Married, With MoneyYou fight over finances, right？ Here's how to keep the cash and the pas

Married, With Money

You fight over finances, right？ Here's how to keep the cash and the passion.

Brian Greenberg is a college financial planner, but on a recent morning he felt more like a marriage counselor. The couple sitting in his office, near Cherry Hill, New Jersey, was seeking advice about applying for financial aid for the man's son from a previous marriage. "When they walked in," Geenberg recalls, "I could feel the hostility."

The income from the wife's business, which she had started before they married, was modest, but it was just enough to limit the amount of aid the son could receive. The husband wanted her to incorporate to reduce their income, thereby allowing the son to qualify for more aid. She didn't want to go through the complicated incorporation process, but felt pressured by her husband. "He was saying, 'I'm entitled to do what I want because I'm making the money that pays the bills,'" recalls Greenberg. "That kind of thinking undermines a relationship."

Much of this type of animosity(仇恨) can be avoided if only couples would talk about money before they get married, says Mary Claire Allvine, a certified financial planner in Chicago and Atlanta and co-author of The 7 Most Important Money Decisions You'll Ever Make. Without this talk, it's unlikely that couples have an actual plan for their lives together.

Studies have shown that disagreements over money are the No. 1 cause of friction in a marriage. And for some, they're the No. 1 reason for divorce.

So why can some couples weather financial ups and downs while others split over a household budget？ The key to success is to find the common ground—the shared values about how, as partners, you want to live your Jives together. Here are some tips for executing a money plan without losing the passion.

Think big and put it in buckets. After couples have paid their fixed expenses, they often find themselves disagreeing over how to spend what's left-pay off the credit cards or get that HDTV one of them has been craving.

To avoid such clashes, talk about your dreams. Allvine's research says couples who don't get bogged down with day-to-day budgeting details are usually the most successful with their money. "You can't say to the spender, Okay, you can only spend $50 a month. It's like putting people on a diet where they can last for a while but then they just binge and eat a loaf of bread. The spender will say, "I'll cut back. And then they start cutting out the extra cup of coffee. But it's rarely the coffee that puts them in debt. It’s the home they can't afford or the ear they shouldn't be driving."

Allvine recommends sorting your big dreams-starting a business, owning a home, saving for a vacation-into categories, or buckets. "When you name the bucket, you know what that money is for, and you won't use it for anything else. That's how couples get to their goals-they pay themselves first for the big things."

Everyone needs the prenuptial(结婚前的) talk. As today's couples marry later, or remarry, they face big challenges combining resources. One spouse may bring children from a previous marriage; another might be caring for elderly parents. The new-think says, rich or not, you may need a prenuptial agreement. "It makes sense to think things through early on," says Mellody Hobson, president of Ariel Capital Management in Chicago.

But Carrie Schwab-Pomerantz, co-author, with her father, Charles Schwab, of It Pays to Talk, has a different take: "Not everyone needs to sign a prenuptial document-but everyone should have the prenuptial conversation."

The point, says Schwab-Pomerantz, is to get an idea of each other's money personality. "If someone has a lot of debt, that can reflect some personality issues that his or her partner needs to know about. How you deal with money is a reflection

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