No couple ever sees eye to eye on everything.
For example, in our house, the garden is sometimes contentious: I usually find that it is more conducive to household peace and continuing cohabitation if She does not witness me gardening, my methods and style being somewhat different from Her own. In fact, some tasks are better left until She is away for the day: in particularly it is better if She is out somewhere while I am pruning (I usually find a chainsaw most efficient), or spraying (245T seems to work well on most plants).

I have never been able to work out why, but whenever we plan a quiet afternoon in the garden together, it always turns into “discussions” on the relative merits of our differing garden practises. If She is not around, I can just get on and do things as they should be done.

However, although couples may reasonably follow different gardening strategies and “discuss” the varying outcomes that they are seeking, this should not extend beyond gardening to other things – especially family finance. Differing gardening strategies pale to insignificance compared to divergent financial ones: research shows that money is one of the biggest causes of friction and failure within relationships – in money management, it is important for success that there is alignment of couples and a sense of joint endeavour. This whole money stuff is difficult enough without having disagreements on desired outcomes and strategies.

In his book The Millionaire Next Door Thomas J Stanley of Georgia State University, showed just how important an aligned sense of purpose is. This book is effectively a record of Stanley’s research of over 1,000 millionaires. Interestingly with respect to money and relationships, Stanley found that the typical millionaire had been married for 28 years and that, as a group, they have a divorce rate of just one third that of the rest of us.

In some ways this is not surprising: people involved in a relationship failure see their wealth halved – it is not easy to recover from that. Nevertheless, a shared view of a good financial future and financial success probably also holds people together – families that stay together grow their wealth together; just as families who grow their wealth tend to stay together. It is a virtuous circle.

In my experience, there are three main things that are important for couples: the first is that they share a view of their futures (financially and otherwise). They set goals and both partners are committed to the lives that they want and the goals that they have set for themselves.
This means that it is not “his” money which “she” sabotages or vice versa – money is not used as a substitute for all the other things that one or other is unhappy about. They both know where they are going and what they have to do for their shared financial futures.

Second, they know their respective spending limits – what they can do and what they should not do. They have agreed that they will spend less than they earn and also the kinds of things on which they will spend their money and the kinds of things that they will not.
This becomes very important – and a bit more difficult – where children are involved (especially where there is a blended family). It is destructive if one partner has a different set of money rules for the children from the other partner.

Third, they have particular roles within their families and for their finances and they trust each other to perform their roles. She may do the investment while he does the cash flow management but they each know what they need to do – and they do it. In fact, trust is important in all aspects of relationships and that includes the management of the family finances.

All of this may sounds a bit Utopian: play happy families and grow rich. However, it is important – it is much higher stakes than your gardening where a slip of the chain saw does no more damage than take off a couple of branches (they were probably superfluous anyway).
Your money is about your life and if you can’t take your partner with you, both your money and your life will be affected. Alignment towards an agreed outcome may be useful in the garden, but it is absolutely critical for the family’s finance.

Martin Hawes is an Authorised Financial Adviser and his disclosure statement is available free of charge at www.martinhawes.com. This article is of a general nature and is no substitute for personalised financial advice.