Wyatt Yates Host 00:00 Money doesn't have to be complicated. You can achieve financial independence. This podcast gets to the truth behind the money mess you hear from your grandma, your broke uncle, the latest social media influencers and the so-called money experts. Welcome to Money Myths with your host, wyatt Yates. 00:23 The myth we're covering today is my partner takes care of our finances, so I don't need to. Now, this myth is one that hits home. This is one at the beginning of our marriage was definitely something we believed in terms of my wife thinking so, and I was the one that was supposed to handle the finances because I was the money guy, so my wife kind of took a back seat and just entrusted everything with me and really didn't know what was going on. And where this myth can really cause problems is if you have somebody that was like me and that you have a spouse that is not being a good leader with the finances because I definitely wasn't, and it can cause issues. So there's a few things I want to cover with this myth that are important and why you can't think this way. The first thing is you have to be on the same page with your finances so one spouse can take the lead role in terms of maybe putting together the budget and tracking it, but you have to be on the same page. So you have to both be involved and you can't have one spouse that's doing the budgeting and stuff not go over it with the other spouse. So that is a big issue and that was an issue with our marriage and our finances when we followed this myth. So, yes, you can have somebody that is the lead role in taking control of your finances or managing your finances, but they need to go over it with the other spouse. You have to be involved and you have to get on the same page with what your goals and stuff are as a couple with your finances. The second reason why you both need to be involved in the process is if something happens to the person who's handling the finances or is the person kind of managing the bulk of it the other spouse needs to be able to step in. So if the person that's doing the budgeting or really handling, like the investments and your personal finances, if they get disabled to where they can't do it anymore or if they pass away, the other spouse has to be able to step in and take control. And if they haven't been involved in any of the processes and met with the key advisors your financial advisor, or maybe your financial coach, or your state planning attorney if they've been excluded from the whole process, or the person who prepares your taxes any of those people if they've been excluded from the whole process, it's going to be very difficult for them to step in and know what to do. So that's why this is not a one spouse does it. 03:30 The other ones takes the hands off approach and just entrusts everything to the other spouse. They have to be involved because eventually something will happen to one of you and you have to be able to adjust and handle the finances. If you weren't the one that was doing the majority of the work, you have enough going on at that time period. The last thing you need is to worry about how to handle it. So if you've been involved in the process and something happens to the spouse that's doing it, it's really easy for you to jump in and take over on that aspect of your life and not have that added to the burden and the emotional time that you're going through when you're dealing with the loss of a spouse. So it will make it easier. So you have to be involved. 04:27 The last thing is when you're both involved, you're able to hold each other accountable. So we all have strengths and weaknesses when it comes to personal finances. We have things that we can do well and things that are Achilles heel and that can trip us up. And when you're both involved in the personal finances of your marriage and your relationship, you're able to kind of hold each other accountable towards your goals. You've set goals and now you know which weaknesses are the other persons and you're able to kind of keep each other on track and be that accountability partner for them. And if you have just one person handling everything and the other person is not involved at all, you lose that. So it's really important that you're both involved to keep each other accountable towards your goals, because there's going to be instances that come up that make you justify why. Oh, we can diverge a little bit here, but when you have each other holding each other accountable, you'll at least minimize those instances. They're never going to go away completely, but you will be able to minimize the times you guys get tripped up with your personal finances because each spouse is going to have periods where they're stronger in being able to be more disciplined with their spending or staying on track to your financial goals. So when you have you both involved, you're able to stay on track easier. So those are the three reasons why you can't believe this myth. 06:08 And both spouses have to be involved in this process. So first, you have to be on the same page, and if one person takes a hands-off approach and is not involved, it's very hard for you guys to get on the same page. The second reason was something will eventually happen to both of you. We all eventually die. So you have to be able to know what's going on, and you're not going to know what's going on with your finances if you're uninvolved. So the last thing you need when a spouse passes away is to have the worry and not understanding what's going on with your finances, and that will happen if you're not involved. So it just makes one less thing you have to worry about when you're dealing with a spouse that has passed away. And the last thing is you help each other be accountable towards your goals. So you're a team in this. So it's really important you're both involved in the process. So now that you understand you can't be completely uninvolved. You know there's always going to be one spouse that's more of the money person or really likes to do the budget and stuff, and that's completely fine. But you have to go over things together and set goals together. So once you understand that you've got to both be involved, it helps to have some type of system in place in your relationship to be able to keep you on track with this and make sure that you're both involved. 07:46 And that leads me to the action step for this week in relation to this myth. So the myth again was my partner takes care of our finances, so I don't need to, and we've already gone over. You both have to be involved in the process. One spouse can take the majority of the work, but you have to go over it together and be involved and set your goals together. 08:10 Now one way personally I've been able to do this with my wife and our marriage is we have a set weekly meeting, so every Sunday. We started this when we were going through getting out of debt. We've done it basically every Sunday for the last five years. There's sometimes we have to move it around a little bit, but we have a weekly meeting we schedule on our calendars where we call it our spouse meeting, and we do it on Sundays just because it's easier to do leading up and kind of planning out the week ahead, but your action step is to have your spouse meeting. So your weekly spouse meeting is going to vary based off of where you're at with your personal finances. So originally when we were doing this, it was primarily looking at finances as far as how are we getting out of debt, how can we increase income and all of that, and it changes as your circumstances change. But it can last anywhere from we found them be as short as 15 minutes to last a couple hours. But basically I'll just kind of explain how we do it and you can take bits and pieces that you think may be helpful and modify it to fit your situation. 09:38 But the most important aspect is that you put it on your calendar and you schedule it and you make time for it. If it's important to you, you have to make time for it and put it on your schedule. So currently our weekly spouse meeting looks a little bit like this, where we first go over our schedule for the week, day by day. We have a daughter, so we're going over who's picking her up, taking her where she needs to be, we're going over our work schedules so we know we have coverage in every aspect that we need and what days we may need to help each other out more or who may need to do what. So we kind of go over the schedule for the week day by day. Then the second aspect is we just kind of go through our goals that we set in our annual goal setting meeting or retreat that we did and how are we tracking towards that. And then we both have our own businesses so that we help out with each other, and so we'll go over action items for the week with our businesses and what we need help with. So that's kind of how ours look. Some weeks are shorter than others, but the most important aspect is that you're doing it each week and you're making time for it because it will open up communication, eliminates a lot of issues with not being on the same page with your finances and everything else. So that's your action step Schedule a weekly spouse meeting for whatever time fits in your schedule. 11:16 I like having it the same time each week so it just becomes a norm in your schedule and then just understand one spouse can be the person that does a lot of the work on the finances. But you both have to be involved and you both have to know who's handling what with your finances and keep each other accountable for your goals. And you both need to have met all the key people in relation to your finances. So whoever does your taxes, whoever does your financial planning or advising if you have that person or whoever does your state planning, you need to both have met them and understand and have a relationship with that person. So, if something happens, you're both okay. 12:05 Thanks for listening. Want to achieve financial independence? Go to ruggedfinancialcom where you can download my free PDF of the 12 Things to Do to Win With Money, and you can also sign up for my weekly money tips emails where I cover the same tips and tricks and advice I walk all my clients through so you can begin your journey to financial independence. Thank you for watching and listening to this episode of the Money Myths Podcast. Please do me a favor and, if you found this episode interesting, subscribe to the podcast so you can make sure you get all the future episodes. Also, leave a rating and review so you can help us grow this podcast, so we can lead more people to financial independence. 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