How to Grow A Healthy Relationship with Money in Your Marriage

A while ago, Selenid and I were on the Medicine, Marriage, and Money podcast with Dr. Kate Mangona. It was an awesome experience! If you have not checked out this podcast, I highly recommend it. She has great guests, is an incredible host, and knows a thing or two about martial interdependence as she is married to another physician in the finance sphere, Victor Mangona. During every episode, there is a focus on medicine, marriage, and yes, money. Our episode focused on our process of growing a healthy relationship with money with your partner.

Anyway, I revisited this episode recently and there were so many great pearls. And I’m not saying that because we were the guests. But Kate’s style as a host helped Selenid and me to reflect and look inwards. As a result, we were able to crystallize even more than we previously had about the role of money in our relationships.

We often think that money pulls relationships apart. But it can also make them stringer when approached and harnessed the right way.

The key is that it is ever evolving. Selenid and I always say that we are never really on the same page, but we are always working to get there and that’s what counts.

A healthy relationship with money is important in your relationship

I’ve said before that there is perhaps nothing that you can do that will have a more beneficial impact on your finances than getting on the same page as your partner.

In this post, Selenid and I even share 7 steps to get started doing this.

healthy relationship money — *The full crew in all our craziness…*

So needless to say, we were super excited to share our thoughts on this and also to learn from Kate.

Breaking down our healthy relationship with money

These are the key components in our minds as Selenid and I break down our path within medicine, our relationship, and our financial lives…

Medicine

Falling in love the first few months of medical school
How Selenid’s shift from medical school to education Masters and PhD helped them grow together
Remembering why I went into medicine and plastic surgery

Marriage

Meeting someone who pushes and challenges the other person
When I took an interest in what she loved
How we act afterwards as each other accountability partners

Money

The evolution away from a fearful relationship with finances
The realization we were spending their paychecks each month
Selenid’s original thoughts about real estate investing
The smartest financial decision we ever made

Mindset

This is a bonus that Kate pulled from our episode! We all love mindset!

Why are you telling yourself that story?
The TWO steps of any big adventure
Embracing your fears

Here are some of our big picture take home points on having a healthy money relationship:

When it comes to you and your spouse, do not hesitate to prioritize each other’s goals and passions! It will only strengthen your marriage.
When your spouse comes to you with what you think is a crazy idea (i.e. investing in RE or running an Airbnb in your own home), do you say “Are you crazy” or do you say “Tell me more”. (We suggest trying out the latter for loving reasons:) Try it out, friends. Get curious. Unless you are wanting severe consequences, go ahead and get curious before crushing dreams and killing the sparks.
Having 1, 5, and 10-year goals helps your marriage and your mindset. MINDSET is SO IMPORTANT. Why are you telling yourself that story?? Remember, this is not a natural question for most of us…so please please work on asking yourself this question daily…about all your thoughts!!! I promise. This will be a game-changer.

Here are the thoughts that we would all love to leave you thinking about after listening to the episode:

What type of relationship do I have with my paycheck?
Do I prioritize my spouse’s interests and passions as much as my own or more?
Do I believe having or wanting money makes me selfish?
Am I doing things I think I cannot do??? If not, when can I start?
What is the smartest financial decision I plan to make this year?

Again, here is the link to our episode for you to take a full listen!

And here are some additional resources to help grow your and your partner’s relationship with each other and money:

What do you think? Do you and your partner have a healthy relationship with money? What can you do to improve it? Do you think it needs to be improved? Let us know in the comments below!