SUMMARY KEYWORDS

drinking, alcohol, money, stress, trigger, financial issues, conflict, disconnection, partnership, marriage, mental load in your relationship, account, Accountant, Bookkeeper, money history, messages, money script, tangent, beliefs, live by, scarcity mindset, dreams, mindset, alignment, time, pleasure, investment, equal, energy, philosophy, values, security, convenience, generosity, abundantly, give, save, spending, relationship dynamics, emotions, resentment, household, wife, husband, spouse, kids, marriage, married, juggling the bills, worrying about the future, money stretch, partner avoids the hard conversations, you aren’t comfortable in talking about money, worried about your spending, not wanting to discuss it with anyone else, unhealthy spending, resentment when one person feels restricted, money fights, financial insecurity, break the cycle, Gottman communication tools, destructive communication patterns, conversations, criticism, contempt, personality, character, morality, defensiveness, withdraw, stonewalling, enlightening, help couples talk about money without fighting and without shutting down, building an emotional safety net around money, health, sobriety, navigate, conversations, dream again, align, shifting, focus, sobriety, accountability, financial freedom, freedom, retirement, investments, happier, alcohol-free

SPEAKERS: Casey McGuire Davidson + Dee Zimmerman 

00:02

Welcome to the Hello Someday Podcast, the podcast for busy women who are ready to drink less and live more. I’m Casey McGuire Davidson, ex-red wine girl turned life coach helping women create lives they love without alcohol. But it wasn’t that long ago that I was anxious, overwhelmed, and drinking a bottle of wine and night to unwind. I thought that wine was the glue, holding my life together, helping me cope with my kids, my stressful job and my busy life. I didn’t realize that my love affair with drinking was making me more anxious and less able to manage my responsibilities.

In this podcast, my goal is to teach you the tried and true secrets of creating and living a life you don’t want to escape from.

Each week, I’ll bring you tools, lessons and conversations to help you drink less and live more. I’ll teach you how to navigate our drinking obsessed culture without a bus, how to sit with your emotions, when you’re lonely or angry, frustrated or overwhelmed, how to self soothe without a drink, and how to turn the decision to stop drinking from your worst case scenario to the best decision of your life.

I am so glad you’re here. Now let’s get started.

Hey there.

Welcome back to the podcast.

Today we are talking about money and how it can be a source of stress and a trigger not only for you, but a source of conflict and disconnection in your marriage or partnership.

It may be that you feel like you’re carrying the whole mental load in your relationship, juggling the bills, and worrying about the future, or trying to make money stretch. While your partner avoids the hard conversations, or it might be that you aren’t comfortable in talking about money or worried about your spending, but not wanting to discuss it with anyone else.

 

[00:02:00]

Either way it builds stress and it shows up as unhealthy spending or resentment when one person feels restricted, money fights, or this constant sense of financial insecurity. And most couples don’t address it until it’s grown into a much bigger problem.

 

My guest today is Dee Zimmerman. She’s a money coach who helps couples break out of that exhausting cycle. She sees what many of us live that in so many relationships, one partner. Often the woman is carrying the emotional load and the logistical burden while the other ducks out of the tough conversations. And when money is the subject, that’s when things can really blow up.

 

Dee uses practical strategies rooted in Gottman communication tools to help couples talk about money without fighting and without shutting down. And she believes that building an emotional safety net around money can change everything, not just your finances, but your connection. Your stress levels and even your health and sobriety.

 

[00:03:00]

So, if you’ve ever wondered why it feels so impossible to talk about money with your partner, this conversation is going to give you some answers and some hope. So Dee welcome. I’m so glad you’re here.

Thank you, Casey. Excited to be here and to talk about this.

Well, tell me what you see and why you started working with couples around money and financial issues.

 

Yeah, you know, I’ve been coaching for a little bit over 5 years and I coached everybody, singles, couples, young and old. And the dynamics are really interesting with the couples and I just found it’s more of a challenge, but I really enjoyed it and I really enjoyed being that third party and being able to help couples navigate their conversations and dream again and get aligned with their goals.

 

And yeah, there’s just so much going on there and they have so many things to overcome. I mean, it’d be a surprise if it’s not difficult in marriage because we come in with different money histories, different money perspectives and so forth.

[00:04:00]

So I just, yeah, that’s how I ended up shifting and just focusing primarily on couples.

I do work with some single women, but I work primarily with couples and just wanted to get really good at that and find some tools and skills, too, to help them navigate those issues. So what do you usually find when a couple comes to you to get a money coach or to work with a coach about some financial issues?

 

What is the reason they are coming to you or what is the pressing matter that they typically need help with? It feels like chaos. Their financial world feels like chaos and they’re just carrying that stress. It’s almost an every day, every moment thing that they’re feeling and they usually just don’t know how.

They may not even know what’s wrong other than they don’t feel like they have enough money in their checking account to cover their bills.

 

[00:05:00]

Or even if they do have enough money, they still feel like it’s really disorganized. Like they’re not on track for their dreams. Maybe they’re not aligned on what they want in the future, or yeah, those things.

So I think they just they feel. That overwhelming stress and really don’t know what steps to take. And a lot of that is because we just don’t, we’re, most people don’t get the financial education. You know, it is. Doesn’t have to be that complicated. It’s not rocket science, but it, there’s a lot of just foundational things to understand and so a lot of people come in just not really knowing that, or knowing, knowing how to, maybe they know that the pieces, but they don’t know how to put the pieces in order.

That’s one thing. But then the other thing is a lot of couples will be coming to me because they can’t talk about money. Hmm. They just can’t talk about money with each other and they just, yeah.

[00:06:00]

It, it just it ends up, like you said, Casey, you know, one person is usually avoiding, or if they do have a fight, I mean, if they do try to talk, it ends up in a fight.

Yeah. Or they just feel like they’re going in circles. Maybe they’re not even fighting, but they’re going in circles and they come out of the conversation going, Hmm, what did we figure out?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, a lot of times it can be really daunting to even get to what the numbers are. You kind of don’t want to look too deeply.

You’re like, I’ve got, I just want to go about my life. I don’t want to look too deeply. I’m meet, you know, I mean, we meet with our financial advisor once a year and we’re supposed to meet with them twice, but we just keep putting it off. And one thing I, the big benefit of when I started my coaching business.

Coming out of corporate was that I had to hire an Accountant for the first time and a Bookkeeper because previously, like one of the most stressful days in my marriage would be the day that my husband and I did our taxes.

 

[00:07:00]

And it was for no good reason, but it, you know, he got really defensive and over the top and thinking that this was all on him and I expected him to know everything and I was just like, Why are you freaking out? We just plug in the numbers and something pops out and we’re all good. And then, we hit file. Like to the point where like my son who is now 17, but he was like 12 at the time, he would like take my daughter who was 6 at the time and like, let’s go upstairs. Lila, just ’cause like we don’t fight.

The tension would be so, mm-hmm.

And it’s ridiculous because we weren’t struggling financially, but we just got it. Didn’t want to look at the numbers, deal with the numbers, think about it, whatever it is. Yeah, it’s just tense.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it’s just so common and it unfortunately. That financial stress feeds into our general stress that feed that, that leads us, you know, into other things that are just, are not health helpful to us.

[00:08:00]

Healthy. Yeah. Right. Yeah. One, one thing you mentioned to me that was really interesting was the idea that. Couples might not be aligned or they might not even know what it is they want for their future. And I know I hear that from lots of women. You know, we’re so busy in daily life, you know, answering to our jobs or doing things for our kids and managing the house and our partner and our friends and vacation.

 

And if you’re struggling with alcohol and you know, cutting out. A couple of hours every night out of your evening ’cause you’re drinking and not feeling great every morning. That just adds to feeling like you’re strung so thin. It’s hard to think about what you want, but when couples come to you, mm-hmm.

 

[00:09:00]

I’m curious, do you first dive into the numbers? Like how much you making, how much you paying the debt, or is it like, what do you want out of life and how do you feel right now? What’s the first step there? Yeah. It, the numbers used to be my first step until I learned to coach better. Okay. Yeah. Yep. And I wanted my clients to have results, tangible results right away.

And you can’t skip the other stuff. So now, I go deep. I’m going to go slowly. In the beginning. Yeah. So the latter of what you said.

Yeah. So, the first step is really, and in fact the first step that I do with, with couples is to talk about their money history, to talk about how they grew up. What kinds of messages did they learn about money when they grew?

You know, and what do they carry with them today? I call it money scripts. Yeah. You know, what scripts were written and what are they still believing and living by? And it is very rare that you don’t have. Very rare to have the same ones when you come into a marriage. So, if I’m working with couples.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep. And that, that would be the, that is the first step. I would add that in tangent.

[00:10:00]

Another first step is to, is to have them start to talk about money with each other in a very safe, gentle way. So we talk about, here’s the kind of conversation that you could have. And here are the parameters around it, how to approach it and what to do if it goes sideways.

So, we don’t wait on that because that’s usually even those that don’t fight that much. It’s surprising how often we, you mentioned the Gottman, it’s surprising how often some of those patterns show up even with those that don’t have you know. Aren’t really in the trenches with that. So I, yeah, I don’t wait.

 

With that, we start having easy conversations. I, I say easy. They’re still hard to have ’cause they’re not used to ’em. But we, we take small steps with that so they can start normalizing the conversations.

[00:11:00]

So we’re digging into Their perspectives on money, not their behaviors too much yet, but their perspectives, how they feel about money.

 

And having those conversations and the two kind of work together, because the kind of questions that couples ask each other are ones to become curious about their partner and to learn to appreciate where they’re coming from. That’s really interesting because as I think about it, and my husband and I have had sort of different conversations around this. We’ve been together for 25 years now. Yeah. But it is really interesting the different places that we came from, both around. Mm-hmm. What our parents taught us about money and what our grandparents taught us about money and how we spend it or believe in it, but also what it means to us.

 

Yeah. So before I share that, I want to hear from you. Can you gimme examples of what different money stories people have or ones you’ve heard? What are the, what are the usual ones?

[00:12:00]

Yeah. This is one that I come across fairly often where the woman has been given the message that you are vulnerable and you could be taken advantage of.

And so, you need to protect yourself and you even need to have a secret account.

Yep. I’m laughing because I was like, yeah, I believe that.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That is one. And, and so, that’s, you know, an obstacle in sharing finances. It’s an obstacle in transparency and in trusting one another. Yeah, both ways.

The woman with that script won’t, you know, it’s hard to trust her husband. The husband’s not trusting her because I don’t know if I see everything or if she’s doing things behind my back, you know, that kind of thing. Are the husbands surprised about that? Are they like, oh, I had no idea you ever felt that way?

Yeah. Most people are surprised. Yeah. Yeah. Because we don’t talk about this, so yeah.

In that situation, are the women typically handling the finances or is the man, or does it vary?

[00:13:00]

I think it varies. Yeah. I don’t know. If I were to choose, I would say typically the man is handling the finances, but I don’t know.

Yeah. Yeah. So, one is, that women have been told that they need to be protective and that they’re vulnerable financially if they don’t take care of themselves.

What’s another one? With a man, it’s often, it’s my responsibility to carry the weight financially. Be a man. Yeah, be a man. Do what you’ve got to do.

And you know, it doesn’t matter how you feel about it. It doesn’t matter that you’re killing yourself. It’s your responsibility and if you are not, then you’re not a man. And it doesn’t matter if you’re scared of being laid off or losing your job or whatever. Mm-hmm. I can imagine. I can imagine that.

That’s really interesting. And what about spending. Right.

[00:14:00]

Because I know I’ve heard, I’ve read on the news and I know people who are making a really good salary, but between private school and huge mortgages and vacations mm-hmm. Or whatever, they’re barely making ends meet. And yet they may not talk about like, do we really have money to buy a new car?

Or should we really think about pulling the kids out of this private school? Yeah. Right, right. Yeah. So I’m not sure you know, in that situation that’s very common. The money script behind it could be something like if we’re still, you know, still want to mention that, it could be like, fear of missing out, you know, we need to have it all you know, we need to live this life.

 

It needs to look good and we need to get it, or like my partner will not be happy. Like, my wife will not be happy if we don’t have this big house. Or, you know. Yeah. It sort of means that I’m not, yeah. Keeping up my end of the bargain as the man or whatever it is.

Definitely. And I call those baked in needs too. You know, you commit to things, you commit to the bigger car, the number of cars that you have, the bigger house.

[00:15:00]

You know, honestly, we do have more needs now. Like our expenses have gone up. Yeah. You know, and you know, where a cell phone, cell phone used to be a luxury. Now it’s, we really, we can’t do without it.

But that’s an additional cost, you know, so life has more baked in needs and sometimes we make decisions that. Were out of place, but once we make them, they’re baked in and they’re really hard to unwind from. So, that is a big mountain to climb and to overcome. We work on it. Yeah. And also, you don’t want to be parentified either the man or the woman.

You don’t want to have to ask permission to spend a certain amount of money or to do something like that’s a source of Yeah. Of conflict. I can imagine. Yeah. And then also, so I’ll just share, ’cause I share a lot on this podcast, like what my story was. ’cause I want you Okay. To kind of tell me how common this is.

[00:16:00]

So, okay. Like you said, everybody’s got a money script. Absolutely. And in my family, it was very much the idea of you know, financially conservative, meaning we had money, but you need to hold onto it. Mm-hmm. And so never buy a car that you can’t pay for outright. Like that was one message that my parents communicated very clearly. You do not lease a car, which is ridiculous, right? But it was like, you know, if you cannot afford a car, you cannot afford a car. Full stop. You know, I was in my first job and was just stressed out, and the message from my grandmother was, you’re lucky to have this job. You know, you are lucky to be there. You’re lucky there, you know, they were great depression people.

Mm-hmm. You know, nothing should be spent on you. Okay. So, in my house, which I think is ridiculous ’cause your house is an investment and it appreciates more than anything else. True. But my mother doesn’t like to spend money on anything. What she considers frivolous.

So, to the point where we had stainless steel appliances in our house and she was like, oh, you always did have expensive taste.

[00:17:00]

You know, you’re paying more just for the color. Like, that’s the like, extent of you should not be spending money. Yeah. That, that said, my parents also moved around constantly.

What?

I went to boarding school. They were just not there a lot. And so, I had this story in my head that I need to be able to support myself and eventually my kids, and that I couldn’t count on anyone, including my husband. So, when you talk about separate accounts, like we did not merge our finances until we had our first kid, which was well over 5 years after we got married. Yeah. Like we used to pull out separate credit cards and couple dinners with people to pay and debate who was going to pay at our, our friends who had been married a decade longer were hysterically laughing at us. But we would, I made more money than him and we would have one joint account and we would contribute the same percentage of our income.

[00:18:00]

I’ve heard that a lot. We, were married like that. And I also, I think it’s seriously, one of the reasons I never stayed home with my kids was because I wanted to protect my ability to be employed. And I was like, in my mind, we might get divorced, you might cheat on me, you might die.

My husband’s like, Jesus Christ, but I’m like, sorry honey, I got to be able to take care of myself.

Yeah. So, that is a huge story that I brought into the marriage. It is, on the other hand, I made more money and I also was kind of like, I don’t want you to tell me what to spend my money on. That was another reason I wanted my separate account.

So, I did not. I have friends who would buy things. And the friends I’m thinking of actually were weren’t working outside the home, but they would hide their clothes that they shopped for and then they would bring ’em out and be like, oh no, I’ve had this for a couple months. And in my mind, I was like, I don’t want to discuss my highlights.

I don’t want to discuss Botox. I don’t want to discuss anything. Mm-hmm. Because it’s my money.

[00:19:00]

So, I was very protective over it, which is complicated. Right. But it goes along with what you said. So, yeah. Tell me what you think about that. Yeah, because it’s probably very messed up.

Yeah, no, I think it was so incredibly interesting and yes, it, yeah, that’s really common, Casey and it’s kind of a scarcity mindset in a way.

Yes. Yeah, a hundred percent scarcity. And it is one of the scripts that I do identify and kind of, you know, ’cause with clients, I’ll walk through some scripts, like I’ll say it to them and does that resonate with you? And that’s kind of how we pull that out. And one of the scripts that I heard, if I interpreted, interpreted that correctly was, you know, this voice that says you’re going to spend on that.

Yeah, that’s a waste. That’s too expensive. You are a bad person because you’re doing that. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Or like, you should only be spending on these things. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:20:00]

Same thing. Yeah. And also when you said the husband sometimes, and obviously this is sexist, but this is the way it was in my marriage, one of the reasons. That it was so tense around tax time, was that my husband very much felt like he was supposed to know how to do everything. Yes. And that he, if we messed up our taxes or our finances, I was going to blame him. And I was like, and so? Like even talking to our financial advisors, he was so tense. ’cause he’s like, well, they can tell us anything I’m supposed to know and we’re supposed you’re going to get mad at me.

Mm-hmm. And I was like. Dude, I’m not going to get mad at you. I could care less. Like, they’re the expert. We’ll tell ’em what we want. They’ll give us their advice and then we’ll say yes or no, you know? Yeah. But it was very tied to his masculinity or job in life or what I would judge him for. Like, oh, no wonder we don’t talk about this shit.

Yeah. And that’s more common. And I was just talking to a couple last night in my program. He wanted her to get more involved in the finances, and she is, and you know, working together is helping.

[00:21:00]

But as she’s, and they were very honest about this and laughing about it, but as she’s getting more involved, she’s kind of doing some things that he’s been trying to do or, or he thought he was doing, you know, all this time.

And so, he’s now feeling like, wait a second, you’re stepping onto on my shoes and, you’re judging me. She’s not judging. She’s just trying to learn it and do what he wanted in the first place – was to be more involved. But he recognizes that he’s feeling. It’s, it’s a script inside of himself, but he’s feeling defensive. He’s feeling judged, like, what is she going to think about how I did things? ’cause obviously I made some mistakes along the way. And so, it’s just a really uncomfortable thing, you know, uncomfortable dynamic. But they know that they need to stay in it and go through the process for what they want in financial partnership.

Well, it’s part of the things like cleaning up the attic or having a garage sale, like nobody wants to do it.

[00:22:00]

It’s a huge effort the first time. And nobody wants to look at it and you’re busy, and when you have time off, you’d rather do something else. So, I can see why working with a Coach in the same way working with anyone, when you want to get something done, forces you to carve out the time and to have the conversations, and to actually dig in to the things.

Now, I’m curious. When you talk about being aligned in terms of like, okay, what is your vision of mm-hmm. How you want your finances to look, or if you’re saving for retirement or have kids, like what it, how do you have those conversations? Because I do know that most many couples don’t talk about that, and, you know, one of the reasons that they don’t talk about it is a lot of times they feel as though they, they, they don’t deserve to talk about it anymore. Now, I know that doesn’t address the alignment part, but I did. I have discovered.

 

What do you mean by that? Yeah. Well, they had dreams.

[00:23:00]

Maybe, you know, when you’re dating and you’re, you talk about the future and all those exciting things you’re going to do together. And then life, life happens, right?

And stress happens and we respond to that stress in various different ways. And avoiding things and, you know, numbing ourselves and that sort of thing. But and so we gave up on the dreams. I mean, that is often what I find is that they don’t dream anymore. And I’ve even heard them say when we had these conversations in my groups, dreaming is irresponsible, dreaming is risky.

 

Yeah, and it’s because they, they feel as though they haven’t made mistakes along the way and, and so, you know, well, we messed it up. It’s, we. We can’t get there. And so, why even think about it? Or what were some of those dreams? Like, do you have any examples of what people used to dream about and are now like, okay, that’s not going to happen.

 

I think that depends. I mean, it’s so subjective.

[00:24:00]

That depends on, and this, this gets to the alignment part because what we love, what our money motivation is, that’s one thing that we talk about our money loves. And then, we do some values exercises too. And those are all pieces to how get aligned with your partner.

 

Also to get aligned with your own heart too. Yeah, like, you know, you may have stopped thinking of those things for yourself. So, pausing and going through some exercises and, and evaluating that gets you in line aligned with your own self and then aligned with your partner. So yeah, we take a look at those things so that people can start dreaming again.

What I meant to say was that it is subjective and it’ll be different for different people. For some people, it’s adventure. It’s the availability to be spontaneous. It’s a sense of freedom. Like I just don’t have to worry about it and I can do what I want to do when I want to do it.

[00:25:00]

For some people it’s, it’s security. It’s relationships, it’s maybe convenience. It’s yeah, it could be a number of different things that we value and where we really want to be aligned with how we spend our money. We want our spending aligned with aligned our values. Yeah. So, those are some examples.

Yeah. Or it might be generosity. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I just really want to feel like I have the freedom to give abundantly to the people or the causes that are important to me and that sort of thing.

Yeah. So, and it’s really important that you have those conversations because there often is a shared pool of money whether it be large or small, that you need to work through and prioritize.

 

[00:26:00]

And, you know, there’s also the fear of the unknown. Like, okay, am I going to live to be a hundred and I need to, you know, take care of that and make sure that I have enough money to, you know, what if I get dementia, what if I need, you know, care, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. That was another funny thing in our, in our, my husband’s and mine world, meaning that like every woman in my family seems to live to like 95 or a hundred. Like, just they live forever. You better plan for it, right? But my dad died when he was like 63 and Mike’s dad died very suddenly at 70. So, neither, like my dad didn’t even get to retire before he got sick and passed. And so, in my husband’s mind, he wants to retire as quickly as possible because he’s like, I don’t want to work till I suddenly die.

I want to enjoy this. Yeah. And that is, you know, as I told my story about like, this money might run out and I need to be able to take care of myself, they’re just very different. So, he’s trying to figure out what is the right number so he can get a dodge as quickly as possible. And I’m like, okay, are you planning on diet at 70? ’cause I might have 30 more years.

[00:27:00]

What about me? You know, so it’s, but it is, it’s super hard. And I would say that a lot of us, when we get into the day-to-day stress, we don’t have those conversations. I mean, maybe you put, you know, the max amount into your 401k if you’re lucky, or maybe you never put money in your 401k when you were younger.

Mm-hmm. Or maybe, you’ve been out of the workforce for a very long time. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, and I think I have seen with friends that the power dynamic is very different when only one partner is bringing home money outside of the home. And it shouldn’t be that way, but it’s complicated. Do you see that too?

I do see that a lot. Yeah. For my own, our own family unit. My husband brought home most of the money. And I just thank God that, I mean, we were, you know, I had made a commitment to myself, I think internally now I realize that I had that commitment. It wasn’t something I really voiced or wrote down or journaled or anything like that.

[00:28:00]

But because of the difficulty in conversations and communication with my parents and the results. I wanted our conversations to be good. I wanted us to always be on the same page. And thankfully we were, and he was so generous and that, you know, it was a partnership. Even the financial finances were a partnership.

And so I, even though I didn’t bring home as much and sometimes didn’t bring home anything at all I always felt. Like I was a contributing part of this family equally, you know, and, and didn’t feel that I think you should. So I’m, you know, I’m, yeah. As we should. And I’m, I’m really thankful for that.

I really feel blessed about that. But it, but I wouldn’t say that that’s common. I think, gosh, with more and more women working now too, I mean, it’s less and less common that, that women are staying at home. Maybe that’s kind of coming back around some, I don’t know. But yeah, I think it’s still a lot of women work outside of the home and a lot of women stay home with their kids.

Yeah. I mean, I think it’s both are very common.

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[00:29:00]

You know, impact people differently in terms of how, how that sets up the relationship. And it probably also depends on how much money the family has as an overall unit. Like, do you need the woman to work or do you need the, do you need the man to work?

Or how does that work? Right. Right. I’ve seen the resentment from the husbands when they really do need the money and the woman isn’t working. I have seen resentment there.

Yeah. Hmm. I’ve seen, you know, I’ve got a couple right now where the man is not able to earn any income right now going through struggle, and boy is that hard for him because, again, back to that money script.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. But that is, yeah. And one thing I, yeah, go ahead. One thing I really struggled with and why I think it’s interesting to bring in a third party because you don’t realize how much your decisions whether you’re happy or not happy. Impact your partner, but there is a, I felt so I wanted to leave my corporate job.

[00:30:00]

Okay. I had been working in corporate pretty successfully for 20 years. I had been the main breadwinner in our marriage for 20 years, and you know, over the years my husband made more and more money. He went from a sixth grade teacher to a principal, but I still made more than him. But I was really unhappy and I wanted to leave my corporate job, but I had a lot of financial fears about it, like so many.

Mm-hmm. And ego fears and, you know, is it, am I allowed to do this? And all those messages. I couldn’t sort it out with him. He was too close to it because I couldn’t figure out, I needed to be sure what I wanted to do. What I, had fears about whether it was worth it, whether it would work what I wanted without involving him, because regardless of how supportive he was going to be, it would impact our, our ability as a family in terms of how much money we had.

It would impact time. It’s sort of is like changing the dynamic of what we agreed to 20 years ago.

[00:31:00]

Oh. You know, but I also, which is messed up, felt like, well, you’ve gotten to be happy all these years. Well, I’ve been busting my ass. When is it my turn to step back? Not that he wasn’t working hard, but I was like, he fucked it out when we were 25 from the corporate world.

So it’s so messed up. But I actually ended up talking to my therapist. For a long time, Uh-huh, until I got clear that this was something I wanted to do and then I brought it to him. ’cause I was afraid if I talked to him first, I would interpret or sense his, oh, hesitancy. And it would dissuade me. It would just feed into my fear, but also my resentment and yada yada.

You know what I mean? Like it’s, yeah, it’s a mess. It’s a mess. Casey, that is really wise, I think the approach that you took to it. But can you see, I mean, how c. Money equals feelings. I mean, money is just, money is emotional. You cannot separate money from relationship dynamics and your emotions and so forth.

 

[00:32:00]

And so, that what, that’s what makes this topic and this, this area is so important to be open and honest about and to work on and not, not avoid, but to, to, to create this kind of partnership with your, yeah, with your spouse. Yeah. So talk to me about the Gottman strategy and communication. Okay.

 

Because I’m one of the first books, my husband and I actually, the only marriage book we ever read, but we read it early in our marriage, was Gottman’s 7 Principles of a Happy Marriage or whatever it was. But we talked about the four horsemen in it. So, will you Explain the Gottman mm-hmm. Framework approach, what people need to know about it. Yeah, yeah, it has been extremely useful because I’ll structure the conversation starters that I suggest for couples around those 4 horsemen they call ’em.

 

[00:33:00]

And so, Gottman’s did research and identified four common destructive communication patterns in our conversations, and those include criticism, contempt, defensiveness, stonewalling and it is enlightening when you have a language around this and you can define it. You can kind of explain, this is what it looks like, this is how it sounds this is why we do it, and here are ways to, combat it, antidotes. And can you define each of those? Because I’ll, I’ve read it, but when you hear criticism and contempt, those two are like, okay, one sounds a lot worse than the other, but what are the, what are the, yeah. Will you define those four terms for me?

Yeah, sure. Okay. I, I think stonewalling is probably the most destructive. Huh. But we’ll start with criticism ’cause that’s the first horseman. And so, criticism is attacking someone’s personality or character. Mm-hmm. Like, you know, you spend that much.

 

[00:34:00]

Yeah. What does that mean? You, you’re only buying that fridge. You’re, you know, you’re paying more for the, just the color.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You are attacking their character, their discernment, and you know what that means about them. So, that’s criticism. Huh And it’s beyond just expressing a complaint.

We all need to be able to express a complaint. But it’s, there’s judgment involved.

Yeah, exactly. Contempt takes criticism a step further. So, contempt is really sort of expressing moral superiority. Hmm.

 

Like, you always do this and I never get to do this, or, you know, yeah, it, I would never behave that way. That kind of thing. Does it take it from, I. Oh you really shouldn’t have spent money on this. Two, contempt would be, you are so selfish. Yeah. I mean, is that sort of the jump?

[00:35:00]

Yeah. Yeah. I would, it, it goes even broader. Like, you know, we said personality and character, but really even your morality.

 

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Defensiveness. Defensiveness. I think we know. Yeah. I think we know that one. I think we know that one. Yeah. And, and. And I think defensiveness happens because you’re just trying to protect yourself.

 

You think that if you just, you know, yeah, you’ve got to. You’re feeling vulnerable, you’re feeling insecure, and rather than saying, Hmm, I don’t see it entirely the same way, but I do recognize what you’re saying and how that impacts you. You know, there are different ways that you can work with that, because if you respond with defensiveness, you obviously, you know, we’re not going to make any headway. The, the step were, you know, defensiveness can lead then into stonewalling, and that’s really the most dangerous one where you withdraw.

 

[00:36:00]

Either you just, you disengage from the conversation or you just literally walk away. You create a wall, there’s silenced. Silent treatment. You never want to go into a conversation again about money. And you know, once you get to the stonewalling, it’s, it’s, it’s a lot harder to repair. It can be repaired, but it’s a lot harder.

 

Yeah. And one of the things that I always point out when these things happen, it really is. Helpful if things start, go to, go sideways, just to be vulnerable going, oh, this is how, what you just said, this is how I’m feeling. You know? Yeah. When, when you say that, and I just want to, it, it’s hard for us though, if we get emotionally hijacked in the conversations, that’s when things go really sideways.

And so I always talk about, especially, this is a good antidote to stonewalling is stop the conversation.

 

[00:37:00]

You have the right to do that. If you try to have the conversation when you’ve been emotionally hijacked, you’re not going to be your best self anyway. And so it’s best just to pause the conversation and go, oh I hear what you said, but I need a break.

I, I’ve got to, I’ve got to process this a little bit. That’s different than stolen stonewalling, because you’re saying I need to take care of myself. This is too much for me, but we’re going to talk about it again. Mm-hmm. We’re going to come back to it. And that again, is something that I could imagine that talking it through with a coach or a therapist or an expert.

Yeah. It would be easier because it’s someone else asking the question. So you tend to get less defensive if it is not your partner or someone with so much skin in the game who you have a history of years of possibly passive aggressive slights or judgment or defensiveness, someone else asking you about what it is you want.

[00:38:00]

Or what it is you’re looking for, what it is you’re scared of. Yeah. You sort of need that neutral third party who’s an expert to broach those conversations. ’cause also having it, when you’re around the kitchen table and you have things to do and you really want to go sit down and read a book or watch TV or you know, you’re craving drinking and you’re trying not to, I mean, this is a very hard time to have those.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Some couples need to schedule ’em. You know, I, I coach them to have weekly conversations around money so that they can start to normalize them. Yeah. And some of them I’m smiling because I’m like, oh, that sounds awful. But I get it. I totally get it. That’s, but, but if you knew what the conversation starters are, they’re not so awful.

Right. Okay. So yeah. Can you gimme an example of those? Yeah, it would be, it would be like, you know, tell me where you think your strengths are around money. And what you know, and where do you feel, you know, the most anxious and you are just listening and you’re not trying to solve any problems.

[00:39:00]

Oh, okay, well then we’ll do this and that and this and Yeah. Or I can’t believe that you, you know, that would be, that would be a horseman. Or it’s you know, tell me tell me one thing that you remember in the past that around money that you’re most proud of. Hmm. Yeah. You can have those. I mean, they might still be hard if you’ve really got ingrained patterns.

What do you think, Casey? No, I’m smiling because I just remembered something. I was like, oh, why did I feel like I couldn’t talk to my husband about leaving my job? And I just remembered that years before I used to want to quit my job. And he would be like, fine, we can totally do that. We just go, need to live in.

Basically like the bus down by the river. He’d be like, yeah, we can totally do that. We’ll just go get, you know, a trailer down in this town and that you don’t have to work. And I was like, oh, holy shit. That’s, he made a point, a way to shut down the conversation.

[00:40:00]

I feel like that’s a course. Yeah. That probably isn’t the kind of conversation that I want you to have.

But he said that like 10 different times. Oh wow. Yeah. That’s tough. I’m throwing him under the bus. Mike, don’t listen to it. But like, that was years before we made the change, but I was just like, yeah. Okay. No wonder I felt like I couldn’t leave my job, you know? That just fed right into the scripts that are really, you know, pretty strong, pretty ingrained for you.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But those, those questions are good ones that, that start out broad and open the conversation without being like, let’s look at our balance sheet right now. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And we really are working on a project here. We’re working on, I mean, we’re working on many different levels.

There’s a lot of practical work around finances too. But there is this, this layer of the money mindset and your conversations. And so, be, we have to be very intentional about it. So that’s why weekly. It could be eventually, you don’t have to talk about money, you know, some money related topic every week, but we’re doing this and yeah.

[00:41:00]

And, and those need to be normalized. So, yeah. So yeah, it’s, it’s weekly and we try to make them as safe and insightful, you know, so that you can learn about your partner and yourself. So, at what point do you actually dig down into the balance sheet or the numbers? Yeah. Or do you, so first you get aligned.

On what is your story about money that you were bringing into this? Which, you know, just from our conversation, I was like, oh yeah, I have this and I have that, and he is this and Yep. You know, after many, many years of doing this and the stories, by the way, are the same regardless of whether we were 26 and didn’t own our first house until we’re 50 now, you know, and have two kids like the Yeah.

The impetus and the mindset hasn’t shifted based on how much money or how many. You know, expenses you have, it’s been the same.

[00:42:00]

And then, once you understand each other, there’s the question of like, what do you want? Right? What, what is it that you want out of life? What does money mean to you? What, what’s your, what makes you happy?

What you know, all that stuff, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then at some point, do you dig into like, all right, are we spending more than we make? I mean, we, when do you get there?

Yeah, absolutely. Because the work is comprehensive. It’s not just about your money. You know, money mindset. So, but I just don’t start there.

They’re just not ready. Yeah. Yeah. We’re not ready as I’ve discovered. Okay. Otherwise, we’ll just, yeah, we’ll just get in the weeds and we’ll never take care of the stuff that’s, you know, deeper and so, yeah. Actually there’s, there’s a framework to the work that I do and the fir and, and there’s four parts to it.

And so the first part is, is building awareness. So what we’ve been talking about is building awareness. But as a part of that, kind of towards the end of that of that phase I guess of our work together is looking at the numbers.

[00:43:00]

So then I do have them gather all their numbers. They maybe never seen it all in one place.

Don’t even know where it is, how to find it, how to put it together. One of the partners doesn’t know it, the other one does that kind of thing. So, they’re doing this in partnership together. And then, shortly after that, they do have to track. They’re spending, they have to look back eventually.

You want to look forward and be intentional and plan, but they have to look back if they’ve never done it before. And they have to look back at, well, what did, what did we actually spend last month and what was it on? So there’s a lot of that logistical stuff that we do get to, but that’s really part of, it’s, it’s at the tail end of sort of that awareness phase.

Then we go into a phase that I call interrupt, which is we look at what are the obstacles in the way of making financial progress? What are the external factors that are impacting us? And then we go back again into the internal.

[00:44:00]

Like inside our spending, what are the internal factors? Not necessarily in our relationship, in our conversations, but me, me, what’s going on?

What kind of emotional spending patterns do I have? And that’s where we do a lot of the value work and so forth. So, it’s often, well, when you have a program with structure, it’s not quite as organic, but when you’re, if you’re working one-on-one, it becomes a little bit more organic. And then, not to get too long-winded here, but the next phase is something that I call streamlining. And Casey, that’s where we really dig in. That’s where we really dig into the tools and the systems of how to manage money and how, what financial goals should we, should we be really focused on what are the, the right steps at the right time, and how are we going to accomplish that?

Mm-hmm. And is it always about cutting spending or expenses or is it sometimes about how you align or invest or prioritize?

[00:45:00]

Yeah. Yeah, it’s all of that. I mean, if there’s opportunities with cutting spending, when you look at your values and when you see what you’re spending on you, there’s conversation about, you know, where the opportunities lie because you might be spending money on a whole lot of stuff that I just call, well, a whole lot of shit, you know? Yeah. That you, you don’t really even care about that much, but you just didn’t pay attention. You don’t, I mean, there’s opportunity there. Yeah. So, yeah, it, there is that part.

But it’s not necessarily just living on rice and beans. That’s not the focus of. My work, the the a budget, which people often hate the word. It’s really just monthly cash flow planning. It is a foundational tool when you’re trying to really, you know, better things and accomplish financial goals.

But it’s not all about a budget. It’s about all this other stuff too. So yeah, there’s opportunity. There’s. Not about that, but it’s alignment.

[00:46:00]

I love to encourage people spending on what their money loves are, but cutting on everything else that just really doesn’t really matter that much. Or thinking of what are some big things that you could do, like how could you really move the needle by making a big move?

Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I mean, I’m thinking back at some of the, priorities and discussions we’ve had over the years. And one of the big ones where I, I could see very clearly how different my sister and I were, was, my dad unfortunately passed away really way too early. He had pancreatic cancer and he never got to spend his 401k, like never accessed it.

He wasn’t retired, but he had that going to myself and my sister. And so we each. Inherited when he died a certain amount of money. And what my sister did and what my mother thought that I should do is immediately pay off a decent portion of our mortgage. And one thing I remembered that my dad said to me before he passed away was I am so glad that I never waited till you girls had] grown up before.

[00:47:00

Mom and I took these trips or did these things. I’m so glad we never waited on adventures. Yeah. And so what my husband and I did was we took different portions of the 401k and put it in a dream trip fund. And so for like the next five years and 10 to 15 years and 20 years out, and. We only spent that money on big adventures ’cause it’s so hard to save up 10 to $15,000 to go to Australia or Africa or anywhere.

And so that’s what we did with the money, whereas my sister paid down her mortgage. But I think having that conversation. Made us really feel positive about doing that. And also not someone being like, wait, you said that we couldn’t pay for X and now you want to go to Italy for two weeks. You know, somehow putting it in a different bucket.

That was important to both of us, made a huge difference and we might have not decided on that.

[00:48:00]

My husband wanted to buy a cabin in Montana and I was like, no, you’re not doing that. Like, I’m going to listen to your dreams. Travel 17 days. I’m going to listen to your dreams and I’m going to be tell them No, I, I think I was like, why don’t you go to Montana once a year and rent a place?

You know? Right. I absolutely love that you did that because money is not something that we need to be a servant to. And, and we don’t have to say, you know, I accomplished this. Money is to serve us. We’re the ones who get to decide what we, we use our money for. And if we’re doing that and we’re aligning with what’s really important to, to you, you knew that you, I bet you have no regrets.

And you have, right? Yeah. You have amazing, no regret. Regret, no regrets, memories, and you knew that that would be. An amazing experience for you and was like it like tuning into the frequency of the radio that just sings right. And you made Yeah. It seemed like also I was honoring him like on every trip we went on.

 

[00:49:00]

Nice. We were like toasting to my dad and he was severally, he was a diplomat who lived in Africa and South America and all around the world with my mom. Mm-hmm. And so we did, when I was growing up, we took epic trips all over the world. Yeah. And it was something that was like our best memories as a family.

Yeah. Yeah. No, that just, yeah, it gives me chills because you, you, yeah. I, I feel like you, you, you were so intentional with that, and money should serve us and be a joy in our lives. A lot of people aren’t experiencing that, but it is possible. And when you make those intentional choices. Boy does, you know, can you enjoy that?

So, you know, that’s my hope is a lot of people are drowning. Or they’re, or they’re, or they can’t see clear. They may have it. Yeah. But they can’t see it clearly. And so even if they chose to take a trip to Italy or Greece, they’re still not going to enjoy it because they don’t have the confidence that they’re doing the right thing.

[00:50:00]

Yeah. And I want them to have that confidence and that freedom. You know that financial freedom, people often call it that. That’s what that is. And I think it does definitely do just depend on what your priorities are for some people. Yeah. You want your kids to get the absolute best education. Yeah. For other people it’s, you know, they’re going to be fine.

 

They, you know, could go to the local school. That’s awesome. And they’ll be fine. And it’s not the biggest deal in the world. We’d rather spend our money on other things, or if we need to do that, we can’t. Yeah. I mean, you definitely have to make trade-offs. Almost everyone does. You can’t have everything hugely wealthy.

Yeah. Yeah. And it’s also the same as someone told me once, which I think was really important. It was actually my first job out of college, and my husband and I actually worked at the same company, so we, we have the same philosophy, but someone said there’s always a trade-off between time, money, and energy.

And so you can make more money. But you’re probably going to have less time and energy, or you can have more time, but you’re probably going to make less money or whatever it is.

 

[00:51:00]

And each of those are important. You just have to decide where to invest or what is equal. So in my mind, also, I’m like, I don’t want my entire life to be work.

Time and pleasure is equally important. By both of us choosing that you take down the money you make a lot of times.

Mm-hmm. Not always, but a lot of times. Yeah. And as long as you’re okay with that mm-hmm. It’s okay. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And there again, if you know what you know really kind of lights your fire and even with less income, you can prioritize your loves.

Your money loves and make sure that you’re leaning in on those, and maybe you have to make some sacrifices in other areas, but if you have that understanding, you can do that. Yeah.

 

Yeah. Well, we’ll see how it goes. My husband wants to retire just as soon as my daughter graduates high school, so Uh-huh that scares the shit out of me, but it does.

[00:52:00]

Speaking of retirement, yeah, that’s kind of part of what you know, you know, we do, too. We eventually get to that, but just sort of scratch the surface because yeah, that is a complicated area and there is a language that is hard to understand around investments in retirement.

 

So, actually, do that separate. I have a program for that, but it’s not this. Couples coaching, you know? Yeah. Program that I do, I keep that separate so that it’s, it’s, it’s kind of, yeah, it its own little capsule and then we can really dig in deep. But if I did that with everybody, they’d be like, oh, I’m so overwhelmed.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, I’m not planning on retiring. I’m like, you can, we’ll, I’ll keep working. We’ll see how it goes. Yeah. So tell us, tell me about where people can find you, how they can work with you all that good stuff. Okay. Yeah. You know, one thing I didn’t mention earlier is that a lot of times in a marriage, one person is.

[00:53:00]

The one who’s like, oh my gosh, we’ve got to get some help. Or, you know, these conversations aren’t working and so, a lot of times it’s just one person that’s kind of pursuing some help and the partner isn’t like behind them and that’s okay. You know, ’cause you can start there. And a lot of times just by taking that initiative, you can get your partner on board and then start to build that partnership.

So I just, I recognize that it’s not like both the, both spouses come in, oh, we’re so excited. We want to work with you. It’s usually. Not like that. I can imagine it’s like couples counseling. One person really wants to go and the other person is like, oh fuck.

Yeah, exactly. It is a lot like that. And that’s okay.

So yeah. But where, where they can find me. I guess I would like to offer them something that can help them start, that’s easy to step into and freeze.

[00:54:00]

So, they can find me at my website and that’s just the initial D Zimmerman finance.com. If you put a slash there and type in Money Talk Quiz.

Maybe we can put it in the show notes or something like that. I can. There’s a link and you could take a money talks quiz. So this is kind of fun. It’s online. It’s one minute and it will help you, like if you’re curious about well, what’s going on in our conversations? What, what’s going on?

You know, are we there’s the side steppers, the I don’t know why I’m blank. The sparring partners, the RS and the builders and so you can kind of get a sense of what’s going on in your conversation and what that means, and also get a small step that you can take to sort of start those conversations and shift them.

And so, that could be really helpful to you. There’s a down, there’s a starter kit, I call it a wealth talk starter kit, and you can download that. Then once you take that quiz and, yeah, just start there.

[00:55:00]

And that’s, yeah, you can find more information. I have a the work that I do, Casey, that I keep talking about with couples is in a group program called Wealth Together. I do also do one-on-one coaching if people prefer that, but I have shifted more towards this group because I am telling you that the couples, when they talk to each other, they love it. They love to other couple when they talk to other couple.

Yes. They love having, at first when I started doing this, I wasn’t sure. I was like, are they going to, and then, you know, they love it. They love the dynamic and the support and that kind of thing. So, it’s a group program called Wealth Together and yeah, that’s where I do most of this work with couples. Like I was kind of talking about the different phases and so forth.

So yeah, you can find out more about that on my website if you just go to the couples coaching tab. But thanks for asking.

[00:56:00]

Great. Alright, well I will put all of those different pieces in the show notes. Thank you so much for coming on. Yeah, I think this is a really important conversation.

Yeah, we were talking about that beforehand, weren’t we?

Yeah. So, I appreciate it. Thank you so much.