Should I let my husband make the financial decisions?

[Anonymous]

For some context, we’ve been married 10 years this year and have made good financial progress together. I am 39 and he is 41. I make more money currently, but haven’t always, and we plan for me to retire from my high stress job in 10 years while he’s happy to keeping working his rewarding low stress job for the next 30 years. By the time I retire, we’ll be able to maintain our lifestyle with his income (through a combination of his income going up moderately plus things like kids’ college being paid for) so we won’t have to touch either of our retirements until he retires at 70 unless we want to take some really special trips in our 60’s or pay for a wedding, etc. etc. We are both in 100% agreement with the above and about our financial goals and priorities generally.

Given the above, you would think that we’d never have a money argument! But we have had intense arguments over things like which investment vehicle to use to save for kids college or which investments to choose (even though neither of us are huge risk takers - think scenarios like person A wants all ETFs and person B wants a combination of ETFs and individual dividend stocks).

We do each give each other freedom about individual retirement accounts, but non-retirement investments (brokerage, real estate, kids’ college, etc.) we end up spending a lot of time disagreeing about approach, even though honestly it ends up being splitting hairs; both of our approaches would get us close to where we mutually agree we want to go.

DH commented tonight that he wishes I’d just let him make the decisions and back off, and this feels insane to me as a person who enjoys investing and thinking about optimizing the future and tax planning etc, but on the other hand, maybe it would bring peace to my marriage.

Given that I trust my husband and think he is incredibly smart, and everything would be transparent, and he’d keep me informed (in fact he’d enjoy telling me why he is doing x,y,z - he’d just want me to nod along), should I grant his wish and back off?

-signed, tired of stupid bickering

[Anonymous]

I find when there are issues where you both have good judgement, it makes sense for one of you to take the lead and the other to back off a bit. It is a partnership. There are enough other issues to worry about.

That said, I would only relax if he can really be trusted on this stuff.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For some context, we’ve been married 10 years this year and have made good financial progress together. I am 39 and he is 41. I make more money currently, but haven’t always, and we plan for me to retire from my high stress job in 10 years while he’s happy to keeping working his rewarding low stress job for the next 30 years. By the time I retire, we’ll be able to maintain our lifestyle with his income (through a combination of his income going up moderately plus things like kids’ college being paid for) so we won’t have to touch either of our retirements until he retires at 70 unless we want to take some really special trips in our 60’s or pay for a wedding, etc. etc. We are both in 100% agreement with the above and about our financial goals and priorities generally.

Given the above, you would think that we’d never have a money argument! But we have had intense arguments over things like which investment vehicle to use to save for kids college or which investments to choose (even though neither of us are huge risk takers - think scenarios like person A wants all ETFs and person B wants a combination of ETFs and individual dividend stocks).

We do each give each other freedom about individual retirement accounts, but non-retirement investments (brokerage, real estate, kids’ college, etc.) we end up spending a lot of time disagreeing about approach, even though honestly it ends up being splitting hairs; both of our approaches would get us close to where we mutually agree we want to go.

DH commented tonight that he wishes I’d just let him make the decisions and back off, and this feels insane to me as a person who enjoys investing and thinking about optimizing the future and tax planning etc, but on the other hand, maybe it would bring peace to my marriage.

Given that I trust my husband and think he is incredibly smart, and everything would be transparent, and he’d keep me informed (in fact he’d enjoy telling me why he is doing x,y,z - he’d just want me to nod along), should I grant his wish and back off?

-signed, tired of stupid bickering

You are going to quit working at 49 and expect DH to work until 71? Good god.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For some context, we’ve been married 10 years this year and have made good financial progress together. I am 39 and he is 41. I make more money currently, but haven’t always, and we plan for me to retire from my high stress job in 10 years while he’s happy to keeping working his rewarding low stress job for the next 30 years. By the time I retire, we’ll be able to maintain our lifestyle with his income (through a combination of his income going up moderately plus things like kids’ college being paid for) so we won’t have to touch either of our retirements until he retires at 70 unless we want to take some really special trips in our 60’s or pay for a wedding, etc. etc. We are both in 100% agreement with the above and about our financial goals and priorities generally.

Given the above, you would think that we’d never have a money argument! But we have had intense arguments over things like which investment vehicle to use to save for kids college or which investments to choose (even though neither of us are huge risk takers - think scenarios like person A wants all ETFs and person B wants a combination of ETFs and individual dividend stocks).

We do each give each other freedom about individual retirement accounts, but non-retirement investments (brokerage, real estate, kids’ college, etc.) we end up spending a lot of time disagreeing about approach, even though honestly it ends up being splitting hairs; both of our approaches would get us close to where we mutually agree we want to go.

DH commented tonight that he wishes I’d just let him make the decisions and back off, and this feels insane to me as a person who enjoys investing and thinking about optimizing the future and tax planning etc, but on the other hand, maybe it would bring peace to my marriage.

Given that I trust my husband and think he is incredibly smart, and everything would be transparent, and he’d keep me informed (in fact he’d enjoy telling me why he is doing x,y,z - he’d just want me to nod along), should I grant his wish and back off?

-signed, tired of stupid bickering

You are going to quit working at 49 and expect DH to work until 71? Good god.

After putting 3M in the bank yes, MYOB.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For some context, we’ve been married 10 years this year and have made good financial progress together. I am 39 and he is 41. I make more money currently, but haven’t always, and we plan for me to retire from my high stress job in 10 years while he’s happy to keeping working his rewarding low stress job for the next 30 years. By the time I retire, we’ll be able to maintain our lifestyle with his income (through a combination of his income going up moderately plus things like kids’ college being paid for) so we won’t have to touch either of our retirements until he retires at 70 unless we want to take some really special trips in our 60’s or pay for a wedding, etc. etc. We are both in 100% agreement with the above and about our financial goals and priorities generally.

Given the above, you would think that we’d never have a money argument! But we have had intense arguments over things like which investment vehicle to use to save for kids college or which investments to choose (even though neither of us are huge risk takers - think scenarios like person A wants all ETFs and person B wants a combination of ETFs and individual dividend stocks).

We do each give each other freedom about individual retirement accounts, but non-retirement investments (brokerage, real estate, kids’ college, etc.) we end up spending a lot of time disagreeing about approach, even though honestly it ends up being splitting hairs; both of our approaches would get us close to where we mutually agree we want to go.

DH commented tonight that he wishes I’d just let him make the decisions and back off, and this feels insane to me as a person who enjoys investing and thinking about optimizing the future and tax planning etc, but on the other hand, maybe it would bring peace to my marriage.

Given that I trust my husband and think he is incredibly smart, and everything would be transparent, and he’d keep me informed (in fact he’d enjoy telling me why he is doing x,y,z - he’d just want me to nod along), should I grant his wish and back off?

-signed, tired of stupid bickering

How come women always say the same thing - "my job is so stressful and it's killing me and DH job is low stress and love his job" kinda thing?

[Anonymous]

Seems very sexist for him to insist on making all the decisions when it sounds like you have financial savvy yourself.
(In our marriage I do let DH make these kinds of decisions but that’s because I know nothing of investing.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I find when there are issues where you both have good judgement, it makes sense for one of you to take the lead and the other to back off a bit. It is a partnership. There are enough other issues to worry about.

That said, I would only relax if he can really be trusted on this stuff.

+1. And if you have a high stress job, won’t you be relieved to have this off your plate?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For some context, we’ve been married 10 years this year and have made good financial progress together. I am 39 and he is 41. I make more money currently, but haven’t always, and we plan for me to retire from my high stress job in 10 years while he’s happy to keeping working his rewarding low stress job for the next 30 years. By the time I retire, we’ll be able to maintain our lifestyle with his income (through a combination of his income going up moderately plus things like kids’ college being paid for) so we won’t have to touch either of our retirements until he retires at 70 unless we want to take some really special trips in our 60’s or pay for a wedding, etc. etc. We are both in 100% agreement with the above and about our financial goals and priorities generally.

Given the above, you would think that we’d never have a money argument! But we have had intense arguments over things like which investment vehicle to use to save for kids college or which investments to choose (even though neither of us are huge risk takers - think scenarios like person A wants all ETFs and person B wants a combination of ETFs and individual dividend stocks).

We do each give each other freedom about individual retirement accounts, but non-retirement investments (brokerage, real estate, kids’ college, etc.) we end up spending a lot of time disagreeing about approach, even though honestly it ends up being splitting hairs; both of our approaches would get us close to where we mutually agree we want to go.

DH commented tonight that he wishes I’d just let him make the decisions and back off, and this feels insane to me as a person who enjoys investing and thinking about optimizing the future and tax planning etc, but on the other hand, maybe it would bring peace to my marriage.

Given that I trust my husband and think he is incredibly smart, and everything would be transparent, and he’d keep me informed (in fact he’d enjoy telling me why he is doing x,y,z - he’d just want me to nod along), should I grant his wish and back off?

-signed, tired of stupid bickering

How come women always say the same thing - "my job is so stressful and it's killing me and DH job is low stress and love his job" kinda thing?

Oh my goodness, no one wants to actually address my question tonight for some reason.

Whatever, I’ll bite: Earlier today in discussing these plans with DH, he insists he thinks he’ll work to 75 because he loves his job so much (and some people really do it until 75). I’m the one who won’t build that into my projections and assume 70 instead.

I make a lot more than DH currently, which I think he likes but also doesn’t like. He very much looks forward to “taking care of” me in my 50’s and beyond, and the money I am able to put aside in preparation for that makes it very “fair.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For some context, we’ve been married 10 years this year and have made good financial progress together. I am 39 and he is 41. I make more money currently, but haven’t always, and we plan for me to retire from my high stress job in 10 years while he’s happy to keeping working his rewarding low stress job for the next 30 years. By the time I retire, we’ll be able to maintain our lifestyle with his income (through a combination of his income going up moderately plus things like kids’ college being paid for) so we won’t have to touch either of our retirements until he retires at 70 unless we want to take some really special trips in our 60’s or pay for a wedding, etc. etc. We are both in 100% agreement with the above and about our financial goals and priorities generally.

Given the above, you would think that we’d never have a money argument! But we have had intense arguments over things like which investment vehicle to use to save for kids college or which investments to choose (even though neither of us are huge risk takers - think scenarios like person A wants all ETFs and person B wants a combination of ETFs and individual dividend stocks).

We do each give each other freedom about individual retirement accounts, but non-retirement investments (brokerage, real estate, kids’ college, etc.) we end up spending a lot of time disagreeing about approach, even though honestly it ends up being splitting hairs; both of our approaches would get us close to where we mutually agree we want to go.

DH commented tonight that he wishes I’d just let him make the decisions and back off, and this feels insane to me as a person who enjoys investing and thinking about optimizing the future and tax planning etc, but on the other hand, maybe it would bring peace to my marriage.

Given that I trust my husband and think he is incredibly smart, and everything would be transparent, and he’d keep me informed (in fact he’d enjoy telling me why he is doing x,y,z - he’d just want me to nod along), should I grant his wish and back off?

-signed, tired of stupid bickering

How come women always say the same thing - "my job is so stressful and it's killing me and DH job is low stress and love his job" kinda thing?

If a man worked in big law and made 10x what his teacher wife made, you wouldn't think twice at him saying he was going to retire at 50 and she can keep working if she wants. You have no idea what their jobs are, and she's the breadwinner so just STFU.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I find when there are issues where you both have good judgement, it makes sense for one of you to take the lead and the other to back off a bit. It is a partnership. There are enough other issues to worry about.

That said, I would only relax if he can really be trusted on this stuff.

+1. And if you have a high stress job, won’t you be relieved to have this off your plate?

Yes, I’m open to it, it’s just hard for a type A like me to give up control, and I just want to gage if it is normal and reasonable to do so. Thank you for your reply.

He does sometimes do things in a different way than I would, which can freak me out, but after 10 years I have enough evidence to see that his decisions are very sound.

[Anonymous]

I handle all of our day to day which includes everything associated with running two homes plus my own business. My husband manages our investments and includes me in all discussions with our advisors. He also updates me a few times a year on how our total portfolio is doing. He does make some decisions without my input but they are not of a size or risk that I’m going to worry about it. The real key is that over 30+ years he has made sure that we save at a high rate and invest smartly. Our yearly returns have been good but it is the consistent saving and compounding that has been great. He relies on me to manage my side and I rely on him to manage his side. We have never argued about money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For some context, we’ve been married 10 years this year and have made good financial progress together. I am 39 and he is 41. I make more money currently, but haven’t always, and we plan for me to retire from my high stress job in 10 years while he’s happy to keeping working his rewarding low stress job for the next 30 years. By the time I retire, we’ll be able to maintain our lifestyle with his income (through a combination of his income going up moderately plus things like kids’ college being paid for) so we won’t have to touch either of our retirements until he retires at 70 unless we want to take some really special trips in our 60’s or pay for a wedding, etc. etc. We are both in 100% agreement with the above and about our financial goals and priorities generally.

Given the above, you would think that we’d never have a money argument! But we have had intense arguments over things like which investment vehicle to use to save for kids college or which investments to choose (even though neither of us are huge risk takers - think scenarios like person A wants all ETFs and person B wants a combination of ETFs and individual dividend stocks).

We do each give each other freedom about individual retirement accounts, but non-retirement investments (brokerage, real estate, kids’ college, etc.) we end up spending a lot of time disagreeing about approach, even though honestly it ends up being splitting hairs; both of our approaches would get us close to where we mutually agree we want to go.

DH commented tonight that he wishes I’d just let him make the decisions and back off, and this feels insane to me as a person who enjoys investing and thinking about optimizing the future and tax planning etc, but on the other hand, maybe it would bring peace to my marriage.

Given that I trust my husband and think he is incredibly smart, and everything would be transparent, and he’d keep me informed (in fact he’d enjoy telling me why he is doing x,y,z - he’d just want me to nod along), should I grant his wish and back off?

-signed, tired of stupid bickering

How come women always say the same thing - "my job is so stressful and it's killing me and DH job is low stress and love his job" kinda thing?

Oh my goodness, no one wants to actually address my question tonight for some reason.

Whatever, I’ll bite: Earlier today in discussing these plans with DH, he insists he thinks he’ll work to 75 because he loves his job so much (and some people really do it until 75). I’m the one who won’t build that into my projections and assume 70 instead.

I make a lot more than DH currently, which I think he likes but also doesn’t like. He very much looks forward to “taking care of” me in my 50’s and beyond, and the money I am able to put aside in preparation for that makes it very “fair.”

I thought your question was should I trust my husband to make the right decisions. My answer is yes.

[Anonymous]

Never do this
No female should do this ever
You run the finances
You make sure your name is one everything
You have passwords
You pay all bills


You both can have input but never ever have him be sole financial person ever

Life lesson ladies

Now after 2925 red states you won’t be able to do this so good luck to you morons that helped set us back to the dark ages

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Never do this
No female should do this ever
You run the finances
You make sure your name is one everything
You have passwords
You pay all bills


You both can have input but never ever have him be sole financial person ever

Life lesson ladies

Now after 2925 red states you won’t be able to do this so good luck to you morons that helped set us back to the dark ages

How long have you been divorced?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Never do this
No female should do this ever
You run the finances
You make sure your name is one everything
You have passwords
You pay all bills


You both can have input but never ever have him be sole financial person ever

Life lesson ladies

Now after 2925 red states you won’t be able to do this so good luck to you morons that helped set us back to the dark ages

WTF are you even trying to say here?