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If You're Going To Get Married, Make Sure Your Spouse Knows How To Handle Money

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@reonarudo
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Introduction

There was discussion in another blog about differences about how to use money can hurt marriages. I think choosing your spouse wisely can make a huge difference in many ways.

You can be the smartest investor in the world who knows how to make money and build wealth like a bandit but if your wife or husband is hopelessly stupid with money and pisses it away every chance he/she gets, then your plans can come to nothing.

The subconscious pull of familiar circumstances

The way we relate to money is partly determined by our inborn temperament and partly the circumstances we grew up in.

Some people say that people who come from modest backgrounds cannot handle it if they come into a significant amount of it. I think there may well be a positive and significant statistical correlation between money management styles and socio-economic background. What we have grown up to consider normal often has a strong subconscious pull on us even to our own surprise. Surprisingly often, people prefer bad circumstances that are familiar to unfamiliar circumstances.

Future orientation is key

I'd say temperament plays a big part in how we deal with money including whether we even have building wealth in us. It comes down to future orientation or relative lack of time preference. What that means is not caring about how soon we receive a benefit. This is hugely important to our ability to prepare for the future by saving and investing.

Conclusion

Too many people blindly follow their emotions when pursuing romantic relationships. That has been taught to us by Hollywood. If we are future oriented and interested in building wealth, what we should do when considering making someone our life partner is observe their money personality without rose-tinted glasses and try and see if theirs is too different from ours. If it is, nothing but failure and acrimony will result from getting together with them. It is better to let that person go before making any commitments. There are many other things to watch out for but if wealth building is our goal, not many things other than a spouse who will burn through money like it's going out of style will obstruct you more. If wealth building does not interest us, we are not likely to be reading this.

Here's a bit of a money personality test by Financial Times to get you thinking about your own relationship with money:

https://www.ft.com/content/5e8da24c-bb09-11e6-8b45-b8b81dd5d080

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