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Money isn’t just about numbers; it’s the silent language shaping intimacy, trust, and fairness in our closest relationships. Beneath the surface of budgets and bank accounts often lies a tangled web of beliefs, emotions, and unspoken histories that can spark misunderstanding, resentment, or even distance between partners. The challenge? Finding a way to transform financial conversations from battlegrounds into bridges of deeper connection.

In this episode, listeners will discover how to unpack personal money stories, identify invisible patterns, and create a foundation for fairness that goes far beyond splitting expenses down the middle. Practical examples and candid advice converge to help couples open up vulnerable, constructive conversations, nurture curiosity about one another, and build flexible habits for lasting financial teamwork. Whether you’re just beginning the dialogue or looking to deepen your connection, this episode offers tools and insights to help you turn financial friction into opportunities for growth, understanding, and shared abundance.

Douglas Boneparth is the founder of Bone Fide Wealth in New York City. He sits on the CNBC and Investopedia advisory councils and has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, and more.

Heather Boneparth spent more than a decade as a lawyer in the insurance industry before joining the firm as the director of business and legal affairs. They co-write a weekly couples and money newsletter called The Joint Account.

Episode Highlights

04:28 Defining fairness in relationships.

09:23 The importance of curiosity in relationships.

11:38 Talking openly about money.

14:54 Opening up about money struggles.

20:05 Interview process revealed insights.

23:23 Avoiding miscommunication in relationships.

25:57 Quarterly money dates for couples.

27:42 Building consistency with money.

31:19 Collaborative goal-setting and self-growth.

34:32 Balancing personal and shared goals.

38:02 Expecting the unexpected in life.

42:33 Where to find more resources.

Your Checklist of Actions to Take

• Schedule Quarterly Money Dates: Set aside time four times a year to discuss finances and personal goals as a couple, creating consistent opportunities for communication and connection.
• Begin With Wins: Start each money date by acknowledging positive progress and successes, which fosters a supportive atmosphere for more difficult conversations.
• Include Personal Goals: During conversations, explicitly ask and share individual goals for the next few years to ensure each partner’s aspirations are recognized and supported.
• Use Conversation Starters: Utilize provided questions at the end of each book section to initiate deeper discussions about financial behaviors, values, and histories.
• Practice Curiosity: Maintain a mindset of curiosity about your partner’s experiences and stories, continually learning and deepening understanding throughout your relationship.
• Acknowledge the Challenge: Embrace the discomfort of exploring your financial histories and patterns, understanding that growth requires facing difficult topics.
• Adapt Your Approach: Identify and adjust to each partner’s preferred communication and learning style for financial topics—for example, using visuals instead of numbers if that helps.
• Allow Time for Change: Give yourselves space between meetings to try new financial behaviors and see if they work before making more decisions or adjustments.

Mentioned

The Joint Account (Newsletter)

Money Together (*Amazon Affiliate link) (book)

Shifting Criticism For Connected Communication (free guide)

Connect with Heather and Douglas Boneparth

Website: domoneytogether.com | bonefidewealth.com

X: x.com/dougboneparth

Instagram: instagram.com/averagejoelle | instagram.com/dougboneparth

Connect with Dr. Jessica Higgins

Facebook: facebook.com/EmpoweredRelationship 

Instagram: instagram.com/drjessicahiggins 

Podcast: drjessicahiggins.com/podcasts/

Pinterest: pinterest.com/EmpowerRelation 

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/drjessicahiggins 

Twitter: @DrJessHiggins 

Website: drjessicahiggins.com  

Email: [email protected]

If you have a topic you would like to be discussed, please contact us by clicking on the “Ask Dr. Jessica Higgins” button here. 

Thank you so much for your interest in improving your relationship. 

Also, I would so appreciate your honest rating and review. Please leave a review by clicking here. 

Thank you!  

*With Amazon Affiliate Links, I may earn a few cents from Amazon if you purchase the book from this link.

Episode Transcript

Douglas and Heather, it's a pleasure to have you both. 

Heather Boneparth
We're so happy to be here. Thanks for having us, Jessica. 

Yes, and I was just commenting that I've had people who are helping people in the financial world who are experts, and not all of them are specifically focused on couples. I know you do a lot to help couples, and one of the topics you were presenting as an option for us to discuss is fairness as it relates to finances and intimacy. Is there a place that you want to start? Even intimacy, talking about finances, is often very tender, multi-layered, and can be tricky to navigate. 

Douglas Boneparth
The first thing I would say is when we're talking about money and individuals and couples, this is a topic that's much deeper than dollars and cents. Right? This is an exploration into who you are as a person, who you are as a couple. So I just want to acknowledge that this work is not easy. This is hard work. And I think going into it with that expectation is mandatory. I don't want anyone to feel like, oh my God, I have to go there. You do. You have to go there. 

and kind of unpack. A lot of things that you have been conditioned to believe, or how you behave around money, all come from stuff that begins early on in your life. 

Douglas Boneparth
So let's not get ourselves into thinking about what we're getting ourselves into. But if you're willing to go on that journey and do this kind of work, the rewards and the results are almost unlimited, and they really do allow you to have a more fair relationship, a more loving relationship. And that's obviously something we all want for ourselves. 

Heather Boneparth

right? It can be a lot of different things. And so when we talk about fairness in the context of money and relationships, it also means a lot of different things. But deep down, it is about honesty with yourself first, because you've got to know what it is you are looking for before you can go ahead and ask for that from your partner. Not just ask, but go on a quest for you both to find it. Whatever that subjective level of contentment is that feels fair to the two of you is something that you're going to have to do some self-discovery for. Our definition of fairness in the context of our book is this notion of making room and 

And I don't just mean more room in terms of time you spend together, and like quality time. I mean more room for what you each want, more room for your quirks, more room for your full personality, more room for the baggage that you're bringing to the relationship, More room for it all. So that when you're bringing your full self, your full needs, your full wants, your full money, identity, and personality to the table, then at least we both really know what we're working with, and we could define what we want that to look like together moving forward. “So this idea of fairness, like it's not this tit for tat. 50/50” Even, I do these three things, and you do those. This is a very subjective personal pursuit for two people to go on together. And it never ends. 

It's work that is constantly moving forward. 

As we're evolving and life evolves, it's going to be dynamic. It's not a rigid protocol or formula that you plug in, and it's going to be constant. So I'm kind of getting two feelings as you're both describing here how the work is difficult. I remember in an ethics class, I think I had a professor that if there's a moral dilemma or some type of decision that needs to be made and there's a lot of complexity to it was the analogy, and maybe you've heard this, of bringing it to a well lit room with the most respected people being able to have it be visible. And that's a lot of the coup work is stuff that maybe is happening on the inside that we do or we think we do a pretty good job of armoring or protecting or like concealing. 

And I think we do that with money. Some of it we're not really all that out in the open. It's a very personal, private, and sometimes not even fully conscious thing that you're saying. If we're willing to explore who we are, what things mean to us, it's not that we're trying to fit like a system here for you to plug into. It's really understanding things that maybe you haven't looked at and what fairness means to you, and that “I love that in your book, what I got, if I'm hearing you now, it sounds like it's less about the ratio 50/50. It's more about understanding and how you both work together. That is the cultivation of what feels fair, that's uniquely personal to the couple.” 

Heather Boneparth
Absolutely. 

Douglas Boneparth
You got it. 

Heather Boneparth
Absolutely. You hit the nail on the head. And I haven't heard that about the well-lit room. And I love that because that's just so incredibly true.” I think we had spoken with someone early one of our source experts for the book who had said, I think we all know a lot of facts about our partners, but do we really know the stories and do we really know emotionally what your partner has carried away from those stories of their childhood, of their lived experiences, of their culture, their socioeconomic upbringing? What has that brought to their present-day beliefs and behaviors around money? A lot of us don't know that. 

Douglas Boneparth
Be able to take it to the next step and ask yourself, ” Is that serving us well? Is this behavior or is it helping or harming us? Yeah. And if it's not helping, that's the call to action, to change the behavior or find the pathway you need to go down to get to the better results that you want for yourselves. And again, this is not easy. The reflection that you need to have to even, you know, figure that out. And then to be brave enough to say, okay, I'm gonna make a change. 

Heather Boneparth
I'll speak for myself that the process of writing this book and the process of interviewing amazing psychologists, therapists, and financial therapists opened up a lot of doors about my past and my present-day money behaviors. Things that I knew, but I hadn't really connected the dots on until he did more of the work. That's what's crazy, right? That's the point, that sometimes you don't even know how deep it really runs until you open the door to explore those uncomfortable moments past and present. 

Douglas Boneparth
One bit of advice that we give here is to be curious, right? 

We've been together for a very long time, over 20 years, married for over 10, and I cherish moments in which I learned something. Just when you think that's enough time to think about every facet of your partner, and then your curiosity will fetch you a new story that uncovers a rock that hasn't been turned over. That could be the difference between having an amazing year, having a greater perspective around your partner, and connecting a lot more deeply with someone. Just when you think you couldn't connect anymore, here you go. Or, hey, this is why perhaps a certain behavior exists or why someone feels the way that they feel. 

Oh my gosh, I so echo that sentiment. Similarly, my husband and I have been together for 20 years and not married the whole time. But when I learn something, I'm like, oh, like, I do have that mindset that I'm open, and I know that there are still so many things that I'm discovering, but it keeps things a little bit fresher. Right. When we're really more open. So if we can slow down really quickly, if you both would just say the name of your book as we're referring to it. And. And then also, do you have an example for people listening around how this understanding, unpacking our money stories, our experience, how that relates to how we might be operating in real time with money, just to anchor that in as a practical example. And if you say the name of the book, we also say a little bit about it. 

You're referring to stories. So part of that piece, if you want. 

Heather Boneparth
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Our book is called Money Together: How to find fairness in your relationship and become an unstoppable financial team. And when we sat down and were approached about writing a book about couples and money, we knew we wanted to do something different, something that was not a how to guy. Here are the eight steps you need to take to manage money with your spouses. Here's the way you need to set up your bank accounts. Here's the way you need to budget. It's been done. “And we felt like what was missing was the conversations and the communication tools, and finding ways to help partners see each other better around money, and around not only money, but around money. Adjacent topics that impact your money, like time, like contribution and caregiving, like risk, like goals.” 

These are all part of a money conversation, but they're so often left out of conversations about. Typical conversations about money that people have been taught are usually about budgeting, saving, paying off debt, things like that. And so when we sat down to do this, we wanted to do something differently. We wanted to help people open the door to deeper conversations, to help partners get on the same page, and then be in a position to have better technical conversations, too. So, what we did was two and a half years ago, we started interviewing as many couples as we possibly could. And couples from all walks of life, people from all different ages and socioeconomic backgrounds and cultural backgrounds, people from different countries. We really tried to hear as many unique viewpoints as we could. 

And it was eye-opening. And incredibly important to us was not only that we reflected their stories well in the way that we tied them together with the lesson. So the thing is that we wanted not only to tie these real-world stories into the lessons that we would like for readers to gain from this book, but we also wanted people to see themselves in these slivers of these stories. It was important for us not just to show three or four couples throughout the book, but dozens of couples in different scenarios, in very intimate, personal, real scenarios that people find themselves in. And I don't just mean technical, like a couple that's in debt or a couple that wants to buy a home. I mean scenarios where there are two partners who have been doing something one way. 

This is one of my favorite examples from the book. A couple who had been doing something one way for five, six, seven years. And they started with the best of intentions, and there was nothing wrong on paper with the way that they decided to approach something financially. But over time, it began to make less and less sense, and resentment started to build and build until one drunken night in Tokyo, they got in a huge fight over a croissant.

That was the story I was hearing.

Heather Boneparth
Yes, and it's crazy, but it's so relatable because it's not the croissant. Every couple has something that is that one thing that was the last straw because something's been brewing in the background for so long. 

For me, it was a sock on the steps that had been left for one day too long, and I had had enough. It's not about the sock. It's about everything leading up to the sock. And so these are the stories that I think just people reading this, we wanted people to say, ” Oh, my God, that's me. Hold on, I'm going to put the page down and call my spouse and say, ” Hey, you need to read this one thing, because this is us. This hat's on us. 

Douglas Boneparth
The way we create that moment is by finding yourself in a story, finding a behavior, finding a chapter, a sentence, a word that says, ” That's me, and I'm not the only one. And now I can share this, or now I have the words in which to share with someone to get that point of view across. 

Heather Boneparth
And it was incredibly important for us to air ourselves out first. This is really hard work for anyone to even be willing to sit down and do with their partner. 

Douglas Boneparth
And 

Heather Boneparth
You lead by example. And we wanted to do that. And I think Doug and I both, but me in particular, like, I have a complicated history with money. I have a complicated family history. And I felt that it was important for me to show the way that my past played out in my young adult life and in our relationship as we grew into adults and started a family and became parents together. It was incredibly important for me to show that it doesn't matter that he's a financial expert and he's been at this for a gazillion years. It doesn't matter, like, even we weren't getting it right. But if we can't talk about money, then what's everyone else doing? Exactly. 

Yeah. It's very normalizing and also gives examples of what the process of doing this work looks like, especially when we've lived in complex dynamics or scenarios that have pain or trauma. So thank you for that because we don't always get to see what's behind the door. And it's a huge gift to compile and bring that together. 

Heather Boneparth
Thank you. 

Douglas Boneparth
And so you're a pleasure, Jessica. 

Yeah. Well, so you were talking about a story, and then I asked about an example that people might be able to feel a little bit more specific about. Can you give an example of what learning about oneself means, and how that impacts whether or not it's the croissant story or whether or not it's something else here or there? 

Douglas Boneparth
Yeah. We saw this for folks who had housing insecurity or food insecurity. And you can go the other end of the spectrum, who came from immense privilege. Right. So you can pick either end of the spectrum. 

Heather Boneparth
We heard an incredible story from someone who experienced homelessness, abuse, and food insecurity as a child into young adulthood, but also was incredibly successful and driven, and someone who really made it his life's objective to take care of the people that he loves. And so, just an incredibly multi-hyphenated person as he grew into adulthood. But the way that first came out in his young adult life was when he got his first paycheck and got that apartment. He had stuffed his fridge full of. 

Douglas Boneparth
Food that would expire, couldn't get through all of it. He had 24 pairs of jeans. In the car. You could see the overcompensation for what the experience was. 

Heather Boneparth
He had actually gone into credit card debt. Despite the fact of growing up with housing, food, and financial insecurity, to surround himself with the physical things that he thought would make him feel safe. I think that is an incredible example. I mean, eventually, he got into investing and became someone who was really involved in their finances and sorted that out. But the thing that he continued to carry on was this idea that I think he maybe had a little bit of that. Never enough. It was a little bit of that. What will be enough to not only not stop working permanently, but just to take a break and to look around and say I deserve and my family deserves my ability to pause and revel in what we've done and to take. 

Douglas Boneparth
A beat and to say patience were particularly hard for this individual. They created the feeling, yes, of never enough. But I can't stop because you're running away from what you had experienced before, and you never want to go back there. So you just keep running. And could really see that juxtaposition here pretty clearly. We try to paint that picture for you. Throughout that particular story, we had spoken. 

Heather Boneparth
With folks and financial therapists who had given us numerous examples from clients in their own practices, where you have someone who grew up in a traumatic, insecure household, environment, or community. And these are people who grew into adulthood and never saved for retirement, never considered it, never thought about it, because they really, honestly did not picture a world that they could grow old in. Could you imagine that? But that's real. Some people do not think about the future, do not think about long-term goals, because they were never allowed in their lives to feel secure enough to think about their future. Absolutely. That is ingrained. That is incredibly hard. 

It's a part of their nervous system, it's part of their pattern that's even very automatic or unconscious, and a lack. 

Heather Boneparth
Of trust in financial systems, as well, to say, hey, you were not able to participate in these things, but now you could. And they're like, well, why would I? Yeah, that's incredibly hard to unwind. 

So in these interviews, where people in a position of having worked through some of these difficulties or having gleaned the insight, many of them have some resolution. If I'm thinking about this story around the gentleman who grew up and not enoughness, and go ahead, Douglas. 

Douglas Boneparth
That particular individual was very self-aware of their circumstances. However, there were plenty of interviews where folks got into and were not therapists. Right. But got into a little bit of a therapy session as they were uncovering things through the very questions they were asking them. And what was so great about that is it served as a real-time proof of concept of what we were working on, where if you were asking the right questions, we were curious about them, becoming curious about each other, and ultimately being curious about each other, we knew we were on the right track. So there were plenty of folks who were open to the idea, and thank goodness they were, because they received the benefit from getting to explore that while we took in answers for the body of work we were working on. 

And then there were folks that clearly and unfortunately needed to address some things that were going on with themselves or in their relationship, good behaviors, but unfortunately, some behaviors that weren't so great. And a lot of times it came out through the things that were not being said. 

Heather Boneparth
My God. 

Douglas Boneparth
Yeah, poke your lines. 

Yeah, it came out not because they were saying something that was necessarily bad or nefarious. It was what was not being said. And we would pick up on that. They're like, hey, they're not talking about this very glaring thing that's showing up here that clearly is an impediment or a barrier to them connecting further. So we saw it all, and it really depends on who we're talking to, what story, and what angle we really wanted to have that discussion around. 

Heather Boneparth
That was a difficult seat to sit in. 

I bet, because you're not in a position where you're doing the work with them yet, like. 

Heather Boneparth
Or not doing the work with them in that sense. And also, this book is written in the first person. It's not written as a we; it's written as an I and as the storyteller and the story receiver to receive a story. There's the story that I think some folks wanted to tell us, and then the story that we received. So I think that's very hard. And I'm sure that's something you experience probably in your line of work. But I think that is so emblematic of this topic in general. We have money. Think about the story people want others to see of themselves around money. 

Which is exactly the point I think I'm hearing you both make, that if we're not doing the inquiry to understand our experiences, what's contributed to shaping how we feel and relate to money, we're going to likely think a certain thing. But that maybe isn't the full story. 

Heather Boneparth
Right? 

Douglas Boneparth
A hundred percent. 

Heather Boneparth
Right. Forget about what other people think of you and what the world thinks of you. What about just your partner and not having those conversations with them, and the way that you're trying to hold yourself out to them, and our choices have. 

Such a huge, powerful impact on our lives. Right. 

Douglas Boneparth
You hit the nail on the head there. Right. So you people are making, let's say, the people and friends. People who dick. People. 

Heather Boneparth
People. 

Douglas Boneparth
People. 

Heather Boneparth
All of us, too. 

Douglas Boneparth
Yeah, they're making their assumptions based on you. Now. Their assumptions technically should not. 

Right? But we ourselves are people, and we do care, unfortunately, about what other people think. 

Heather Boneparth
Chapter about that, about the power of expectation. 

Douglas Boneparth
You should probably be tuning in to a lot of what other people think. Oh, but what about your partner? Like you probably should not, Right? And if you're in a situation where you're both assuming things about each other and trying to navigate a life together, whether that's your money, your kids, the risks you take, and the decisions you have to make to move forward in life, that is where you run afoul or have a high degree of possibility of running afoul.

It's where disappointment and resentment can breed. And nothing of what I said, there is something you want in your relationship. Right. So it's so easy to say, yeah, you gotta communicate more. Yes, of course. 

But I think when you look at the other side of it, you're seeing, okay, I understand why it's so important that we get the story, that we remain curious about one another, that we get to the root of the issue, because we don't want those things. And we got work. We got stuff we need to do. We don't want to stand still. 

Yes. Okay, so I have a question about. For people listening. Is there something? I know your book and your work offer. You have so many things you offer to help people. Is there anything that you want to direct people towards as an exercise or an invitation to contemplate their own experience with money, to deepen that understanding? Because from what I remember, the gentleman who was running, and not enough, he was asking his partner, please help me from myself. Like, they had an explicit arrangement where they balanced, and he was able to take those vacations and drop in, or the crystal. I love that story. The intention was to be 50 to really be fair. But that mechanism was so unsupportive for their bond of really having each other's back, or that feeling of we're in it together. 

“Just to give people the example of, like, what it looks like when they start implementing awareness. But how do you help people begin to start building this awareness?” 

Heather Boneparth
I'll say two things. There's a reason that at the end of each section of our five sections in our book, and at the end of each section, we have 10 questions or around 10 questions that help couples uncover and to begin to have these conversations. 

Douglas Boneparth
Yeah, we got the words for you. 

Heather Boneparth
We've got some conversation starters. And nobody's saying you should sit down and pretend that you're opal. 

Douglas Boneparth
Start griddling your partner. 

Heather Boneparth
Done at once. They're literally conversation starters. And you can do them in whatever environment and pace makes sense for you. 

Douglas Boneparth
See where they take you? 

Heather Boneparth
The thing that we really recommend couples do is we recommend you sit down for a money date four times a year, quarterly, and you can incorporate one or two of these questions into your money date, and the money date from our perspective.” And we don't need to get fully into the technicality because it does involve obviously talking about your numbers. That's a piece of it which we can put aside just for the purpose of this conversation. But we also include in our money conversations things that are going right in your life, patting each other on the back for all the good work in progress that you are doing, “framing this in a positive way so that you can constructively work through,” and then talking about maybe the things that you guys both should be working on a little bit better. 

And the other thing that we include in those conversations is an inquiry about time and about whether both of you feel supported and have enough time to do the things that you individually want and need to do.” Which I think goes into again, this bigger question about money and the deeper conversations and saying, like, what are my personal goals? What am I trying to accomplish in 2026? What are the things that I feel like I'm unsatisfied with in my own personal life? That opens up the door to that piece of the conversation. And by doing it as part of this big four-time-a-year meeting, where you also have your numbers handy and available, you don't have to kick the can down the road and say later, ” We'll talk about it later. 

Well, no, we can actually address. Are there constructive things we can be doing in our financial lives to get back to this concept, make room for the thing that you want to be doing that you're not getting to do? Other things we can do. So we do this four times a year, and we suggest couples do it four times a year as well. 

Douglas Boneparth
And I want, thank you, folks, to understand that you're playing a long game here, right? You're not going to read this book, you're not going to have one money date, let alone two, or maybe even three, and walk away, you know, having mastered any of this. You don't go to the gym one time and say you're in the best shape of your life. You don't see a therapist one time and say, I've been cured, I've been healed, right? This is something that you have to put in the reps on. 

Anything under self-care follows these rules. And your money is absolutely no different from any of this. So, counting by fours here, right? One year, you got four cracks at it. Three years down the road, you're at 12, right? 

At that point, you can say, ” Hey, we've put in this work. We know how these meetings go. We know the cadence. We know what's easy to talk about, what's difficult to talk about. Heather gave a lot of great tips. 

You start to figure out how to conduct these meetings. And all of a sudden, you have a practice. And once you get to that point, that's where really great things happen. That is the subtitle. Becoming an unstoppable financial team now creates that kind of teamwork that will get you the results that you're looking for to navigate your financial life, if not just your life together. 

Yes. And if I'm understanding the sentiment of the curious, like, attitude, and also some preparatory work to have some of those questions, to have a better understanding going into those meetings, and being able to continue to be in a relationship with what is this telling? Or what am I learning about myself? What am I experiencing as it relates to these dynamics? 

Heather Boneparth
They get better every time. You will get more organized over time by giving yourself the space. It's so important to us. When we landed on quarterly, this is not the same as sitting down. Some people say weekly, some people say monthly. We want you to have the time between these meetings to see if what you talked about is working. We want there to be space because we're talking about what's working in terms of our feelings and how we feel about it, and the kind of work you'd be doing relationally. But we're also talking about financially. And we know that when we're talking about things that require financial changes or behavioral financial changes in your life, you gotta give it some time to see if it works. You're not gonna know in a week. Well, I stopped spending money on coffee, and everything's different. 

It's been four days. You haven't even faced like one. Like one ounce of adversity or something that could shake up your plans. You have to give it a little bit of space and these things. Time to breathe and to settle in. And so it's important to us. And the work gets better and more streamlined and more efficient over time. We started this years ago, and the way that it looks now is a million times better. I mean, like when we first started, we'd end up either screaming at each other or we wouldn't talk about money for six months. 

Douglas Boneparth
Frustration, frustration. 

Heather Boneparth
A lot of talking over one another, a lot of tears from me. 

Douglas Boneparth
Yeah, it took a lot of willingness. Again, developing a practice is not easy. Keep going back to the gym analogy. You work out hard one time, you're going to be super sore, and a lot of people are going to be like, I don't want to experience that level of discomfort again. And that's why this is hard. Right. You have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable before this practice is going to take shape and form. That's why I started the whole conversation here today with that, hey, buyer beware. But it's definitely worth it. Right? Because when you put in the practice, or you go to the gym four days a week, six months, you probably are in the best shape of your life. 

Heather Boneparth
Yes. 

Yes. Well, it's interesting when I think about your work, and I was preparing for our interview, I was thinking, there's a piece. And I think they're interconnected. And as you're speaking, it seems like they're. These quarterly meetings involve two parts, but I'm sure each part has many aspects. But one part is just the unpacking and self-understanding, and also understanding your partner and their experience as it relates to their life and money, and all the things. And then the second part is how we actually work together, developing these goals, having these conversations. So, can we talk a little bit more about doing it together? 

Because I think people try to adopt a certain thing, and it sounds like you're really encouraging people to develop based on what they learn and know about themselves and others, and then arrive at something that's going to be evolving. 

Douglas Boneparth
Yeah. So I'll use a story from the book or an interview that we had with a couple, two partners that were extraordinarily willing to do the work. That wasn't the issue at all. They both wanted to get further or dive more deeply into their financial life. He was a financial professional. She was willing to go along. He would start with the numbers, start with spreadsheets and budgets, and net worth tables, and the things that you do have to review. And it wasn't clicking; it just could not get forward. And what had happened here is he said, hey, let's try something different. Finally, I got fed up with like, we gotta try something different. Brings out a whiteboard and starts to draw pictures of what he is trying to explain through tables and things like that. And it clicked, and it clicked. 

And the lesson here is that you need to be able to meet your partner where they're at, figure out how it is they operate, and like to learn back to that curiosity component. Right. I know with Heather, starting with the numbers is not going to be as effective as starting with the goals and the things that we want to achieve. I know I will be more effective, or we will be more effective. Talking about, inevitably, numbers. We have to do it, but how do we have an on-ramp into successfully getting there? Right? So this is such a big part of fairness and a big part of teamwork is knowing how the other person learns, how it is that they receive information, being curious about what they're interested in. They're in the golden age of financial information, right? 

I can name you a dozen podcasts, newsletters, TV programs, you name it, that likely will cater to your interests or the way you like to learn, or the person you want to hear it from. That is an amazing gateway drug into diving more deeply into. And I'll be the first to own this. It's a pretty boring topic, personal finance. But what's not boring is what you've got going on in your life. Hopefully, you don't find your partner boring, right? Hopefully, you find them to be quite interesting. And then now you have the way to connect more deeply with them, particularly around personal finance. So I love that story because such a big part is meeting your partner where they're at. 

Thank you. Heather, do you want to comment? 

Heather Boneparth
The one thing I'll say too is that I don't want to gender this, but I know, especially I can speak from my own experience as a mother, as a professional, as someone trying to juggle way too many things at once. “It is really, really easy to get lost in your marriage, in your relationship, in your children, in a lot of different things. And so when we talk about goals and how to, like, really identify not only shared goals, but, like, put shared goals aside for a second, what are your goals? And those get so easily lost.” It sounds so cliché to come back to this idea of yours, mine, and ours. But it really is so critical in this work that the goals are not just those of this homogenous unit. 

And we are sure to ask ourselves as part of this process, and one of the other financial wealth managers whom we interviewed for this book asks the question beautifully. She says over the next three years, what would need to happen in your life, personally, professionally, and financially, for you to be happy with the progress you've made in your life? That is an individual question. That's not a coupled question. You each should answer separately and answer it in front of your partner. And together we talk about that as part of the conversation, so that your partner may hear the words out of your mouth and realize what conditions may need to change in your life as a couple for those things to be achieved for you. 

So when we talk about the technical, we could talk about the technical all day, but that's what I keep coming back to, is this idea of not losing your individual goals to the collective of the couple. 

Yes. And I know some of what you both focus on, which I'm hearing you point to here, is how you're connecting through different ways of having different values, different processing, different. Like, there are so many differences that couples have that it's less trying to have the strategy or the result that's the win. The win is that we are connecting, we're on the same page, we're getting it, we're aligning, we're attuning, and then from there we can move. And I'm hearing you speak to Heather just how if we're not looking at this in a more holistic or multidimensional way, we're going to lose where contributing value in these maybe invisible work or ways in which we're contributing that maybe don't have specific dollars in this concrete, very precise way. And then also like where we feel most fulfilled and most happy. 

“Like that is part of the conversation of abundance and wealth and how we're working together.” 

Heather Boneparth
Absolutely. And I think something that was just so important, one of the most important messages from all of this, because. Right. Like, if you focus and you obsess as a couple or as an individual over one strategy.” Right. We lay out this one strategy. We've got our eight-step process. Here are the things you have to do. Guess what's going to happen. Life's going to happen to you. And it's going to throw that strategy upon Ted. The math doesn't always add up. And that's coming from a financial professional saying that in our lives, we've made decisions before where the math hasn't made sense. It's not the decision that another financial planner would have told us to make on paper, but we made the decision because it was meeting the needs of our family and of me or of him at that time. 

And that's why all this other stuff, which might sound a little wishy washy, I'm not giving you an eight-step budgeting tip, how to work together and combine your finances. But at the end of the day, none of us knows what tomorrow is going to bring. That's why we end the book on the section about risk and expecting the unexpected. Because you're better off spending your time conditioning your relationship to be in a better situation, to accept and be nimble to change. Yes. You are marrying yourself to one way of doing things and having that be the only way you can envision yourselves moving forward. I would rather see people come away from this book, from our thoughts, from our lessons, saying I'm ready to accept whatever happens next. Then I've got the three-step process together. 

Douglas Boneparth
Yeah. And again, things like 

Right. Things like knowing each other. If you're trying to be a durable, malleable, dynamic person, and you want to be those things because the most dynamic thing you're dealing with is life itself. 

This is how you're able to take the change that comes your way. It will. When things turn upside down. It will. That's the only guarantee I've got for you is that things are going to change up on you. How can you deal with the expectations that you set for each other and yourselves when things inevitably change? And we're probably sick of hearing this at this point about the difficulty of this. That's why it's hard. And you hear this all the time. 

You'd be out of a job, I'd be out of a job. And it's utopia, and we live in a world that's the furthest thing from that. So again, it's creating that cost-benefit analysis here with the cost being. Okay. 

This is going to be a difficult thing to get started with, by the way. It gets so much easier the more reps you put in. Right. 

Well, and I'm also thinking how much. 

Douglas Boneparth
More rewarding when that's the deal, the trade-off. Right. 

And when life presents a challenge, we can be more nimble because we are in touch with each other, with ourselves, around what matters, instead of oh, delay, sacrifice, and when X happens, then I will do the work, and then life happens, and we're not equipped because we're like running on a deficit. 

Douglas Boneparth
Let's go all the way with that thinking real quick. Okay, let's go all the way there. It's not only were we able to find our way through it or out of it, but we are also able to find the opportunity. 

Yeah, yeah. 

Douglas Boneparth
That is, I think the multitude of. 

Heather Boneparth
Layers here, it doesn't have to just be scary, it can be filled with possibility. 

Thank you for saying that. Yes. 

Douglas Boneparth
And I'm a financial guy, it's in crisis, it's in the meltdowns, it's in the volatility. Like, let's get to a financial will, extrapolate out to life. It's in those moments that the people who've managed to keep calm in those environments, because they know each other and their behaviors and all of that, they're like, look at that deal. Look at that opportunity. I'm going to put my chips there while everyone's running for the exit. 

It's aligned because they've done the work, or we've done the work, and we have our bearings around how to calibrate to our north star the things that matter most. It's uncomfortable and uncertain and scary. But we have that to guide us. 

Heather Boneparth
And would you really want a world with something unexpected happening in it? Would you really want? 

Douglas Boneparth
Would you be a little boring? I could go on for days. That's where the opportunities are. Whether you look at 2008 or whatever and stuff like that. 

Heather Boneparth
Let's nod and say we did. 

Douglas Boneparth
Heather wants to take ye olde, you know, walking stick and pull me out of the hollow here. 

Heather Boneparth
Talk about 2008. That's not. 

Well, I can just feel that both of you could probably do a whole week-long, like you both have so much to give and offer. So for people who are recognizing there's a depth here and just gifts that you have to share. Where can people get in touch with you both? 

Douglas Boneparth
Where are they going to find you? 

Heather Boneparth
You can go. You do it. 

Douglas Boneparth
So if you're interested in learning more about the book, you can go to www.domoneytogether.com. If you want to learn more about the wealth management firm we're running here, it's bonefidewealth.com on social media. Oh, wait, we have a newsletter that we publish pretty much every week around love and money, and that's going to be @readthejointaccount.com. Check out the joint account, subscribe. And then lastly, for social media, you can find us on all platforms. She's @averagejoelle, and I'm @dougboneparth. Or you could just Google our names and go anywhere you need to go here. 

I'll make sure to have all of the links on today's show notes. Heather, were you going to say anything? It seemed like you were gonna cover it. 

Heather Boneparth
He gave the whole thing. 

Douglas Boneparth
She was going to stop me and be like you forgot the newsletter. 

Heather Boneparth
Don't forget the newsletter, it is the most fun of all. 

Well, thank you both. It's been a treat to spend this time with you, and thank you for what you're doing. 

Heather Boneparth
Thanks for having us.