I am very excited to be participating in Women’s Money Week 2012. I am breaking from my usual posting schedule to post everyday this week in support of this project. Today’s post is about Relationships and Money. Click here for more posts on this topic.

 

If you are new here thanks to Women’s Money Week, welcome! So glad to see you. If you have any questions about what I’m talking about, ask. I’m always happy to answer.

 

Just the two of us: Money has never really been a big deal between C and I. It was one of those parts of the relationship that came easy to us. Maybe it’s because my student loans first came due while we were living together, or because, in those early years of living together, we both suffered bouts of unemployment. I don’t really know, but we never sat down and had a money talk, and yet we’ve always been able to talk about money.

We combined our finances at least a year before we were even engaged. We closed on our first house almost two months before the wedding. It seems like financially, we have always known where the other stood.

As a married couple, our view on finances remains in sync. We both know we would not be where we are if we hadn’t had family and friends help us out, so we have made loans and given gifts of cash to family members. We have let friends stay with us rent free. We don’t do it without checking in with the other first, but it has never been an issue between us. (Don’t worry, we are not perfect. We have plenty of relationship issues. Money just doesn’t happen to be one of them.)

 

And MIL makes three: That isn’t to say that money has never caused a problem in our relationships, though. As regular readers know, we took over managing my mother-in-law’s finances back in late 2008. Managing someone else’s money adds a layer of complication to most other relationships.

First, there is the complication with the person themselves. It is the MIL’s money, and yet, we gave her an allowance and did not allow her access to it. That’s not comfortable.

Second, there is the complication of other family members. MIL would sometimes call her sister to ask her to buy her something because we told her “No”. Often that would then mean a conversation between us and C’s Aunt explaining why we had made that decision and what we were doing. That then added another layer of complication between the sisters.

And third, there is then an additional legal relationship you have to be aware of. We are specifically not on any of the MIL’s accounts. If we were, that money would be considered ours as much as hers, and legally that would mean we could do anything with it. That would also open us up to lawsuits from the family or state if it appeared we were mismanaging her money or using it for us instead of her. Having a DPOA gave us the legal responsibility of managing her money in the way that was best for her. Even though we can access all of her accounts as if they were our own, we know we need to be able to justify every expense. It creates a relationship of a fiscal guardian.

It also makes things more complicated now that the MIL has become truly mentally incompetent, and we are moving her to hospice level care. If someone else were in charge of her finances, they could gift us some of her assets, to keep things out of probate. But since we are the financial DPOA’s, we can not gift ourselves any of her assets and remain legally above board.

Does she have enough that it matters? Doubtful, and certainly not after long term care expenses eat up what she does have. But it adds one more layer of complexity to the family relationships.

 

Communication is key: Money is one of those things we all like to say doesn’t matter. But that’s a lie. In our modern society, you need money to buy food to eat, to put a roof over your head, etc. Money is required to live our daily lives. We can not pretend it doesn’t exist or doesn’t matter to our existence, because it most definitely does.

Sometimes you are lucky, as C and I are, to be on the same page as your partner financially without it ever having been a big deal. But just because you are that lucky, do not think that money will never have an impact on your relationships. It will.

The only thing to do is to keep talking, to each other  and to anyone else who the money relationship touches. People may not like talking about money, but they like it even less if they think you are mismanaging the money of someone they love.