FI/RE and Relationship

By Mrs. Xennial

With my head in a better place, I’ve been participating more “fun” things for myself lately. I’m following my own goals and got an online art class and some art supplies that are on lower end of what people could pay (the recommended supplies were not FI friendly IMO), and definitely more chats on All FIRE Connect! lately. One time we had a chat amongst the introverts (yes, we have a FIRE for Introverts talk from time to time), and we came up with a new theme for a monthly talk: Difficult Conversations about FIRE. The first one we did under that theme was FI/RE and Relationships.

Now, if you think having money conversation is hard between family members and friends, I don’t even know how people would start when you’re still in a dating phase, or in a relationship where the topic was never brought up. I’m glad I’m not in the dating game because knowing what I know now (while still not an expert), I wouldn’t feel confident to be with someone who has a total 180-degree opposite view on money. But then when is a good time to bring it up? Do it on the first date and interrogate the $hit outta the other person just to get it over with? Or wait til it’s serious enough then bringing the subject up? What if you genuinely love the person, just not his/her/their idea about money?

All that is to say that it is not easy, period. One of the participants of the talk was a therapist who mainly work with couples, and said that money, while not always the first, is almost always in the top 3 of what couples argue about. One shared his experiences of dating someone who thought the pursuit of FIRE was “just a phase” that he’d eventually “grow out of,” and this was after three years in a serious relationship, too. Or another one of us really liked his girlfriend, but her spending habit and student loan debt were all very shocking to him even though they clicked in almost every other way. While I don’t think it is necessary a deal breaker (or is it?), it’s hard to find that balance when money is something we care about, especially if you are planning to, or already committed to spend the rest of your lives together.

No, the purpose wasn’t to share the crap out of you single people, but to give you some ideas of what you should prepare for if you are a fellow FI-er in the dating world (and those in a relationship, too). Here are some things over the years that Mr. Xennial and I did which makes us on a better ground with money conversations. Again, not a certified financial planner; just simply sharing what worked for us:

1. Sharing Information

Mr. Xennial started to share his bank account for me to view early in our marriage, and added my name to his account as well in the attempt that in times I need extra for us (I was not making good money as a teacher back then), I could use the debit card I have to do so. I didn’t ask him to, nor had I known better in the FI realm yet. At the time, our finance was pretty much separated in general. We discussed what bill each of us would pay, and that was that. No elaboration was done in this department for a long time. And even though Mr. Xennial offered the extra, I tried my hardest not to; was that a frugal mindset? Maybe. I think that was more of my ego, being the one making less money, not wanting to be the one relying on her partner for the expenses.

Then, since I’d look at the bank account from the app, I started to notice his spending pattern, too. Again, this is before I even started budgeting and learning about FI! And I noticed a few things that occurred every month that I didn’t understand what that was for, which leads to the next thing…

2. Honest Conversations

By the time I noticed some things that were foreign to me, I asked. I was pretty lucky because I never felt I needed to hide anything from Mr. Xennial, and we have hard conversations from time to time (although not always about money). Then I found out that pretty much every other week before the next paycheck hit, there was this small amount, usually $100 to $200 that were pulled from the bank with less in the balance. Then he told me that he was cash advance, which was fairly hefty with the APR. I then asked what that was for, then we learned that not only were we paycheck-to-paycheck, we were basically borrowing money from the bank almost all the time.

That’s when I started a hard but honest conversation on child support money for his ex wife because he’s always paid more than what the law requires him to just to provide support for his son since he lives with the ex more than he spent time with us. I remembered saying “if we were already adding more to our debt each month, why don’t we just let the court decide exactly how much you should be paying for child support, and give her no more than what we can afford to?” Luckily, the system in Hawaii has a calculator that gave us a number (almost half of what he used to give her), and also luckily, she wasn’t the defensive, money-sucking type of ex either. Starting around that time, while we were still more or less living paycheck to paycheck, at least we weren’t pulling money we didn’t have from the bank on a regular basis anymore.

3. Knowing each other’s capacity/bandwidth

We continue to have honest conversations when I started to look into the FI community (starting with the How to Money Podcast, which they’ve had some episodes where their wives were interviewed, too), and I’d share a little bit from time to time. I then quickly realized that Mr. Xennial, while he’s interested in the end goals, isn’t really nerdy enough to find everything there is about the FI journey interesting. Yet, he’s also not defensive enough to never want to hear anything about it, and have the “just tell me what to do and I’ll do it” mindset. (Lucky me.) I started to test on how much information he could intake at once, and do more of smaller bits of information at a time. Even with just those, he is now contributing to his Roth IRA, and working on pulling his TSA to another IRA account, too. The company he’s working for is also going to implement on the IRA match pretty soon, so that is exciting.

In the time of me oversharing (or trying not to), I continue to learn as much as my bandwidth allows me to; then I’d share with Mr. Xennial a little bit at a time. Happy to report that he now does not have any more significant credit card debt, and is ahead in paying things off that are still under his list of bills to pay (which includes his baby, aka his Harley, and the solar panel that we installed for the current residence). He has once said that even though he’s not ready to take on too much information about FI, the fact that he’s ahead of his bills and have some savings around has already amazed him since he’s never had in this kind of financial stability earlier in his life.

All in all, these are the three main things that worked for us in times of having money conversation. Similar to what I’ve heard in FI community, these three things can generally provide a good start if you’d want to have this conversation with your partner as well. Are they easy? Not always. And I think sometimes people still keep a handful of secrets even in a serious relationship, too, and that one of the secrets is usually about the exact amount of debt you have. I get it; talking about debt feels like prying on one’s shame because we are “getting financially naked” in a sense, and that is NOT comfortable even if you’re not literally getting naked in public. But I feel like just like most honest conversations, while it can be uncomfortable, it is necessary for the growth and mutual understanding of each other. For me, honesty is the foundation of our relationship, and something I refuse to compromise. And I look forward to continuing this money conversation as I learn more, so Mr. Xennial can also follow suit and be “Passively FI Savvy” in his own ways.

What about you? If you are in the relationship, what are your tips about having money talk? What works for you? I’d love to hear from the fellow FI-ers out there. 🙂