Talking to Your Spouse About Money – 4 Money Languages

Are you familiar with the book The Five Love Languages? The author, Gary Chapman, suggests that we each speak our own love language. When we learn what our language is and understand our partner’s (or children, parents, friends) language, we are able to build healthier and stronger relationships.

My husband P and I were discussing our finances recently and it hit me. Talking to your spouse about money has a learning curve. We speak completely different money languages. I started to think about how my parents, cousins, and friends spoke about money and finances. It was interesting to me that we all have our own way of thinking about money! So, just for fun, I present to you: The Four Money Languages.

1. Out of Sight, Out of Mind
I met many people who spoke this language in my college years. It was the “enjoy now, worry later” kind of mindset. They might even ignore bills, believing they will just go away.

One of my old college roommates spoke this language, and it still haunts her today. We no longer keep in touch, but I get monthly phone calls from debt collectors asking for her.

2. CFO
This person likes to be in control of the finances. They are completely comfortable with making the financial decisions and are on top of the budgeting, saving, investing, and financial planning.

I play this role in our family and I LOVE it. It’s important for me to have a clear, big picture of our financial standing. Fortunately, my husband is more than happy to pass this position over to me.

3. Need to Know Basis
This person only wants to be notified when something absolutely requires his/her attention. They might have a financial professional taking care of their accounts and is mostly hands-off with their finances.

P speaks this money language. While I get excited about numbers and spreadsheets, P gets overwhelmed and stressed out. We learned this the hard way. Now I only tell him things about our finances that he needs to know.

4. Teamwork
Do you know couples who sit down each month to go over their financials together? Honestly, I have only read of them via the blogging world.

No matter what money language you speak, I think we could all benefit from speaking Teamwork as a second language. P and I function very differently when it comes to money and finances, but I do think that we work as a team. We may not feel the same way about budgets and spreadsheets, but we have a common goal — financial freedom.

These are the money languages that I’ve seen in my life. As you can see, my husband and I fall into multiple “language” categories. You and your partner probably do, too! And that is okay! The important thing is to familiarize ourselves with each person’s personality and money language. Maybe if we can identify ourselves with a language and understand our partners’, money and finance won’t be as difficult to discuss within our relationships.

Linking up with Living Well Spending Less.