Is your partner involved too ?

[House_Keeper]

Interesting thread, as I have been wondering how best to involve my wife in the investing process.

Basically, we are a complementary team. There are things that I prefer to do, like fixing things and looking after finances, and there are things that my wife prefers to do, like looking after the kids day to day, and keeping the house beautiful. Nothing sexist in there, it just happens to be what we settled on fairly naturally.

So I have started to do the investing without my wife involvement. That didn't seem totally right though. I explain to her quite often what I am doing. She listens patiently, but is not really that interested. She is quite happy to leave it up to me.

Last year I tried to involve her as part of inspecting investment properties, as she has more time than me. However, we both found this experience a bit frustrating. She felt that I wasn't clear enough on what we were after. That was fair enough as I wasn't sure exactly what to buy. I felt that she wasn't taking much of an interest, not willing to learn about investment properties as part of the process. The places she was the most impressed with, I did not like. I was looking at the numbers, while she always had a different reason to like a particular place.

What I learnt from this is that it is good to involve your partner, however uninterested, as at least you get a second opinion on things. With two points of view, you are less likely to miss something "obvious". The other lesson is that you need to break down the process into tasks that both parties are happy and interested to do.

In the future, I would always involve my wife before putting an offer on a specific property. I would ask her to help in some areas where she has a bit of an interest or at least enjoys doing.

However, I will most likely still be driving the process, as I have more interest in it that her overall.

Cheers,

 

[MarkR]

Acey wrote "If my partner was not involved with the activities I do I just cannot see why I would want to stay with them. I don't see any work/life barriers - work and investing is part of life & sharing our lives is what it's about"

Acey,
This is a hard one, easy to agree with your point, but what if you've changed over the time together & this is a relatively new interest. Has the person you married not changed so then you leave them, or do you assume a pretty heavy burden & try to bring them on-board ?

This one is VERY close to my heart as my wife has no financial IQ, didn't when I met her, didn't when I married her, & didn't when she had our son. My financial IQ & outlook has changed dramatically in the last 3 yrs, but we've been together 9yrs, so I see it as my responsiblity to try & bring her along. She's borderline supportive (except for when I take 1yr off work to study, THAT was a very interesting time), has very little time & almost no energy left after looking after our 2 yr old. Running financials past her @ 9pm are a complete waste, I don't have much energy for them myself at that point. My intention is to start getting runs on the board as I explain what I'm doing & hope that her interest will become more than passing as time goes on. As our son gets easier to look after (time at pre-school, etc) & I start getting wins hopefully things will change. But will I leave her just because she hasn't changed at the rate I have (assuming all the endearing features that caused the chemical inbalance interpreted as love still exist) ? Hopefully not !

My wife doesn't share my love of martial arts & rugby, doesn't surf, & reads about 1 book to every 50 I read, doesn't work in IT & can't explain what I do.

I HATE Oprah & ER, & most of the mass media trash that interests my wife, she's a photographer & most photography only interest me for 5 seconds.

Do we still enjoy time together as a couple, yes ! (when we can get it these days)

So at the moment I see investing (property & shares) as just one more thing that I love & she tolerates. If it changes, wonderful, if it doesn't I'll still achieve what I want to & she's welcome to come along for the ride.

Ahhhh..... marriage, the art of compromise !

 

[Jas]

Mark,

I can see your point about sports and other interests. My feeling is that they don't impact on your married life in the same way. I'm speaking in generaly here and not jsut to you now...

I don't see how, if things go hobbily wrong in Oprah, you'll lose your house. Alternativly, if things go wonderful for ER, you won't be living your dream life and relaxing...

I see a couple investing togehter as building their lives together (literally), sharing the joys and risks equally. If one partner did nothing and the other did all, isn't that an unfair burden? "Support me, cause I can't be bothered"

OTOH, if apartner is contributing in other ways (looking after your kids/bringing in cash, so you can invest for the future), then the investor needs to get comfortable with the balance. Back before the divcorce laws came in the in 70s, the male lawyer's argument was that they had brought in all the money, the wife had done nothing. Therefore the wife should get nothing.

That wasn't an argument that held water back then, and isn't now.

People do need to find a balance between what each of them contrubutes to their life together. Those who have worked it out need to remain comforatble with it in changing circumstances, or work out a new balance...

Bagging out the other party isn't useful to any degree.

Jas

 

[MarkR]

Jas,
Fair point, sport et al is not quite as important as financial happiness (YES, it is just a game, contrary to a popular Melb shows theme song). The point that analogy was trying to make (very badly) is that there are fundamental differences in most couples & their interests. For most part we either enjoy or tolerate these differences (e.g. I didn't marry my wife just so I could change her)

My original point was - just because I've changed doesn't mean my wife has to change, that's a self centred approach to relationships & if it was enforced I think the divorce rate would be a lot higher than 50% ! I suppose to put it in perspective my approach is that I wish she'd become more involved but if she doesn't I'm OK with it as long as she doesn't get in the road i.e. if my current role is as a provider while you raise the kid/s, then just let me do it, if you don't like how I'm doing it, then you do it. Once our son is at school age she fully intends working again so she will contribute financially to the best of her ability (historically she has only earned 40-50% of what I have).

Just my space at this point in time, I suppose I'm trying to introduce a shade of grey into the black & white as I was strongly in the 'support me or get out' camp last year which in my experience was not a nice place to be. Especially when you have children

Cheers
Mark

Still married, but who knows what will happen when she stops taking Prozac !

 

[Aceyducey]

On the fundamental differences point MarkR raised....

There are differences in interests & differences in outlook.

I don't feel that a difference in interests matters - but a fundamental difference in financial/wealth outlook...look out!

IE:
I want to be wealthy, she wants to spend money.

I want to have fun now & forget tomorrow, she wants to work hard now to build future wealth.

I am comfortable with loads of 'good' debt. She can't sleep owing money to anyone.

These situations are not favourable to long-term relationship success.
(gender references are purely for example)

Given a choice of giving up your relationship or giving up your hopes & dreams (where no mutually agreeable negotiated solution is possible), which would you choose?

I'd give up the relationship every time.

If you can't be true to your yourself in a relationship how can you be honest to the other person? How will your frustration, anger & loss be reflected inwards? What damage will you cause your partner, children & broader family & friends?

Cheers,

Aceyducey

 

[Rachelk]

Based on my own experiences I would have to agree with AceyDucey on this one - especially if you're 'hands on' with property and most of your spare time is spent on this.

My partner and I moved to the UK from Oz in 2001 and after initially spending most of our spare cash on travelling, we're now buying property - including the one we live in which we're renovating.

If both of us didn't have the same goals - i.e., buy as many properties as possible over here and then retire to Oz with the income then I could see issues. Especially through the difficult times like renovating a 100+ year old house without central heating in the middle of an english winter. If we weren't both committed 100% then it would just not be possible.

In the end both of us have to work full-time jobs as well so we'd just end up resentful if the other person didn't put in as much effort. We also get a lot of satisfaction out of labouring together and dare I say we actually enjoy it!

As for financial literacy - anyone can learn the basics if they are committed to the end result. I'm no accountant but I made sure that I understood all the figures that the other half calculates.

 

[House_Keeper]

Thanks to all of you for your input.

This is a difficult topic to provide one obvious answer for, as we are all in different situations.

I can understand that, if you don't have kids, you would expect each partner to do their share of the effort towards building a solid financial foundation.

If you have been married for a while and have kids, and one of the partner develops an interest in investment property, I don't think it is reasonable to expect your partner to be suddenly switched on to it as much as you are. For us, as much as we would like to build a solid financial foundation for the family, the kids are more important. That is the choice we have made. So I can't complain about my wife focusing on the kids and the family. I'm jus ttrying to get her involved so far it is more of a team effort than somethitng I do on my own.

I agree with Aceyducey in terms of values. Even though partners may have different interest and focus, it can't work if they have fundamentally different values, like one wants to spend money now and they other wants to build wealth. In our case, we are both financially conservative, and not big spenders, so it works out OK.

Of course, it's much easier to achieve wealth with both partners switched on. But I believe it can be done too with a complementary team as well. At least, that is what I am trying to achieve right now. If anybody has any hints on how to make this work, it would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

 

[Kathie]

My husband has been reading 'wealth' books as long as I have known him. He would leave them in obvious places and casually ask me if I had had a chance to 'flick through'. Car trips would be taken up with him enthusiastically explaining why we need to consider our future and how we could do it - often while I thought about other things.

When a colleague sent him a stack of books late last year I thought "Yeah right, here we go again". Early this year, after listening to him speak for 30mins in the car I finally agreed to read the first (perhpas I could get some peace then?): 'The Richest Man in Babylon'. Funnily enough (!?!) he happened to have it in the car with him so as he played at the park with our son I started reading. An hour an a half later I was finished and let him drive us home! From that moment on I was hooked. I then proceeded to devour the rest of the books in the pile and visted the bookshelf to consume most of the titles he had recommended in previous years.

We now enthusiastically discuss plans, prospects, options ad nauseum ad infinitum. Whoever has the time does the task. We have different strengths. I am an information junkie who researches vociforously and reads 700 words a minute at a leisurely pace. He likes numbers and had decided to buy our first IP before he even saw it based on the numbers. I am a stay at home mum who has the time to look at property but my husband can actually manage to speak on the phone to agents and brokers for more than 2 minutes without getting climbed over or summoned urgently and insistently to supervise poos.

Actually the only reason that I have time to put in my two cents worth now is becuase my son fell asleep on me while I was at the computer checking for an e-mail from our lawyer! Now I'm stuck and am amusing myself by trawling through the forums. Its better than Oprah!