This Valentine's Day, show your spouse where the money is

By Beth Pinsker

If you want to show your love, write out a road map to your finances

This Valentine's Day, trade the roses for a spreadsheet and some folders.

Scott Boito has tried many different ways to get his wife, Kerry, to be interested in their finances over the decades they've been married. Nothing ever worked.

He doesn't even know how the division of labor started. She wasn't interested and was not very good at managing her own money when she was single. So he just took on the task. Now that he's retired and Kerry plans to stop working as a teacher at the end of the school year, he's trying again.

"We're ironing out the last details of what we need to do for her," said Scott, 57.

"He's been trying to include me over the years, and it's not that I'm not interested. It just blows my mind to think about all of it," said Kerry, 53. "The letters and numbers and percentage rates. My eyes glaze over."

Kerry said she'll be able to focus much more once she is officially done working. And so Scott's major recent step has been to hire a financial planner to help them hammer out their final retirement plans. He also has a binder full of all the emergency information Kerry would need if Scott, as he put it, "got hit by a beer truck."

These are the right moves, said financial experts. Ideally, both partners in any relationship involving those living together would be involved in the finances and could take over for each other in an emergency. They'd have money dates on a weekly or monthly basis to discuss how things are going, and they'd work to stay on the same page about major financial decisions. This is more idealism than reality.

This sort of situation doesn't even happen for couples like Doug and Heather Boneparth, who run a financial-planning company in New Jersey and co-wrote the book, "Money Together." When they were first married, Heather was a harried corporate lawyer working long hours. Doug was a financial planner. Then two kids came along.

"I was very engaged in finances, but I was so overloaded that I said, 'Nope, this is not mine,'" Heather said. While they discussed major financial moves, Doug handled most of the details. Then they eventually worked their way to having regular "money date" discussions and sharing more of the mental load of financial planning with each other.

What's at stake if you never make it to this meeting of the minds over money is that the partner who takes care of everything can feel overwhelmed and guilt-ridden, while the unengaged one is at a huge financial risk if anything should happen to their spouse.

"It's not that you're going to try to turn your spouse into a financial professional. It's about making sure both spouses can steer the boat in an emergency," said Stacy Francis, a financial adviser based in New York, who also hosts a podcast, "Financially Ever After: Widowhood."

"Otherwise, your spouse will suffer. Your kids will suffer. These people, particularly women, will come to me and they are a disaster. They feel unsafe. They don't know how anything is being paid or the amount of money they have. Then it's like Sherlock Holmes and forensic accounting to figure everything out."

If this dynamic sounds familiar to you, the best gift you can give each other as spouses for, say, Valentine's Day or an upcoming anniversary - or just because - is to use these three steps to plan for sharing and receiving information.

Create a treasure map

Scott Boito's binder for his wife has passwords, account balances and instructions on how to pay all the bills. Susan Stamatkin, 67, is making a painstaking list of every detail of her household before she has surgery at the end of March. Anna Mehta, 45, shares a Google document with her husband where she tracks their expenses - down to the bill due dates.

"I'm also putting together an 'If I die document,'" Mehta said. "I read about this a few years ago during COVID and thought: That's a good idea."

For the spouse handling the finances, it might sound like a big chore, but it can actually be a way to put down the mental load.

"Writing it all down relieves that burden 100%," said Francis, whose firm has created a downloadable booklet to help the process. "It's one of the most wonderful gifts that you can give to yourself if you're managing the finances, but also the most loving gift you can give to your partner and children."

The job of the partner who isn't currently involved is to be enthusiastic about the binder, no matter how scary it is. Find some way to engage with it, whether it's planning the next vacation or when to retire.

Get some help

Another part of the mental burden of being the spouse who handles the finances is that you need a sounding board for your ideas. This is why Brian Leo, 60, finally turned to a financial adviser after years of doing things on his own. If nothing else, he figured, all his wife would have to do is call the adviser if something happened to him - and since he's an avid skydiver, it's something he thinks about a lot.

He's trying to get his wife to meet with the planner. "I tell her that statistically, I'm going to die before you," but she has so far remained uninterested.

The Boneparths said they see this a lot with couples in their practice. "It takes a lot to build a bridge where one has not existed. One of the themes we talk about is meeting the partner where they are," said Heather.

Maybe your spouse doesn't want an office meeting or to look at bar charts. You and your adviser need to find a way to engage the uninterested partner in ways they like to learn, perhaps in a more casual setting or from YouTube videos.

"Maybe somebody says they're not interested in finances, but they are interested in vacation," said Doug, who advises starting there and talking about how to afford it.

Another route to consider is bypassing the uninterested spouse and going instead to adult children or other trusted relatives. This may be Susan Stamatkin's next step, because after 45 years of marriage, she's run out of other ideas. The couple has three adult children, one of whom has special needs. But her husband has been reluctant so far to rope them in. "I'm going to wear him down a bit. It might be the simplest way. I've told the kids that I have a file on my computer and a box with all our paperwork," she said.

Work on the big discussions

Even if both spouses never end up on an even footing in taking care of everyday expenses, they can still get on the same page about the big stuff. Making decisions about retirement as a married couple is a two-person process. Stamatkin said she can engage her husband on these big-picture items even if he doesn't care how the electric bill gets paid. "If we go for a walk, he's a captive audience, but it's been below zero here. So sometimes, I'll interrupt 'Jeopardy,'" she said.

As life changes approach, things might also change. Now that she's set a retirement date, Kerry Boito finds herself almost ready to be involved.

"I do wish I understood a little better," she said. "One goal I have for myself is that I can catch on a lot better when I'm not worried about school."

Got a question about investing, how it fits into your overall financial plan and what strategies can help you make the most out of your money? You can write to me at beth.pinsker@marketwatch.com. Please put "Fix My Portfolio" in the subject line.

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-Beth Pinsker

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02-10-26 1350ET