One really needs to stay objective and thinking with one’s head, as much as heart right from the beginning of any partnership. For a sense of financial well being it behooves one to learn one’s partner’s idiosyncratic reactions to earning, sharing, and investing money. Your partner’s relationship to money, even if raised by the same (e.g. siblings in the business) or similar parents, will be different. So one must understand that difference, rather than become a resistant victim of that discrepancy. Marriage is thought of as that developmental step that says, ” We’re grown up.” Yet it is divorce, for many couples, that provides the trigger that requires responsible adult behavior. Separation challenges one to grow: to understand tax law, to plan for asset accumulation and preservation, and to implement a rational budget without which there will be no viable life strategy for the future. Some people avoid creating a budget. So stress heightens when attorneys asks for the financials. In business, some grow too fast or while significant in size never get around to creating a board to oversee one’s mission, its changing challenges, or even the way one rewards talent or downsizes staff. Strategic planning either in the boardroom or bedroom takes time away from doing business or having fun. Rather than take away that precious time now, such planning gets postponed. So will you select the loss of time now or a much bigger and even more painful monetary loss later?
It is a necessary loss to take care to plan responsibly and talk easily and openly about how to manage expenditures before crunch time. Partnership means strategically fashioning a fair, balanced, mutually reciprocal teamwork - a team wherein you respectfully support one another. Certainly it is worth reviewing differing attitudes about earning, spending and budgeting money. Ask each other about conscious expectations, and about role models. Hopefully one will even access some of the heretofore hidden images from the past, stored in their brains. Variations in how one approaches the size of their diamond engagement ring or the wedding reception often or in the décor of your offices reflect the differing messages about money that each received from parents and extended family. Some lessons were intentionally transmitted. Other teachings were by example, including the unintended lessons. For example, was money meant to be spent or saved, used freely for luxuries or just necessities, to be hidden or spent conspicuously? There may have been confusion between the resources of love and money. For money is often the only “nurturing” that some (e.g. workaholic) parents were able to give their spouse or children. Feeling inferior and competitive with friends of higher socioeconomic status may cause conflict with a spouse or business partner taught to be prudent with his resources. How would he feel about her push to buy the marital or company car that represents an announcement of status? These dynamics may need to be teased out and negotiated with the assistance of a coach in addition to your accountant and attorney.
Such unresolved differences could eventually lead to divorce or business dissolution, which taxes one’s heart and pocket book simultaneously. Life is a series of necessary and potential losses and gains. Some occur as a result of nature (illness, death, accident or childbirth) and other due to circumstance (job loss, stock plummets, and bankruptcy, promotions or lottery success). Wouldn’t it be easier to explore these possibilities collaboratively while first falling in love, first choosing your co-executive or first developing your business and marketing plans?

Dr Shel J. Miller is an Executive, Family and Divorce coach. As the Keep-It-Together Expert, his mission is to lift spirits by restoring hope and peace in relationships that are struggling. One way he does so is through Family Event Coaching. He also works as a Child Specialist with Collaborative Attorneys and as a Parent Coordinator post litigation. His web address is www.ShelMiller@rcn.com and he may be reached at 617 731-9174 or by email at ShelMiller@rcn.com
Posted by SM at 12:05 PM 0 comments
money conflict