Getting Your Spouse Involved in Planning

We got a great question from a listener: “How do I get my spouse more involved in our retirement planning?” It’s a common challenge, and usually not about understanding the numbers, but about interest and engagement. The goal isn’t to turn your partner into a financial expert; it’s to get aligned on what actually matters. Taylor walks through a better way to approach the conversation so both of you feel confident, informed, and on the same page.

Here’s what we discuss in today’s show:

🎯 Spouse Involvement: One partner often leads, but both should be included

🧭 Start with Purpose: Build the plan around what matters to each spouse

🧩 Keep It Simple: Know where money is, who to call, and how income works

🤝 Neutral Advisor Role: A third party helps remove tension and set boundaries

📲 Stay Aligned: Simple tools can keep both partners engaged without stress

Resources:

Website:  https://www.demarsfinancial.com/

Phone: (509) 536-9556

Schedule an introduction call with Taylor: https://bit.ly/demarspodcast

Check out Taylor's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@TaylorMadeRetirement

Taylor's Newsletter: https://demars-financial-group.kit.com/827c64fe0e

Disclaimer: Since we don't know your specific situation, none of this information should be construed as tax, legal, financial, insurance, financial advice, or other advice and may be outdated or inaccurate. It is your responsibility to verify all information yourself. This content is prepared for entertainment purposes only. If you need advice, please contact a qualified CPA, attorney, insurance agent, financial advisor, or the appropriate professional for the subject you would like help with. Demars Financial Group, LLC or its members cannot be held liable for any use or misuse of this content. Advisory services offered through Demars Financial Group LLC, a Registered Investment Advisor. Demars Financial Group is not affiliated with LPL Financial.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:01

More often than not, with decline couples I see, one spouse is more financially savvy than the other. Today we're going to open up on how we can loop in both partners into the conversation so we're all on the same page.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Welcome in. Glad to have you on another episode of Taylor Made Retirement with Taylor DeMars, the Certified Financial Planner, the DeMars Financial Group. Taylor, good to talk to you. I'm sending in for Mark today. I'm glad to be a part of the show, looking forward to the conversation today because I know this is uh something that you probably hear quite a bit from people, whether you're working with them or just, hey, random questions that you get from people that come in to meet you for the first time. But there's oftentimes spouses aren't on the same page with finances, are they?

SPEAKER_02 0:56

It's true. It's true. And and and it's interesting because um, you know, I do uh content on marketing, uh, I current content on retirement in my YouTube channel. And YouTube tells me that over 80% of my viewers are male, right? And so it's no surprise that most clients that come to me, the the the husband is the the nerdy one like me, getting into the numbers and and and their wife is not as interested. And sometimes the the the gender roles are flipped, but yeah, it's very consistent that one spouse is much more interested in getting to the weeds of these conversations than others.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Well, when you hear someone uh present this to you and say, hey, you know, I want my wife or want my spouse to be more involved in our retirement planning, uh, but they just don't have an interest, how do you approach it? What where do you start in and providing suggestions for them moving forward?

SPEAKER_02 1:40

Yeah, yeah, that's a great question because I feel like that the issue is not actually a language problem. It's it's well actually it it's an interest problem, not a language problem. Because when the less financial savvy spouse comes into the picture, they think it's just gonna be looking at Excel spreadsheets for hours and asking hard questions and having you know nerdy topics pulled you know over their head that they have no idea what it all means. And so what I like to flip the script around is helping them understand, not not trying to understand the engine, but what's the direction? What is the vision? What is what is actually gets them excited? And sometimes when I ask that to people, they kind of sit in their chair and look at each other. They don't know really how to translate that. But there's a little tip or little trick I found that if you were to just look spend even five minutes on your partner's social media feed, be it Pinterest or Instagram or even TikTok, you can tell pretty quickly what their interests are. You'll see things coming up like travel plans or cooking ideas or what they want to do with family members or a hobby that they haven't really explored. And to me, that's many times what the unspoken plan is, what they want to be doing, and as time frees up in retirement, and putting the topic around those ideas is where they get really interested in the conversation and they realize that the money is just the engine to make it a reality.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

Okay. That makes sense. And I think you know the pushback that I'm assuming you might get sometimes is hey, I I get it, Taylor, but you know, uh that's not something I'm really interested in. But when you kind of push back to them, how involved do they have to be? I mean, is it something where you can say, okay, well, you don't want to be involved, fine, we can still move forward without you, or is it always a situation where you want them to be on the same page and be a part of the conversation all the time?

SPEAKER_02 3:20

Yeah, it's a great question because in our planning process, we we don't even start with talking about investments, right? I feel like many people in this industry just go straight to talk about the portfolio and then they say, Oh, well, here's how we're gonna build a plan around it. And they never talk about the purpose or what really matters to them personally. And so our process flips that and we start with a purpose, build the plan to inject into the portfolio. So from the onset, we want to involve both spouses into building that purpose. And the way we do that is I frame it as a discovery questionnaire. We're asking questions such as, you know, if if time were no object, if money were no object, what would you be doing? Or what's something that you've never given yourself permission to truly do from a financial perspective? And pulling those ideas out of both spouses, I feel is very important so that they feel bought in from the start to understand, okay, here's how we're going to translate that with the 401k withdrawals, maybe Roth IRA conversions and asset allocation and such, so that they understand that we want to start with the end in mind so that we can be able to translate that to their reality. So at the end of the day, what we're trying to do is make sure that they're involved in at least three major things. And the first of which is where is their money and how do they access it? Right. So, in other words, if something were to happen to their husband, if they're the more financially savvy one, does she know where the accounts are? Does she know who to call or how to access them? And if she's not having an advisor or if she does have an advisor, the second thing is who who to be able to contact. So the the estate attorney, the CPA, the financial advisor, to know the team, not necessarily how to manage the engine itself again, but who are the professionals she needs to be contacted with. And then the third thing I feel like they need to be involved in is the plan, the income plan to know, okay, how do the bills actually get paid? Because if we're continuing to pick on, say, a wife who may be the less financially savvy one, that they've all they've known their whole career is either themselves or their spouse as well, making the paycheck that supports the bills, takes care of the needs, wants, and wishes. And when they pull that plug and are retired, I feel many clients feel there's a gap and and and really a lack of security when we're trying to translate the portfolio to the paycheck. So as long as they understand the methodology of what we're trying to do and not necessarily get into the weeds, I feel like that gives them the confidence to be able to feel that much less stressful in retirement.

SPEAKER_01 5:33

Is it as much about understanding kind of the plan and what the strategy is to get to those end goals as you point out? Or is it just as much about knowing, you know, in that event where you know your spouse is no longer around? Because that is a you know a realistic scenario for many women that are out there that you have to kind of pick up the financial side, whether you like it or not, you have no choice now. Is it as is those kind of equal parts? You want to make sure they're able to do kind of both of those things?

SPEAKER_02 5:57

Yeah, that's a good point. I think I think it's more about them just being able to know who to contact and help steer them because at the end of the day, what we're talking about is not we get all bogged down with spreadsheets and and and software and graphs and such. But I feel the true value of what we're doing is providing a reliable source that people can trust. And so that's why I prefer that both spouses be involved in those planning sessions. We have six planning sessions in our retirement readiness roadmap process. And many times, yeah, the one spouse is is much less involved than the other. I'm of course making sure that they understand the high-level overview, but I feel that they get the impression of understanding, okay, there's more to this than just handing them a plan on paper and saying good luck. Like there is definitely care and intentionality around making the decisions and what the trade-offs are. And so, heaven forbid, yeah, something happens to their spouse and they're now the one that's left alone. They want to know that they can actually trust someone who's actually been methodical about this and has their best interest at heart. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 6:57

It does make sense. Yeah. And I know you mentioned that retirement readiness roadmap. You can click on the link in the description to actually begin that process. Just click could we be a fit as well at demarsfinancial.com and answer the questions there and kind of go through that process and kind of begin learning more about it. But I'm curious how you handle it, Taylor, because you know, I think we all kind of want to know what's the advisor actually do for this situation. I'm sure you're a little bit more uh nerdy when it comes to money and much more technical than your wife.

SPEAKER_02 7:24

Sure. No, that's true. Yeah, my wife's a good sport, but she's definitely not uh she's not one to get into the spreadsheets with me or try and understand all the nerdiness that makes my job enjoyable for me. But at the end of the day, I feel that she needs to be bought in because when it comes to things such as funding a vacation or paying for a child's tuition or setting money, you know, significant money aside for retirement, for example, and such, uh it it may not be money that she wants to make the final display on, but I want her to feel bought in, right? Because heaven forbid we come back months or years later and she feels like that was not something she agreed with or felt involved in. I want to make sure that she never feels surprised or in the dark. So at the end of the day, I'm basically letting her know a high-level overview of how we're, you know, what our monthly budget is and what I'm projecting off of our historical spending and what our spending looks like going forward and just being on the same page just to track the numbers, I feel is important. Many marriages or partnerships have one spouse who's a savior, one who's a spender. And I'm not here to try and encourage clients to spend less just for the sake of doing so, because that's hard to change behavior. But for myself and my wife, what really helps is just being aware of what we're spending. So we use a certain app called Copilot. It costs$100 a year, and it's just easy to track on our phone to say, hey, we thought we would be spending this much in these categories. Looks like we're spending over or under. And just being aware of where our spending is, I think helps shape behavior, just in the same way that I think there was some study out there that, you know, they took several people that uh that just took their weight every morning. They weren't told to, you know, change their exercise or their nutrition, but just track their weight every single morning. And versus the control group that didn't do that, the the the former group actually did drop weight because they were being more aware and tracking those numbers and metrics. And so that's something that my wife and I do is rather than trying to you know sit down and have a monthly session that she'll probably dread where I pull out the spreadsheet and tell about our spending, it's just like, hey, it's just an automated app that gives her notifications that tells both of us about how we're doing as far as our goals. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

Yeah. Was is that something you recommend to your clients as well to have not maybe not that app specifically, but to be able to track it constantly. Because I I kind of agree with you. I I kind of see where that the dread could come in for someone in this situation where if their wife has no interest in money or doesn't want to talk about it, uh, here we go. We got that meeting coming up where we got to talk about where we stand on everything.

SPEAKER_02 9:47

Yeah. Last thing we want is to make them feel like they're going down to the principal's office. But but no, it's just just kind of those light touches to to be aware of. And I I I think at the end of the day, you know, some spouses may spend more than others, but they they of course don't want to spend to the point where where other things that are most important, like being able to fund a certain lifestyle or retire us along a certain timeline, I think those are things that we can that most spouses can get aligned on and and and being able to reverse engineer to say, okay, if we are going to try and live this lifestyle, it means we want to target this, this type of spending in our month-to-month basis and and adding some context around that. And yeah, no, I wouldn't, I wouldn't put on my business card, but it sometimes it feels like my job is to be a mid mediator among spouses because it's it's easier for me to be the bad guy to say, hey, here are the boundaries, or or here's if you continue down this path, here's the consequences, and and it's you know, one spouse isn't the bad guy for for saying it to the other and they have to go to bed tonight together. So in that sense, I'm I'm I'm the one that's kind of the third party that's helping give give an overview and and a third party independent perspective as as to how to weigh those decisions.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

Do you have any good success stories where you had a couple that that came in to work with you that you know maybe didn't have they weren't on the same page, were maybe planning to do this separately where you kind of reframed the thinking for them and got them on the same page and and now you know you look back now and they're kind of working together jointly?

SPEAKER_02 11:08

Yeah, I would. I I feel like there's a specific couple we're working with, they're they're just very, very kind people. But something very interesting about their situation is they have a significant age gap, close to 20-year age gap between the two of them. And so it's kind of the uh uh the elephant in the room that, you know, she is going to have many years being a widow sometime down the road, right? And so it's been something that they it's been on a sensitive subject that they haven't wanted to talk to directly about. But when it comes to retirement and spending and estate planning and such, that's uh I I bring it up and I'm pretty blunt about it. And uh, and so whereas at the beginning of the conversation, she also was not as interested to be involved and and didn't like being you know involved in all the numbers and such, now she feels much more empowered and less scared of an inevitable outcome where she will be the only person and be the only one that's you know having a social security and screen in social security stream and such. So now she understands, not you know, we're not we're not scared of a potential, you know, widow situation, but now she feels much more bought in and involved. She doesn't have to understand or answer all the questions when it comes to the financial decisions, but it's she's come around a lot long ways to feel a lot more involved in the process.

SPEAKER_01 12:20

That's great. All right, and if you're in this situation too, and you know you want to have some help, you want to kind of take that next step towards getting on the same page, right? Demars Financial Group can help you with that. And it begins with the retirement readiness roadmap. You can click that link in the description of this show, or you can just visit demarsfinancial.com, click on that. Could we be a fit button and begin that process as well? But I know this is a great question and a great conversation, Taylor. Anything else to kind of add before we close it out?

SPEAKER_02 12:45

No, I appreciate you pulling those uh thoughts out of me. There's some great questions. I think at the end of the day, what we're trying to do is make sure that both spouses understand that the finances are there to fund the fund. And once we can kind of zoom out and get out, get ourselves out of all the nerdiness and open up the vision and the purpose of retirement, that's where the wheels start turning.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

Yep, you understand the purpose with the planning. So you can begin that with Taylor Made Retirement here. Every episode, please subscribe. We talk about these things all the time. Well, Mark and Taylor do. I'm just here for a short time, but I enjoyed being a part of the show and thank you for listening to Taylor Made Retirement with Taylor Demores. Love another episode coming soon, so stay tuned.