{"id":36651,"date":"2025-11-19T22:09:56","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T23:09:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=36651"},"modified":"2025-11-20T11:22:53","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T11:22:53","slug":"how-to-talk-about-money-in-your-relationship-according-to-a-personal-finance-coach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=36651","title":{"rendered":"How to Talk About Money in Your Relationship, According to a Personal Finance Coach"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A few years ago, a conflict about money almost ended a relationship of mine. It was a vacation with a new boyfriend, our first together. We alternated paying for things, I thought pretty evenly. He paid for breakfast. I paid for lunch. He bought us coffee. I bought us ice cream. It felt very fair to me, this kind of unspoken arrangement when it came to the bill. We didn\u2019t need Venmo! We were adults!<\/p>\n

But then, on the flight home, my boyfriend casually mentioned that I owed him a very specific amount of money. I almost started to cry. My emotions surprised him. They also surprised me.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t that the number itself was huge; it was that my boyfriend had clearly been keeping track of our payments in detail while I had thought we were trusting each other, and that any difference would come out in the wash. I knew he hadn\u2019t intended to hurt me by bringing it up, but it made the whole trip feel less romantic and more transactional, like we had been two co-workers on a business trip, settling up expenses.<\/p>\n

I became sullen, he got defensive. Things spiraled, and we had a massive fight. If I had heard the advice of Ramit Sethi, a money and relationships expert, I might have approached the situation differently.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Sethi\u2019s first book, \u201cI Will Teach You to Be Rich,\u201d gave frank and pragmatic advice for managing your personal finances according to what matters most to you. His second book, \u201cMoney for Couples,\u201d offers strategies for constructively discussing money with a partner, like leading with curiosity rather than anger or judgment. His Netflix series, \u201cHow to Get Rich,\u201d and his podcast, also called \u201cMoney for Couples,\u201d show him applying those techniques with clients, and can sometimes feel as much like relationship counseling as they do financial planning.<\/p>\n

I recently spoke to Sethi about why talking about money with our loved ones can be so difficult. We discussed tactics for having those conversations in ways that actually bring people closer together, and Sethi offered advice to \u201cModern Love\u201d listeners who sent in their relationship and money questions. Lessons from our interview, edited for length and clarity, are below.<\/p>\n

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A few years ago, a conflict about money almost ended a relationship of mine. It was a vacation with a new boyfriend, our first together. We alternated paying for things, I thought pretty evenly. He paid for breakfast. I paid for lunch. He bought us coffee. I bought us ice cream. It felt very fair to me, this kind of unspoken arrangement when it came to the bill. We didn\u2019t need Venmo! We were adults!But then, on the flight home, my boyfriend casually mentioned that I owed him a very specific amount of money. I almost started to cry. My emotions surprised him. They also surprised me.It wasn\u2019t that the number itself was huge; it was that my boyfriend had clearly been keeping track of our payments in detail while I had thought we were trusting each other, and that any difference would come out in the wash. I knew he hadn\u2019t intended to hurt me by bringing it up, but it made the whole trip feel less romantic and more transactional, like we had been two co-workers on a business trip, settling up expenses.I became sullen, he got defensive. Things spiraled, and we had a massive fight. If I had heard the advice of Ramit Sethi, a money and relationships expert, I might have approached the situation differently.Sethi\u2019s first book, \u201cI Will Teach You to Be Rich,\u201d gave frank and pragmatic advice for managing your personal finances according to what matters most to you. His second book, \u201cMoney for Couples,\u201d offers strategies for constructively discussing money with a partner, like leading with curiosity rather than anger or judgment. His Netflix series, \u201cHow to Get Rich,\u201d and his podcast, also called \u201cMoney for Couples,\u201d show him applying those techniques with clients, and can sometimes feel as much like relationship counseling as they do financial planning.I recently spoke to Sethi about why talking about money with our loved ones can be so difficult. We discussed tactics for having those conversations in ways that actually bring people closer together, and Sethi offered advice to \u201cModern Love\u201d listeners who sent in their relationship and money questions. Lessons from our interview, edited for length and clarity, are below.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36653,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36651"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36654,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36651\/revisions\/36654"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}