Should I let my husband make the financial decisions?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP no one knows your marriage but you, so difficult to advise. But a few uncomfortable things jumped out at me from your post:

You’re a hard worker, you enjoy investing, you make more money than your DH. Your arguments may be “splitting hairs” but you’re still having them, and you don’t sound like a dummy, so your points probably have merit. You’re being given two choices: keep arguing or back off entirely. Why not a third option, where you continue to work together, or learn to communicate about financial planning in a way that isn’t a fight? If you had no interest in finance, it would make sense to trust and bow out. But you do have interest in the topic, and you’re a high earner.

A plan to retire early, stop earning money, and trust to be “taken care of” by a spouse who wants me to “back off” of being involved in all financial discussions while I’m still young feels…not safe (to me). YMMV. But your post makes me wary.

This.

I see no reason why your husband should in control of the decisions. I mean if you didn’t care, fine. But you do care.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Reading between the lines here, you’re clearly a controlling PITA who thinks you’re superior to your husband because you make more money than him, and while you say you trust him you really don’t. You’re never going to let go, ever, so stop pretending. Just keep fighting with your husband about money and continue to make him feel inadequate. That’s the game you’re playing.

[Anonymous]

I would like to think you could find a happy medium. My husband is very risk averse but he understands diversification. I have a 401K, and he "let" me change it to target year retirement target from whatever totally risk averse selection he had made when I let him solely be in charge. And, he reasoned that if I only changed mine, he still had his on a super low risk / no gain way - so we were still diversified.

[Anonymous]

I am hesitant to have a woman lose visibility on such things, knowing that half of marriages end in divorce.

How about you stop trying to convince him to follow your guidance but do have a rule that before important decisions he should share his reasoning and hear your reaction.

This should work (reduce fights) if he believes in your savvy as much you believe in his (ie, he will listen sincerely enough to be open to reconsidering his initial direction). And you have to commit to stating your reasoning once and letting him make the final decision. Maybe try this for a year and see how it goes

I like you still having a window into where the money is going and how it is doing. (Trust but verify…)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Reading between the lines here, you’re clearly a controlling PITA who thinks you’re superior to your husband because you make more money than him, and while you say you trust him you really don’t. You’re never going to let go, ever, so stop pretending. Just keep fighting with your husband about money and continue to make him feel inadequate. That’s the game you’re playing.

How long have you hated women?

[Anonymous]

Reading between the lines here, you’re clearly a controlling PITA who thinks you’re superior to your husband because you make more money than him, and while you say you trust him you really don’t. You’re never going to let go, ever, so stop pretending. Just keep fighting with your husband about money and continue to make him feel inadequate. That’s the game you’re playing.

Suggesting that the only way OP's DH can feel "adequate" is for him to be totally in control is commensurate with someone taking OP's very reasonable post and distilling it down to her being a "controlling PITA". Neither are true, but both statements are telling.

Real talk: men like you are abusive, want it your way, will try to brow beat women into accepting it, are walking evidence of why women require financial transparency, and rarely remain married (for good reason).

Enjoy your dinners for 1.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would like to think you could find a happy medium. My husband is very risk averse but he understands diversification. I have a 401K, and he "let" me change it to target year retirement target from whatever totally risk averse selection he had made when I let him solely be in charge. And, he reasoned that if I only changed mine, he still had his on a super low risk / no gain way - so we were still diversified.

Yes to this, op-- he can invest his accounts and you yours. My wife is more risk averse and I like real estate and Roths so we balance each other out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It sounds like you are both savvy when it comes to investing or at least savvy enough. A few questions:

Do you trust him?
Will he update you and answer your questions?
Is he a prudent investor?
Is he a long term investor and not a trader?

If the answers are all yes, relax and let him do his thing.

To answer your questions:
Yes I trust him.
Not only will he update me and answer my questions, I’d continue to have access to all of his accounts and our joint accounts - we use Monarch since Mint went out of business, so we each see everything anyway.
Yes he is prudent
Yes he is a long term investor

My biggest fear about his decisions is that they are more conservative than mine! I get upset about missed opportunities.

[Anonymous]

No, I would not.

You should be able to make investment decisions without fighting. If you can’t, then money isn’t the problem you are having.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Reading between the lines here, you’re clearly a controlling PITA who thinks you’re superior to your husband because you make more money than him, and while you say you trust him you really don’t. You’re never going to let go, ever, so stop pretending. Just keep fighting with your husband about money and continue to make him feel inadequate. That’s the game you’re playing.

Ouch!

I can be controlling, and I do want to work on that. The root is anxiety, not that I think I am superior to him, which I DO NOT think at all. FWIW, he is objectively much smarter than I am, and any outsider would agree.

He is more laid back, whereas I am a super optimizer. My anxiety tells me that if I am not a hyper vigilant super optimizer, everything will go to shit. I know rationally that is not true.

I do think my fighting with him does make him feel that I don’t trust and him and could make him feel inadequate, and I want to change that. Hence this post.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would like to think you could find a happy medium. My husband is very risk averse but he understands diversification. I have a 401K, and he "let" me change it to target year retirement target from whatever totally risk averse selection he had made when I let him solely be in charge. And, he reasoned that if I only changed mine, he still had his on a super low risk / no gain way - so we were still diversified.

This is OP. Haha yes, this is almost identical to how our retirement accounts vary and how my husband feels about the combo leading to diversification. Fortunately we quit arguing about that a long time ago. Having excess money in non-retirement accounts has brought back the spirited discussions….

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am hesitant to have a woman lose visibility on such things, knowing that half of marriages end in divorce.

How about you stop trying to convince him to follow your guidance but do have a rule that before important decisions he should share his reasoning and hear your reaction.

This should work (reduce fights) if he believes in your savvy as much you believe in his (ie, he will listen sincerely enough to be open to reconsidering his initial direction). And you have to commit to stating your reasoning once and letting him make the final decision. Maybe try this for a year and see how it goes

I like you still having a window into where the money is going and how it is doing. (Trust but verify…)

This is OP. I like this and think it could work for us. He always likes to update me about different decisions he makes with his own accounts and I believe he would naturally do the same with joint accounts. I don’t think he’d have a problem committing to doing so before pulling the trigger. My plan/goal would be to shut up unless there was a glaring issue, which again, probably wouldn’t happen often.

[Anonymous]

Both of you are extremely conservative. I have no idea why you bickering over lousy investments. Whoever is buying crypto, is the one to make decisions. Well, in your case 'ETFs and individual stocks'.

[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?

It's just you.

My job is stressful and it's killing me and my DW loves her low stress lower pay part time job. She'll be happy for me to retire early as long as I pick up the rope at home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Both of you are extremely conservative. I have no idea why you bickering over lousy investments. Whoever is buying crypto, is the one to make decisions. Well, in your case 'ETFs and individual stocks'.

Whoever is buying crypto in non trivial quantities should be divorced before the money is lost or stolen.