Should I let my husband make the financial decisions?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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….

Solve the problem by donating the excessive money

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How much decision making is there really? You shouldn't be in and out of stocks. Buying and holding has always proven to be the best option.

I suggest you put together an investment plan and then meet monthly/quarterly to go over the details and performance. I don't really see why you need to have one person be so hands on.

This is what I think too. Do either of you have any clue what you are doing anyway? Unless one of you is a certified financial planner, hire one, make a plan, and execute it. This should not be coming up as a day to day or even month to month topic in your life. You shouldn't be tinkering with things that much.

[Anonymous]

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=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 [/quote]

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

After putting 3M in the bank yes, MYOB. [/quote]

There’s a lot that can go wrong with this plan. If he divorces you you will be on the hook for child support and alimony AND that 3 m will be split 50/50 so you will stuck in the high stress job for many more years. You should switch to a lower paying more sustainable job now and keep working longer.

And no, you need to stay involved in the financial decisions. You would be foolish to open yourself up to even more potential risk than you already are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

If you have a retirement account then manage that yourself. It is your money and not held jointly.

[Anonymous]

I can't believe you are fighting about whether or not to buy dividend stocks in addition to ETFs enough for it to be a marriage issue. Just find a dividend based ETF that you can agree on and call it a day. I don't think you should hand it all over to him, but at least try to find a workable compromise!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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?

He’s probably a cheating ex who lived in Virginia at the time of his divorce. They never recover. It’s like jerk-induced PTSD.