A few years ago I was speaking at a farm conference and a friend of mine was leading a session for women on how to deal with stress. I had finished my presentation, so I sat in on hers. It was an eye-opener.
She asked for a show of hands of how many of the 100-plus women in the room were feeling stressed. Almost every hand went up. When she probed further, it became clear that about 90 percent of them were stressed because they knew their husbands were stressed out, but wouldn’t talk about what was bothering them.
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The women didn’t know what the problem was for their men and there didn’t seem to be any way to find out.
I had been talking to a number of men at the conference during coffee breaks and happy hour, and I knew that for most of them the stress was money.
Grain and other commodity prices were down and they didn’t know what to do. Many of them weren’t sure they could make it through another year, but because of fear, pride or maybe shame, they weren’t talking to their wives about it.
This created a doubly dangerous situation. The men couldn’t benefit from their wives’ help and wisdom and the women were frantic knowing something serious was bothering their husbands, but not knowing what.
As all humans do, they assumed the worst when they knew something was wrong, but didn’t know what it was. That meant these couples couldn’t work together to find a way out of the tough situation they faced, which only one of them knew about. That kind of thing is not only hard on the bank account, it’s hard on marriages.
These men were not alone in refusing to talk to their wives about money. I knew a government counsellor who helped families in financial trouble deal with banks and other creditors to consolidate their debt and work out terms. She said the families she ended up dealing with were those who had waited too long before taking action. They could have had a much easier go of it if they had faced their situation earlier and figured out what to do. The problem was often that the men wouldn’t talk to their wives.
She gave as a typical example an executive who had lost his job and had not told his wife. He later said he had felt so much shame he just couldn’t admit to her that he was a failure. Every day he got up, dressed in his business clothes and went to the library. His wife, not knowing they had no income, continued to spend in the usual manner and soon they had massive credit card debt and were in a crisis.
She would have been more than happy to cut back and help figure out how to cope if she had only known the situation. And she certainly would not have loved him less because he had lost his job.
This kind of thing doesn’t surprise the folks at the Capital One credit card company.
Their surveys show almost a third of all adults have never had a conversation about finances with their spouse or significant other.
Lawyers, accountants and financial planners all have hundreds of horror stories about widows who did not get their husband’s pensions because he didn’t sign the right papers, or women who assumed their future was secure only to have their husbands die and find they had far less resources than they thought.
In a report in a past issue of the AARP bulletin (AARP is an association for people older than 50), Thomas Murchy Jr., a probate lawyer in Maynard, Massachusetts, said it is a common problem.
“I’ve seen hundreds of cases where spouses and family members have absolutely no knowledge of what someone left behind. They’re forced to spend days and even weeks trying to learn about various benefits and assets when they’re trying to cope with the pain and suffering of their loss.”
If it’s complicated for urban couples, it’s doubly or triply so for ranchers and farmers.
A lawyer I knew in Alberta who dealt mainly with farm and ranch couples cited dozens of cases where the husband died and the wife ended up losing the ranch because she had no idea of the financial structure.
What the creditors didn’t get, the lawyers and taxman did. Creating a retirement plan together, and planning what to do if either of them died, would have saved these women untold grief.
Even if you don’t die (and statistics are that one in five men reading this article will die before age 65), you need to talk to your wife about money. When do you want to retire? How much money will you need? When will you have it? If something happened to you, what plan do you have laid out so your wife will be secure financially, and know how to manage your assets?
If you find it hard to talk to your wife about financial matters, get some help from a third party: a financial planner, lawyer, accountant or even a trusted relative.
Why not do it today? You could do something like my friends Tom and Margaret did, who went away to a resort for a weekend. They did some skiing, hot-tubbing, dining out and in between, talked about their financial plan.
By the way, if you think chocolate and roses are great for wooing your wife, try communication about money and watch what happens.
Edmonton-based Noel McNaughton is a professional speaker, facilitator, coach and writer who specializes in guiding men and women through the uncertainty oflife transitions. He can be reached toll-free at 877-736-1552. Website: www.midlifemen.com.
