Hi, This is Wayne Brown from Life Back On Track. Welcome to the latest episode.

Relationships can be challenging, and there can be many things that can pull you off course and contribute to things that may pull you apart, and people give many reasons for divorce. But every time they do surveys, there is one thing that seems to come out near the top of the list a lot more than anything else, and that is money.

Now, why would money be the cause of a relationship breakdown? It's not the money itself, per se, because money has no meaning other than the meaning you give it. And that is where the problem lies. We each have a different meaning, a different emotion, a different need attributed to money that is different to that of our partners.

Now, this is one that I've spoken about before, and I don't talk about it massively because I'm not a finance person or anything like that. However, I do have understandings of things, and many years ago, when I was with my last partner, we went and did a money workshop, because we were contemplating doing investing and we were trying to work out which way to go. When we heard about this workshop on money and we thought we'd give it a go, and it wasn't about how to make money or how to invest or anything like that, it was understanding your relationship with money.

So we went along to this workshop and they talk about mindset and various things like this. Then they came to this part they were talking about the four attitudes toward money. As the chap on the stage was explaining these four types, he then, at the end of the explanations, asked everyone to stand in the corner of the room that they felt they fitted into according to the money type. So my partner and I separated off and we went to where we felt our money type was.

Now the four money types were, and two of them are fairly obvious. One was the saver, and one was the spender. Now these aren't a straight out and out definition because there is different variations on a spectrum within that definition. So someone who's a saver, you could get someone who's sensible with their money, they're thrifty. If they can save money, they will. If they get like a coupon, they'll use it. So there are people that are sensible savers there, people that like to make sure they've got money in their account. And then the opposite end of that spectrum is the person that doesn't like spending money at all. They're very fearful. They're the sort of person that if you go out to dinner with them and you say, "Well, let's just split the bill evenly" they go, "But I didn't have dessert, so I should pay $8 less" or whatever.

So that's that sort of person, and that's the spender and then there's the spender, who is the opposite. There's people that are comfortable spending money and they'll enjoy spending their money. And then there's people that spend so much money that they never have any, so they basically spend it as soon as they've got it. And the other two are, the monk. That's the person who believes you don't need money to be happy. Yeah, money is a good thing, in-as-much as it gives you options and choices and that sort of thing. So the people that believe you don't need money to be happy, fall into the category of Monk.

Then you have the denier. The denier is the person who keeps racking up more and more debt, and they are a financial train wreck just waiting to happen. But they keep saying "no, it'll be all right. I'll pay it off, I'll pay it off". A very good example would be a chap I worked with years ago. He would have been in his fifties, and this was 15 years ago, so if you allow for inflation, it's probably two or three times the amount. And one day he mentioned to me the fact that he had credit card debt of $70,000. So I put that into today's money or allowing for 15 years of inflation. You'd be looking at well over double that amount, so he had probably close to $200,000 worth of debt. And that is insane because it's 18% or whatever it is in interest. He had been putting nearly all of his wage into just paying it off. So that would be the denier.

Anyway, back to my story, my ex partner and myself, she went and stood in the saver section, and I stood in the spender section because at the time I was spending, not full on, but, you know, I enjoyed spending my money and knowing that money is a major cause of divorces and relationship breakup, I had the realisation that this was something that would contribute to the end of our relationship if I didn't do something about it. So I started working on it and we ended up breaking up a few years later, to do with other things than money.

By the time I met my wife, I was on path to being a sensible spender. So I was a little more sensible. So and again, my wife is a saver, so we work in well together. I get her to loosen up, loosen up a little bit with some things, and she gets me to be sensible more. The reason relationships break up are due to money. And that is like I said, the differing opinions. So as I just mentioned with my ex partner, she was a saver. I was spender. If I didn't have that realisation and work on that, that relationship would have struggled financially. We would have had problems.

So if you want a successful relationship, and you don't want to have yet another thing contributing to a challenge. Think about what money type you are. Are you a saver, a spender, a monk or a denier? And then think about if that's going to cause problems with your relationship and start working on your relationship with money. If you're a spender, find out why you feel the need to spend so much. If you're a saver and you're on the tight-ass end of it and you know you like saving every cent you've got, ask yourself why? Where does that come from? What is the driver behind that?

Find a healthy balance, and the key to a money relationship with your partner is you have your money type. Your partner has their money type, and you have your couples money type. So when you sit together to talk about finances and plan things out, you come from your couples mindset. So the fact that money contributes to divorces and relationship breakdowns is nothing to do with money itself. People think or choose not to think, because they just blame the money directly rather than actually working on it. and getting clarity so that they can have a better relationship. They blame it on the money.

This obviously doesn't help the situation because that is what they focus on rather than their contributions. They can't take any responsibility or learn from it. So if you want a healthy relationship with your partner, have a healthy relationship with money. So it doesn't matter which of the four you sit in as long as it's a healthy form of that type, and it can actually work in your favour. If you have a partner who's in one type, you can bring them to a healthy balance. So, for example, if your partner is a spender, they like spending money. Find out why they like spending it, get them to spend it on things where they can get that same sort of result, but without spending the money, then you've got a chance of saving it and vice versa.

With the spender, find out why they like to save every cent and find ways for them to have fun while spending a little bit of money, and then they'll realise the benefits. Yeah, so if you want that healthy, high quality relationship, look at all aspects of it, and money is one of those taboo subjects. We get told. You can't ask people how much they earn and you can't ask this about money and you can't ask that, and this is ridiculous because it is another part of a relationship.

It is something that needs to be broached. I've met couples where they have separate bank accounts. They don't have joint bank accounts. They talk about loaning to each other. You know, like "you borrowed $10 off me the other day and you know, you need to pay that back". And with my wife and myself, we have joint bank accounts. Obviously, we also have our own private bank accounts. And if we're going out for one of our date nights, we still say, "Are you paying or am I paying?" Even though it's coming out of our joint bank account? So that's always amusing. I think I always get tickled by that one.

So if you want that high quality relationship, work on your money relationship, if you had a relationship in the past that struggled, look at it and see if the attitude towards money contributed to it. If so, how can you tweak it so that you can get a better result this time anyway? That's it for this one.

I wanted to defend poor money because obviously money can't speak up for itself. But money didn't break up a relationship. Was it your attitude towards it or their attitude towards it that contributed to that break up? So let's hear it for money. Money is good. Money gives you choices. Money allows you to do things to help people. You can't help anyone if you're broke, so have a good relationship with money. Then you can have a good relationship with your partner and yourself, and you can have a good life.

So on that I want to finish. Here's to a good life.

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You can also listen to my radio show “All About Relationships” which has its own podcast on your favourite platform by clicking HERE 

Thanks for listening.