Financial Abuse is a Woman’s Problem

Many people Google the phrase ‘financial abuse’ and find their way to my website. I can’t tell how many of the searches are by women, but I’ll bet most of them are.

A Warning for Online Advertisers

If you block what I’m reading with a pop up ad, I’ll never buy your product.

If your ad precedes the video I want to watch, I’m off the site in a flash …and I’ll never buy your product.

If your ad starts with loud audio the second I get to the page, I’ll leave the page immediately to get away from you.

If your ad jumps up and down, waves, jiggles , beeps or flashes, I’ll boycott your product forever.

If I'm not on your subscriber list, you go straight into junk mail.

Show a little class, don’t intrude on my concentration, assume I’m as smart as you are. I’ll be so grateful for being treated like an adult that I might reward you by buying your product.

Mark Zuckerberg Expands His Horizons

It used to be enough to share your food with those less fortunate. Or say grace before dinner. Or become a vegetarian in recognition of the consciousness of the animals who die to feed us.

Not anymore.

There’s Something about Dominique

The facts aren’t all in yet, but let’s see if we can understand this so far.

The managing director of the International Monetary Fund, ex-finance minister of France and soon to declare his candidacy for the presidency of France, emerges naked from his luxury hotel bathroom,

It's Not about the Money

I once attended a workshop about money and the meaning of life. One of the exercises we did was chew a new $100 bill. Most of us gagged.

The purpose of the exercise was to demonstrate that money – the thing itself – is neutral. Pieces of paper, diamonds, chunks of gold and other things to which we assign worth have no inherent value in nourishing us, keeping us warm, or sheltering us.  In this exercise, money even turned out to be disgusting.

I returned from that workshop with a deeper understanding of how money is a vehicle of exchange for a wide variety of other things. It’s a mirror against which we see ourselves compared to others. It’s a metaphor we use to assign value to a person or thing. It shapes our identity, expanding or restricting access to  dreams and ambitions. Some people marry for it; others kill to get it.

Perhaps most important, money is leverage – the ability to shape our life based on “want to” choices rather than “have to” ones. It’s this leverage aspect of money that is often a trap in marriage.

The reality is, whoever controls the money in marriage calls the shots. That’s why it’s so important for you to participate and understand your marital finances. If you’re not involved, if you don’t want to be bothered with such an unromantic thing as money, if you’re too busy, or too trusting, you're being naive.

Can money make your marriage happier? It might, but not if you're at the wrong end of the lever.

Financially Safe Marriage

If you have a business partner, you expect to share information about that business. However, most of us don’t think of marriage as a business even though it has an eerily similar financial structure.

A business has income, expenses, assets, liabilities, taxes and net worth.So does a marriage. That’s why marriages, like businesses, need financial intimacy.We don’t start a business or go into marriage expecting that it might fail. But both fail at alarmingly high rates, albeit for different reasons.

It’s counterintuitive to think about widowhood or divorce when you’re getting married. Few women do. But I’ve written over the years that letting one partner manage all the money sets the other partner up for financial vulnerability. Too often, the partner with her head in the sand is the woman.

We trusting creatures make certain romantic assumptions about marriage. For example, we assume our mate is making financial choices that will benefit us both. Sometimes he is; sometimes he isn’t. Sometimes he assumes we don’t want to be involved. Other times, he doesn’t want us to be involved. I say 'he' because, most of the time, the uninvolved partner is a 'she'.

Here’s the bottom line: If you live in one of the nine community property states*,you and your marital partner share responsibility for financial decisions. The following five questions will give you a head start on practicing financially safe marriage...and business.

Do I understand what my partner is doing financially?

Do we regularly discuss our finances together?
Do I sign documents without understanding them?

Do I know the location of all our financial records?
How would I manage if I were widowed or divorced?

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*Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin

Financial Intimacy: Five Points about Marriage

You romantics out there may not be happy with this blog. You may consider it in your face, the ranting of a realist , a cynic or worse, a misandrist . I apologize for shattering your illusions.