Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Natalie H. Jenkins is vice president and marketing director of PREP, Inc., provider of one of the most respected marriage enrichment programs in the world. Scott M. Stanley of the University of Denver is a noted expert on commitment and coauthor of Fighting for Your Marriage. William C. Bailey teaches family economics and studies attitudes toward money at the University of Arkansas. Howard J. Markman of the University of Denver is noted for his work on divorce prevention and coauthor of Fighting for Your Marriage.

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Money is the number one problem area for couples because money isn't simply about dollars and cents. If you scratch the surface of almost any money issue, you'll find a relationship issue complicating if not actually driving the problem. That's why You Paid How Much For That? not only sound reveals principles of money management but also provides you with practical tools to uncover and understand the deeper, often hidden meanings of money and conquer the problems it raises in your relationship.
You Paid How Much For That? can help you to

• Learn how a Saver and Spender can live together-happily!
• Gain a healthy respect for what money can-and can't-do for you.
• Understand how your upbringing, culture, and gender influence how you and your partner approach relationships and money differently.
• Find out how to solve problems together in ways that promote teamwork.
• Discover practical ways to get what you both want most.
• Capture a vision for a prosperous and loving future together.

Aus dem Klappentext

Money is the number one problem area for couples because money isn't simply about dollars and cents. If you scratch the surface of almost any money issue, you'll find a relationship issue complicating if not actually driving the problem. That's why You Paid How Much For That? not only sound reveals principles of money management but also provides you with practical tools to uncover and understand the deeper, often hidden meanings of money and conquer the problems it raises in your relationship.
You Paid How Much For That? can help you to

• Learn how a Saver and Spender can live together-happily!
• Gain a healthy respect for what money can-and can't-do for you.
• Understand how your upbringing, culture, and gender influence how you and your partner approach relationships and money differently.
• Find out how to solve problems together in ways that promote teamwork.
• Discover practical ways to get what you both want most.
• Capture a vision for a prosperous and loving future together.

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You Paid How Much For That!

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

The heart has its reason, which reason knows not of. BLAISE PASCAL

We've met couples who've had great success with money but lost at love. And we've met couples who've lost lots of money, but their love was stronger than ever. Then there are the couples who have had success with both, or with neither. Have you ever wondered what the difference is between these couples? We have.

We believe we've identified the key difference. It has relatively little to do with luck or intelligence, though it has something to do with the answer to another question: Why do smart people sometimes do dumb things with their money? It seems that nearly every family has some story about a silly purchase they've made. There's the one about Ron, who's retired from a very successful career in sales. Ron and Marie are the best of friends and have been married for forty years. Ron's kids and grandkids have all heard the funny story about when Grandma and Grandpa were newlyweds and Grandpa bought a vacuum cleaner for $249.99 from a door-to-door salesman. That was in 1962, when Ron made only $400 per month. Furthermore, they had hardwood floors and not a single rug in the house. "Grandma was so mad at me she could hardly talk to me for a month!" recalls Ron.

Or take Linda, a very smart and savvy teacher who decided to go ahead and visit her girlfriend in Boston even though she and her husband didn't have the money. During her visit, Linda and her friend went shopping, and Linda decided to buy a very expensive stereo system for her husband. They couldn't afford the trip, so why did Linda make things worse by buying a stereo?

Why do couples carefully go through their budget in order to figure out how much house they can buy and then let their real estate agent show them houses $5K to $10K more than they had decided they can afford? Have you seen this? Have you done this? Have you become totally obsessed with the house that "is just perfect" and "feels like home," even when you'd already decided it was more money than you felt comfortable spending?

Why do we seem to lose our minds when it comes to certain money decisions? Odds are that if you don't have a story to tell, your partner does. Why do smart people sometimes do un-smart things? It's as though there are some invisible forces at work in our lives. Actually, there are. Understanding these invisible forces and knowing how to manage them are essential to winning at money without losing at love. But you won't find these invisible forces mentioned in traditional models of economics.

A Simple Model of Money Decisions

In a most basic model of economics, money behavior can be thought of in four parts:

1. The first part is the person: you. You are an individual who wants to reach some particular goal.

2. The second part is the decisions you make. How are you going to handle your money? Mainstream economics tends to assert that we make decisions rationally.

3. The third part in this model is your money: whether you have a lot of money or a little, whether your income is consistent or erratic, whether your assets are liquid or not.

4. The last part is your goal.

For example, if your goal were to go to a movie, you would decide which movie you wanted to see, go to the theater, buy your ticket, and watch the movie. If we were to draw this simple model, it might look like Figure 1.

Real Life Is More Complicated

The problem is that real life doesn't always follow a simple model. There is often more going on than what is pictured in the figure. In real life, if you wanted to go see a movie and you asked your partner if he or she would like to go with you, your partner might respond in a way that baffles you. Your partner might say something like, "That won't work because I'm planning to take the kids to the amusement park on Saturday while you are away camping." You might reply, "Um, OK," but you'd be thinking, "Huh?" If you were to ask what one thing had to do with the other, your mate might even criticize you for not planning ahead. Later, when the situation had calmed down, you might find out that your mate was thinking that your plan would require money for the movie, stuff to eat at the movie, and a baby-sitter. Fifty bucks, from top to bottom, and your partner was counting on using that money to take the kids out while you were away on the weekend. In real life, simple things can get complicated pretty quickly.

These baffling interchanges happen all the time to couples, and money tends to have its fingerprints all over them. Money is such an integral part of our lives that it is bound to be mixed up in the interactions between partners. "Want to go to the movies?" "We can't afford it." "The truck needs a new transmission; maybe we should just buy a new one." "Why'd you buy generic ketchup? I like Heinz." "I'd like to cut back to working part-time." "But we'd have to sell the house." "Let's increase our savings for retirement." "But that means we can't afford to go anywhere for vacation." The sheer number of decisions that revolve around money makes it unlikely that two people will always agree about what to do with the stuff.

Why Money Is So Challenging for Couples

Money issues have the potential to ruin or define a marriage like nothing else we know. That's because money is not simply about money. If it were that simple, we could just give you some sound financial advice, and you'd have no trouble following it. Money is complex because money and finance symbolize so much about how we view life, what we think is important, and how we work together—or don't—with loved ones. Let's look for just a moment at that "how we work together—or don't" part.

May We Have the Envelope, Please?

And the winner is ... money. The topic that is consistently reported to be the number one problem area for couples is not jealousy or sex or chores, it's money. So if you and your partner don't always see eye to eye when it comes to money, you're not alone.

In 1991, Ragnar Storaasli and Howard Markman published a study out of our lab at the University of Denver, which reported how couples rated their top problem areas. In that study, couples were tracked from before they married to long after the wedding bells had rung. People before marriage, people after marriage, people with lots of money, people with little money—all rated their number one area of conflict as money.

In another study from our group, coauthors Scott and Howard devised a nationwide telephone poll that asked people all sorts of questions about their relationships. (You know those guys who call just as you are sitting down to dinner? Yes, that's us!) Among the many questions people answered was this one: "What is the number one thing that you and your partner argue about most?" Figure 2 shows how people responded.

You can see how couples responded, grouped by how long they had been married. The top argument starter for every group, from engaged couples to people married up to twenty-five years, was money. Those who had been married twenty-six years or longer reported that "nothing" started arguments. It's not that they don't argue at all but that on...