Dear Vicky,
Ever since my husband and I retired, our arguments about money have escalated. He sees retirement as a time to relax and loosen the money belt that’s been fastened so tightly around us as we’ve navigated family life. He’s more than happy to freely spend the money we made in our careers. My sense is that retirement is a time to be even more cautious with our outgoings. We don’t know if we have ten, 20, or 30 years ahead of us, or what kind of care we might need in the future. I believe we need to be prudent as a duty to ourselves and our children. Is he being reckless?
Money psychotherapist Vicky Reynal replies: I often see individuals who are stuck in a deadlock with their partner and their opposite view of finances because their primary objective is to ‘win’ the argument. In other words, they want to prove to the other that their way is the right way to approach the money problem at hand. And, of course, if the other person is doing the same thing then the couple might conclude that their opposing views are incompatible and unresolvable. But that does not need to be the case.
If you let go of your wish that there was some way for your partner to just realise how right you are, you might be able to reach a compromise that addresses your different needs and desires.
First, focus on the fact that you have a joint objective here. You want to find a way to retire in harmony with one another and find an approach to managing your finances that works for both. It’s always helpful to start with what you agree on. There might be more on this topic that you agree on – for example, you might both be determined not to become a financial burden on your children.
Try also to articulate not just the reasons why you think you are ‘right’, but why this approach to money is so important to you. This isn’t just about caution is it?
It’s about that sense of duty not to be a financial burden to your children. It might be about safety and the fact that it feels unsafe for you to spend without clear plans and contingencies in place. What else?
Allow yourself to be a bit vulnerable and ask – what is this really about?
There could be a range of reasons behind wanting to spend more money during retirement (picture posed by models)
Why has being careful and meticulous with finances suddenly become so important? For some retirees, the loss of purpose that comes with retiring, the loss of vitality or status that comes with old age, fears about mortality, sometimes get expressed by turning the dial up in the areas of life we can control (such as finances) and maybe the desire to feel in charge, with a sense of agency and control that is misplaced and taken too far. For other retirees the breaks on spending at retirement is about leaving a legacy, which sometime is thought of too narrowly as inheritance.
Now, the hard bit. As conflict is so often focused on what is good about your approach to money and what is bad about his, try to think about the two dimensions that people forget to consider when they are in the heat of an argument – trying to win.
What is the downside to your approach and the upside to his approach? Is it possible that your way of managing finances post-retirement is leaving out opportunities for finally enjoying the fruit of a lifetime’s hard work? Are you at risk of falling into a routine that seeks to minimise costs but misses out on opportunities for joint projects or nice experiences, now that you have the time to be together?
Next, approach your husband and try to dig deeper into the reasons behind his desire to spend freely in retirement. This is where you begin to gather information that not only helps you understand him more deeply, but they can also be the clues to how you can reach a compromise. More on this in a moment.
His desire to spend could come from having watched his parents live in a miserly way until the end, and he is determined to enjoy life and money more than they did.
Maybe it’s because his own biggest regrets in life, looking back, is that he didn’t enjoy money, and the things it could enable, to the extent he wanted to. Maybe he feels retirement is the time to rekindle the fire in the relationship (by travelling and sharing experiences together). The answers could be so many but don’t make assumptions – ask!
It could be (and I have seen this in a particular retiree that I have worked with), that he is so angry and disappointed with his children that his wanting to spend in retirement has little to do with enjoying his money and more to do with spending it so the kids are left with no inheritance because he feels they do not deserve it.
Having understood more about what drives his wish to loosening the purse strings in retirement, see if some of the desires or fears can be addressed in a more financially responsible way. Say he wanted to enjoy retirement more than his parents: maybe the solution there is to budget for a nice trip every year, rather than simply to stop budgeting all together. Perhaps he wants to enjoy more experiences with you? You could think of alternatives that won’t be as expensive as a round-the-world ticket. How about starting a class together? Or eating out at a new restaurant once a fortnight?
So now, having created a space in which he might have better understood how unsettling you find an unstructured, unbudgeted approach to retirement and you having found ways to address some of his needs within more reasonable financial boundaries, it might feel that you are no longer at extreme ends of a spectrum.
It might begin to feel that what you thought was an incompatibility can actually turn into a collaboration that makes you complementary. He can help you enjoy retirement more than you would have been inclined to, and you can make sure he doesn’t dig a financial hole your children have to pull you out from.
Do you have a question for Vicky? Email vicky.reynal@dailymail.co.uk. Vicky’s book Money on your Mind, is out now from Bonnier Books, £10.99.
