February 2024
This episode of Couchside Conversations is from Morton Wealth’s 2023 Investor Symposium. Wealth Advisor Beau Wirick and his wife, Daniela Wirick, who is a relationship coach, share their story and emphasize the importance of working with your partner to create a financial plan that respects both of your core needs and dreams.
They start by introducing the Gottman Institute’s methodology, which can accurately predict the longevity of a relationship based on observable behaviors like criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. It is important to be aware of these unproductive communication styles when resolving a disagreement with your partner. Daniela suggests using “compromise ovals,” which may help couples map out their non-negotiable needs, areas they can be flexible in and overlapping goals. Beau and Daniela also recommend couples to delve into the “why” behind each other’s viewpoints to further understand and settle financial conflicts.
Stay tuned for more Couchside Conversations episodes! We have topics coming up like…
- Parenting Tips for Financially Savvy Kids
- Protecting Your Family Using Insurance
- Owning a Home/Investment Property
Watch previous episodes of Couchside Conversations:
Current Me vs. Future Me: The Modern Investor Dilemma
Investing in Your Community: Charitable Giving & Impact
Welcome to the last day of my marriage.
Hello, I am Beau.
And I'm Daniela.
I like spending money.
I love saving money.
I am an extrovert.
I'm an introvert.
I like budgets.
I hate budgets.
I need a budget.
He needs a budget.
Let the battle of the spouses, financial edition begin.
What we actually wanna talk about today is what can we do as married couples that can help to bring us together as partners in our financial journeys rather than as individuals pursuing disparate paths.
That's what we're covering today. And so with that, Daniela, one of the many ways that you grace the world with your wisdom is through relationship coaching. And you subscribe to the Gottman Institute's research-based methodology when you coach couples.
Yeah, so the Gottman Institute was founded by John and Julie Gottman, a fellow married couple, two psychologists that devoted their time and their expertise. John was actually an analyst to studying what makes relationships work. So they have changed the way that we view relationships, the way that we understand it and have graced us with their wealth of knowledge. So they spent the first 20 years of their partnership studying what makes relationships fail.
And with that knowledge they spent the next 20 years studying what makes relationships work. Hence the title of their New York Times bestseller, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. And so and their research actually produced some pretty incredible results,
The Gottman's claim to fame is that they can actually predict with a 90 % accuracy whether a couple will still be married five years from now simply by watching them interact for 15 minutes, which is-- yes, exactly, which is roughly the-- length of this talk, so don't worry, we won't be making any predictions here today, but yeah, very, very scary, very scary.
So asking for a friend here. What did the Gottmans find that makes marriages not work?
So they found four main behaviors that they identified that quickly deteriorate a relationship. relationship and this is a relationship at any stage. So these are criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling which is a lesser known one but we all know it. It's when one or both partners shut down, they get emotional and they try to walk away from the relationship or some successfully walk away from the relationship.
So we won't spend too any time on these behaviors but all you need to know is that yes, they tend to be present in all. all relationships, but it's the longer they are in a relationship and the longer they go unchecked, that is cause for concern and that could bring a couple to their demise.
So, what can couples do to help avoid these behaviors?
Yeah, so that's a question I get a lot. However, it's interesting that you mention avoiding because the key to having a successful marriage is not to avoid conflict. and while it is to avoid these behaviors, what people are often surprised to find is that the research continually shows, to this day, time and time again, that even the happy couples, the ones that are expected to last, they actually fight often. So we're okay, so far, so far. But yeah, it's actually the couples that stop fighting, the ones. that just quietly bicker, or even the ones that stop talking to each other that have just stonewalled completely, that are more the cause for concern and more likely to end up divorced. So with that being said, it's not about avoiding conflict, it's about learning how to fight well and how to fight productively. So instead of falling into these behaviors, here's the Gottmans that were able to come up with a set of data -backed tools to help couples and give them a structured guide to talk about these sensitive topics and not fall into these behaviors. And then you told me about perpetual problems.
So, the research found that 69 % of conflict is, again, a conflict is a normal part of any relationship, 69 % of all conflict is actually something we call perpetual problems.
So these are the problems that come up in a relationship time and time again, no matter how hard you try, unless you go to a therapist, and even then it comes back up in every season of life.
And the reason why is that these perpetual problems tend to come from the deepest parts of who we are. So they come from our deeply rooted beliefs, from our upbringing, from our childhood. What we know about these... things, they can come from personality differences or lifestyle differences. So as we mentioned, he's an extrovert, I'm an introvert, that's one of our main perpetual problems.
It's all about learning what to do when these perpetual problems, because they will come back up and learning what to do with them, and being prepared, just how you guys-- guys have a financial plan for what to do in the future.
Okay so this is a financial symposium so when it comes to perpetual problems how does that how does that find its way into financial conflicts and financial issues?
Yeah so this won't be a surprise but most perpetual problems have to do with three topics: money, sex, and kids. Hence money being listed as one of the top reasons why people end up divorced. So we hope that today we can give you some tools and you won't end up that way. But the reason why money is at the top of the list for perpetual problems is because money is a loaded topic.
And whether you're loaded or not, it's loaded emotionally. It's loaded with a lot of meaning for people. For one person, money can symbolize safety and security. For the other person, it could symbolize freedom and other dreams that they have for their life. So money is just one of those things that we tend to approach as individuals. Even if we want to, and we have the hopes of coming into our relationship with the dream of being partners. on the topic, it can often be that we're completely on opposite sides.
And it's not because we're on opposite sides, it's because we're coming from different sides and different upbringings and different values.
So I shouldn't ask this question, but I'm going to ask this question. Hypothetically speaking, do you have an example of a financial conflict?
Hmm, I'm glad you asked. I've got an example. Once upon a time, very, very early on in our relationship, Beau and I were on a date. It was not too far from here. We had just gone ice skating at the lakes, I think it was. And we were in a Badass Tacos, if anyone knows. It was a great date. And my boyfriend at the time thought that this would be... he knows where I'm going with this now, thought that this would be an excellent time to discuss budgeting. Using this very date as an example of how expensive dates were and how moving forward we would need to have a line item to control our date spending.
Not the romantic declaration that you wanna hear, not even a few months into dating.
How broke do you have to be to have that conversation at Badass tacos? They're like $2 tacos.
But what my sweet, responsible, soon -to -be financial planner boyfriend, soon -to -be husband, actually year after that or something, what he didn't know is that budget and the term "budgeting" was a four -letter word for me.
It was something that I was not happy to hear due to my upbringing that he just hadn't really understood yet. So we had unknowingly walked into one of our perpetual problems.
And I didn't do us any favors by doing it in such a setting as that.
Okay, so tell us about what budget means to you and what are the underlying reasons that budgets four letter work for you?
Yeah, so this is when the tools come in. This is where the tools come in. So there are two tools that should we have had them back then, but again, we were just stating. We hadn't even gotten engaged or gone to premarital counseling where we would have received these tools.
But there are two tools that would have been really helpful that eventually were once we got engaged and got into therapy. So the first tool is called Dreams Within Conflict. And the reason that tool would have been helpful is because it would have helped us understand where we were coming from, instead of just imposing a budget on someone or saying, "No, I will never go on a budget," and that could have torn us apart, we could have understood why this was coming up and why we were having the emotional reaction.
The research shows that if you go into a conversation, especially something so loaded as money and try to come up with a compromise before you have understanding, the conversation is not gonna go well. You can't force someone to come to your side before you even hear their side, so understanding has to come before the compromise.
Which brings me to the second tool, and we'll get into each of the tools, but the second tool is called compromise ovals.
Okay, so let's go back in time. We're at Badass Tacos, you're dating a child, and...
And so how would this conversation have gone if we did it right?
Yeah, so I would have taken the opportunity to tell you about my upbringing, and I'll tell you guys this today. So my incredibly brave parents, when I was seven years old, left everything behind in Mexico City and moved us to Vancouver, Canada. They had big dreams of having a better life, not just for themselves, but for me, and that meant leaving behind our family, leaving behind their jobs, leaving behind a business, everything we knew, including their college degrees, which don't always transfer up to Canada. So, having that... in mind, I had the immigrant mentality of we started from nothing.
We had, we didn't go out to eat when we first got there. We couldn't go back home for the first few years because the plane tickets were so expensive. Japan Airlines was one of the only ways to get back from Vancouver. But I had witnessed firsthand what it was for my parents to build back up every single day. But my parents did it, they did it. They are now successful, they have their business again, they're back up and running, but I saw what it took for them to get there. And then, much to my parents' dismay, I actually followed in their footsteps. And when I was 16, I immigrated to the US to start my career. So I had started once again from zero and built myself up. So by the time that I met Beau, I had once again gotten to a place of stability. I could go out to eat again, to places fancier than tacos. So the thought of going back to a budget felt like starting over again, and I was not about to do that a third time.
Not that we were going to break up. I just thought, oh, I'm going to be with this guy and I'm not going to have fun anymore.
What's the opposite of knight in shining armor?
A financial planner.
So then I would have asked you, 'cause this is what the Dreams Within Conflict prompts you to do, is to ask each other, what does this mean to you? So I would have asked you, Beau, what does budgeting mean to you ?
Yeah, and so for me I think the reason why a budget's so important to me, which is probably why I became a financial advisor, is I graduated from USC in 2008, worst job market possible, couldn't get an interview at Starbucks. I mean it was just horrible, and I developed a mindset where I had no control over my money. And then I got back into acting, which has no control over your money at all. It's just feast and famine. You go a year without work, and then you make a bunch of money. And so having no control on that side of things, spending is the only thing that I had to control. And so it was basically my way of feeling like I had to say in my own financial journey, in my own financial journey. destiny. And so bringing this woman into my life on the road that I was on, I wanted to impose a budget, which makes sense, because I didn't want to spend all this money. But that financial independence was the dream. I wanted to get there, and the industry that I was in just couldn't give me any sense of control.
See, that conversation-- conversation would not have ended up in saltier tacos due to my tears. See, we were able to discuss the same sensitive topic still from our same points of view, but we were able to remain connected because we got down to the deeper issue. So that's the beauty of these conversations is it can keep you guys together. We can still honor each other's dreams, but from a place of empathy and vulnerability and understand each other. You'll hear me say that a lot.
So now we are prepared to go into the compromised circles. So I want you guys to picture two ovals or two circles. So picture it like an egg. So you've got the egg whites, and then you've got the egg yolk. The inner circle is what's going to house our non -negotiables. So these are coming from our core beliefs. These are our core needs. This is what we need in order to stay together. Then in the outer circle, in the egg white, you're gonna have your negotiable. So this is your areas of flexibility.
So Beau, what are your core needs when it comes to budgeting?
I think all I need from it is I want us to be on a plan. Okay. I want us to get together and agree together as a couple, this is how much we're gonna spend and we can be on that plan to achieving financial independence. As long as there's a plan, I have a lot of flexibility outside of that.
Okay, I like that you're calling it a plan and not a budget. Okay, my core needs are to feel like, if I'm going to save, which again, I'm the saver here, I don't know how that conversation happened, he's the spender, but if I'm gonna save, that we're saving up towards something. So I wanna feel like I'm still in the same, that I still earned my fun and that there's gonna be fun to be had. Even if we have to save up for it, I'm all about that, but I just don't wanna feel completely restricted to only saving every dollar.
So as long as in that spending plan, there's a portion of it that's set aside for adventure, for romance, for dates, for fun, you're willing to have a plan as long as that core need gets met.
Yes, and let me add to that, that I would not want to talk or think about the plan during the fun.
So that is actually how the conversation ended up going. Like no joke, that was taken out of the page of history. It took maybe like six hours to get there.
And no joke, when we would fight, we would just fight for hours and hours and hours and miss each other. And we'd be like, do you want to get the Gottman tools out? Fine. And we'd be like, what's your dream within the conflict, Daniela? And then like 15 minutes later, we're like, oh my God, I love you so much. I understand where you're coming from.
Well, thank you everybody for joining us. Thank you for marrying me. Against all odds.
