We all have heard that money is the most argued topic amongst married people. Well, when I began my career as a psychotherapist, we were in the middle of a down economy. For the first two years, literally every couple I saw in counseling was experiencing the strain of this, in the form of unemployment, under-employment or overall strain to the finances because of higher cost of living, coupled with lower take home pay. I sat with a number of men and women who had gone to school, worked hard and planned well, but were facing financial strain beyond what they ever imagined. As a result, marriage relationships were being tested.
As I sat with couples, the issue of money and how it was spent in their homes was an ongoing topic in the counseling space. Money, it turns out, has the power to make people feel cared for, provide distraction and contrary to the old adage, bring peace and happiness. When there is an absence of the stuff, people tend to get cranky.
As with most other relational conflict, communication is key to resolving differences. Hiding feelings about how your significant other spends the family cash or hiding the actual spending of the dollars, is never good for the relationship. When things are tight, the communication has to get transparent to make it through the season.
Tips For Weathering the Storm
Have conversations about the non-negotiables
When it is time to tighten the belt, it is important to know what each member of the family absolutely needs to feel like a person. It is crucial to identify areas where cutting back is possible and where the cutting back may cause more conflict. Budgets can almost always be reworked and reworked some more, to accommodate both the needs and a few wants of each member of the family, but this cannot be done if people are not upfront about what they are willing or unwilling to part with.
Keeping an open mind in this process is important since we all tend to think about what should be kept and what needs to go, in terms of our own personal viewpoints. While the highlights your wife has put in her hair may seem like a luxury to you, it might be something she is willing to sacrifice in other areas, to keep. (Hey…I am just keeping it real with a very personal example.) If highlighted hair is more important to her than an updated cell phone, new clothes or dinners out, that has to be discussed with understanding and appreciation.
Studies have proven that during crisis, it is the little things that give hope. For example, in times of scarcity, people will pay as much for something as meaningless as lipstick as they will for food! This is because “extras” make us feel like we are doing better than simply surviving. So, if every member of the family has been forced to identify their nonnegotiable and then has those needs met, you run a much better chance of weathering the storm.
Get real about the sacrifices
For awhile there, it seemed like every time someone was trying to get people to give to a cause, or encourage saving, they would tell us to give up our Starbucks coffee. The truth is, most families in financial crisis are not getting treats at Starbucks EVER! They are trying to pay for soccer and dance and their sacrifices are much bigger than skipping a frappacino. They are already operating without much of the fun stuff that only some people are purchasing on a daily basis.
This is when the sacrifices might be more painful than we would like. When individuals are making sacrifices for the good of the group, it is important for those sacrifices to be acknowledged openly and often. Telling your children that you know they are missing cable TV and you are doing every thing you can to get it back or expressing gratitude that the old car was fixed instead of replaced, is an important dynamic to create. Even when closer evaluation reveals that everyone is doing just fine with the changes, showing appreciation for good attitude goes a long way.
There are very few parents who resent giving up their extras when their children are appreciative and the same is true between husband and wife. We know that relationship is always more important than material possessions, but silence or brooding is not relationship. Talking through the situation and allowing each other to continue dreaming toward a return to good times, is important when a family is in financial crisis.
Utilize systems meant to encourage spending, to save
Whether you are in financial crisis or simply in transition from no kids to a baby, a job change, a new home or even heading into retirement, sometimes finances can become the largest challenge in the relationship. This is the time to put that college education to work utilizing the many resources provided in our capitalist society! I sometimes laugh to myself at the very practical applications I find myself sharing with people who come to me for help with their relationships.
- Find a credit card that rewards something that your family enjoys and limit all credit purchases to that one card. Whether it is cash back or miles toward an airline trip, it is wise to capitalize on the rewards when possible. Please do not hear me encouraging you to incur huge amounts of debt with this suggestion. But, our family read a blog about how to utilize the Southwest Airline credit card most effectively, and we have a buddy pass and are going to fly free to numerous locations this year because we got serious about working the system.
- Utilize stores that offer points or membership benefits associated with your family needs. Our local grocery store offered a point system when our daughters were in sports. It is amazing the amount of money we saved in gas, and the amount of money that went directly to our individual account with their teams. It made their “non-negotiable” possible when we were in crisis.
- Use the numerous online services and phone apps that give instant coupons or cash back for purchases that you already have to make. I literally do not make an online purchase without going through my ebates.com account or checking to see if my honey.com account offers an additional rebate. It seems like a lot of extra steps in the beginning but if a reward check of $100 means that our family can cover each member’s “what-makes-me-most-happy” then it is totally worth it.
As with all relational conflict, if the discussion can change from facing one another and pointing out the issues we have with one another into a dynamic where a couple or a family stands side by side and faces the struggle as a team, the outcome can be drastically altered. Financial crisis should not cause a dynamic of anger or shame or guilt. It should be a time of team building and character growth in a marriage or a family. If you need more assistance, please give me a call.
Sonia
When an individual, a couple or a family comes to counseling, I often ask them, “Why now?” I am curious as to what is was that tipped the balance, in the relationship at stake, or the issue at hand, to cause their desire to seek assistance. What moved the meter from “I can handle this” to “OUT OF CONTROL”? Some situations are elevated by obvious trauma: finding out about a cheating spouse, a death, or a diagnosis. But many situations become unbearable over much less overt changes.
The only way to truly know if the marriage, the friendship or the job is worth saving is to be direct at the outset of the imbalance, to share the frustrations you have, the part you are willing to contribute to solving the problem and the timeline that you foresee being the healthiest for the relationship. The WARNING LABEL to this prescription however, is that boundaries once set, can lead to a truth that might be hard to stomach.
The week before my wedding was tumultuous to say the least. The minister scheduled to marry us, a dear friend of the family, got really sick and was hospitalized and there was a military coup in Venezuela, making it impossible for many of my relatives to attend. However, as a young bride, head over heels with the most handsome boy I had ever known, I was not going to let anything come in the way of my wedding. I practically ran down that aisle into a marriage that I truly believed would be picture perfect.
But we have had them all. The last 25 years have not been picture perfect as I had hoped. We have endured trials that many marriages would not survive. We have faced infertility, numerous moves, struggles with family dynamic, unemployment, loss of fortune, and grave sickness. Had I known that sharing my life with this man would bring all this, would I have said yes?