Talk Your Book: Money and Marriage

0:28This episode is brought to you by VanEck. technological innovation, clean energy, and national security. That's why countries around the world are racing to build their own supply chains and reduce reliance on China. As this global shift continues, investment in the rare earth ecosystem is growing rapidly from mining to advanced manufacturing. Investors can access this powerful trend through REMX. Visit vanec.com slash REMX compound to learn more. Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching.

1:02All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ritholtz Wealth Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

1:23We are joined today by Doug and Heather Bonaparte to talk about their new book, Money Together, How to Find Fairness in Your Relationship and Become an Unstoppable Financial Team. Guys, welcome to the show. Hey, hey. Michael. Ben. Okay. Ben. So, So I did read the book and I was so delighted and relieved to very immediately find out that it was written by Heather, through Heather's perspective, which was a very wise decision. It's enough of Doug. It's enough. Yeah. No, I'm good. I'm good here, guys. By the way, I'm barely literate, so it's probably bad. It was not possible. Yeah. Would not have actually.

2:12All right. First question. Who is the book for? When you thought about this idea, who did you picture in your head to be the person that was, I'm talking to them? Awesome question. I think this book is for any couple at any age, but I would say that our generation, you know, the millennial generation that's kind of seen some things. We've been through a handful of unprecedented events that have probably caused us to pivot and reevaluate things in our lives a fair number of times in those years where big things are typically happening in our lives, where you're graduating college, starting your adult life in the workforce.

2:53us having children, doing all those, you know, major financial moves. And I think that the thing that we wanted to create was a place for people to see a little bit more of themselves in other people's stories. Because I can speak for myself, and I can't tell you the number of times over the last two decades that I've been like, is it me? Are we the only ones that are dealing with this? because I feel like no one's supposed to be able to do this, right? Yeah. Like the level of how dynamic things are at this particular phase, I think that everyone here on this pod is in like, it's the craziest time.

3:36And therefore, it's the easiest time to lose track of communicating with your partner about things that are super important, like money, like the very thing that, you know, greases the wheel of the things that you can do in your life presently. and the things you need to invest and save for to get to those big goals in the future. And at the same time, people get lost in their marriages all the time. And a lot of that has to do with money, right? That is not a new concept to our generation. That's something that's been happening forever. But I think what's interesting right now, and at least the way that I felt, was that it was always made to feel like, is it me?

4:14Is it him? Is it everything else going on around us? So the thing that I wanted this book to do was to really give people the tools to have those important conversations at home, get to the bottom of the things that might not be working for them or that are working really well and gain perspective on their own lives.

4:36It's a very thoughtful book and it's interesting. We're all middle-aged people. No, we're not. Yeah, we are. Come on. We're middle-aged people. We're seasoned. She gets so mad when I'm saying, we're old now. and just, yeah, we're not old, middle-aged. Michael's response. We're like, we have one foot in each side. But I think back to how little thought my wife and I put into so many of the big decisions we have. When, you know, getting married was obviously a thing, but then buying a house and having kids and all these things, it's like you look back and you go, man, I was so naive going into this.

5:07Like, I didn't understand so much of this. And to your point like that, putting it out there, I think it helped people because my wife and I talked about a lot of stuff. Like, man, this thing we're going through, other people have to be going through this too. and we realize it's not an easy choice. For us, a big one was daycare or my wife continuing to work. And that was a big decision for us. And it was not easy for either of us, but especially for her. And those kinds of things, there's no handbook for this. They don't teach you this stuff when you have to make these decisions. It's really hard.

5:38No, and I think it's really easy to believe you do this one time and you think you have it all figured out. If you were to ask us at 30 years old or I guess 31 was when we bought our house out in the suburbs and like it was the hugest financial decision ever. And we had a little baby and we were like moving out to the suburbs from the city. We're like, we got this all worked out, right? Like it's in the year or two around that we really we really did think we had it, you know, noodled out and, you know, we'll just continue to trend this way forever. And, you know, that's a lie. You know, that's a lie.

6:10You know, as you go through these periods of life, almost any period of life, you know, you're going to have to navigate finances differently. For us, that resulted in Heather's career in law, ultimately being something that allowed me to grow a business, us to grow a business, because she was there the entire time helping me make decisions while being an amazing mom, while being a full-time attorney in the corporate world. And we found out that that wasn't serving us very well. We found ourselves, you know, struggling to have the conversations that needed to be had, and it was very difficult.

6:49And if a financial advisor and a lawyer are struggling in this area, what is everybody else doing? Again, Heather's point, are we alone? And it only underscored just how difficult this can be. It's inherently difficult to have basic money conversations with your partner. I think it's difficult to even understand your own relationship with money before you even get to your partner. The whole first part of the book is about getting to know yourself before you even dive into where your partner came from. And that inspired us to really put this together is like, hey, people need help here. And it's an area of personal finance that's just so important.

7:28As we look at the divorce rates, we look at the number one reason people, you know, have issues in their relationship is around money. It's like 51%. And by the way, it's not solved by how much money you have. Billionaires get divorced at the same rate ordinary people do. It's not just a scarcity problem because money, we're talking about money. It's not just money. You're talking about your identity, your values, your perception of autonomy and independence from one another and from the powers that, you know, control us in this world. So I think like, it's just so dynamic and there's never a one, it's not a one-time answer.

8:08And so we wrote this book and we chose to highlight different seasons and chapters of people's lives in these short stories for a reason, because we want you to kind of see that your life moves in seasons and we only, we know this season, but maybe we don't know the next one. And so embracing that uncertainty and fortifying the relationship and the communication skills between the two of you will help you prepare for whatever comes next. When do you think is the right time for people to have the money conversation? Is it before they maybe get engaged? Is it on the first date where it's like, hey, I spent$3 ,000 on crypto dick butts.

8:50Like, want to have a relationship? And what was it like for you guys? Conversation. Yeah, it was definitely exactly our first convo. We predicted crypto dick butts. No, and no, it's not in the DMs before you even ask the person out on a date. Hey, before we go on this date, you know, are you an American Express? What's your credit score? Give it to me. Exactly. These are the things that will determine if you have a successful relationship. Not at all. I think it is always a good time to talk about these matters. It's how you talk about them. You don't need to, Ben, good point. What's your credit score?

9:25That's obviously not going to fly on your first date. But it comes through the stories. You get to know your partner through the stories that they tell. What was it like growing up in Southern Alabama? You will inherently learn things about what their life at home and financial situation was. Yeah, we didn't grow up with much. I always got secondhand clothing from my brothers and sisters. You just picked up a lot of information about that person's background when it comes to money. Okay, they didn't grow up with a lot of means. Or we had food insecurity. Could be the other way around. Like, yeah, I came from immense privilege.

10:01And you know what? I'm trying to escape that. I'm always under the thumb of my family and my parents. You learned an incredible amount about that person on a first her second interaction without coming off like, hey, how much money do you make? When we, when my, I did this completely the wrong way. When we got engaged, I think I've told Michael this before. I literally gave my wife a PowerPoint presentation on how we were going to invest our money. And she, she asked me, she's like, wait a minute. So we're going to put our money in the stock market. That's really scary. So I said, all right, I'm going to, I'm going to put some stuff together.

10:36I'm going to show it to you. And I put a PowerPoint presentation and I think I just beat her down and she just, all right, fine, fine. You're right. I'm wrong. That was the wrong way to go about it. But yeah, I think to your point, a lot of these things come out more naturally than like sitting down and like you put your ledger on here and I'll put my ledger and then we'll hash it out. But what you don't want are surprises, right? You shouldn't be waiting till your honeymoon. I mean, oh my God, we opened the book with this story that like we'll never forget. Doug and I were on our honeymoon and the Italian, you know, like Positano, like where all the other like American tourists go.

11:10We're like sitting at the one restaurant that they tell us all to go to, right? And I'm like, we're sitting next to this other couple on their honeymoon. And we hear them. I'm like, oh my God, they're fighting about money. And while on their honeymoon, you have debt, you have student loan debt. You pay the groceries. I'll handle the car payment. And we were just like, this is a, this is the hot mess express happening right now. The point is that that is not the time, but at the same time, you don't need to be like busting out your statements on the first date. We're talking about values, about identity, about your culture, because that all says a lot about the way that you handle money and the way that you'll have to handle money together.

11:49By the way, Ben, you said something very interesting, which was like, hey, I tried to sit my wife down and talk about investments through a PowerPoint presentation. And I think this is an avenue, if not just in practice, but in interviewing couples where I see particularly guys go astray every time. I will never forget, we wanted to set up money, regular money meetings to discuss a myriad of things that we needed to go over from the business to our own household finances. And there I would be sitting with a spreadsheet in front of me, like a print. Oh, I went to, I went the distance of printing out the spreadsheet.

12:22You know, there's a net worth table, a cashflow statement. And I could see like, think about like from Heather's perspective, is she excited to see this in front of me to go over the thing that, You know, I want her to be. Now I am. You're speaking from the standpoint of there was a moment in our relationship, and I think this happens to a lot of women, which is why caregiving and contribution is such a big part of the book. I think there is a moment where the division of labor becomes so inequitable in a household, or it can be, where a—I don't like to gender this and make it women versus men, but where oftentimes a woman will find themselves handling so much, so many of the household responsibilities, if not almost all of them, that money feels like the only thing they can check out of.

13:12because it's the only thing they don't mentally feel responsible for. So in a moment like that, when Doug comes marching in and I'm drowning in, by the way, my full-time job as a corporate lawyer, the kids and helping him out with the business at night, he comes walking over with his... This is not on the menu, guys. I don't care. How about I don't care? But if you... It's not only not care, but the point I'm trying to make with Ben's particular situation, which resonated really well, and Heather has a very good point as to why, You know, that's not a way to enter it. But if you simply flip this on its head instead of me maybe sitting down with spreadsheets in front of me and I talked about something we both mutually want.

13:52Right. For example, we knew we wanted to go on vacation over Christmas or the holidays. And I said, hey, can we talk about this vacation? We're sitting down. We both want this thing. Everyone's motivated. And I know I can then have a nice on-ramp into, okay, let's see how we can make that happen. Yeah, let's cancel this, you know, weekend we thought we were going to do there. Because, you know, hey, lo and behold, the spreadsheet is getting involved. The ones and zeros are being discussed. So the approach. It's the framing. It's the framing of the issue around a positive shared goal that can really pique interest when somebody may have been a little disengaged from their finances for some time.

14:34There was multiple parts in the book, and I'm really annoyed that I left it at home because I did take notes to ask you guys, but there was multiple parts where I was laughing. I think one of them was, as you just described, Heather, was Doug something with his socks. And obviously knowing Doug the way that I do, it made me laugh. But also, of course, I saw myself in a lot of the same situations. That's the goal. Yeah, that was when I said that I was ready to leave Doug over a sock on the steps. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. It was the sock that broke the camel's back. Right.

15:02Right, right, right. So what do you, go ahead, Doug. Yeah, no, I was going to say it's really that moment right there highlighted the imbalance and the lack of fairness that clearly started to build and our relationship, how we viewed our careers and our time and the roles that we had in our marriage. We clearly weren't going to get divorced, but it prompted a real hard and meaningful conversation between the two of us that ultimately charted what would then take place in our lives, which gets us here today. Money is the most complicated item to talk about because it's geography. It's where you are in your career.

15:46It's the background that you grew up with. How did your parents talk and think about money and behave with money? I'm sure there is a not great answers to this, but I'm curious with that terrible setup being said, is there like something over the course of all of these different interviews that you saw come up sort of regardless of all of these differences that there was maybe something that you could like nudge or fix? Like we see this mistake so often, but I don't even know. I don't know if mistake is the right word. I just don't know what else to call it. What are some of like the, I guess the bad habits that you see couples dealing with money.

16:23You're nodding your head, so I want to let you know. No, no, no. I'll say a money adjacent one first, and then he can give you a more direct money. I don't like to call them mistakes, but to your point, something that people are getting wrong. Oftentimes when partners are trying to divide labor in their homes, which I believe that money and care and labor are inextricably linked concepts because we're never going to have equity. Sorry, I just poked you. I think you just picked my nose. You're never going to have it. That's love. That's love. That's love. Right. We're never going to have equity out in the world unless we have it at home.

16:59And something that I see often and that I heard often and that we experience often would be Doug saying something like, tell me what to do and I'll do it. Uh-oh, I do that. Uh-oh. And that works two ways. like even when it comes to money and if he wanted to engage me on something, I would say, well, just tell me the one thing I need to know so that I'll know it. You know, and this idea that the other person doesn't need to own what that is, is what's wrong about it. So I've just used labor as an example, but like it doesn't help me for him to drive somebody to one place once. If he didn't put it on the calendar, he didn't prepare them to go there.

17:39He didn't arrange the carpool and him just showing up to like drive her there is not we all have our tails between our legs right now but what's helpful is to conceptualize plan and execute which is a concept from eve radsky and her framework of fair play but this idea of conceptualizing planning and executing owning it right owning something so when it comes to money even like you can one person can own the task of like paying a bill, but like you still really need to know a lot more about your finances. You just like say, just tell me what to do and I'll do it. Like you both have an individual responsibility to step into your understanding of money and be sure that you know what it's going to.

18:24It's a practice. You don't, you don't go to the gym one time and you're in the best shape of your life. If you go to the gym four days a week for six months, you are in the best shape of your life arguably and you know it only gets better and better um and yes owning tasks through and through was something that we saw come up a lot I'll tell you something we saw that come up that came up quite a bit um it was partners not meeting uh the other person where they're at um and this really was with how they like to learn or how they process information um I am a financial professional I do things a certain way with my clients.

19:02And, you know, you would think I would know that not everyone learns the same. And I do. And therefore, you know, it's up to me if I'm the one with that kind of knowledge to find out the ways in which this is going to resonate with Heather. And I'll give you a quick example that we saw. We had one couple really as another financial professional. We had talked about the neurodivergent. Yeah. Beating his head against the wall, tried everything under the sun, rearranged the numbers on the spreadsheet a million different ways. And then finally realized that his wife was a visual learner. She also has ADHD.

19:36has ADHD. There was neurodivergency. You know, we all have things, right? And guess what? They brought out a whiteboard and he started drawing things out in a more visual way than just being limited to the cells of an Excel spreadsheet. And it clicked. It clicked. So I see people really being stubborn in their own ways or thinking about, I'm going to work with my partner in the way that I would do this instead of thinking, again, you flip it on his head. How does Heather, or how does my partner learn best? I will make that, it's not even so much a compromise, but I will shift my thinking or my approach.

20:13And lo and behold, you start connecting and getting the job done. And you have someone who is like, hey, I'm never gonna get it. Oh, I'm starting to get it. And then you get into the practice and you build on that. So I have one couples thing that I feel very strongly about. And we've gotten questions on this in the past from young people who are about to get married. And it's, should we combine our finances or not? and I think 99 % of the time when you don't combine your finances, it works out poorly. I think it just invites fights. I've heard people say, hey, we do it and it's fine, but it's like, you know, you're paying this share and I'm paying this share.

20:48I think combining your finances is something you almost have to do. There's very few outliers that can make that work without combining your finances. There have been studies that show and that some of the professors have worked on those studies. We interviewed for a book that in the first several years of marriage, the outcomes are better for couples who combine their finances because it increases accountability. Transparency. Transparency, communication. It creates a dynamic of a team dynamic versus one where you're kind of saying like, we're going to keep score or we create like a bean counting mentality of you do this and you do that.

21:27You want to create a communal environment in your relationship and not one where you're, you know, keeping score too much or hiding the ball. The practicality of the split finances breaks down pretty quickly when, you know, we did talk to a couple who ultimately it all came to a head. It's a whole chapter called the croissant. You know, the woman lost it over her now husband eating a second croissant while they were on vacation in Tokyo and it had nothing to do with the croissant. They agree that they should split everything 50-50. So whether it's over, you know, a husband wanting that extra appetizer or what are you going to do?

22:11Like split, you know, the stuff for the kids down the middle? Like to what end does these types of, you know, does living in the financial silos, you know, continue to work? And by the way, this does not mean that you should not keep individual accounts. This means that you should operate your family and household finances together as a team. But there certainly are valid reasons why people keep their finances separate, which I always like to point out, like, you know, sometimes in second marriages, sometimes when one partner has been a victim of domestic violence in the past. There's a reason why people decide to keep their finances separate, but by and large, it is better and the outcomes are better when you combine finances.

22:52And also something that's really interesting is you start to see that communality with your finances and partnership and teamwork. That then can bleed into other areas of your life when you start reciprocating around other things like how you divide up the household labor, when it becomes less of a keeping score. It becomes more of a team. And I'm going to I got you. Don't don't worry about that extra croissant. I'm happy to get that. I'll put a bow on it. It even teaches the kids, I think, more valuable lessons around teamwork and sharing. So, you know, they're they're always, you know, if you have kids and they're young, they're watching, they're listening.

23:30And just like you received your scripts from your upbringing and your background and all of that, they're doing they're doing it, too. That's exactly what's happening. So it's multi-generational and dimensional when you're taking these kinds of actions. Where have you seen the best cadence of money talks happening? I happen to think that a quarterly review is a bit odd, but it's odd for my personality. But obviously, it works for some very disciplined type of thinkers. Is it like, hey, we're okay, but we need to talk about the big things like a vacation, college planning, summer camp. And we'll talk about it as they come up.

24:13And again, I'm sure it's personality driven, but what have you seen that you can share with the listeners? Yeah. So for Austin, just like you mentioned, we do this on a quarterly. Our practice is a quarterly check-in and we call them money dates. Heather already mentioned time and place are absolutely critical. Maybe do you think you like to do together? We like to walk. We like cocktails. We like to eat. We'll center it around that. That's what makes it less weird and more organic is the fact that we we choose to do this at a time and a place that it's actually something we enjoy to do and that we probably would have done anyway.

24:47We just happen to make the focus of that around money and our big picture goals. But as far as like the the content itself of these discussions, it does range. And I think it's best to start big picture high. I think it makes sense to start with don't start your meetings with what's wrong. Start with what's right. What what wind did you have? What's serving you well? That's going to lend itself into a much more productive conversation when you ultimately do get into being critical around what needs improvement. So, you know, time and place, how you begin the style. These are all very relevant.