Keep Your Finances From Ruining Your Relationship

Fights about money can eat into and destroy your relationship. Chirag Mohanty Samal has tips on how to avert a complete meltdown.

- Chirag Mohanty Samal

The Beatles were right; money can’t buy you love. But going broke together isn’t going to ensure a lifetime of bliss, either. According to research conducted at the Institute for Divorce Financial Analysts in the US, money is the third most common cause of separations around the world. A 2011 study by Jeffrey Dew of Utah State University found that married couples who disagreed about money once a week were twice as likely to divorce as those who differed less than once a month. This is mostly because these arguments have more than just money at stake. Olivia Mellan, author of Money Harmony: Resolving Money Conflicts In Your Life And Relationships, explained in an interview, “Money doesn’t just represent money; it represents love, power, control, self-esteem and freedom.”

If you are in a relationship, compare your situation with the carefree single days when you only had to spend on yourself. Swapping movie tickets for monthly groceries, holidays or fancy gadgets for retirement funds—it was all simple because you were the only approver. So it’s tough to make the transition into a life where someone else is monitoring your expenditure. Clinical psychologist Pulkit Sharma says, “When it comes to money, we always think our perspective is the best. We refuse to accept the fact that our partner’s opinion can be a better one. This often leads to fights.” Arguments take a serious turn if one of the spouses is a spender and the other a saver. The one who believes in living for the moment will not see sense in the struggle involved in saving for a better future.