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Shumita Basu, Narrating: This is "In Conversation," from Apple News. I'm Shumita Basu. Today, how to talk to your partner about money.
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Basu, Narrating: When it comes to money and relationships, the old saying is true — opposites really do attract.
Unidentified Speaker: I think she and myself would identify her as the spender and me as the saver.
Unidentified Speaker 2: I'm a saver, she's a spender. Finances has been the greatest challenge in our relationship.
Unidentified Speaker 3: I am the spender. I definitely learned this from my mom. She was the spender. My dad was very much a saver, [LAUGHS] and he was holding it down.
Unidentified Speaker 4: I am in a marriage with a wonderful wife who does not spend money at all. I am the exact opposite.
Basu, Narrating: That's just a little taste of our voicemail inbox when we asked you to call in and tell us your opposites-attract stories. We'll hear more from you all a little bit later.
Now, the research shows that couples with different money habits tend to become more and more similar over time. I know, romantic, right? But in between now and then, being with someone who is your financial opposite can be challenging. It might be the reason that money is one of the top issues that couples argue about.
Julia Carpenter: Talking about money is still so taboo. Talking about money with your partner, a lot of people just immediately associate it with fighting.
Basu, Narrating: That's Julia Carpenter. She covers personal finance for "The Wall Street Journal," and a lot of her focus is on money and romantic relationships, what we can accomplish together, what we argue about, what we hide from each other, and what the experts say.
So, I started by asking Julia, from her reporting, what she has found to be some of the biggest roadblocks that couples face when managing finances together.
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Carpenter: I talk to so many people who have a really hard time building a shared goal with their partner, you know? They are in agreement maybe that they can't buy a house right now, they're like, Okay, we're together, we can't buy a house right now, but we're gonna move in together. And then they can't agree on how they spend their money together, or they can't agree on what they're saving for, or they can't agree on what the next step is. You know, maybe one person wants to quit their job and, like, go all in on building a self-employed career. Maybe the other person says, Hell no, we have to try and pay off your debt first. And reconciling those two different visions is really difficult for people. I think that that is, especially now, such a sticking point for couples, because everything feels less doable on your own, and then you're partnered with someone else, you have their income, their earning power, their skills, their ability, and you think, Okay, we're gonna do this as a team. And then your inability to move as quickly as you maybe have envisioned that can feel like a hotbed for conflict. And that's what I hear from people so much.
Basu: Maybe we can do a little bit of demystifying. I mean, what are some of the forces at play that are making it feel especially hard today?
Carpenter: I mean, the big one is that, this is not gonna sound new to anyone who has been wrestling with this, but so many of these traditional milestones that, you know, my parents were able to access when they were just two years into their relationship are now really out of bounds for people. And not just even out of bounds for single people, but out of bounds for couples with sort of everything going right for them, you know? I'm thinking-- Of course home ownership is the huge one, and that's the one that so many people feel the most frustrated by right now, just because prices are still so high, rates are still so high, and the inventory is so low. They feel that-- You know, going back to my parents, they were able to buy this one-bedroom house that was extremely in their budget, in fact, it could even have been a deal, and those one-bedroom houses don't exist anymore. And if they do, they are triple the price, and you're probably gonna be beat out by an investor who wants to build three condos on the land.
Basu: Right, right.
Carpenter: And things like being able to level up to your high-earning years, which for so many people in their late-twenties, early-thirties, that's the span of time that they've sort of been counting on to meet these goals. We're just seeing that happen much later for people, you know? Or millennials hit their peak earning power and it's just not buying as much as they thought they could. So they think, Okay, I wrestled with all of this for the early part of my career and made pennies, or like was dying to get that promotion. Now I got the promotion, now I'm making what I think I should be making, I'm partnered up with someone who's maybe in my same income bracket or making their maximum income as well, and we still can't do this stuff. We still can't take a three-month vacation to the place of our dreams, we still can't have a kid, we still can't feel good about buying a house. That's really frustrating for a lot of people.
Basu: Yeah. So it sounds like what you're saying is not only is it difficult to agree on what the shared goals should be today, it's hard to achieve the [LAUGHS] shared goals once you've set them.
Carpenter: And I think those things are related. I think it's hard to achieve some of those goals that I listed, and so thinking of a shared vision for your future as a household, when those things aren't as accessible, is really difficult.
Basu: Frustrating.
Carpenter: Yeah. Frustrating. I think for a lot of people it's-- they feel, especially after the pandemic and especially after the last year of rapid rate increases and rapid inflation, that they're stuck, or that they're in this holding pattern, and so there is this urge for change right now. You know-- "Okay, this is the year we buy the house," or "This is the year we start our family," "This is the year we do this." And if the other person can't get on board with that, it feels like you're stymied, and then, understandably, that's when you fight or that's when you break up, or that's when you work together and try to find a middle pathway.
Basu: You know, just so that people can get a sense of where your perspective comes from and where your reporting is coming from, I know you've done a lot of reporting around how relationship status can affect your ability to build wealth.
Carpenter: Right.
Basu: So can you talk about the relationship between these things?
Carpenter: Yeah. I think traditionally we have thought of relationships as you date then you get married and you move in together. And now, so often people are dating, they're living together and then they're getting married, and they're living together for a much longer period of time than previous generations and they're pushing back that age of first marriage. And a lot of people think, Okay, but living together probably affords me the same benefits as marriage in many ways, you know? We are moving in together and sharing bills, we're sharing rent, we are partnered in so many different ways. Maybe marriage isn't even a goal for them. But I found in this data from the St. Louis Fed that's been looking at how marriage impacts someone's ability to build wealth that single people are falling way behind everybody else, mostly because of inflation, mostly because these asset prices are so high. They're not able to even access some of the milestones we were talking about couples already having difficulty to access, so they're sort of falling further down on the ladder that way. And cohabitating couples, so couples who live together, are pretty much on the same level as single people, which I found super surprising. As someone who's been cohabitating with her girlfriend for like seven years, no idea of marriage in the immediate future, I was sort of shocked to read this. But then also, in talking to people, it seemed that a lot of people were feeling that they didn't understand that gap. I interviewed one couple and she said, you know, All my married friends are buying houses, and I'm just like, how? Like, how are you doing this? I feel like we're equivalent in so many ways.
Basu: Yeah, so what is the "how"? Is it about being married, unlocking these financial levers that are different? Or is it about being married, unlocking some kind of psychological levers? [LAUGHS]
Carpenter: I mean, that's great because I think it's sort of both. And I love the way you phrased it with "levers," because I think that that is sort of the best visual for this. A lot of people don't share money with their partner unless they're married, which is smart in many ways. You know, they're doing that to protect themselves, or they're doing that because they're at a stage in their relationship where they're still building trust, or like we talked about a second ago, you know, building goals. They don't want their money just in one big, shared pot if they don't know what it's going to, or how to manage that. But if you're not sharing money, in my research and talking to a lot of financial professionals, you're not getting a lot of the benefits of having two incomes and two different backgrounds. So, somebody has a joint account that they share with their partner and then they have savings that they're saving for a down payment for a house, say. If that's all separate, they're not taking advantage of the other person's ability to save more, or their respective ability to save more, so you're both just sort of equalizing these pots. And you're not able to take advantage of compound interest if you have, which, I mean, makes a lot of sense for a lot of people: you put a bigger amount of money in a high yield savings account, for example, and you'll earn more in interest. So the shared vision that you also hinted at when you said the psychological levers is also true. A lot of people, once they are married, they see it as, Okay, my financial life as a household, or our financial life as a household, I should say, begins now. You know, now that we're married, now that we're on the other side of this huge life milestone, now is when we get serious about saving for X or doing Y. And it sort of puts the accelerator on.
Basu: Right.
Basu: Julia, I have something fun for us to do.
Carpenter: Yay!
Basu: We asked our listeners to send us some voice memos and tell us about some of the biggest challenges that they are having with their partner when talking about finances, and I thought that maybe I could play some of these for you and just ask you to react, respond, give advice. I know you're not a financial advisor, but give advice based on what you know.
Carpenter: Yes!
Basu: So, here's the first one. This is Ashley from New Jersey…
Ashley: One of the issues I have with my wife of seven years, together fifteen, I'm trying to combine our finances, I make much more than she does, and however she's reserved because of her credit card debt. She doesn't want me to know. So this is the issue that I'm facing. I'm trying to convince her that together we're stronger, but it's just an issue that I constantly face with her.
Basu: Yeah, so a couple things going on there. There's the pool-our-finances question and then there's also a debt question in there. Is there a way to think of it in terms of pros and cons for a couple in their position? The pros of pooling their finances at this point and any potential cons.
Carpenter: Totally. I mean, the immediate pro I see is that if they are pooling their finances, and that means him taking on her debt, he could potentially pay off her debt, and it could be they do that together. And that's a negotiation, that's a win for a lot of couples. I mean, that's something that I wrote a story about: just how much further married people are able to get than single people, financially. And the married couple I interviewed in my story, he came into the relationship with $10,000 in credit card debt, and she said, Listen, I do not want you paying the interest on this credit card that is just gonna hang over this balance for forever. Let me pay it off, and then you have a feeling about that, so you pay me back at zero interest, and we'll just-- I think she called it "the wifey bank." She was like, We'll just treat it like the wifey bank. And that was-- he said he wouldn't have been able to do that without her. You know, he would've been paying that debt for so much longer, he would've been held back by it for so much longer. So an immediate pro I hear when Ashley is describing wanting to do that is I'm like, Oh my God, that could eliminate the problem. And if they combine their finances and he pays off that debt for her, that improves her credit score, which improves their overall financial health as a household. The downside to combining that a lot of people are understandably scared of is, you know, historically financial infidelity is a really huge issue, especially for women in relationships. And it's typically that one partner is hiding spending or hiding saving, it can be either way, from the other partner so they don't have the full financial picture. So their way of solving this is we never combine finances. We each act as two individuals in this household, and I'm responsible for what's mine, you're responsible for what's yours, and that way neither of us is hurt by the other one's spending, or hurt by the other one's debt. The tricky thing is that without someone else making this more apparent to her, she is probably not going to cave. I think it's one of those situations where either a financial advisor coming in and saying, Hey, this is what's best for you as a household, as an independent third party, or a couple's therapist, making it more explicit to her and maybe making it more dispassionate, because right now, it seems like there's a lot of feeling there. Oh, but that's difficult.
Basu: Yeah, sure.
Basu: Let's hear from another listener. We're staying with the topic of debt, and actually shame in fact, but this feels like a really common story around student debt.
Carpenter: Yes.
Carpenter: Okay.
Madison: Hi, this is Madison from Illinois, and I believe one of the most challenging aspects about money in regards to romantic relationships is debt and having bad credit. For me, I currently have over $60,000 in student loans, and recently, due to various circumstances that happened during the pandemic, my credit score plummeted. While we were trying to find a place to rent back in 2021, 2022, which happened to be during a time when the rental market was incredibly competitive, we both knew that a credit check would be one of the components in the application that would be weighted pretty heavily. So as we kept experiencing rejection after rejection, we both knew that it was likely due to my low credit. So, personally for me, I carry a great deal of shame and guilt knowing that this burden has fallen onto my partner and that they're affected by this just as much as I am, and we're not even married yet.
Carpenter: Oh, man, I hear about that so much with couples, especially as it relates to applying for mortgages. That one person feels like they are the stone weighing the other person down.
Basu: Yes, definitely!
Basu: Yeah, the drag.
Carpenter: Yeah, exactly. That they feel like, Okay, this other person could get so much farther without me. It's interesting 'cause I frequently hear about that from the other person, and I have not heard as much from someone saying "My girlfriend is dragging me down," or "My boyfriend is dragging me down." It's usually the person who feels that they're the one doing that, you know?
Basu: And what does-- what does that tell you? That that's more of a self-imposed kind of title than what a partner might feel about you?
Carpenter: Yeah, totally!
Carpenter: Totally. That's-- You nailed it. I think that, for me, what I hear when I hear someone telling that story is like, Okay, this is something that's a-- not to sound flippant, but like this is a you thing. You know, like this title is a you thing. This shame you're carrying is something that you feel and not something that's necessarily being imposed on you or pushed on you by your partner. In many cases maybe your partner wants to help, but you feel so much baggage around this or you feel so much shame that you don't want them to help.
Basu: Yeah. I mean, what are the options that couples should think through? Like, what are all the different ways that couples can decide to handle a situation where one person comes to the relationship, or even during the course of the relationship, accrues a lot of debt, whether it's student debt, credit card debt, anything?
Carpenter: Right. I was speaking with someone for a piece I wrote about just how couples that share money do it, and the spectrum of sharing money. And he used that word "spectrum" 'cause he said, you know, it's not always as black and white as what's mine is mine, what's yours is yours, or everything goes into one giant pot. You know, there's a spectrum of this that people can do. Maybe one partner says, Listen, you have this debt, I will help you pay off one of the credit cards, but you can pay off the other credit cards. Or I'll help you pay your student loans or support you in some other way that enables you to pay off your student loans, but those can stay yours. And other couples say, No, I'll handle that, and together we'll pay off your loans, or together we'll pay down that debt. Other couples say we have one joint account and then we have our own separate accounts and whatever happens in those own separate accounts is each other's responsibility, and the other person doesn't have to know about it until it's over a certain figure. That was something somebody emailed me actually, saying that that was their rule with their wife, that if it was over $50, they had to talk about it, if someone spent more than $50. But if it was under $50, they thought, Okay, whatever, let it go.
Basu: This is for me to make.
Carpenter: Totally. Exactly.
Basu: Yeah, and I can understand how different couples find themselves in different places on that spectrum as they, you know, survey what makes sense for them. But is there a path that makes the most sense financially for some reason that people should be considering?
Carpenter: You know, that's a question I get a lot, and every therapist I've talked to, every financial professional I talk to, just says it's so individual. It's so individual. You know, ideally we wanna live in a world where people pay down debt immediately, and we wanna live in a world where people are liquid in some assets and saving in others that they won't touch, but that's just not realistic for a lot of people. It's just not realistic for a lot of households. So it's very individual, it totally depends on someone's background, their idea of what the future holds, as well as sort of their willingness to talk about it.
Basu: Makes sense.
Carpenter: Yeah.
Basu: Let's do another listener call.
Carpenter: Yay.
Basu: This one is from Ankit, who immigrated to the U.S. from India.
Ankit: Me and my girlfriend have been living in the U.S. for seven years. We have known each other for six years and we decided to get married last year. Both of us work in tech companies and have our own work visas. Living in the U.S. on a non-immigrant visa comes with its own set of challenges. Our visas are tied to a job, and if something were to happen to a job, we have to pack our bags and go home. This puts our investments in the U.S. at risk. This is also a challenge in our relationship. Both of us have a very different appetite for risk-taking. My wife would like to keep assets in cash that she can easily tap into in times of emergency. I am the risk-taker in the house. I invest in stocks, sometimes even play with margin, and I believe in building a real estate portfolio. Me and my wife are in this constant push and pull about how to best utilize our financial resources.
Basu: You smiled when you heard Ankit say "I'm the risk-taker in this house." I imagine this is a really classic mismatch of risk-taker and more risk-averse type of person.
Carpenter: I totally smiled because I think this couple has already done something really important, though, in that they've sort of identified which one is which. You know, they've identified that she owns and can say, I am much more conservative with this, I am much more worried about the future, I want to be able to tap these funds immediately in case of an emergency, and he's learned in talking about that with her, Okay, comparatively, I am the risk-taker and I want to, you know-- Well, he mentioned playing with margin, he mentioned building a real estate portfolio. Like, I wanna dream bigger in so many different ways and take bigger swings. I just interviewed a couple for a piece last week where, kind of in a similar position, she's much more conservative, he's much more of a risk-taker. They've been married for about ten years now, and she said over time they've sort of found a middle road, that they've actually-- she's become much more of a risk-taker than she was prior to their relationship, and he is much more conservative with managing his investments. And it sounds like this couple is sort of in the process of finding that middle road as well. And that middle road can be different at different times. You know, like, a lot of people in the tech industry right now are scared. They're not sure what's happening with their job security, they're not sure what the future holds for their industry, so maybe now is the time that, you know, Ankit listens more to his partner. And then maybe when times aren't as lean, or when the dust settles, she says, Okay, I feel okay about our emergency savings now. We socked away this amount of money, let's take this amount of money and use it for one of these investments that you have been so curious about for so long. And that's a way that they both sort of play and learn from one another. The roles is so interesting because we so often find ourselves paired with people who have different attitudes about money, and that's scientifically proven, that we prefer to date people who are actually much more similar to us than we expect, except when it comes to money. Then we're drawn to our opposite.
Basu: Oh, really? Opposites attract. That's not just a rom-com formula, it turns out to be true financially. Why is that?
Carpenter: Absolutely.
Carpenter: I think because we are drawn to the thing in the other person that shows us the kind of life we could be living, if that makes sense. So if I'm a big saver, then I see someone who is spendier and to me they're living their best life, they are so free, they're so unencumbered. And then if I am a spender, I'm attracted to someone who's a saver, and I see them as so stable, so reliable, so adult, so grown up. And what we see-- You know, I've interviewed Scott Rick, he's a professor at the University of Michigan, he has a book forthcoming about couples and money, and families and money, and something that he found in his research that I thought was so interesting is that comparing newlyweds to older married couples who've been together for a long time, newlyweds are much more this pattern I described. They're much more different from each other. By the time they're an old married couple who's been together for a while, they're actually much more similar. They've sort of grown together over time and found that that's been the--
Basu: They've converged somewhere.
Carpenter: Absolutely. Yeah. And that to me, when I read that research, I thought, Okay, well, yeah, that's what a successful partnership is, like that you learn from the other person and change.
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Basu, Narrating: It sounds like it shouldn't work, right? I mean, we're looking for compatibility, so why do we seek out our money-opposites? Here's what we heard from listeners when we asked you how you deal with your opposite-partner when it comes to money issues…
Christina: Hi, my name's Christina, I'm from Louisiana. My husband and I are complete opposites when it comes to money. He needs me to be the one to ask "Do we really need this?" "Can we spend money somewhere cheaper?" "Can we not do this right now?" And I need him to say sometimes we just need to spend some money and have a good time and worry about everything else tomorrow.
John: My name is John, I currently live in the Columbus, Ohio area. I've been with my wife for about five years now and I think she and myself would identify her as the spender and me as the saver. However, over the last five years, I think she has started to turn me into a spender.
Leanne: My name is Leanne, I'm from Colorado, and I am the spender. My partner was raised in an affluent family and he definitely had a lot of security growing up and he saves so well, and so I have injected a lot of like joy in the small things and enjoying little purchases into his life, and he has injected a lot of saving consciousness for me.
Charlie Mauzy: Hi, my name is Charlie Mauzy. I live in Louisville, Kentucky with my wife Anne, of about 37 years, and opposites really have attracted. I would say our philosophy has been one where I live in the present financially and Anne has always lived in the future, thankfully, because now, fast forward those 37 years later and we are living in the future that my wife planned so diligently for.
Basu, Narrating: This kind of converging, this meeting-in-the-middle, it happens over time and it helps if you keep talking about money together. So I asked Julia to explain how do we have good, productive conversations about money at every stage of a relationship, starting from the very beginning.
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Carpenter: I think, again, borrowing from what I learned interviewing so many different couple's therapists, is start by asking someone about their earliest experiences with money. So you just ask someone "How did you talk about money growing up?" And it feels less loaded, but it also can tell you a lot about another person. You also, of course, if you're asking these questions, you need to be willing to answer them too. It's not just like an interrogation.
Basu: [LAUGHS] Right. Yes. To be fair.
Carpenter: You need to be willing to say, Meanwhile in my house, you know, I learned that money caused fights, or I learned that money was dirty. You know, there's different words that people just immediately associate with their family growing up and money, and how they've seen that sort of ripple through their lives, and I think learning about how someone learned about those things is hugely informative, but it's also a way to grow closer.
Basu: Yeah. And what about as a relationship progresses, you're getting to know each other more, maybe you're even moving in together at this point, what do those ongoing conversations look like?
Carpenter: Yeah, I think at that point, talking about what your vision for the future is, and what your vision for what your money can do for you in the future, and how you see your money working for you in the future, is a logical question. And hopefully you've already sort of broached it by the time you're moving in together. But thinking about, Okay, I know my boyfriend doesn't wanna be in his job long term. You know, he wants to maximize what he can get from this industry and then change careers, or he wants to start his own business, or he wants to, you know, go back to school. Knowing that those things are on the horizon tells you what someone's goals are and also how someone sees their investments paying out over time, and I think talking about what you wanna do then as a household can inform that too. So, like, Okay, I know he wants to go back to school, I know I want to travel for part of the year, or I know I want to get a dog, or I know I want to also quit my job, those are two things that you can talk about together. Like, Okay, you go back to school first and then after you get your degree, that's when we travel. Or, Okay, you wanna go back to school? Let's think if we have the liquidity right now to travel now. When do we wanna buy a house? Do we not wanna buy a house? All of the things that sort of map out the future. And the fun part about that being the sort of, like, midpoint of the relationship is that it's all hypothetical. I talked with one financial advisor and she said, you know, "People don't dream together." And I just thought that was so sweet. You know, you don't dream together then you don't-- If somebody isn't comfortable saying to you like, Yeah, I wanna start my own business one day, I think I can do it, then, you know, maybe they gotta warm up to that point, but also like, don't they trust you with that dream? Can't you help them with that dream? Like, can't you do that together?
Basu: And what a nice response to say, like, Okay, how can we fit that into our timeline? Right.
Carpenter: Yeah!
Basu: Like, let's create a timeline that overlaps where that's possible.
Carpenter: Yeah. Or maybe that's, again, initially what attracted you to this person. You say, Yeah, I've always thought of you as a risk-taker and I've always loved, you know, how big you dream, I've always loved, like, the ideas you have, I think you would thrive in that, how can I help you? is such a moment to grow closer and such a moment to sort of solidify what kind of partnership you have.
Basu: Well, I think this is also the stage of the relationship as you're deepening your understanding of each other's, you know, financial goals and thoughts. This is maybe also the time where you kind of identify your archetypes, right? Like, Oh, so I am the saver, and they are the spender, or whatever it might be. And I would imagine that a lot of people who probably write to you are coming at from a place of "I am right and she is wrong." [LAUGHS]
Carpenter: Totally.
Carpenter: [LAUGHS]
Basu: How do people move through that? I mean this is the basis of most arguments, right? "I think my perspective is the right way to do it, and I think their perspective is the wrong way."
Carpenter: Yeah.
Carpenter: Totally. Totally. It's interesting, 'cause I wanna say there's always a middle path, but obviously sometimes there isn't. You know, sometimes one person says "I am insisting on taking this lavish vacation," and the other person says "We just can't afford it." Like, I'm looking at the numbers right now and we can't do it. And that's sort of the-- the breaking points in many relationships. You know, if there's an inability for you to see the value in what the other person is insisting or suggesting, then maybe that shows that you're not gonna be able to compromise in that way. You know, maybe you say, The way that this person spends money or saves money just does not align with my values. And we've tried and we've talked about it and, you know, maybe they would be better partnered with someone who is less inflexible, and maybe I'm inflexible for this reason because this is really important to me.
Basu: Yeah.
Carpenter: I think finding where you can soften and finding where you can't tells you a lot about what you're willing to move on. And that's the basis of a value system. You know, if you say, Listen, at the end of the day, I'm just not gonna take on debt for something that I don't believe in, or something I don't deem necessary, and I won't do it, and the other person says, Well, you know, we have to take-- This poor other person, I'm making them sound like a villain. But I'm like, Oh, we, we have to take this vacation, it's the vacation of a lifetime, and you say, I'm just not-- I don't know why you're fighting me on this, this isn't important to me, then that's-- the reason you have a fight in that case is because you aren't gonna compromise in that way.
Basu: You know, I feel like a lot of financial advice columns are written from the perspective of the saver because that is financially prudent. What's the argument in favor of the person who thinks, Come on, let's go take that vacation. [LAUGHS]
Carpenter: I love that you asked that because something I hear a lot from people is, you know, especially since I write so much about millennials, so many of us, and I'm a millennial too, so many of us are really scarred from 2008. They just don't feel secure. They're making the kind of money that they can make in their industry, they have advocated for themselves in so many ways, they've saved, they've paid down their debt, they've done everything, quote-unquote "right," and they still feel like they can't allow themselves any reprieve, or they can't allow themselves any indulgence, and that, you know, taking a vacation is a bad idea and they can't afford it. Or, you know, living alone and not living with roommates is-- "I can't do that. That's-- I just don't have the money to do that." And when you actually--
Basu: It's fear, right? A fear of a downturn around the corner.
Carpenter: Totally, and very understandably, you know? People saw-- people saw that. For a lot of millennials, that was their first experience in starting their financial life was starting in the 2008 recession and they're really scarred from it still, and so sometimes it really takes another person to come in and say, Listen, I'm looking at your budget right now, I'm looking at how you spend right now, and you have room, like you have room to enjoy yourself. You have room to relax a little bit.
Basu: Let's talk about relationships where the conversation starts to turn to marriage and someone says the word that feels like it's straight out of the eighties, "prenup."
Carpenter: Yes.
Basu: Who should be thinking about prenups?
Carpenter: I was just talking about this with a matrimonial lawyer, and she was talking about how, in the last 20 years, she has just seen her prenup business boom. That it was something that in the past, literally her words, she said, "I wasn't the biggest fan of them in the past, and now I just think of them as doing business."
Basu: Interesting.
Carpenter: Yeah. I have-- You know, this is anecdotal of course, but I've had a handful of friends get divorced over the last few years and the prenup is often what made the process easy. You know, the prenup is what enabled them to say, Okay, we've set this process in motion and now we can both walk away with minimal feelings, or whatever feelings that came with the dissolution of this relationship that's hard and horrible and heart-breaking in many cases. But regarding the money, regarding our property, like, we already planned for this, thank God. We can just sort of like click the button and let the process start taking place.
Basu: Right, right. I mean, it's-- it seems unromantic, I think, to a lot of people, which is why they don't do it, but it sounds like you're saying, financially-speaking, it's a good exercise to go through?
Carpenter: Oh, completely, and I think people should think about it even if they're not getting married. I think you should think about it at all times. My girlfriend and I have a dog together, and we've already said, like, as soon as we got her, we said, Let's just put in writing. if something were to ever happen, you know, how are we gonna split up our time with her? How are we gonna split our bills with her? Like, what are we gonna do-- Just to make sure that if that horrible moment ever comes, you've thought about it. Because the scrambling to think about it is where people get into fights, it's where people get, you know-- the process becomes more burdensome, that's where the process becomes elongated, which leads to bad feelings. I also think, you know, the thing about prenups that I found really interesting is my little sister just got married and I immediately was talking to her about prenups, and in her state, the state of Georgia, there's actually a default prenup now in some states.
Basu: Really? Wow.
Carpenter: Yes. That, you know, you enter the relationship and what's yours going into the relationship-- Or you enter into the marriage, I should say, and what's yours going into the relationship is yours, what's his going into the relationship is his. She got married to a man. And then anything acquired after the wedding is shared 50-50. And she said "We're just gonna go with the default one," and I was like "Wait, there's default one now?"
Basu: How fascinating. Yeah.
Carpenter: I think it just shows how commonplace it's become. I think it shows how commonplace, how accepted it is, and how in many cases a lot of states are saying this makes our process simpler.
Basu: How about when kids enter the equation? What does that tend to do to couples and their conversations around finances?
Carpenter: Talking with financial professionals, that's oftentimes when couples start thinking about retirement and start thinking about saving for the future of their family, not just the future of themselves as two people, you know, "What are we gonna do over the next few years of our career?" but instead the future of the family. So they say, Okay, I-- it's really important to me that my kid doesn't have to take out loans for college like I did, so they say, Let's start siphoning some money from our savings to put in a 529 investment account, which is a college education savings account for people-- they can open it for grandchildren, or nieces or nephews. But I think also having kids is when many people start thinking, We have to plan for our estate, we have to plan for what happens if one of us is in an accident, we have to plan for if one of us, you know, passes away, we have to plan for if one of us can no longer work. They're thinking about the security of the overall household, not just the one other person that they got married to.
Basu: Right, right.
Basu: Julia, what's the parting advice that you like to leave people with? I know you speak to so many different kinds of people in this world, whether they're a therapist, whether they are financial advisors, also just couples who are living this and working this through all the time. Are there any good tips or tricks or advice that you would give people?
Carpenter: Yeah. I mean, this is gonna sound so basic but so few people do it, is to just talk about money more frequently. You know, so many people talk about money only when it's tax season, or they talk about money only when they're about to make a big purchase, and I'm not just talking about talking about it with your partner, I'm talking about talking about it with your friends or your family. You know, they are hesitant to be honest about how they're feeling about money. They're hesitant to be honest about their goals, because historically it's such a taboo subject or they're worried about coming off a certain way. But I've just found again and again that the more open I am in talking about it, people reciprocate. And that's where so much of my life lessons have come from related to money, you know, not from talking with a financial advisor or talking with a tax professional but talking with my best friends or talking with my friends' partners, or talking with my, you know, brother's friends, like figuring out how different people manage their money, how different people approach this. It's sort of gives you insight into what you wanna do and then also sort of what your feelings are about that.
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Basu: Yeah. Julia, thank you so much for your time.
Carpenter: Thank you for having me.
Basu, Narrating: You can read Julia Carpenter's reporting for "The Wall Street Journal" on Apple News. We'll include a link for you on our show notes page.
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