I’m not a couples therapist, but I am one of many financial advisors who’ve heard, “This has been better for us than couples counseling,” after a productive financial advisory meeting. With more than half of marriages ending in divorce, and with disagreements over money listed as the leading cause, it’s no wonder that if you can better manage your money as a couple you’ll vastly improve the probability of remaining one. The foundation of couples money management, then, is a healthy, open, open-minded and ongoing dialog.
I’m a little slow on the uptake, so I just recently learned the term “gaslighting,” only to realize that I’ve been observing an unintentional form of it for years…and may have even practiced it at times, to my dismay. To be clear, actual gaslighting, according to Psychology Today, is a “tactic in which a person or entity, in order to gain more power, makes a victim question their reality.” The name is derived from a 1940s movie called “Gaslight” in which a husband manipulates a wife into thinking she’s insane.
So while I haven’t witnessed anything that I think rises to the level of premeditated psychological abuse, the topic of money is fertile soil for a lesser version of gaslighting that is unhelpful at best and that has taken down many marriages. Here’s how I’ve seen it present—and how to avoid it:
“I’m a numbers guy.”
I’m on a nonprofit committee with another well-intentioned member who is fond of reminding the group, “Hey, I’m a numbers guy,” when it seems it might lend an extra helping of credibility to his opinion. Do you think his spouse has ever heard that phrase in justification of a financial decision?
However seemingly minor an infraction, this is a lighter form of financial gaslighting designed to reinforce the opinion of one and weaken that of another. “I do this stuff all day!” and “But this is my thing,” or “C’mon, you know you’re not great with numbers,” are all financial gaslighting misdemeanors that can become threads of mistrust undermining an otherwise effective partnership.
A tool often used to perpetrate financial gaslighting is the personal spreadsheet. Like statistics, spreadsheets with their endless columns and rows can be made to substantiate or refute any opinion. I mean, who can argue with a spreadsheet and its objective veracity?
Having now sufficiently beat up on my buddy, who is, objectively, both a guy and a numbers guy, allow me to refute a common stereotype.
Who is the financial spouse?
It’s not always the guy. Yes, this is a stereotype rooted in a historically paternalistic approach to household finances to be sure, but what I have found in my advisory experience is that while it’s not always a dude, there is most often a particular spouse or partner to whom the responsibility for the household’s money management tends to fall. Let’s call them “the financial spouse.”
As financial advisors, we typically spot the financial spouse within mere minutes of interacting with a couple because it’s normally the person who takes the lead in the discussion. Please note that I’m not saying this is always a thing, that’s it’s a necessarily bad thing, or that if you’re the financial spouse in your household you are hereby accused and guilty of financial gaslighting. But I do invite you to ask these questions:
Who is the financial spouse in your relationship? And if it’s not so clear, how do you and your beloved make financial decisions?
If you are the financial spouse, you have a responsibility first and foremost not to shield your partner from financial realities or decision-making. I have a good friend who *was* the financial spouse in his household until the day he shared with his wife, for the first time, that his visibly successful foray into a home-flipping side gig had quickly turned unsuccessful, resulting in a need for him—and her—to claim personal bankruptcy for their family to stay afloat.
To this day, he’d tell you that the conversation he had with his wife hurt even more than the initial realization of their financial failure. I’m pleased to say that they’ve rebuilt their net worth statement—and their marriage—as a powerful team.
Your second responsibility as a financial spouse is to validate and honor the opinions of your partner. Even if you’re a bona fide numbers person and your spouse isn’t, your opinion is not worth more. It’s not good enough for your partner to merely be “in the know”; they must be involved in all financial decisions. And this is true whether you manage household finances jointly or separately, because in most cases one spouse’s financial decision will affect the other.
This is one of the best reasons to work with a financial advisor, to enlist someone to act as a third-party guide through life’s many financial decisions. And this leads us to a warning for financial advisors.
A warning to financial advisors
We must recognize financial gaslighting in any form and then, without judgement, temper the influence of the financial spouse and elevate that of the non-financial spouse. Financial life planning legend George Kinder offers us a simple method for doing so. To paraphrase:
- As much as humanly possible (and some advisors require it), work with both partners present.
- Identify the financial spouse. (And if your spidey sense isn’t tingling, just ask them.)
- Always invite the non-financial spouse to speak first.
- When necessary, mute the financial spouse. (Respectfully and gently, of course.)
By elevating the non-financial spouse, you’ll not only do better financial planning, you will be providing a template for healthier financial discourse outside of your office, especially as the non-financial spouse gains confidence in their ability to contribute thanks to your validation. Oh, and you might just save a marriage.
Lastly, advisors, it is we who are most likely to fall prey to financial gaslighting. After all, we are (hopefully) esteemed, educated, credentialed, experienced professionals whose good opinion in these matters should hold much weight. It is undoubtedly easier, therefore, for both us and our spouses to default to a hierarchical approach to financial planning. As a result, we must exhibit all of these best practices in the home.
This is also why so many great financial advisors have their own financial advisors—because, as always, personal finance is more personal than it is finance.