Conversations for Couples: Part 3

Let’s take a moment to consider your big life and financial goals. You’ve started to think a lot about these in the previous section, and it’s time to officially take note. While this book is mainly about money management, handling finances as a couple, and optimizing your financial lives together, it all starts here with your life goals.

Money is just the means to help you live your most fulfilling life, and no two people have the exact same goals and experiences in life. This makes money so personal, and only you two can truly know your goals as they evolve.

It’s important to get on the same page with your partner about which goals are shared with your partner or just for you. Then you can both start to understand where you will need to prioritize and make trade-offs together. So first, take about fifteen or twenty minutes individually to note down your individual goals and your vision and your partner’s shared goals. You’ll do this yourself and then discuss your responses with your partner after.

Here we go:

• ·      What are you excited to accomplish in life?

• ·      Where would you like to be ten years from now? Twenty years?

• ·      What will you be most proud of?

• ·      Where do you want to live?

• ·      How do you want to spend your time?

• ·      Any bucket list items?

• ·      Are there any must-have goals versus some that are more nice-to-haves?

These goals and accomplishments can be as big as “Climb Mount Everest” or as small as “Make dinner today,” as long term as “Raise good kids” or short term as “Go camping this weekend,” and as specific as “Launch new skincare line for my business next fall” or as vague as “retire one day.” Include financial goals as well, such as “Save $100,000.” Write it all down and don’t worry too much about feasibility at this point.

Once you’ve each considered your goals separately, it’s time to discuss them with each other. Each of you should have a sharing session with minimal input from the other before you open the discussion. Then it’s time to get aligned.

Here are more life goal questions to discuss with your partner once you’ve compared your responses to the previous questions:

●      What goals do you both share? In which goals are you both similar?

●      Which goals are complementary?

●      In which goals do you both currently differ and more discussion will be needed?

●      Do you have a sense at all yet of how much money (if any) might be needed for each goal?

●      Do you have any initial prioritization of goals yet?

(Please feel free to put a pin in anything that might cause too much conflict at this point. That’s completely normal. Right now we are trying to get these goals written and organized, and this is just a starting point.)

Take a moment also to consider how you both will handle decisions down the road. Because while these may be your life goals now, they could and probably will change in the future. No one has everything figured out today, so discuss how you will make room for adjustments and work out options for the two of you.

Thank you for going through the conversations in this series so far, and thank you both for sticking with each other through all of those. That was a lot of initial hard work up front, and now you can just keep building on that foundation. Please do feel free to come back and revisit these questions as much as you like, at least annually.

Life always keeps changing, and you two will keep saving; therefore, your financial lives will keep changing too.

Looking for more financial advice? Check out what services and programs Momentum offers or schedule a free intro chat with Sarah!