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In this episode of Pennies and Popcorn, we talk about the pilot episode of Good Girls. Good Girls aired on NBC for four seasons, and featured a stellar cast: Christina Hendricks, Retta, and Mae Whitman play the three lead characters – suburban moms/wives who are trying to navigate difficult financial situations. Retta, who plays Ruby, has a very sick daughter who needs expensive experimental treatment that her insurance won’t cover. Mae Whitman’s character, Annie, is in the middle of a custody battle she can’t afford on her minimum-wage job.
And Christina Hendricks’s character, Beth, finds out that her husband is cheating on her – not just romantically but also financially. He’s hidden the fact that the family is drowning in debt, and he took out two extra mortgages on the house without her knowledge.
We could do a whole episode on each of these characters’ individual situations. But I think Beth’s is the most fascinating and also important to address, because it highlights a problem that is still hugely pervasive even as we sit here in 2022: women often defer to their husbands on “handling the money.” They are in the proverbial dark when it comes to what’s going on with their money.
According to a study done by UBS, a wealth-management company, only twenty percent of couples make long-term financial decisions together. And here’s a depressing stat – millennials are the worst when it comes to sharing financial responsibility! The UBS article states: “Half of millennial women (51%) stated that their spouse is responsible for long-term finances and three quarters of men (75%) agreed that they take the lead.” Ummmm …
WHAT?!?!?!
My ladies, my beautiful, beautiful ladies – this is for you: Please get involved!
There are SO many reasons it’s critical for the women to know what’s going on behind the financial scenes. Let’s start with just four.
ONE: Your spouse could be driving your family ship into the damn ground, like Beth’s was in Good Girls. If you don’t know what’s going on with your money, you don’t know whether your spouse has a nasty little spending habit that’s going to leave you penniless in your old age, or whether your hard-earned dollars are being frittered away in a manner you can’t afford. One of the absolute best financial decisions we ever made was synching up all our accounts to a online tracker that consolidates all our financial information in one place. Mint and Personal Capital are the two that get mentioned most frequently, and they’re both fantastic. It takes about 20 minutes to get all your accounts connected to one of these online trackers, and then you log in and can see all spending done with one of your linked credit cards. You can get a grip on your spending, your net worth, your outstanding loans. And you can see what your spouse is spending, too, as long as you synch up all of their credit cards to one of these trackers, as well.
This is such an awesome way to be transparent with each other. You both have the login information so you can both pop in and see how much money you have in your checking accounts, your retirement accounts, and how much you’re spending each month. It allows both spouses to be easily and effortlessly involved and, more importantly, informed.
TWO: Your spouse could be an unabashed asshat who is keeping you on a short spending leash to control you emotionally. Listen to this awful story I came across: a woman named Stacy Francis was married to her husband for forty godforsaken years, raised his two children, and the entire time was given a very small “allowance” to live on and provide for her and the children’s needs. Husband, by the way, was the CEO of a financial planning firm. But the wife just assumed they were destitute. Turns out, NOT SO MUCH. He was a control freak who enjoyed watching his wife struggle, and when she finally divorced his ass, she found out they had over $10 million in assets.
Now, look, I am all for living below your means. And in our little corner of the world, we have both agreed to live well below our means because we both love securing our long-term futures rather than indulging in luxuries that don’t actually bring us lasting joy. But we have made this decision together. And we don’t feel destitute in the slightest. Far from it. We just enjoy living below our means. What this guy did is not even on the same planet. He was emotionally and financially manipulating his wife.
If you get involved in the family finances, you can prevent this from happening to you. And if your spouse is not cool with you doing that … well …
If you ask to get involved with the family finances and are told no, it might be time to talk to a relationship counselor or maybe even a divorce lawyer. That is some next-level controlling behavior.
THREE: You might be a financial badass. In my own anecdotal experience, women are often more frugal than men. And they can be a little more risk-averse. You might make a good counter-balance to your spouse and help the family create a more effective approach to spending and investing. And two heads are always better than one. Give yourself a better shot at creating a secure future for yourself and your family by getting involved.
FOUR: People don’t live forever. Your spouse won’t be the exception to that rule. Even if you’ve found the sweetest, most perfect, honest, trustworthy spouse that humanity has to offer, you should still not let yourself be in the dark, because there may come a day when that sweet, honest, trustworthy spouse is just flat no longer there. You don’t want to be dealing with soul-shattering grief and taking a crash course in how to handle your finances at the same time. Be prepared for whatever life throws at you and become an equal partner in handling the family finances – today.
To wrap up, don’t let yourself be Beth. Yes – finding a spouse you trust is wonderful, it’s one of life’s sweetest joys. But just because you trust someone doesn’t mean you have to let them take control of something as critical as your financial security while you sit entirely in the dark. Step into the light, friends.