Family and financial love languages

Family and financial love languages

Family and financial love languages might sound like a weird mix Especially if you’re not used to talking finances or have a strained relationship with your family. But in this case it’s your chosen family – well in my case, it’s my partner with whom I share expenses and living quarters.

When I recently redid our budget to reflect upcoming changes in our living expenses, it made me realize something. It’s something I’ve been aware of really for years, but only just reflected properly on now.

We don’t have the same financial love language!

Love languages and “the finance talk”

I’m sure you’re aware of the “5 love languages” or however many have been added by pop culture since they were coined. (If not, google it and come back here). And after years of trying to get my partner to talk about and be interested in personal finance or just as a minimum – our own budget – it just dawned on me.

I’ve been doing what *I* loved to do all this time! No wonder it’s been hard and annoying to get a finance talk up and running!

I can talk about personal finance all the time – hence this blog haha! But my partner doesn’t like talking about money matters without at least being warned beforehand or have time to prepare. Actually there are several things about our approaches to finance that are different from each other, and can either help or obstruct our money talks. My hope is that by being aware, it can help us be constructive. Possibly also make it a positive experience to talk about money at home with my partner.

I’ve noticed the following differences in our financial love languages

• I like talking about personal finance all the time, but my partner needs to be warned in advance and have a set schedule
• I love looking at numbers and calculate all available scenarios before making a decision. My partner gets information overload and just shuts off with too many possibilities being presented.
• I like a pretty budget and to have a visually appealing representation of my money. My partner just wants to know which accounts and payments to set up and that’s about that. 
• I thrive on value talks and in the right settings, my partner does too. But I could talk about it anywhere and everywhere – whereas my partner has to be doing an activity that ties into our rich life values. (I’ll talk more about what that is in another blog post).
• I like to make sure we have everything we need and don’t go missing toothpaste, toiletpaper or lightbulbs. I also come up with organization hacks and plan home upgrade purchases. My partner likes to splurge on dinners and flowers for me (I know, I’m happy). It’s wildly different ways of securing our homebase and show our affections for our shared home.

How are these financial love languages?

The reason I see these as family based financial love languages, is the fact that it is a way for us to connect and communicate our needs. It’s really very simple (now that I see it in hindsight). It’s always been hard to get my partner to talk about money. More so when they weren’t earning as much money, as the splurging money were scarce. I’m happy to know that we are stocked up on basic goods, but my partner wanted to feel like flowers on a Tuesday didn’t knock over the budget. 

Finances can either help or hinder you expressing your love language/affection to others. Me talking is prevalent in emotional situations too, and my partner doesn’t naturally talk much without being prompted. This is also evident in money matters where we discuss our budget and upcoming changes. I dive straight in and want to just know everything, but this feels overwhelming for my partner. So in essence, I’m not helping myself, by wanting to present the entire excel document with 6 different spreadsheets on our financial situation. 

I show my partner that I listen and know their needs by simply just communicating the *results* of the budget instead. I get praise and appreciation for having made the work, and my partner gets clear and concise information. It’s much easier for my partner to take action, than to talk about it – and especially if I bother doing the groundwork. 

What makes your family work?

We love the saying “Divide and conquer” and I like to see my partner and I playing to each others strengths. I’m very great at planning but often lack motivation to follow through on things I find boring or tedious. My partner on the other hand loves actionable tasks and seeing tangible progress. That’s why this works so great for us, when I get it right! 

Realizing and respecting that my partner just have different needs and a different interest level, is really beneficial. Both for our relationship and our finances.

Have you thought of making space for your love languages in your family money talks? And what about your budget? 

If you’re curious to know more about me/us and our journey towards Financial Independence, feel free to browse my other blogposts right here>>