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Dear For Love & Money,
I have a large inheritance coming my way when my grandmother dies. She’s still alive and healthy, so it feels gross even talking about it at this stage, but she’s 86 and has had us sit down with her estate planner to explain how her trust for me would work.
My husband and I are both 42 and work great jobs with high incomes. Between the retirement packages we have in place and my grandma’s money, we’ll have more than enough to ride out the 20 to 30 years we will hopefully have left if we retire at 65.
The problem is our quality of life right now. My husband has a lot of anxiety around money, and he groans constantly about never getting to retire and working till he dies. Anytime I suggest we do anything fun with our money, he shuts it down because he thinks we should be saving for retirement.
When I argue that we’re more than fine and that we can count on grandma’s inheritance, he acts like it’s stupid for me to really think that’s going to happen. He says that the money will probably get tied up in court, or she won’t keep her word.
I’m a fun person with a lust for life and adventure. I’m sick of his negativity and find his inability to enjoy life with me exhausting. How do I get through to this man?
Sincerely,
Sick of the Negativity
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Dear Sick,
With two high incomes, retirement saving plans in place, and a generous inheritance on the way, I agree that your future financial security is well in hand. More money won’t solve your problems because the problem isn’t a lack of funds. Instead, the solution to your husband’s negativity and “inability to enjoy life,” as you put it, will require the much more complex work of a mindset shift.
A common issue affecting couples is the frequent, conflict-prone pairing of fun-loving types with serious-minded counterparts. You know the type: Guests are arriving in an hour, and one person thinks the house looks great and is just looking forward to watching the game with friends, while the other is having heart palpitations over the baseboards. One person wants to jump in the car and go on an adventure, but the other can’t leave the house without a bag packed for doomsday. Or — and this one might sound familiar — one person wants to travel, live generously, and bask in the present; the other wants to save for retirement and safeguard the future. Who is “right” depends entirely on the individual situation, and the healthiest functioning is found in the balance of the two.
What makes finding this balance so difficult is that the mismatch is rarely as simple as opposites attracting. No, the incompatibility is more dynamic than that. It’s losing thousands of dollars because your spouse never got around to filling out their expense reports. It’s having a terrible vacation because your partner won’t stop checking their bank account app. When our significant others fail us in these ways, we tend to try to compensate for their shortcomings ourselves. But overcompensating for them will only make our partners feel the need to overcompensate for us — worsening the imbalance.
The only way to break this cycle is for one person to stop participating in it. In the case of you and your husband, you need to stop seeing it as your full-time job to elicit your husband’s reluctant buy-in to a joyful, adventurous life that you alone must manufacture. You also need to recognize that when you say, “We don’t need to worry about the future,” what he hears is that he now has to worry for both of you.
Instead, show him it’s possible to be fiscally responsible and have a good time. Make an appointment with a financial advisor to get hard numbers and set clear retirement objectives. Then, treat this information as the actionable intel that it is. If your husband keeps trying to shut down your attempts to have a good time after you’ve walked through the numbers together, go on your adventure without him. Perhaps, if your husband sees you actively participating in your retirement strategy beyond depending on inherited wealth, he’ll feel less stressed about it.
Over time, he may realize that you’re right, the sky isn’t falling, and that your grasp on the numbers is as strong and steady as his own. In the meantime, you’re still living the life you want and deserve.
That said, when you share a life with someone you love, I know that watching them remain stubbornly dissatisfied when your circumstances are objectively wonderful tends to drain the joy out of your experience as well. It may be worth exploring if his anxiety about the future is a deeper-rooted personal struggle. If it is, there’s nothing you can do to change his mindset; he has to do that.
However, you can support your husband in this by being gentle but honest with him. Gentle, because living with his scarcity mindset is likely just as exhausting for him as it is for you. And honest, because, as his spouse, there may be no one else to tell him he needs help and doesn’t have to exist in a perpetual state of dread and doom. Help him find a therapist to help him work through his fear of the future and the roots of his relationship with money.
If nothing else, your gentle, honest support will show him that he can count on you no matter what happens. And with time, perhaps you can both find peace and joy in a life that balances spontaneous adventure with long-term security.
Rooting for you,
For Love & Money
Looking for advice on how your savings, debt, or another financial challenge is affecting your relationships? Write to For Love & Money using this Google form.
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The post My husband refuses to let us enjoy our money because he’s stressed about retirement savings. How do I convince him we’ll be fine? appeared first on Business Insider.
