Financial Love Languages: A Couple’s Guide to Building Wealth Together
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For many couples, financial conversations can be a source of tension. Working with clients, I’ve noticed that often this tension stems from a misunderstanding of each other's natural tendencies and values. Sometimes it's difficult to understand and identify our own deep-seeded values - doesn’t everyone just think like I do?!
Understanding each other’s "financial love language" can transform these discussions into opportunities to strengthen your relationship and work toward shared goals. Clarity is kindness!
What Are Financial Love Languages?
The concept of financial love languages adapts the idea of love languages—how people give and receive love—to the world of money. Everyone has a unique relationship with money shaped by their upbringing, experiences, and values. Recognizing your partner’s financial love language can help you navigate differences in spending, saving, investing, and planning habits.
Here are five common financial love languages:
1. The Saver
Core Traits: Loves building a financial safety net and prioritizes long-term security over immediate gratification.
How They Operate: Savers often prefer maintaining a robust emergency fund (at least six months of living expenses) and shy away from unnecessary risks.
How to Support Them: Celebrate their commitment to stability and work together to define clear savings goals, such as retirement planning or purchasing a home.
2. The Spender
Core Traits: Enjoys treating themselves and others, valuing experiences, travel, or material comforts.
How They Operate: Spenders might allocate a specific portion of their budget for indulgences, such as a travel fund or a splurge account.
How to Support Them: Encourage their zest for life by creating a financial plan that accommodates flexible spending while ensuring long-term goals are still prioritized. A bucket strategy can work wonders here!
3. The Investor
Core Traits: Focuses on growing wealth through calculated risks and strategic decisions.
How They Operate: Investors thrive on understanding the details of holdings and might allocate a small portion of their portfolio to speculative opportunities.
How to Support Them: Engage with their enthusiasm by discussing investment strategies and aligning their goals with the broader financial plan. Having a hobby/play account for speculative investments can be a great solution to keep the financial plan on track.
4. The Planner
Core Traits: Thrives on structure, setting budgets, and meticulously tracking financial goals.
How They Operate: Planners love detailed financial plans and tracking progress through spreadsheets or planning software.
How to Support Them: Provide the nitty gritty details of the cashflow plan and retirement projections. Collaborate with your advisor on creating a detailed financial roadmap and schedule regular check-ins to review progress and pivot as needed.
5. The Giver
Core Traits: Finds joy in sharing resources through gifting or charitable contributions.
How They Operate: Givers prioritize supporting loved ones or charitable causes. Working with a great advisor allows for maximum tax-efficiency, making your dollar as generous as possible.
How to Support Them: Work together to incorporate charitable giving into the financial plan, ensuring it aligns with other priorities like savings and investments. Charitable planning is a proactive process that should be woven into the financial plan all year long.
Building a Financial Partnership
Identifying your financial love languages can give you a great starting point to understand deeply held values within one another. Pinpointing your money motivators helps align your approaches and build a stronger financial foundation together.
Having different financial motivations doesn’t mean you can’t create a cohesive plan. With proactive planning and open communication building and sticking to a financial plan can bring a lot of joy to your life!
Money doesn’t have to be a source of stress in your relationship. Instead, it can become a way to deepen your connection and work toward shared dreams. This Valentine’s Day enjoy a heartfelt conversation about your financial future. After all, what’s more romantic than building a life and accomplishing goals together?
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Fiduciary Financial Advisors, LLC is a registered investment adviser and does not give legal or tax advice. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any securities. The information contained herein has been obtained from a third-party source which is believed to be reliable but is subject to correction for error. Investments involve risk and are not guaranteed. Past performance is not a guarantee or representation of future results.
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