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.

Financial Intimacy and Income Tax

There are no excuses after April 15.

My friend Betty has been divorced for three years. Her ex-husband is being audited by the IRS for tax returns dating back to when they were married. He always handled the taxes, and she just signed what he put in front of her. The government assumed that Betty, as an adult, understood what she signed and that the information is accurate.

When the letter arrived from the IRS informing her that she was liable for $54,000 of unpaid taxes, which they claim her ex-husband had failed to report, Betty was stunned. She is just getting back on her feet after a tough few years of trying to make it on her own. Learning about how to handle money after divorce hasn’t been easy for her. She had just let her husband do everything. She trusted him. Maybe they didn’t have the best marriage, but she had never doubted his honesty. Why would he under report income? Wouldn’t the accountant have known that?

Typically, your husband isn’t going to intentionally falsify information on the tax return. On the other hand, he might be doing exactly that. As soon as you sign, you’re agreeing to the accuracy of the information and the government assumes you understand what you signed. Accountants aren’t magicians or detectives; they work with the numbers you give them.

Betty is learning some facts of life the hard way. Accountants only know what you tell them. Signing documents without understanding them obligates you anyway. Divorce doesn’t protect you from financial activities your husband engaged in while you were married.

The point is you have to be involved in your marital finances. If your husband is doing it financially, you’re doing it too, whether you know about it or not. Before you sign the tax return, read it, ask questions, understand what’s in each column and don’t wait until the last minute. If you sign it, it’s a done deal.

As I said at the beginning, there are no excuses after April 15.

Trust, Husbands and Financial Advisors

A woman called into a talk show where the topic was marital fidelity.Saying she was done with men, the caller ended her commentary by asking "If you can't trust the person who takes a marriage vow with you, whom can you trust?"

I thought about her question as it applies to two professions dealing with money- financial advice and accounting.  No financial advisor takes a vow before taking us on as a client. We can't check a track record because the names of clients are confidential. We have no way of knowing how well the advisor does in an economic downturn.

Bottom line, we're working on trust - giving our money to a firm or individual whose caveat is that past performance is no indication of future results and counsels us on the risks of investment. The certificates on the office wall testify to completion of a course of study, not a grade for performance.

The same holds true for the accounting profession. Most accountants are good at what they do. But they depend on accurate input from us to help us with our tax return. The accountant signs the return based on trust that we've provided all the information we're required to provide. If we're filing a joint tax return and most of the financial information is handled by our husband because we don't "do taxes", we have to trust he has provided accurate information.

Trust is involved in a transaction with someone when we do not have full knowledge about them, their intent, and the things they are offering us.  However, when it comes to marriage, which requires no study, no training and nothing but a vow, trust is used interchangeably with love. Unfortunately, love is not a course of study and no one gets a diploma in the subject.