Ask us anything: How do you talk to your partner about money?

0:02Damo, what are you doing? well while we're waiting for our next podcast episode i'm sat here reading this magazine that's on the table about wallpaper very very quaint very old school you know what i never realized how much i missed those little rip-off sniffy perfume things that are in the middle but yeah i think um magazines are making a comeback mate in a world where everything feels digital and i'm just dying to put down a screen all of the time i quite enjoy sitting down with a magazine and having a read of it it's almost like you know buying a vinyl record yeah feels more real more tangible the music's more authentic it's richer yeah that's right which kind of leads us into today's sponsor one of the best finance publications in the uk is money week they're in print and online so you can get that nice magazine feeling in your hands money week sift and summarize the biggest stories in finance and then add their own journalism on top it means no more endless scrolling if you want to give money week a try you can get six issues in print and on the app absolutely free by visiting moneyweek.com forward slash money.

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1:17Welcome to our mini episodes where we answer your biggest questions about money. Guys, keep them coming. We love your questions. There's some good content right there. Great content. What do we have today? So the next one is from Sian. She got in touch and asked, how do you do finances with your partner, especially if one of you earns a lot more than the other? A lot of arguing. No, I mean, obviously, last year I was very good for the crypto market. So I was making a lot more than my partner. Then this year the market crashed and now she's making more than me. But I recently changed jobs. We'll get into that later.

1:52So now I'm making more than her. But for us, it's since we had a kid, she started worrying. We started worrying more about, I don't worry about anything, but she started worrying more about finances. So she's like, you need to leave crypto. It's not stable. We have a kid now. We need to invest. So we're setting up his ISA, which you're going to help us with. And we're probably going to open a joint bank account for just for like savings and investments so that she has a bit more transparency with what I'm putting our money into. Because obviously I was previously just putting it all into crypto.

2:22So now obviously she's been watching the podcast. She loves it. And yeah, she wants us to diversify. You're treading carefully around this. I'm treading very carefully. Because once this goes live, I might be sleeping on the street. So yeah. I might tell her about that other bank account. You got that Swiss bank account. With all the gold bullion safe I've got. So yeah, right now we're looking at doing joint investments, obviously for a little baby. And yeah, I think transparency and talking about it, We didn't really used to talk about it before. I'd be like, trust me, don't worry. It's all in crypto, we're going to be rich.

2:55But now since we've been on the podcast, we're being a bit more strategic and looking more long-term, not just for us, because we're trying to buy a house as well, hopefully next year. So right now we're saving towards the house and also saving towards the little one. The one thing that's obviously saved jointly for a child because the child is one. From a perspective of investing together, I would always say, invest in your own ISA and pension just because if the relationship ever broke down, it's quite messy and you can't take money out of a pension, obviously, but taking money out of an IC, you then lose the tax-free benefit.

3:32You've both got separate allowances, use them. You can both do the exact same thing in your own accounts, but it just gives you a little bit of ownership and it means that both parties are covered and that's cleaner. Yeah, so I earn more than my partner now. That wasn't the case in the past. She earn more than me. but for me like money's important topic obviously so it's kind of like a non-negotiable in terms of discussion in the house because I get pretty stressed out if I think that she's not doing well financially or struggling so I set those boundaries pretty early on in terms of all that expectation of like I need to kind of know what's going on a bit I've had bad relationships in the past that were centered around one person being really reckless with money and me being the way I am and that just like ruined my life so I didn't I didn't I didn't I wouldn't do that again my current partner though she doesn't she doesn't like talking about money she's not a money person so she can often like her business is in the beauty industry and during lockdown they closed off her industry but they gave her no support so she just had no money so for a while she was just struggling on and then it and then it was kind of like well how are you paying for things she's like I've got no money and it's like well why didn't you tell me so I had to then step in and pay for everything in the house for that 12 month period you know she back up and earning now and stuff but those kind of conversations I can get kind of like annoyed if they'd like sprung on me at the last minute it's like oh I've been but she's from a perspective of I was trying to figure it out I was trying to battle through it so now it's it's a lot clearer of if you're struggling come to me and we can sort it out and in the house really we have a joint account and we both pay money into that for the household yeah like all the bills all the all of the costs for the house are in that account and we both put money in and then what you have is your own if you want i encourage her to invest and save as well she runs a business so as well so there's always investment within the business but it's it's not a joint household mine it is it is separate in ways yeah i mean i think i'm a bit like your partner um i've never talked about money with any of my past relationships this is the first time now, but that's only because I just had a kid that we're talking about finances.

5:47I think a lot of people, I think it's a bit like debt. A lot of people don't want to, if you're not doing well, you don't want to talk about it. And even if you are, I think it's quite a personal thing. So I've always kind of just never talked about it. I'm like, this is my money. You do what you want. You do your money and everyone's happy. How'd you tackle the bills in the house? So we just, we like divvied them up. So like I do like sky, sky and like wifi because I was like, we need all the sports channels so I can watch all my basketballs. So I do all the sky, Wi-Fi. She does like heating and electricity and then we just split the - Oh, she got the bad ones.

6:19Yeah. No, we got a big sky bill. It's like a hundred and something a month. Yeah. Got all the channels. But now we're like, for the first time we're talking about money because we've got a baby and like future investments. But it's not an easy topic because you might have different ideas, different risk appetites. She's only ever invested in property and I've really mainly done crypto and a little bit in the stock market. So we're trying to come to like a happy medium. We don't have any joint accounts like you guys, but we're thinking about opening one. That's just easy then because it's like you've got to pay X amount a month on this day and then it all goes out and then it's nice and clean.

6:59We have everything like the Netflix, the food shopping in there. So whenever one of us goes food shopping, we pick up the card and spend on that. You know, we know that there's like 400 quid a month for food or whatever in there. So, you know, it all goes into that. And then that means it's, you fulfilled your responsibilities to the home in that sense. It is harder, especially like the second part of the question where one of you earns more than the other. Obviously the crypto market crashed this year. So for a while she was earning more than me. And I think that's the first time in my life my partner was earning more than me.

7:29So it was a bit, it's like a power shift a little bit. Like it's a bit weird. Only if you allow it to be that. You don't know, you don't allow it to be, but it's just a bit weird. Like it's just, yeah. I mean, yeah, it doesn't really bother me, but it was just a bit weird for a bit. Yeah, she used to earn loads of money back in the day and it never bothered me. I know, I'm happy to be a kept man. Stay at home dad. No, I never really asked for that. I just wanted her to make sure that, I mean, I benefited with nice food and things in the house, but I never wanted her to like, you know, give me money.

7:56I want my own money. I want to earn it myself. That's part of like my own identity. But yeah, it doesn't bother me if she earns more than me and vice versa. So do you still put in 50-50 into the joint account or do you put in a bit more? We used to until a couple of months ago. Now I put in a bit more. Is it proportional? No. Probably not, no. If it was proportional, I'd pay most of it. I've always been of the view of when it comes to housing costs, it's a 50-50 burden because we live in this house together. And just because when she earned more, I didn't ask her to pay more into the house. But now I kind of see from the perspective of, okay, I can afford to put a bit more up.

8:37But you know, when you're saying I will pay an extra 500 pound a month in that 6 ,000 pound net. So I've got to bring in an extra 10k to make that. That's a big commitment financially. So I was aware of that and it probably took me a little bit of time to come round to it. I was probably a bit of a miser because I was just kind of like, well, we both live in the house. It's 50, 50, you know, and then. I'm like literally the opposite of you. I'm like when I'm now I'm making more, I'm like, oh, she's like, oh, we need to get nappies. and I'll just come back with like huge boxes of nappies, like loads of them and like, we need wet wipes.

9:10So I just get like a room full of wet wipes. So I like to, or like, we need a new rug. I just, I love buying like, like spur of the thing moments where she's like, oh, I need to, we need some groceries. I'm like, I got it. So I like to like pay for big. Well, I paid for all our holidays this year. So we went on, we've been on a couple of holidays to pay for those, you know, so I do those bits. But with the house, it was kind of just like, it's down the middle. We both agreed to live in this house. We both knew what the costs were coming in. We should split that. you know that's how i've always approached it personally because i just think it removes like a this is my house not yours or you know if you're not 50 50 on the household bills i think sometimes it can be a bit like i own this house yeah and when it comes to mortgages and if you split up it can get real nasty then where the person's like well actually i paid a third more than you over the lifetime so i'm going to get more and then i think i'm all about the clean the cleanness if it goes wrong, but I do get that I earn a fair bit more than her now.

10:06So I pay more and I'm fine with that. And I do think it's the right thing to do to support her because you're a team, aren't you? And you're stronger as a team. And one day, maybe she's going to earn more than me. But it's hard to have those conversations because she doesn't like talking about them. Over WhatsApp is probably better. Oh, yeah. I was going to say, do you like sit down in the living room and have, I couldn't think of anything more daunting than sitting down like once a week and having like, let's get all the finances out and like investments and bills. I'm there with like the fact, like the time writer.

10:35You've got an Excel spreadsheet and your whiteboard and everything. Yeah, no, I'm just like, what do we need to pay? All right, I got it. If you ever need to have a difficult conversation with a child, say, like you need to ask them about something that's happened at school or whatever, you know, like, but you don't want to look them in the eye because it's a bit intimidating. You sit them in the back of the car and you drive and they'll tell you because they're in the back. They feel more comfortable to talk because you're not kind of looking them in the eye. And I guess the WhatsApp conversation is a bit like that.

10:59if you've got a partner that doesn't like talking about money maybe say well have a chat over WhatsApp about it yeah I think that's a good idea good advice WhatsApp or or sit them in the back of the car get the missus in the back of the car so where are we going just driving around the block get in the boots we need to talk

11:20next question is from J.A. Hunter he asks can I just keep balance transferring my interest free credit cards forever and ever and ever. It's that little loophole there. You can until you can't is the answer to that. And I think, you know, you can rely on rolling it over but then you might just get refused and then you're scuppered. So, you know, I used to see this all the time that people would, when I worked in the debt solutions industry, they would be executives with a lot of credit card debt, 100 grand of credit card debt, say. And they would just be rolling it on interest free and then they get declined and within two months they're screwed because the interest payments are massive, 27 % or whatever a year on 100 grand, like that's 27K a year in interest.

12:07So you've suddenly got an extra two grand a month to find just in interest. So it's a great strategy for reducing the amount of interest that you've got to pay, but your aim should be to pay off the debt as you're going. What I would say is move debt onto interest-free as much as you can, pay off any debt that's still got an interest rate applied to it. and then continue to roll. But don't rely on the fact that you can just keep shifting this balance forever because they will at some point go, no, you can't. But it doesn't affect your credit rating, right? No, balance transfer. Well, to do a balance transfer, you typically have to open a new card.

12:43And at the point you apply for credit, then you'll get a mark on your credit rating that says you've applied for credit. And some lenders might then go, I'm not going to lend to that person within six to 12 months because they've just taken out new debt. And if they're applying for a load of debt, then we think, well, no. But the way to see it is, if you're continually balanced transfer and you're also paying a 2 % to 3 % fee typically, so it's not free. You are paying a fee over time. And at some point, the credit card company is going to want their money back and they might just go, yeah, no, we're not going to do this balance transfer.

13:17Maybe like a short-term measure. If you're about to enter into high interest, it's amazing to rotate that balance onto a balance transfer. I do it, you know, when I do my studio or something, I might, or I have a large purchase. You can buy it on a card that gives you points and then balance transfer that out to an interest-free and pay that off. So, you know, it's like a free loan in that sense, but I've got the cash behind me to cover it. If you're struggling with that, it's great to move stuff off to give you some time to pay off the other high interest stuff. Bit of breathing room. Yeah, but you can't then think, well, I found the glitch here.

13:50I'm just going to keep rolling it forever. Running through the matrix. Yeah, because I can guarantee that at some point, the answer will be no and then you'll be screwed. J.A. Hunter.

14:03What do you want to ask us or future guests? Email us at makingmoneyatkindling.media or just slide into the DMs. This isn't advice. Whilst we discuss individual examples, we can't give you personal financial advice. What we can do is offer a perspective and discuss the issues. I'm Damo. I'm T. And we'll be back next week answering some more of your questions.