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Keep Your Spouse in the Loop

March 18th, 2007 ·

My wife and I have been married for almost six years now and just like in other marriages, we each play our own designated roles. For instance, she mostly does the cooking and cleaning and I do the grocery shopping and taking out the garbage. We never actually talked about what we would each contribute but somehow we settled into doing our “assigned” tasks.

It turns out that I run the family’s financial department. I pay the bills, move money between accounts, manage our investments and file our income taxes. The downside to this arrangement, of course, is if I were to be run over by a truck, my wife would be clueless about our finances. I am fairly certain that she would say “huh?” if I were to say that I purchased an ETF for our account. I am not implying that she is not smart, because she is, after all, an engineer too. She just isn’t very interested in financial topics and would much rather read literature than pick up a book on personal finance.

One idea I’ve picked up from Free Money Finance is to create a PowerPoint presentation with information about our assets and liabilities, our income and spending and our portfolio holdings that I would update and share with my wife periodically. I bounced the idea off my wife and she is very enthusiastic about it, so I’ll start working on my slides pretty soon. I am hoping that in a few years time, she will have enough understanding of our finances and would be capable of managing things on her own.

PS: I would like to thank frequent commenter Mike for suggesting this post topic. I would also like to take this chance to ask you, dear reader, what financial topics you would like to see discussed in future posts. Feel free to post a comment here or you are also welcome to contact me via email.

PPS: Finance Minister Jim Flaherty will table the Federal Budget in Parliament tomorrow. The budget is rumoured to contain a reduction to the capital gains tax and a grab bag of other tax cuts. Tomorrow’s post will deal with how the budget will affect our pocket books.

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13 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Jeff // Mar 18, 2007 at 11:10 pm

    CC: This is a fantastic idea, and I plan to use it as well. I have been searching for ways to get my fiancée to take an active interest in our finances, and this may just be the ticket. Many thanks for passing it on.

  • 2 Mike // Mar 19, 2007 at 12:14 am

    Great post!

    I think one basic thing to do whether you have a will or not (you should!) is for both partners to have access to all the family’s financial details.

    We haven’t actually created our list yet but it will have all our various financial institutions, insurance policies, account numbers, approx balance, account type etc. I think if we create this list and store it in a place where we both know about ie on the computer and in the filing cabinet then if one of us kicks, then at least the survivor will know where to look up what they own, even if they’ve never done that before.

    I’ve heard about life insurance payouts and investments going unclaimed because the survivors didn’t know about them.

    Other admin things to do would be to make sure your address is up to date at the institutions you deal with and for RRSP investments make sure the beneficiary on the account is your spouse - saves on probate & taxes since they can be directly transferred to the surviving spouse’s rrsp.

  • 3 Dave // Mar 19, 2007 at 12:51 am

    Great idea. I think I will try that too. Maybe annually like an annual report.

  • 4 Kevin // Mar 19, 2007 at 6:59 am

    Great idea; thanks for sharing.

  • 5 FMF // Mar 19, 2007 at 8:21 am

    Let me know how it goes. My wife loved it and we plan to make it an annual event!

  • 6 Mark // Mar 19, 2007 at 8:46 am

    I saw this article a while ago and it seems relevant. It’s a list of everything that should go on a one-page financial ‘cheat sheet’, for your family should something happen to the person running the finances. Enjoy.
    http://www.parade.com/articles/editions/2006/edition_09-17-2006/Finance

  • 7 Canadian Capitalist // Mar 19, 2007 at 9:40 am

    Mike, Mark: I think a one page summary is a great idea and it should be in the same file as the original copy of the will.

  • 8 Middle Class Millionaire // Mar 19, 2007 at 9:42 am

    Like you my wife is totally uninterested in anything related to investing. Just the very mention of “stocks”, “portfolio” or “retirement planning” make her eyes glaze over and virtually shut. The PowerPoint sounds like a great idea for spouses that have even a miniscule slight interest in their finances. However, if your spouse would be unresponsive to a PowerPoint (like my wife) I’d suggest the following. Write down all the financial info for both of you: chequing accounts, saving accounts, RSP accounts, CDN & US trading accounts, mortgage info, credit cards, insurance etc…and put it in a fire proof safe. On my list I’ve included institution, account number, login and password (if applicable). This way my wife still doesn’t know (or care) about our finances but at least if I die she can give this sheet to an accountant/lawyer and it’ll be taken care of quickly.

    Cheers,
    MCM
    http://middleclassmillionaire.blogspot.com/

  • 9 Big Cajun Man // Mar 19, 2007 at 3:58 pm

    Excellent post, and very good idea. More marriages go on the rocks about money than any other subject matter. I will be linking to this posting somewhere along the way, you should send this to the Under 30’s carnival, they need to learn this one EARLY!

    –C8j

  • 10 Canadian Money Blogs Reviewer // Mar 19, 2007 at 5:16 pm

    great post! I’ve actually went one step further: I got my wife interested in finance by getting her to choose (and follow) stocks from companies she knows (mostly related to the Health and Retail sectors ; with some of my help obviously at first) … I even set her up with her own brokerage account so she get her monthly summaries and company brochures she now likes to read. This lead to interesting choices like Shopper’s. I find that approach to be very effective since one is always more motivated when participating in something rather than simply being briefed about it.

  • 11 Jennie // Mar 20, 2007 at 11:40 pm

    Great idea!

  • 12 re: Money // Mar 21, 2007 at 1:19 am

    I’d recommend a couple of books to your wife. They’re not dry and technical books about finance, but more like a woman’s view on why it’s dangerous to be clueless about finances :)

    One is “Money: A memoir” by Liz Perle, the other - “Nice Girls Don’t Get Rich” by Lois P. Frankel. These were the books that actually woke me up from our financial routine (even though I’ve always been the one paying the bills and taking care of the budget, I was never really interested in anything beyond basics).

  • 13 Four Pillars › Smart Couples Finish Rich - Ch. 1 Review // Sep 18, 2007 at 9:45 pm

    [...] who is more interested (or less disinterested) in that topic. Canadian Capitalist talks about some solutions for the problem of the spouse who looks after the finances dying and the other spouse having to take [...]

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