588 - Bridging Financial Gaps in Polyamory
Mo’ money, mo’ partners, mo’ problems
We’ve talked about money before (shout out to episode 273 with Hadassah Damien), but this week, we’re focusing specifically on financial gaps in relationships. Money is one of the most polarizing topics in relationships, and we often get into fights with partners about who pays for what, or we avoid the topic of money altogether because of social stigma, awkwardness, or vulnerability.
When you’re non-monogamous, financial gaps extend past our own partnerships too. They can show up with metamours as well, which complicates things further.
Types of financial gaps
Generally when talking about financial gaps we’re referring to one of the following:
Income disparity, or one partner earning significantly more than the other.
Different spending habits.
Debt disparity, such as student loans, credit cards, or medical debt carried unevenly between partners.
Asset disparity, or savings, property, investments, or inheritance one partner has that the other does not.
Financial upbringing or class background. Growing up with scarcity versus growing up with financial security can shape how people relate to money, often unconsciously.
Differing financial values, i.e. money as security versus status versus a tool for experiences.
Differing risk tolerance, such as one partner wanting to invest and grow wealth and the other wanting everything liquid and safe.
Differing money management styles.
Polyamory-specific layers of financial gaps include:
Financial gaps with metamours, or comparing what you’re able to offer or receive financially with what they can.
Disparity in dating/travel, such as one person able to afford dates and trips and another being unable to.
Uneven financial entanglement across partners.
Cost of long-distance travel.
Perceived financial irresponsibility, such as a partner spending money on another relationship while seeming financially irresponsible.
It’s not about the dollar amount
According to the research used for this episode (Peetz, J., Meloff, Z., & Royle, C. (2023). When couples fight about money, what do they fight about? Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 40(11), 3723–3751), the gap itself isn’t usually the problem in a relationship, it’s the unaddressed fairness that turns to resentment over time.
Every theme brought up in this study intersected with either concerns about fairness or concerns about responsibility, and disagreements regarding the extremes of these concerns were linked to the worst relationship outcomes.
What to do about it
If you haven’t already, head over to episode 273 to get Hadassah Damien’s input on topics like:
How do you avoid going broke from dating multiple people?
Is it possible to intertwine finances with multiple partners without it becoming a complicated mess?
Does retirement planning look different for poly people who don't plan on having a single married partner?
Any advice for property ownership or big purchases involving multiple partners?
Talk about money early. Earlier first financial discussions have been linked to better relationship quality, but it’s vital to continue to communicate well throughout the relationship, not just disclosing numbers. Having early first financial discussions were also linked to more short-term financial conflict, but with genuinely good communication, there was less conflict over time.
How do you talk about money?
Normalize that money conversations bring up feelings, same as conversations about sex.
Lead with curiosity over confrontation — gather information about how your partner thinks and feels about money before trying to negotiate anything.
Encourage transparency around actual numbers when it feels safe and trustworthy.
Encourage specificity about contributions rather than letting a partner guess or assume.
Frame agreements as experiments, not permanent contracts — e.g., try a particular date-cost split for a while and revisit it if it's not working.
Build a money check-in into your regular RADAR rather than only discussing money during conflict or around a big purchase.
Some questions about money that the Gottmans suggest discussing with a partner:
What did your maternal and paternal grandparents do for a living?
How well off were your grandparents?
What did your parents do for a living?
How well off were your parents?
What were your parents’ attitudes about money?
How did you view these parental ideas as a child?
Did your parents feel comfortable spending money?
How did you view these attitudes about money as a child?
Did you get presents at holidays? Did you celebrate birthdays? Did your family contribute to charity?
These questions give more context and nuance about one’s financial upbringing and how it might influence someone’s relationship to money as an adult.
Transcript
If you find any transcription errors, please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Dedeker: The single largest recurring theme was perceived irresponsibility. So as in, you see your partner as failing to plan financially, failing to budget, failing to save, or failing to spend responsibly. So that was the biggest theme is, I perceive that my partner is messing all this up. I perceive my partner is making bad choices with their money or with our money.
Jase: Welcome to the Multiamory Podcast. I'm Jase.
Emily: I'm Emily.
Dedeker: And I'm Dedeker.
Emily: We believe in looking to the future of relationships, not maintaining the status quo of the past.
Dedeker: Whether you're monogamous, polyamorous, swinging, casually dating, or if you just do relationships differently, we see you and we're here for you.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory podcast, we're talking about financial gaps in relationships. Most of us want to feel like we're financial teammates with our partners, but money is one of the most fraught topics in any relationship. We get into recurring fights about who pays for what, or we freeze up and avoid the conversation altogether because it feels awkward or vulnerable to bring up. For polyamorous folks, financial gaps don't stop at one relationship. They can show up with metamours too. We'll look at what the research says about why money creates so much friction in relationships and give you some concrete tools for navigating financial differences with the people that you love.
Dedeker: Okay, folks, financial gaps. Who's got them? Who's experienced them? Yeah, yeah, yes.
Jase: Yeah, definitely. Every relationship I've had has had some kind of financial gap. It shows up more in some than others, though.
Dedeker: Sure.
Jase: And that's an interesting piece.
Dedeker: What if you're willing to share what experiences come to mind for you that have been the most challenging to navigate or have felt the most fraught?
Jase: I think the one that actually comes up to my mind whenever I think about financial gaps was during a time in my life when I was not doing well financially at all. Had a lot of debt, was not making very much money, was really barely getting by. And I was dating someone who is in a much better financial position than I was. And I had a really hard time with how do I navigate what I'm willing to pay for or just that I can't pay to go out? And then when she would pay for things, feeling guilt about that too, feeling ashamed of that. For example, something happened. I can't even remember the details of it, but I lost the keys to my vehicle and had to pay a locksmith, and she paid for that for me. And it's that kind of a basic thing. It's not just a fun thing, but a basic deal of paying for a locksmith, that I just had a really hard time accepting that and felt embarrassed or ashamed about that, that I wasn't contributing more equally.
Dedeker: Yeah, that makes sense. What about you, Emily?
Emily: Absolutely, I've been on the side generally in my life of men who make more than I do that I am dating. And it's interesting because I do think that gender sometimes comes into this question. Jace, you illustrated it right there.
Jase: Yeah, exactly.
Emily: I don't know that if the roles were reversed, if you were dating a woman, if the woman would feel the same way about you offering to do that for her, for example. I look at the one very long-term relationship where I was living with a partner for a long time and the partner when we started dating, we made roughly the same amount of money. And then by the time we were not together anymore, or I would say even maybe two to three years into the relationship, he was making significantly more and then even significantly more than that. And it was a big struggle figuring out what is equal in the relationship in terms of rent. Of course, if you are living with someone, all of those questions come into play. And money is just very difficult if you're not able to speak about it in a way that doesn't get tense and doesn't get accusatory and doesn't also feel like there's a tit for tat and you need to— you're almost beholden to a person because they're spending money on you. The power dynamics involved with money, especially in non-monogamous relationships, but in any relationships, it's really something to be careful with and mindful about. Unfortunately in the past I've been maybe not as mindful or careful as I should be and gotten myself into situations where I felt very stuck because I felt like I couldn't leave because I didn't have enough money.
Dedeker: A little too financially dependent on someone.
Emily: 100%. Too financially dependent to leave.
Dedeker: Yeah.
Jase: Well, that's— I know that's something that Dedeker's brought up not just of financial dependence, but of someone feeling like you owe them now if they pay for stuff, even if you didn't need them to, but they did. There's that. But then I'm just reminded of a conversation I have had a few times with a friend of mine who had this long-term relationship and they kept considering moving in together, but the other person— so not my friend, but the person they were dating— was in much worse financial shape and didn't seem very motivated to fix it. And it was actually my friend who was concerned to say, I don't want to move in, to have someone move in with me and then feel like they can't leave. I don't want them to feel trapped with me because of that too.
Emily: That's awesome that they were able to look beyond and realize that that might even be an issue in their relationship.
Dedeker: Well, because, yeah, it makes sense, especially when you're considering a big milestone like that where you're getting close to someone, it's very easy to want to just be positive, right? It's always going to be magical and wonderful. It's going to be great. We don't have to talk about money. It'll just work. Jokes on you. So I want to talk about the many, many different ways that financial gaps can actually look, because of course we have the classic one of income disparity, that one partner earns significantly more or less than the other person. But there's a lot of different ways that this can show up. It's not just about income. And then we're also going to get into some very hyper-specific to Polyamory and non-monogamy versions of financial gaps as well. So in addition to the classic income disparity, there's just the different spending habits, right? Somebody can have a tendency towards spending more money versus the other person can have a tendency more towards saving money, and that can create tension, particularly if you're in a situation where you're going to financially entangle in some kind of way.
Jase: Something else I think is worth acknowledging when it comes to financially entangling is that if you're going to live together or have a business together or something that even if you're not sharing bank accounts and even if you're saying, yeah, we're going to do everything separately, there's still a certain amount of entanglement that happens just practically. I'd say even to a certain extent, dating seriously where you start traveling together, even if you're not living together and you don't have a business together. But just to be aware, I think it can be easy to think, oh, well, we just won't do that. And then it's not a problem. It's still something that's going to come up. To a certain extent, obviously more significantly in those cases where you're more closely entwined.
Dedeker: Yeah, if we really want to go extreme with this, there is an argument to be made that the moment that you get a check at a restaurant on a date, you are financially entangled in a tiny way, but you're immediately sharing an expense around something and having to navigate that, right? And so these things can be actually still be important to think about. So there can be a disparity in the amount of debt each person carries, right? So someone can have ridiculous student loans or credit card debt or medical debt that's carried unevenly between people, and that can impact them differently regardless of what their income is.
Jase: And that all debt is not equal, right?
Dedeker: Yes, that too.
Jase: Someone who owns a house and has a mortgage could argue, oh, I've got way more debt than you, but that's a very different kind of debt than credit card debt or medical debt or something like that.
Dedeker: Uh, there can be a gap between just what assets you have. So again, separate from your income, but if someone just has more savings, if they have property, if they have investments, if they inherited property or savings or investments and the other person didn't, and this can also start to extend into family assets as well, right? That if one person has a little bit more of a financial safety net with a family that has particular assets that the other person does not, that can change things as well. And then related to that, it's very easy for there to be differences in financial upbringing or your class background, right? So if you grew up in poverty or if you grew up with a certain sense of scarcity versus growing up with financial security— and of course we could get super granular with the different flavors of what it's like to truly grow up in extreme food scarcity, poverty, to growing up lower class, to growing up lower middle class versus upper middle class, we can really get granular with that. But of course, those are things that shape how people relate to money, sometimes in ways that neither person can fully articulate necessarily.
Jase: Yeah, for sure. I think there's also a certain aspect of how much of a safety net exists for you or how much you feel like you have. One can also change that relationship. I'll say, for myself, I've had times of having very little money, but I've had a positive enough relationship with my parents and my family that I know if I was truly in trouble, I would be able to have someone help me to a certain extent. Right. And I know that for some people it's like, oh yeah, they take care of whatever for me. And for some people it's, I don't have that safety net at all. I don't have anyone who would come to my rescue if I needed it. And that's a whole spectrum there too.
Emily: Also chosen family along those lines. I know. Mm-hmm. You two kind of counseled me about this when I was thinking about exiting my last big relationship and saying, you know, if you need help in some way, we are here for you, which meant a lot as well.
Dedeker: Yeah. And so similarly, your background, your financial upbringing, your class background can then influence your financial values. And those can be very different between two people in a relationship. Some person may see money as this is my security, and some people may see money as this is a way to show status, or some people may see money as this is a tool for experiences and for living life. And that can also lead into differences in risk tolerance. And this also intersects with the how much risk does someone feel comfortable taking with their money if they know really if everything fell apart, yeah, I have family members or I've chosen family who would bail me out versus, if they don't have that, one partner may want to invest or do more risky investments to grow wealth. The other person might want everything to be liquid and to be safe and to be exactly where they want it or where they can see it. Some person may want to keep it under their mattress. I got some people in my family that are like that.
Jase: I had someone that I dated for a while that her and her mom both didn't trust banks. And so it was like, wow, all of ours is cash in the sock drawer kind of a thing.
Emily: Whoa.
Dedeker: And then, oh gosh, yeah, the last one I have on my list before we get into the poly-specific stuff, because this one I feel like comes up a lot with couples that I've worked with, is just different money managing styles. And always the classic is there's one person who's the meticulous budgeter partnered with the one person who's like, that stresses me the fuck out. And then, no, I do not want to come to the budgeting meeting. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to weigh in. I want to not think about it because this stresses me out. Or someone who's just like, eh, sure, budgeting, but also we can figure it out as we go. That's all right. So lots of different flavors of financial gaps. And of course, the non-monogamy-specific versions where financial gaps don't just stop with one dyadic relationship, you can have some feelings coming up if you know there's a financial gap, let's say an income disparity, between you and a metamour, for instance, that can be a seed of comparison about, well, what am I able to offer or receive financially? What are they able to offer financially? Or if maybe there's a debt gap there, right? And let's say you have a hinge where you feel like my partner is spending more money with my metamour or picking up more of their expenses, but they don't do that for me. Right. I think that the metamour financial gaps, there's a lot of potential for for feelings to come up, wouldn't you say?
Emily: I didn't even think about that one. I was thinking about using it as a reason to potentially feel bad about yourself because, oh, my metamour might be able to go on a really extravagant trip with my—
Jase: Absolutely.
Emily: with our hinge, and I can't afford to do that. But yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Dedeker: I think also one of my nightmares is like, oh my God, what if, what if I have a partner who dates someone who's so rich, they're just like, I'm going to take you to Paris just for the weekend. Let's go.
Emily: Wow. You know, totally. Yeah, no, absolutely. But also when, for instance, somebody lives with a partner and then if you don't, for example, and your metamour is somebody who is a nesting partner and from a logistical standpoint, more money might be spent or just day-to-day resources. Yeah, exactly. Day-to-day interactions. And so therefore the resources that may be spent on you, it might not just be your partner's decision in terms of where those resources are allocated.
Jase: Yeah, I was gonna say, I've seen that come up from the different perspective of what you were just talking about, Emily, where if you do live with someone and you do have entwined finances, then any money that they do spend on someone else is kind of coming from your money too. And that can be a source of tension and conflict for people. Sometimes, and then other times not. But it's another thing to be discussed, right?
Emily: Yeah, yeah.
Dedeker: And related to this, there can be this disparity. Like, let's say you're in partnership with someone who maybe, yeah, has a higher income than you, and they're able to afford more dates out with other people. They're able to afford weekend getaways with multiple partners within a year, and maybe you can afford one trip a year, or one night out a month or something like that. And so you have to be choosy with who that's with, right? It's not as easy to be able to just give this equal financial abundance to every single partner or things like that. I've seen that definitely come up as a source of conflict and tension. Yeah, we've touched on this a little bit in other episodes, but also, within the poly community, I do think that long-distance relationships are a little bit more common or a little bit more embraced. Than they are in normie land. And there's that, just the cost of maintaining a long-distance relationship.
Emily: Yeah.
Dedeker: And the sometimes unspoken question of, like, well, who can afford to travel to whom and how often? And then, when I was looking through our back catalog, way back in episode 238, which was when we interviewed Kathy Labriola about her Polyamory Break Up book, she talked about what she sees really commonly as a source of tension is a partner spending money on another relationship while seeming financially irresponsible with you.
Emily: What, what would that look like exactly?
Dedeker: Uh, it could look like, I don't know, just to do low-hanging fruit, it could look like your partner telling you, I don't know if I can pull off us doing this weekend getaway, things are a little bit tight, and then you see them turn around and go spend several hundreds of dollars on a fancy dinner. With their other metamour. Whether that's quote unquote justifiable via whatever their financial state is or not, it's understandable to bring up feelings. Sorry, now that I'm thinking about it, I hear this reported to me all the freaking time from people. Yeah, all the freaking time. Well, especially because if you think about it, what really makes this worse is that you only have partial information about what's going on in your relationship that your partner's having with this other person. And it's very easy to project the worst possible version of it.
Emily: Yeah.
Dedeker: You know, so it's like you have partial information about how much the other person spent or did they split the cost of this trip or whatever. Often what happens is people are kind of guessing and just from the outside it definitely looks like, I think this partner is, you know, spending a lot of money over here and maybe not showing up responsibly for me. I mean, sometimes that is the case. I'm not saying that it's 100% projection. It's just this is a situation where it's very easy for question marks and skepticism to come up about a partner's financial decisions they're making with somebody else.
Jase: Yeah. And I think that that shows up outside of other partners too, right? Where you might be trying to plan things with a partner and they're a little bit like, I don't know if I want to spend money on that, about something you're going to do together. But then they, you know, drop $300 on pre-ordering some random Kickstarter thing that came up.
Emily: That can happen from experience.
Jase: Maybe, I don't know. We'll get to that later, maybe. No, but that tension can come up. But I think that if then that spending is not just feeling irresponsible, but also on someone else, it just kind of adds to that. So something that I think already can exist and be a point of tension can be more so, especially if you're already feeling a little bit like, ah, I feel like I'm losing something because of this other relationship. Yeah, for sure.
Dedeker: Ooh, I think another one that can come up is assumptions that people make about someone with a nesting partner, right? I've definitely seen people be like, well, their nesting partner I know makes a ton of money or they have a cushy tech job and so I assume they make a ton of money. And so I assume they have these resources or this safety net that maybe I don't have.
Emily: Right.
Jase: They're a podcast host, so I assume they have tons of money.
Dedeker: Just, they're just rolling in money every single night when they finish recording and I don't have that. So I want to take us into the research, and the first stop on our research tour is the often cited statistic that money is the biggest predictor of divorce among married—
Jase: money conflict.
Dedeker: Yeah, money conflict is the biggest predictor of divorce among married monogamous people. So I found at least the most recent study that examined that. So it's a 2012 study by Dew, Britt, and Huston. Examining the Relationship Between Financial Issues and Divorce that was published in the Journal of Family Relations. And so that is true, what they found, that financial disagreements were the strongest predictor of divorce among all of the common different types of disagreements that they tested. So stronger than disagreements about sex or about in-laws. And then they also found that this was true even when they controlled for people's income, for their debt, and for their net worth. So as in, it seems like even very wealthy people even mixed income relationships, even very poor people, money was still a strong— or money conflict was still a strong predictor of divorce. So at least what they found—
Jase: that's really interesting. Yeah.
Dedeker: This isn't necessarily about how much money you have.
Jase: So it's not like money stress predicts divorce, but it's money conflict.
Dedeker: Money conflict.
Emily: Interesting. Did they say what exactly the conflicts were around?
Dedeker: Oh, well, we'll get to that shortly.
Emily: Okay.
Dedeker: Shortly. Okay. Just the last thing I want to share about their study is they found that perceived financial inequity was linked to divorce risk, but that link was more fully explained by how often the couple actually fought about money. So as in having a financial gap did not predict divorce necessarily. It just means that the conflict and the feeling of unfairness is the active ingredient, not necessarily the inequity or the gap. We're going to dive into that more, and we're going to also dive into another research study that actually got into the nitty-gritty of what these conflicts actually look like in the next section.
Jase: So before that, we're going to take a quick break to talk about our sponsors for this show. Thank you to them for letting us do this show for free every week, helping to support us. And you can help support us by just giving them a listen. Use the promo codes if they're interesting to you, or of course, if you would rather join our amazing community of listeners and support this show directly and get ad-free episodes, you can go to multiamory.com/join and sign up to get in our community there. And we would love to see you in our monthly video chats.
Dedeker: And we're back and we're gonna answer your question, Emily, of like, what do these financial conflicts actually look like? So I found this super fascinating study. So this was a 2023 study by Peetz, Meloff, and Royle. Titled "When Couples Fight About Money, What Do They Fight About?" This was published in Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. So this is actually two studies. Study number one is the one we're going to dive into the deepest. And what they did was they polled over 1,000 different Reddit posts from r/relationships, and specifically posts that mentioned money or finance and that also had enough engagement to suggest it was a conflict that people related to.
Jase: Oh, okay, sure, sure. It's not just somebody on one-off thing.
Emily: That it wasn't, like, really the issue.
Dedeker: Yes, yes. Yes. And they coded all of them by hand. So going through these Reddit posts, they identified 8 themes of financial conflict. Any guesses on what the single largest theme was? It was not what I expected.
Emily: How you spend your money on children.
Dedeker: Oh, that's good.
Jase: That's not what I was gonna guess.
Dedeker: Children. Okay.
Emily: Yeah, like I was gonna say like children or in-laws or other family members.
Jase: Like how much you spend on family, that being the disagreement.
Emily: How much you spend.
Dedeker: Sure.
Emily: Well, also like how much you allow, for instance, if you are really wealthy and you spend a shit ton on your kids, and don't give them the opportunity to work hard and learn about money themselves, but rather just give them everything. How you, how you kind of teach them, how you raise them, how you teach them about money. Yeah.
Dedeker: Okay. So, so that was not the top theme. However, I think what you're speaking to, it comes up in two of the other themes that showed up. So one of the themes was relative contributions, as in fighting over uneven financial contribution to the household or a lack of reciprocity or unequal gift-giving as well.
Emily: Oh, interesting.
Dedeker: So I think that falls into that category. Category? Yes.
Jase: I would've thought that was number one. I would've thought that was number one. Gift-giving? No, the unequal spending on, on household stuff. Unequal spending.
Emily: Yeah.
Dedeker: No, that was not the top one. But also I think what you're speaking to, Emily, I would put under this category, this theme of different financial values. So different spending priorities, having different class backgrounds, and probably that different values around what are we gonna teach our children about money.
Emily: Around money. Yes, totally.
Dedeker: What's your guess, Jace?
Jase: Gosh, how many streaming services to subscribe to?
Dedeker: You know what? You might be getting close. Maybe.
Jase: What of like, of like how big our quality of life should be in areas or like?
Dedeker: Oh, now you're getting colder. Now you're getting colder. Okay, so I'll just tell you. I'll just tell you. So the single largest recurring theme was perceived irresponsibility. So as in, you see your partner as failing to plan financially, failing to budget, failing to save, or failing to spend responsibly. So that was the biggest theme is, I perceive that my partner is messing all this up. I perceive my partner is making bad choices with their money or with our money.
Jase: Got it. And sort of the specifics of what that means could vary by relationship.
Dedeker: So that's why I was like, I don't know if I'm like, my partner pays for 25 different streaming services, jace, and I can have my own feelings around it.
Emily: Oh, that's good. Is something on there that it relates to Maybe speaking poorly of your partner in terms of their contribution because maybe they don't give as much monetarily as you do, for instance.
Dedeker: I put that under the relative contributions.
Emily: Relative contributions. Yeah, sure. Yeah. I recall back in the day my partner spending quite lavishly on himself, but then when it came to, oh, why don't we do something that would be enriching for both of us? Take a trip together or, it'd be cheaper. Yes, yes, much cheaper. Or even say like, no, we can't afford that, or no, that's not something that would be good for us to do. Or, and then, and then seeing the inequality there.
Jase: $8,000 computer that he buys or something like that.
Emily: Yeah, sure, sure.
Dedeker: Right. So the other themes that emerged from their analysis was a job and income, right? So like what happens when somebody suddenly loses their income? Oh, interesting. What happens if somebody refuses to work? Or if somebody doesn't want to go get a job or maybe, or maybe honestly has some legitimate reasons to not go get a job, like maybe they have a chronic illness or something like that, but that can still cause financial stress and tension.
Jase: I've also seen the version of that, that it's why don't you just take any job versus no, but I want this kind of job and holding out to get the job you want instead of just doing anything. I've definitely seen that one come up in my own life. And in lots of other people's lives.
Emily: Yeah, absolutely.
Dedeker: Another theme was who pays. This feels like a little bit of an offshoot from relative contributions, but as in, how do we split the rent? Who pays for dates? Who pays for this bill? Who pays for the cat that I gifted them for their birthday but they didn't ask for? But, you know, now they're paying for it or they think I should pay for this, whatever.
Emily: I feel like that also comes up in early relationships that not even necessarily if you're living with a person, but rather how do we pay for dates? How do we pay for anything that involves the two of us going out and doing something fun together? Especially, yeah, like if there is an income disparity, like you said.
Jase: For sure.
Dedeker: Another theme was how do we handle exceptional expenses, right? So we gotta buy a car together, or we're gonna buy a house together, or we're gonna pay for a wedding, or there's gonna be a big windfall of money. Like someone's going to get an inheritance, or someone's getting a big promotion, or they switch jobs and there's a— suddenly their income is much higher. Like, what do we do with that now?
Emily: Yeah, right.
Dedeker: Or how does that influence our lives together? Also related to that was the theme of conflict over the terms of financial arrangement. So as in, do we get a prenup? Do we merge our finances or keep our finances together? Or conflict around if I'm lending money to someone that I love, or if my partner that I entangle finances wants to financially bailout a family member, you know, is that appropriate? Should I do that? Should I not? Right. Like, boy, y'all, money's complicated.
Emily: It's really complicated.
Dedeker: It's really complicated. Sorry, I know that's so obvious.
Jase: There's so many pieces to it.
Dedeker: Yeah, really driving it home to me. Let's, let's be done with it. Let's be done with the whole money, right?
Emily: I wish I— Yeah, I had a friend who— two friends, they're married and she made more money than her husband and her husband's mother was going to lose the house. And so she offered— she gave her a loan, basically. But that's a whole other thing as well when it's not your immediate family member, but an in-law that you're bailing out.
Dedeker: I mean, I feel it's already complicated even with an immediate family member.
Emily: Totally.
Jase: Yeah. Lending within family is tricky.
Emily: Yeah. And friends, of course.
Jase: It's kind of that understanding of, like, in the normal world of lending, right? It's, you evaluate how risky is this person to actually pay me back, and that influences the amount of interest that I charge them. And then over a bunch of people lending to them, it all kind of works out in your favor. Favor, but when it's just I'm lending to one person, there's that like, if they don't pay you back, how hurt are you going to be? Like, financially, how damn good is that going to be to you? Or can you afford to like, if they never pay you back for this, you'll live and it won't have ruined that friendship or completely destroyed that family relationship? And that's hard.
Dedeker: And then the last theme was one-sided decisions. So as in somebody's made a big financial decision and kept you out of the loop, right? Or hidden spending or Jace, for decades now, has accused me of having hidden millions.
Emily: A millionaire.
Jase: Yeah. She's been hiding millions from me.
Dedeker: Jace is convinced I've been hiding millions, even though we're much more financially entangled than we've ever been and much more financial transparency between both of our lives. And still, and still he's convinced. And the problem is that I come from a family culture that if we had millions to hide, we 100% would be hiding.
Jase: That's the thing, right? That's how your family works. So I know that if you had it, you'd be hiding it. And so there's no way you can prove to me you don't have it.
Emily: Of the three of us, Dedeker totally would, right? She would be the one, right?
Dedeker: The problem is I don't make a good case to convince people otherwise.
Jase: But then the weird—
Dedeker: only the millions I've made from podcasting.
Emily: That's the only millions I have.
Jase: The weird thing is I actually don't know which outcome I want, right? It would suck if she'd been lying to me this whole time, but then also we'd have millions.
Emily: Yeah, I'm like, how would that not be in your favor in some way? I think it's going to be fine.
Jase: But she would have been lying to me about it. Yeah. And I don't like that part.
Dedeker: So. And well, and my baggage that always comes up is like a partner having hidden millions in debt. That's the thing I'm always like bothering Jason about. Like, do you have hidden debt that you're not telling me about?
Emily: He got rid of his debt.
Dedeker: He did very well. Yeah, no, no, I know. Congratulations. Good for you. And that's great.
Jase: That has changed during the duration of this podcast. Yes, it has.
Emily: You did. You made your podcast debt. But you don't. Yes.
Dedeker: Now the podcast has made you so rich that you can pay off your debt.
Emily: Why?
Jase: I will say the podcast is not what helped me pay that off. That's for sure.
Dedeker: Well, what's hard though is that you have a personality and a family culture that doesn't support hiding debt. So it's a lot easier for me to believe you.
Jase: I see.
Dedeker: Yeah. I think for you to believe me. Anyway, to get back to this study. So that was their first study. That was the Reddit study. And then they did a follow-up study where they were kind of trying to see like, can we replicate this with real-life people, not just people on the internet? And so they had a sample size of close to like 5,500 married people reporting on their money disagreements, and they found that it largely replicated the same patterns as the Reddit study, that the same themes emerged with pretty much the same frequency of each theme. However, there was a new theme that emerged with married people, and that was conflict over mundane expenses. So as in disagreements over small stuff like dealing with some car repairs, or how much are we going to budget for our kid's birthday party, I thought it was like, which brand of oat milk do we buy?
Jase: You know, it could be that expensive organic one, really mundane.
Dedeker: Yeah, I would put that under, yeah, the category of mundane expenses. However, what's interesting in that study is they found that the couples who had conflicts over mundane expenses, those were correlated with better relationship outcomes, not worse.
Jase: And so wait, what? That's like the one exception?
Dedeker: That was kind of the one exception. And I, and My interpretation of this is I'm like, maybe that suggests it's like you're actually talking about these things.
Emily: Fair enough.
Dedeker: Instead of making some assumptions perhaps, right? Because yeah, when you live with someone or you're financially entangled or you're building out a lot of these logistical life pillars with someone, it's probably better that you are talking about it more frequently rather than not, even if that means that there's some disagreements about it.
Jase: Have small disagreements over brand of oat milk, which saves you from the bigger disagreements about, yeah, extravagant expenses or being irresponsible or, or whatever. That's really interesting.
Dedeker: Possibly.
Jase: I would not have expected that.
Dedeker: Fascinating. Across both of their studies, basically they found that every theme that emerged could be placed along two related crossing dimensions. So as in, pretty much inherent in every single one of these themes, there were concerns about fairness, and then also concerns about responsibility. And so the disagreements that they found that sat at the extremes of those dimensions, right? So like someone who feels like they're being treated really unfairly, or someone who feels like their partner is just fundamentally super irresponsible. And I imagine if you're dealing with a situation where you're feeling both at once, those are the situations that were linked to the worst relationship outcomes. So again, I think this reiterates what they found in that divorce study, that the gap itself, whatever it is, may not be the problem. Or maybe even what you're fighting about may not be the problem. It's the unaddressed unfairness or unaddressed feeling like your partner is irresponsible that I think Again, here's me going into armchair analysis mode. I think if you have a big well of unaddressed unfairness— unfairness is the seed of resentment. And I think that if you have an unaddressed sense of, wow, my partner's not very responsible, I think that's the seed of eventually disrespect of your partner and not being able to admire them anymore.
Jase: For sure.
Dedeker: Yeah.
Emily: Yeah.
Dedeker: So given all of that, Does that offer any perspective for your personal experiences, like financial gaps or financial conflict?
Emily: I think I wrestled with feeling like the situation that I was in was unfair because my partner was contributing more financially.
Dedeker: Dollar number-wise, more financially.
Emily: So yes, we got to a place where from a dollar number-wise, he was contributing more financially. That left him telling me that I needed to contribute more to the relationship.
Dedeker: Like you need to overcompensate.
Emily: Yes.
Dedeker: For the fact that your income is lower.
Emily: Yes, exactly. But then the question becomes, what does that mean? What does that look like? And again, I don't think that relationships should be tallied on a scoreboard about how much one contributes versus the other. I think if we are equal partners, then we do things that help each other feel like we're achieving our goals and moving forward in the relationship and not having it be this tit-for-tat thing. So yeah, that doesn't surprise me at all, the fairness thing, just because I think both of us struggled with feeling like parts of that were unfair. And the resentment part at times also shone through. Absolutely.
Jase: Yeah, it's also making me think about when financial situations change over time in a relationship, and then also about if there is an income disparity, how significant it is. And it actually, just thinking anecdotally from stories that I've heard and my own experience as well, is if that gap is huge, sometimes there's actually less conflict over it. Because it's just, it's so clear. It's like right from the start of our relationship, you make and have so much more money than I do that, okay, great, you pay for stuff, no problem. I know that that's no sweat to you. You portray that it's no sweat to you. Not a big deal. Versus if it's just a little bit more or even just like twice as much, even can still feel like a little bit more versus, you know, 10 times as much or something like that. That maybe then there could be more room for that. Well, but you should be contributing some. How much? Well, it should be the same percentage of what you earn. It's like, yeah, but that leaves a lot less for discretionary spending than it does for the person with more money. Yeah, right. It's like how sales tax disproportionately affects lower income people compared to higher income people. And you don't think that at first it goes, oh, it's, well, it's when you buy stuff, you pay money. That seems fair. But for someone who makes less money, a larger percentage of the money they do spend is on stuff that's sales taxed, right? It's groceries, it's clothes, it's things for their house versus a wealthier person. A small percentage of the money they spend is on that and a larger percentage is on investment vehicles or assets or things like that. And so it disproportionately affects that. But you don't see that up front. And I know that's like a super simple example, but in relationships, I think a version of that, it's really hard to really pin down what fair even is because there's so many variables that go into it.
Emily: Yeah, I just wish that, I don't know, I think in relationships with money, people should be clear from the beginning kind of what expectations are ideally and work together to find something that works for both of them.
Jase: And they can change.
Emily: Even though of course they change. Yeah, I think you two have always done a really good job and I mean, Dedeker, you're so meticulous with your budgeting and with how you tend to spend your money.
Dedeker: Definitely a hyper-budgeter for sure. Yes, yes. At least I've grown into that person. That wasn't always me.
Emily: Yeah, but I mean, at least for me, it's definitely like given me a good example of how to act around money. And I think in relationships, it seems like the two of you do well there as well.
Dedeker: Yeah, we've had to work at it though. It wasn't like natural right out the gate. What— listening, thinking about all this is interesting for me because it makes me remember my very first relationship where there was any kind of financial entanglement. And it was like my college boyfriend. And it was funny because when we were both in college, we didn't necessarily have an income gap. We were both like broke college students, right?
Emily: Yeah.
Dedeker: You know, but he did come from a family that was much wealthier than mine. And I remember not having the language at the time to understand why I felt this weird sense of tension and unfairness around owned certain things, and we definitely got into fights about it. I just did not have the language for it. And I think, cut to who I am now, now I have the experiences under my belt of both being in relationships with people who make more money than me, or sometimes significantly more money than me. I've now also had the experience of it being flipped, being in relationships with people or dating people who've made less money than me, or sometimes significantly less money than me. I think that I've now gotten the knowledge to also look beyond income, right? And to be aware of people's debt status or, again, socioeconomic status generally, or their financial values or their family background and things like that. So I think these days, the fairness issue I tend to run into less conflict around. For me, it's the responsibility piece because I've become the hyper-budgeter. Because I've become the hyper budgeter now, right? Because I now, I identify as someone who's very financially responsible. And so it's the stuff that comes up most often in relationships for me is around, yeah, if I perceive someone's being a fool with their money or they're not saving or they're not planning or things like that. And good God, I've bought Ramit Sethi's book for so many people now, even when they have not asked for it from me.
Emily: But you're like, I perceive that you need this.
Dedeker: I perceive you need help. Let me give you unasked for help. Let me assign a book to you. Everyone loves when they have a book assigned to them, especially by a romantic partner.
Jase: Yeah, yeah. Maybe if you could get some worksheets along with it and you'd be like, this is your week one homework.
Emily: There you go. There you go. It's a recipe for a long-lasting relationship right there.
Jase: So we're going to go on to some practical tips that you can actually use to try to make these conversations better. But first, we're going to take another quick break to talk about our sponsors. Again, do check them out. The links are in our show notes as well. And if you use those, that does directly help support our show. And we do appreciate them for letting us do this for free every week by being ad-supported. And then of course, if you'd rather support us directly, if you love this show, if you get value from it, the best way that you can support us is to do so at multiamory.com/join. Join our amazing community there and support us directly.
Dedeker: Okay folks, we've come to the last section. What do we do about all of this? So the things that we're going to cover at the end of this episode are we're going to talk about what the research says about when to start talking about money with someone. We're going to give some practical tips about how to talk about money with someone. And then I also dove down a little bit of a research rabbit hole on like, is merging your finances with someone a good idea or a bad idea? Now, there's a lot of things, unfortunately, that we don't get to. And so I would recommend listeners go check out our episode 273 titled Money and Multiple Partners that we did with this amazing guest Hadassah Damien. And we covered a lot more like nitty-gritty practical questions about money and non-monogamy. So some of the questions we tackled in that episode were things like, how do you avoid going broke from dating multiple people? Or is it possible to intertwine finances with multiple partners without it becoming a big complicated mess? Does retirement planning look different for poly people who don't plan on having a single married partner? Do you have any advice for property ownership or big purchases involving multiple partners? So we get into like that sort of logistical money stuff in that episode and many more questions like that. So again, go check out episode 273, Money and Multiple Partners with Hadassah Damien. So when to start talking about money, right? When you match on the app, when you're in the talking phase, when's a good time? What did— when do you talk about money with people? I got to be honest, knowing what I know, I sometimes do have the urge to be like, let's talk about it right away. If we're going to split this check, let's just right away just disclose our whole financial picture. Why not? But a lot of people are not comfortable with that.
Jase: I do actually find that that first splitting of a check is actually a place where I will— where I will start to open up that conversation. Right. I'm not going to ask like, how much do you put away for retirement every month or something, but more I try to start that conversation a little bit more open about, how do you normally handle splitting checks with people in your life? Or, how do you do this? And then maybe a few dates in, or if you're doing something a little more expensive, then I might try to step up the level of that conversation to be a little bit of starting by disclosing yourself first so it doesn't feel like you're grilling them. But to be like, to me, this amount of money is, right? This is an expensive dinner for me, or this is no problem for me and I'm happy to pay for it. Or if we're going to do dinners like this, I just can't do this very often. Or just kind of give a little bit of your own perspective first to then hopefully open up that door. And a lot of people are still really uncomfortable talking about it, but I try to at least set somewhat of an example of, no, this is a thing we can talk about. This doesn't have to be something that we're just keeping secret and trying to infer from looks and body language who should pay when or how you feel about this.
Emily: Yeah, that's great.
Dedeker: Okay, well, there's actually some research on this. So I found a 2022 study by Saxey, LeBaron-Black, and Curran titled The Sooner the Better: Couple's First Financial Discussion, Relationship Quality, and Financial Conflict in Emerging Adulthood. So they found that earlier first financial discussions were linked to better relationship quality. It was also linked— having an earlier first financial discussion was also linked to having more financial conflict in the short term. However, they basically found that the couples that had good communication skills during those early discussions saw less conflict over time. I don't know how to interpret that, if that's just like Maybe it is the situation of the first time we're together at the grocery store to get stuff for the picnic. And for some reason we're buying oat milk for the picnic and then we get into an argument about which oat milk to get. And then that prompts us to have a discussion about financial values and rates of income and things like that.
Jase: That's actually a great one because if you're not oat milk, but if you're buying cheese for a picnic.
Dedeker: Oh yeah.
Jase: Because there's a big range for what cheese can cost. And that can say a little bit about Both your culinary tastes, but also your budget feelings.
Dedeker: And I do have to have conversations with people about my cheese buying values also.
Jase: Right.
Dedeker: Well, so, but then I wanted to dig in and be like, okay, wait, how early is early though? Because that's quite relative. And so the way they did this study is they kind of had people rate on a 7-point scale when they had a first financial discussion with a partner. And these are the 7, the 7 milestones, I guess I would say. Soon after we met, after we'd been on dates but before exclusively dating, after we were exclusively dating but before we were engaged, after we were engaged but before we were married, soon after we were married, a few years into marriage or 7. We still haven't really talked about finances in our relationship.
Emily: Whoa, those like jumped really quickly.
Dedeker: I know, I know, I know, I know, it's all escalatory. I know, I know.
Jase: So I just— when you were giving that list, it like hit me by surprise how much I don't make that we're dating to when we're exclusive.
Dedeker: I know, I know.
Jase: Mark in my head. And I used to like that, right? That was normal. That's how you measure.
Dedeker: But like, okay, seriously, it's so wild. If I'm gonna polywash this in my brain, it might be, after we've been on dates but before this has become like a partnership. Yeah, or like a defined relationship. Maybe, maybe. I know people can fight me on that. Anyway, so, but what the study found is that the average that most people reported when they had their first financial discussion was around 3-4. So as in like somewhere between we're exclusively dating but we're not engaged yet, or somewhere around the time of we're engaged but we're not yet married, that that was when people— that feels late to me.
Jase: That seems really late.
Emily: I don't think you should be committing to anyone in that way if you haven't had like a very frank talk about money.
Jase: But many, many, many conversations.
Dedeker: Yes, but what they found, what they found was that the people who reported having a first financial discussion before Milestone 2, as in before they were exclusively dating, that showed the biggest results for facilitating financial communication and having better relationship quality.
Jase: Okay.
Dedeker: And so that's, that's where they're like, actually it shows that earlier is better and even earlier than you think.
Emily: Yeah.
Dedeker: I think is my takeaway from that study.
Emily: Great.
Jase: Maybe not, maybe not earlier than we think, but earlier than one might think.
Dedeker: One might think.
Emily: Some people might think.
Dedeker: As long as, again, with the caveat that they found, as long as you're able to communicate about it well and use good communication skills.
Jase: I love that they basically put a plug for our book in there where, you know, we're writing a book about relationships and we realize, you know, it's communication really is the core of it. And that's what really is what our book Multiamory: Essential Tools for Modern Relationships is all about, is communication, how to do that better.
Dedeker: So I gathered just a collection of best practices for how to talk about money with a partner, and I think that these things will be helpful regardless of if you're doing it in this very early stage, or maybe you're later to the game. That's okay. Just some things to bear in mind. So thing number one, we just gotta normalize that money conversations, like 99.9% of the time, are going to bring up feelings. I think this is very similar to conversations about sex. It's like we all have some kind of emotional charge around money or around debt or around our background or around what money means. Not necessarily always a negative emotional charge, but we got, we got feelings. So just expect that, that like, I think there is no neutral money conversation when it comes to especially like talking about money within a romantic relationship. That's normal. That's totally normal. It's okay if you got feelings that come up, your partner's got feelings that come up.
Emily: That's okay.
Dedeker: That's normal.
Emily: Yes.
Dedeker: So that means that when you're first opening up this topic, lead with curiosity. Over confrontation. Now, this can be hard if you already feel like you're stewing in resentment or feel like things are unfair, or if you're judging your partner for being irresponsible. But I think that's the guiding light, is to lead with curiosity over confrontation. So gather information about how your partner thinks and feels about money, or thinks and feels about their financial situation, before trying to dive into the weeds of we gotta negotiate something, we gotta change this, we gotta make some practical decisions about this. Other thing to remember, this is scary. I know we've talked about this on the show before, but I like to encourage people to take a risk around transparency, around actual numbers related to your financial life. So as in naming your real income, naming your real debt, naming your real savings rather than staying vague. When you feel like you're at that stage with this person where you feel like they're safe, they're trustworthy, right?
Jase: The channel of communication is open.
Dedeker: Yeah, the trust is open for sure.
Emily: Yeah, that's a big one.
Dedeker: Right.
Jase: Yeah.
Dedeker: Chase, you know, you approached me years ago and you were just like, I heard that rich people talk about money in a very frank way. So like, let's do that.
Emily: I love that.
Dedeker: Yeah, let's try to act like rich people. And that's really changed the game for me, honestly. And it brings up feelings. It brings up feelings anytime you have to talk about this stuff. And I think Americans were really socialized around not talking about money in such a frank, open kind of way.
Emily: Why do you think that is?
Dedeker: We could go into a whole TED Talk about class.
Emily: This is the most capitalist— well, that's the thing, this is the most capitalist freaking country on the planet.
Dedeker: That's why it's kind of— okay, I think, yeah, I think it's kind of like revealing the number of your body count, how it's like such a socialized thing where it's like no matter what number you give, it's always going to be wrong to somebody.
Emily: And I heard that comparison recently where somebody was talking about there's a reason why women ask men how much they make, and there's a reason why men ask women what their body count is. And I'm like, I do agree that it's probably— it's important to ask what are we working with here, especially if you are getting into a situation where you're going to be financially entangled. But who the fuck cares about body count?
Dedeker: Come on. That one is— that one, that's where the one-to-one falls apart. That can go in the garbage. If you want to share that, you can share that, but this is just something to consider, right? Because again, if you're just like, I don't make that much money, or I don't know, what does that mean to you? Yeah, it's like, what does that mean? How does that mean to you? How does that change your decision-making? How does that change our decision-making.
Jase: Yeah, and I think it's worth acknowledging that if you do live in the US or in several places in Europe, it kind of varies a little bit by political and economic values there. But not everyone does this whole thing of keeping how much you make secret and also keeping how much you pay people secret, because I think that's the flip side, right, is that companies are incentivized for you to not share information with each other. Yeah. So then they can try to pay you the lowest they think you'll take, and you don't really have a frame of reference as much, right? That's why sites like Glassdoor exist to try to black market, get that data. And there's other countries where this is more just transparent. There's other cultures where it is just, we pay this much for this job. We pay that much. I make this much. And it's just matter of fact. Yeah. So just to be aware that this isn't a universal thing. This is something we've been taught and conditioned. And sometimes even within companies, like ordered that you cannot tell other people at your company what you make, which is kind of insane that that's something we let people get away with. But I'll stop.
Dedeker: My— Jason's going off on the TED Talk.
Jase: Hey, there, there it is. Yeah.
Dedeker: Yeah. Other things to bear in mind, any agreements that you make with a partner, let's say it's an agreement around, yeah, when we go on a date, let's try just splitting it 70/30, just frame it as an experiment. It doesn't have to be a permanent contract, especially because sometimes income situations, financial situations, debt situations can shift and change over time, just again, bring that attitude of this is being— this is an experiment, right? Let's try this. Let's see how it feels. Let's see if, when we try this particular split, are there any weird feelings that comes up? Is there any guilt? Is there any resentment that comes up? Right. And then other thing to bear in mind is this is why we put money on the list of check-in topics for your regular RADAR check-in so that you can run these experiments so that you can discuss money in a more ideal container that's not just during conflict or around a big purchase or when you're arguing about oat milk in the grocery store.
Emily: For this weird picnic.
Dedeker: I know, this really weird picnic. We're gonna make some, like, matcha lattes out on the grass.
Emily: That sounds great, actually.
Dedeker: Extra credit. So the Gottman Institute has this book that I do recommend called Eight Dates. And they have a whole chapter that's specifically like all of these prompts and questions about money to prompt a money conversation between you and your partner. I love these questions and I love these prompts and it's long. They have like a series of like 25 questions. Oh, wow. But it really gets into the heart of the emotional core around money and around like your financial context. So like, for instance, it's like the first question is, what did your maternal grandparents do for a living? You know, it's like that's how far back we're starting to help bring each other in and paint this picture of the context, the generational wealth or generational poverty, right?
Jase: That just the generational perception of money, whether that's still true or not.
Dedeker: Because then it gets into like, what were your parents' attitudes about money? What did you think about your parents' attitudes about money as a child? Did you get presents at the holidays? Did you celebrate birthdays? Did your family contribute to charity? I love these questions. Every single time I've gone through these questions with a partner, it's always been a super fascinating conversation. And sometimes I think if you've already run into money conflict with a partner, I would recommend seeking out these kind of questions that are not about the, how much are you spending, or why did you make this choice, that is just about this deeper, more rooted emotional core around it, so that you can lead with that curiosity rather than confrontation. The last thing I want to hit here is, in all of my research for this episode, there kept being this recurring question of like, well, should you merge your finances with somebody? And a lot of the research does find generally that, yeah, people who get married and then like put their money in a joint account, like they tend to have better relationship quality and a stronger financial picture and things like that. So it's like, that is true. And to a certain extent it makes sense. Some of this could be correlative, right? That it's like, well, yeah, when you put your money into a bigger pool, you feel more secure. And you feel more entangled with somebody, you're definitely committed, right? And so maybe that produces more of a motivation toward the relationship, or yada yada yada. However, there were also studies that found that like, yeah, that's cool and all, and also we have this whole queer community that for years has not legally been able to do that, and they've been doing just fine. Like, they have been getting creative in the ways that they manage expenses, getting creative in the way that they manage sharing income and things like that. And so I guess my takeaway being, sure, merging your finances with somebody, or maybe multiple someones, could be a good option. It could be great for you. But if you're with someone, if you're cohabiting with someone or multiple people and you don't want to do that, that doesn't mean that there's anything necessarily inherently wrong with your relationship, or you don't trust them, or you're not gonna work well together as a financial unit. Like, you just got to be creative, man. So, and I think especially for people who want to merge finances or do any kind of financial entanglement, as like a polycule for instance, it's like, yeah, we just got to get creative, because the system is not really set up for us.
Jase: Yeah, yeah. I find that having some combination too where it's not an all or nothing— it's not like you join this polycule, you're in the commune, you have to sell all your possessions and put all your money in this account kind of a thing.
Dedeker: Not going to yuck anybody's yum.
Jase: I might yuck that a little bit, to be honest. Right, but it doesn't have to be that, like, you got to be all in on this, because we've seen how that can create conflicts where then it feels like any decision you make with your money affects everyone else and everyone has their emotions involved in that. And at the same time, yeah, if you're just keeping everything separate and you're not able to entwine very much, I think that's fine. But there's also these middle grounds. Where you can have some money in shared accounts and specific things those are for. And especially if you're dealing with more than two people, you might want to have a few different variations on that, right? Like maybe there's just shared accounts for each of the dyads in this group, or maybe there's that and there's one pool for everyone that's only for group events or for housing costs if we all live together or something, right? Again, be creative and think about what it's for. So I think rather than looking at the fact that you're sharing an account as the thing in itself. But like, what is this for? What does this let us do? How does this help us in how we deal with money? Or how might this hurt us? Like, let's actually look at that instead of just, oh, well, people say we should, so let's do it. Or this seems very utopian, so we should do it.
Dedeker: Well, I think when the day finally comes that I'm tired of making so much money from being a podcaster, I might— I legitimately would consider a career shift or maybe a retirement job that is doing financial planning. I could sell molecules. Yeah, I would totally go get my financial planning license because I honestly, I love this topic. I love talking about these things and I especially love digging into the emotional side of it. So maybe it would be like part financial planner, part financial therapist. I don't know.
Jase: I mean, a lot of people could benefit from a financial planner who's also a therapist. You know what? I bet most financial planners would argue that's already what they are.
Dedeker: Yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Okay folks, we want to hear from you. How have you managed financial gaps in your relationships in the past? So that's a question that's going to be on our Instagram stories on the day that this episode drops. So go check that out, share your answers with us. We will reshare answers anonymously. Also, the best place to share your thoughts about this episode with other listeners is in the episode discussion channel in our Discord server, or you can post about it in our private Facebook group. You can get access to these groups and join our exclusive community by going to multiamory.com/join. In addition, you can share with us publicly on Instagram @multiamory_podcast.
Dedeker: Multiamory is created and produced by Jace Lindgren, Emily Matlack, and me, Dedeker Winston. Our production assistants are Rachel Schenewerk and Carson Collins. Our theme song is "Forms I Know I Did" by Josh and Anand from the Fractal Cave EP. The full transcript is available on this episode's page on multiamory.com.