean, our dating consisted of meeting each other at church every Sunday.

Yeah. And so dating was, you know, we use that term loosely. But since 14, we have been together. And I we got we're getting older. And I was like, hey, 16, 17, 17. Exactly.

Much older, practically older, thinking about Social Security, thinking we were we were grown. And I thought it would be a great idea to surprise this woman. I was hoping to marry by buying a brand new car because I could finally afford it.

And so I went out and Ford had just came out with a brand new Mustang body style in 2003, 2004. And I didn't really tell her. Instead, I just went and picked it out and had to have my dad cosign because I had no credit and really no money. And I couldn't afford it, but it was cool. And I thought she would think it was really cool. And so I bought this car, drove to her house. And what I thought was going to be just this amazing like, you know, show of gratitude. And you're so awesome. You're the coolest guy ever.

So glad I get to marry you one day, hopefully. Again, at 18 instead was complete opposite of what what what what were you doing? What were you thinking when you bought this car? I did. You can't even afford rent.

Why are you buying a car? And it really did not turn out the way I thought it was going to. You know, going back a minute, you were kind of saying you're the finance guy. And it sounds like Megan might have a good sense for finance here.

She did. So my financial journey started then. And that's what led to today because I had not thought a thing about money growing up. My parents were blue collar workers, great salt of the earth people that really lived paycheck to paycheck, you know, gave a lot of money away.

And just that was it. They lived on overtime. And that's how I was raised. And he also came from a large family.

There's nine children. So I don't know if you can necessarily save a lot when you get a stretch every dollar in that context. Yes. You know, I said a moment ago that money tends to be one of the top two, three points of conflict in marriage. But you say couples really aren't arguing about money. What are they arguing about? For us, it's really about how they how people think about money and how we talk about money or the lack of talking about money. And so a lot of times it's not so much that they spent the money on maybe the Mustang in this case it was. But, you know, the Camaro or the Starbucks coffee.

It's really that you didn't communicate to me about that or why you feel like you need X, Y or Z. That ends up causing a lot of problems in marriages. Why do you think budget is such a bad word in a marriage?

Yikes. Budget. I think that people see budgets and think it's it's rules for them. They're adults. They're making the money.

So why should I be given rules as to how I'm spending that money? That's insightful. Yeah, that's true.

We don't like accountability. Right. So you speak about money relationship. What what is a money relationship like me and my banker? You know, you and your spouse. We talk about a lot with marriages in general, and we're big advocates of marriage conferences and investing in your marriage. And what a lot of people think is, oh, well, you know, we're having date night and, you know, we are physically intimate and, you know, we have time away and we go on vacations and we communicate. But it's really that money relationship that a lot of people just forget about. We don't bring up some of this shame and guilt because we spent money we shouldn't had or we're hiding money that, you know, we have or don't have. And so that money relationship really drives a big part of the trust that goes on between a husband and a wife. It's true.

It kind of cuts through the fog. And if there's conflict there, there's something you need to work on. Right. You knew an older couple.

I think they've been married more than 40 years, if I remember correctly. And they had all this kind of misery in their marriage, but they have plenty of money. So, you know, for the couple starting out going, all we need is more money and we would be happier and have a better marriage doesn't always work that way. Right. Absolutely not. I think so often everything comes back to communication. Not only if we have more money, we'll do better. But also some people think if we have a child, our marriage will be fixed.

If we have a different job, if we have a new friend group and it all comes back to communication. What happened in that man and his wife's situation? Married 40 years and had lots of money, but they were miserable.

Yeah. So what we found, you know, we were talking with this couple and had a great financial plan, had a lot of money compared to the majority of people that are out there. And came to us one day and said, hey, we're done.

We're calling it quits. And I was like, hey, you're in the prime of life, right? You're getting to enjoy, in theory, you get to enjoy retirement or about to enjoy retirement. And what it came down to is she always wanted to see more money in the account. And he was felt confident in where they were. And so over the years, he would, you know, contribute less to his 401k when she wanted him to contribute more.

And it was just always kind of underlying there. And as they were getting closer and closer to retirement, she realized I wanted to see a bigger number there. And even though as a financial advisor, I was like, you're very safe.

You have a very safe nest egg. Here's all the, you know, the scenarios and everything. Everything looks really good. She wanted to see more. And I don't know if it was really so much she wanted to see more. She just wanted to feel heard. She wanted to feel that he understood where she was coming from.

And he never took that approach. He always just said, look, we're putting back four percent. It's enough. We're putting back seven percent. It's enough. And never really explained maybe, hey, babe, I understand you feel that way. How can we come to an agreement here?

If we put five in instead of four and I could still use the other percentage on something else. They never really had those conversations. And ultimately it led to them being divorced right when they're about to be able to really enjoy retirement. Seriously, they did divorce.

They did. Oh, my goodness. That's a sad outcome.

It is. Yeah, very sad. And, you know, a lot of it comes back to communication of where and that really opened our eyes to why are couples feeling this way? There's something ingrained in us that we think differently about money. Well, and part of it's talking about it. That's why we're talking about it today, because we don't want you, the listener, viewer to be in that spot. You know, be married 40 years and look at things differently and have this conflict where it's insurmountable.

I mean, that's not the goal for us as Christians, particularly. You do something in this book, which I think is really good, and that's put personality to money types. You know, I don't know if this is 100 percent accurate, but let's talk about those five personality types and give a little description to each one. Sure.

So there are five money personalities that we have discovered, and that starts with we have a saver, spender, risk taker, security seeker and also a flyer. Oh, I just like flyer already. It sounds like a fun one. It sounds fun, right? They are really fun. Except you pay the piper. You do.

Yeah. And so after interviewing literally thousands of couples, right, and we've done this, we've identified these five different money personalities that are out there. I mean, a lot of people, when we talk about how you think about money, it's usually saver and spender, right?

And that's usually where people stop. Well, I'm a saver, she's a spender, and that's all it comes down to. Well, and every saver is a spender to a degree.

To a degree. Because you've got to spend money. You've got to spend money. Right. And every spender has to hopefully save something. And so what we've found is everybody has two money personalities, you have a primary and a secondary that kind of jump out, right? That's how we put it.

So Megan is a saver, security seeker, and I tend to be a spender, risk taker, which are two very opposite ways of thinking about money. We're already hearing conflict. Yes, yes. I've missed him from the Mustang, right? Every since then. That was a tell.

It was. Yeah, very much so. And so savers, you know, the very basic, they like to save money. They, like the woman in our story, she wanted to see the money in the account. She wanted to see the hard dollars there.

Didn't really care to see it in a rent house. She wanted to see it in the account. And so savers, Meg is a great example of a saver.

Yes. So I am a saver. And I'm also a tad bit of a security seeker, but as a saver, and of course, like everyone knows, we love to save money. Taylor is very big on what we are saving money, we are putting money away by investing in this real estate or investing in land or different things. But for me, I want to see the money in the account.

I want to know how much is in the account at all times. One of the things that definitely gives me away as a saver is I love to go out and have a good time, but it's going to be on a budget. Like me and the kids every summer, we like look at the movie theater schedule and see that they have a dollar summer movie. Now, we have already watched all of these movies because they're from last year. We've already seen the movies. So we're going to go because I know for a dollar, we can watch the movie for a dollar.

We can get popcorn and soda and we're going to have a great time. And to me, that satisfies my little bit of spender, but also lets me know that we're having a great time in saving money at that time. Help me understand how our faith, and this is really critical because you can be a good Christian and be a saver.

You probably will pat yourself on the back maybe a little more than your spouse who may be a spender, but they're still saved in Christ. So how do we how do we recognize different personalities and then kind of pull some of those more outrageous attributes in a little bit to give them some discipline, I guess? Yeah, I think a lot of that starts with, you know, understanding what you're how you think about money.

You know, we can say I'm a saver, I'm a spender. But in reality, if you don't really know, you haven't studied it or took the time and we do have a free assessment online. It's 5moneypersonalities.com or you can go and take the assessment. It just takes a few minutes and dives into your money personality. And so we use that to start the conversation. And, you know, all throughout the scriptures, there's examples of savers and spenders and flyers and all of these different money personalities. And so once we know how we think about money and we're able to communicate that, it really opens up the communication between a husband and a wife.

And so that's where we usually start is let's take the assessment, let's figure out where we are, and then let's utilize some resources that are at our disposal to communicate better. We find a lot of people want to have hard money conversations at the most inopportune times. You know, I come home because I'm a risk taker and I'm like, hey, I got this new business idea.

Let's you know, we're going to do this. And I walk in the door because I'm all excited about it. And Megan's sitting there trying to cook dinner.

And, you know, the house is a wreck because the kids are just walking from, you know, playing out outside and everything's just crazy. And I'm trying to throw this business idea at her. And it's like, hey, that's that's not the right time, right? That's a whole different problem. Whole different timing is a very big problem. And so but getting on that same page, understanding, hey, let's let's find a time that works for both of us.

Let me make sure I answer the questions before you let me just make sure. So you don't like set candles up in the bedroom and you come to the bedroom and go, honey, I've got a great deal for us. Not for the financial. That's a different thing. That's a different that's a different time. I can imagine that you get snuggled into bed. That's not going to be.

I've got an eye on a piece of property that I think would be great. What do you think? Yeah. Now, he has he has done that without the candles. But I would definitely say crawling into bed is also not the perfect time to have these conversations. See, this is good advice. John, know your spouse to have a little bit of EQ about what's the situation before you share the big idea or have the big conversation. Well, we've been married. Dina and I've been married 40, almost 40 years, 39. And we have these conversations and we're different.

And so I'm really grateful for what you all are doing. Taylor and Megan Kovar are our guests today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. And they've written a book that's really designed to help you better manage your money with your spouse.

And the title is The Five Money Personalities Speaking the Same Love and Money Language. Get a copy of that when you call 800 the letter A in the word family or check the program notes for the details. And over at our Web site, we've got a free marriage assessment. It's a quick survey, maybe takes five or 10 minutes of your time. And it's going to give you a really good overview of what's working well in your marriage and some areas that you might want to improve in.

And we'd recommend you check it out at MarriageMilestone.com. Let me let me ask you, we've, you know, saver spender, pretty obvious risk taker, pretty obvious security seeker. That's, you know, put it under your pillow, put in the mattress kind of person, save, save, save. And then that flyer flyer can be interesting because you're saying there that person is not motivated by money, but very content with life.

Big on relationships, happy to let someone else take care of the finances. That sounds like a committed Christian to me. It is, yes.

As a flyer. That's right. No, I just want to say, too, do some of these conflict?

Like I could see somebody it's almost schizophrenic, but a spender security seeker. It is. Can you have that combo?

You can. Yeah. And so what we say is everybody has a primary and a secondary. And that primary is how you think about money 90 plus percent of the time.

Right. So that's that's how you are day in, day out. And that secondary one pops up usually in times of stress. Usually when you've had a bad day. And so we like to call it the backseat driver.

It's like pumping, trying to pump the brakes on things sometimes. I'm thinking of somebody in the aisle going buy it. Don't buy it. Buy it.

Don't buy it. I mean, like, wow, what am I doing? Yeah.

Now, typically, you know, when somebody's had a bad day and they say, man, I just you know, I deserve to have a good meal. Comfort buying. Comfort buying. Retail therapy. Retail therapy. Yes.

You guys are so well educated in this. Moving to scripture, which is really critical. You know, how does God see these personalities? I think Philippians four is a good place to ask this question where, of course, Paul's writing and says, you know, be content in every situation. I've learned to be content if I have a lot or if I have a little.

How do we find that contentment in a culture that is saturated with consumerism? You know, I think Ecclesiastes is one of my favorite books in the Bible. And I think it speaks to that really well, especially to today where, you know, we think, oh, if we have more money, if we have this nicer car, if we had more vacations or, you know, we're idolizing people we see on Instagram and social media. If we just had that, you know, we would be set. And Ecclesiastes does an amazing job of saying, hey, I've had all this. I've had everything you can imagine, but it all comes down to our relationship with God. Right. If we keep him number one and really the center of all that we do, we can be content in all situations.

If we just give him our fears, our worries, our concerns, our joy, everything becomes a lot more in focus. In your book, The Five Money Personalities, you address something called financial infidelity. I mean, that sounds like a big hot word. Infidelity, obviously. What's financial infidelity? You know, for us, financial infidelity comes from a lack of communication. But when we think of infidelity, most people think of physical infidelity.

And we don't think, well, financial, well, me spending this money in my house, not knowing about it is not nearly as bad as me having some other type of an affair. But in reality, a lot of those same emotions come up when those when financial debt occurs. And so, you know, we talk about financial debt in a few different ways. One being hidden expenses, right? Hitting credit card debt, hiding cash or even controlling. So we worked with a couple one time where he were talking with them and he says, you know, I go through McDonald's for lunch sometimes.

And my wife will call me and say, hey, why did you get a large drink? That just that controlling of money. And so financial fidelity can take a lot of different avenues and pop up in a lot of different ways. But it it does bring about a lot of the same insecurities, all the same emotions that other types of infidelity in an unscientific way. When you look at the number of couples that you've talked about it, I guess it's a little startling to me that what I imagine would be a fair number of couples that do have hidden accounts or money stashed away and they don't talk together as a couple about is that pretty common?

It is. So statistically, we show about 65 percent of especially women have a hidden credit card or hidden debt. What is that saying when they do that? I think that it stems from generations of women teaching the younger generation to have that mad money, that safety net, just in case something happens that they'll have a little money set aside in case the marriage doesn't work out. I think that some of it stems from that. And then, of course, other it also stems from the feeling of I know better than he does. So he's spending the money in a way that I don't feel it should be spent.

So in order to have that safety net, I'm going to have to take it upon myself to start saving away. I was just going to say that sounds like there's not communication again. Right.

Yes. It always boils down to communication in that context, too. It kind of leads into that fear based situation, which, again, is going to be one of the roots of division within the marriage, you know, for whatever reason. But certainly money will create that, especially fear regarding money. So in that regard, I guess there'd be two ways of looking at that. You have insecurities. Let me call it that.

And you've described that. What about the other side of that where we can't pay our bills? We have a lot of debt. How do we balance that fear and lack of confidence with the security and peace of mind that God wants us to experience?

I mean, you're in it. If you're in that well, that deep well, that pit of debt and everything else, how do we overcome the fear of that and start working on getting rid of it? You know, for me, I think a lot of it comes down to a lot of people are in debt and above, in over their heads. And a lot of it comes from things that aren't biblical. You know, it's the lust of the eye and the lust of the flesh. And so, number one, we tell people, if you're in that situation, the Bible makes it really clear we need to repent. Right? We need to go to our Heavenly Father and say, hey, I messed up. You know, I've done wrong. And realize that it wasn't some outside circumstances. It wasn't your neighbor that used your credit card.

Right? It was you. And we made those decisions as a couple or independently. And really just come to that realization that, hey, we we have failed. We're not blaming others. And let's get on the same page. We're big proponents of we're on the same team. If you're in that pit of despair, a lot of times you realize, hey, we're on the same team. We got into this together. We're going to get out of it together and really sit down and work on that plan. But from an aspect of realizing we got ourselves into this.

Well, let me stress that point, because what you're saying is, yeah, you're on the same team. But in this context, you can really be divided. And that's not a healthy way to solve the problem of how do we get out of debt. You talk about a money dump. Boy, it sounds like fun.

Where can we go? Doesn't that sound great? I don't think that's what you're talking about.

It does sound like fun. But what's your version of the money dump? Yeah, so the money dump is is where we want couples to get together at least once a year. Right. And we say once a year to really just dump it all out.

Right. Let's just get all the fears, all the insecurities, all the issues, all the worries out on the table. Let's just dump it on the table and let's talk about it.

What does that sound like? Give me help between a husband and a wife. For us, that means, hey, we're not going to have the kids around. Right. It's something that we've planned. And so we have thoughts together. So it's not spontaneous. You know, it's not bringing up a bunch of old fears or concerns.

It's really this is where I am right now. And this is why. So we've thought about it. We've written out some ideas and we're having a really good conversation about it. And so that money dump, it just helps to ignite the conversations, helps to keep the couple back on the same page. And, you know, people say, well, that's only once a year. You know, you're only talking about money once a year. It's like, no, we also have a thing called the money huddle, which is where we recommend couples come together.

They huddle up, you know, five, 10, 15 minutes a month and just say, hey, this is where we are. You know, we're we're moving in our budget. We're making progress. It's not an overnight thing. There's not a switch we can flip and everybody just become a millionaire.

It is a progress. And so between the money dump and then moving toward a money huddle on a once a month basis, it really helps keep those lines of communication. Well, I like those football analogies that used to be playing in the street. You'd say, go buy the Chevy and turn around and I get you. Now we're saying go buy the Chevy.

Yeah, that's a different huddle. It's really important. We've said this already, but it bears repeating, I think, conflict about money in your marriage. It is inevitable. It's going to happen. I like that idea of getting out there and getting ahead of it and having these discussions.

And that's what you mean by the money dump. When I was looking for those examples, it's like, honey, I think we're in a good place. Or honey, maybe we're not.

Do you feel the same way? That would be some of those discussions. Or maybe we're not saving enough or maybe we do need a dryer. How are we going to pay for that or something like that?

As a matter of fact, I use that because we need a dryer. That's where you would go over different goals for the family and things like that as well. Because typically some of the goals aren't just going to come around without money involved in those goals. So that's where you would discuss also how much we're spending on the children's soccer lessons or private schools or whatever may come up. And we've created some really great resources to help couples to open those lines of communication. And so we have questionnaires that couples can use to help start that and just say, hey, this is the basis of this money dump. And really open lines of communication. And that's critical.

I mean, I think that's what it's about. Whether it's money, intimacy, faith, having that open line of communication is critical. Obviously, we want you to pick this book up, The Five Money Personalities. I think you'll love it.

It's just really well done. And when you look again at the conflict in marriage and money being right at the top of the list or near the top of the list, why not attack it head on? And we want to get this into your hands. If you can make a gift of any amount, and if you can't afford it, ask us for the book because we understand you're in a money crunch. But if you can make a gift of any amount, $5, $10, we'll send it as our way of saying thank you for being part of the ministry. And as I said, if you can't, we'll get it to you and trust others. We'll cover the expense of that. I think it's one of those tools you need in your marriage arsenal so you can go to it and improve the communication in your marriage around money.

Yeah. And thanks in advance for your generosity. And please donate and request the Kovars book when you call 800, the letter A and the word family.

800-232-6459 or check the program notes for details. And we also mentioned our free marriage assessment, which is a great way to kind of get on the same page with your spouse about what's most important in your relationship, how things are and maybe areas that you'd like to see some improvement in. Take it together and engage. Have some great conversations about this marriage assessment.

We've got all the details in the show notes. Taylor and Megan, this has been really good. I so appreciate you making the time to be here, coming up from Texas and spending a little time with us. I hope many, many couples are helped through your great advice.

Thanks. Thank you all. Thank you so much for having us. We'll plan now to join us tomorrow as we'll explore simple ways that you can show love and kindness every day of life.

And then he looked up at me visibly choked up and he said, do you know what? I have been a mailman on this street for 33 years and no one's ever done anything like what your family did for me. Thank you. On behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family.

I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. As a parent, it's easy to find myself sitting backseat to my kids in the back seat. It's tough to be a step ahead and full honesty, I'm pretty hard on myself when that happens. But I've found Practice Makes Parent a podcast from Focus on the Family, hosted by Dr. Danny Huerta and Rebecca St. James. It helps me be more intentional and not feel alone when things get tough. Everything they share is practical and well practiced, and I can use it right away. Listen to Practice Makes Parent wherever you get your podcasts.