How couples can have constructive conversations about money

Today, the Get Rich Slowly summer of books concludes with an excerpt from Cashing Out: Win the Wealth Game by Walking Away from Julien and Kiersten Saunders. Julien and Kiersten are the power couple behind the rich & Regular blog and YouTube channel.

The following excerpt from Cashing Out (published by Portfolio/Penguin) is used with permission. Copyright © 2022 by Rich & Regular LLC. This passage has been edited to be more readable on the web.

Dr. Sue Johnson is a clinical psychologist who specializes in emotionally focused therapy. She says that when couples fight (regardless of the topic), they’re doing a dance. One partner makes a move, and the other one responds accordingly. She insists the dance is always the problem — not you, not me, not us — and not the topic.

By focusing on the dance, we can shift our focus and look at our interaction patterns whenever there’s an issue. The rhythm of one person responding to the other person’s moves is what ultimately. defines the dance, and our ability to instinctively know when to reach and and grab the other’s hand for a spin requires what Dr. Johnson calls emotional attunement.

If the conflict is the dance itself, think of your emotions as the music. Being emotionally attuned means you can both hear the same song, or at the very least can acknowledge that yours isn’t the only song playing. In other words, it’s not enough to just go through the moves together if one of you is grooving to Barry White and the other is swinging to Barry Manilow.

When you’ve been in a pattern of avoiding conversations with your partner about money, it’s as if you’ve both been attending a silent disco. Everyone’s dancing, but you can’t hear any music. If you want to get attuned, it’s important to understand what unresolved money arguments sound like, emotionally speaking.

Name-Calling: Conversations About Spending

Over the years, we’ve met and spoken with hundreds of couples about money, and the most common argument we’ve heard…