When love means your money is ours Ma. Salve Duplito INQUIRER.net
February 08, 2009
IT’S EASY TO FALL IN love. The hard part comes when money troubles barge into a couple’s life and the sweet nothings fly out the window.
“Marital finance is the most sensitive issue in personal finance,” says Augustus J.V. Ferreria, senior executive vice-president of Generali Pilipinas. He started his financial planning practice back in the early 1980s, but has since gone back to corporate life. His wife, Nannette, is a registered financial consultant and continues the practice.
“It’s either you experience it, go through the pain, learn from it and live in financial harmony for the rest of your life, or you live through financial tension with the children witnessing everything,” Ferreria says. “Some couples don’t survive that.”
The culprit that causes the tension: Men and women are worlds apart when it comes to handling money. While there may be exemptions, Ferreria explains that men are generalists and care only about the total amount, while women have an innate need to wade through all the details.
“When a spouse asks questions why the money was spent on this and that, the other one feels accused of using up all the money,” he says. “Nakakasakit ng damdamin (that hurts.)”
The solution is finding a modus vivendi--a middle ground where both can decide what to do and how to agree to disagree. For couples that are just about to say their “I do’s,” it’s imperative that financial issues are discussed. For those that are married “for richer or poorer,” declogging lines of communication is crucial.
“There has to be a mixture of the two styles of being a generalist and the detailed approach. I believe men and women are meant to be like that so both can contribute. Men to increase income--just give them the toys they want and they don’t care about the rest except to earn more--while women can make sure there’s no wanton spending,” Ferreria says.
Money is a topic that is considered taboo in most Filipino families, and there lies the difficulty, but the alternative is daily tension.
“I’ll give you an example. When I was growing up, my leather shoes were also for soccer and for all other sports. I didn’t know you needed different kinds of shoes. So when I got married, I became a Hitler when it came to money. My wife and children would complain because I would make them wear down all their shoes before I bought them new ones,” Ferreria says with a chuckle.
Eventually, he and his wife came to an agreement. The best strategy, he said, was for Nannette to handle the purse strings, but for Augustus to provide input before the money is spent.
“We agreed on a belief system. In the US, your money is yours and mine is mine. That doesn’t work here. We operate on the idea that once married, everything is pooled as community money,” he says.
Ferreria also answered common love-and-money questions:
How do you handle the need to support extended relatives financially?
Situations like this can make a person feel like a rubber band. He or she is constantly pulled in different directions--toward the spouse or toward the extended family. The only way to deal with this is to talk about it and make sure expectations are clear.
Would you recommend setting up separate or joint accounts? Or both?
There should be joint accounts for community expenses that need to be paid for by those accounts, but there should also be separate accounts because each one of you has personal aspirations for savings. What we shouldn’t have are secret accounts. These are not healthy for a relationship.
How do you bridge the gap when the woman’s income is bigger than the man’s?
Don’t create an environment where one has to feel insecure about the income gap. I have advised many couples in this situation. Remember that you are working for the common good. It shouldn’t matter who makes more money. The person who has to make the sacrifice to stay home and take care of the children doesn’t have less self-worth than the one who has higher net worth.
What if you realize after you get married that your spouse is buried under a lot of debt?
Legally, you do not have an obligation to pay his debt because it was contracted before the marriage. But because you love each other, you talk about it and discuss how to pay it off. The law of marriage is different. It is not based on logic but based on emotions.
What do you do when your investment styles are very different?
You get money for investments from your personal funds. That’s where your own personality comes out. If she wants to be an entrepreneur and you don’t like that, then she can do what she wants. You see, you have a middle ground, but there’s also a portion where you can make your own decisions so that you don’t feel so repressed.
When it comes to marital finance, Ferreria says the most important thing is to have a sense of humor. That’s most likely when the sweet nothings will come flying in again.
(For more personal finance articles, visit INQUIRER.net’s MoneySmart blog at http://blogs.inquirer.net/moneysmarts.)
