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The Long View
Doug and Heather Boneparth: How Couples Can Find Financial Harmony
00:54:35
The authors of a new book about money and relationships discuss the importance of understanding each partner’s money history and definition of ‘enough.’
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- [00:00]
Schwab/Ameritrade Announcer
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- [00:32]
Disclosure Announcer
Important disclosure information at the conclusion of this episode.
- [00:37]
Christine Benz
Hi and welcome to the Longview. I'm Christine Benz, Director of Personal Finance and Retirement Planning for Morningstar. Before we get started today, wanted to give a quick heads up about some changes in our hosting lineup. Ben Johnson will be joining the roster of hosts for the podcast along with me and Amy Arnott. Ben has long been an analyst and thought leader for Morningstar, and I'm excited to have him join us on the Longview. Ben, welcome.
- [01:03]
Ben Johnson
I'm thrilled to be here today. Christine, longtime listener, first time co host. Really looking forward to continuing to shape terrific conversations on the podcast with you.
- [01:14]
Christine Benz
Ben, we're really excited to have you here. Today on the podcast, we're going to be chatting with Heather and Doug Bonaparte. They're co authors of a new book called Money how to find fairness in your Relationship and become an Unstoppable Financial team. Heather and Doug know a little something about money and relationships. As you may have guessed, they're married. Heather worked as a lawyer for more than a decade before joining the family business as Bonafide Wealth's Director of Business and Legal affairs. She also co authored the couple's first book, the Millennial Money Fix. Doug is a certified financial planner and founder of Bonafide Wealth, a wealth management firm in New York City. He serves on the advisory councils of CNBC and Investopedia. Heather and Doug, welcome to the Longview.
- [01:59]
Doug Bonaparte
Great to be here.
- [02:00]
Heather Bonaparte
Thank you so much for having us.
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Christine Benz
Well, we're excited to have you here and we want to talk about your book, which is a delightful read and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Can you talk about the initial spark in wanting to talk about this topic and write about this topic of couples and money? I wonder, were you both equally interested in the topic or did one kind of get interested and then bring the other along?
- [02:24]
Doug Bonaparte
I think we found ourselves in a position in our lives that prompted us both to say, hey, there's something interesting going on here as far as our own relationship with money was concerned and kind of the evolution of the roles that we are Playing not only in our careers, but in our household. And then kind of everything else happening around us in the wealth management space just kept pointing to, wow, what an opportunity to talk about love and money. As someone who's been in the space for more than 20 years, there's just not a lot here. And boy, have we done a good job as an industry talking about so many subjects. There's so much content out there. But this was an area that, you know, didn't look like it had a whole lot. And we put two and two together, got super excited of this idea to explore, obviously, money together.
- [03:13]
Heather Bonaparte
And I think also we have enough self awareness to know that at a certain point, if we are having a difficult time talking about this. My husband's been a financial advisor for more than 20 years. I'm a corporate lawyer who at one point was incredibly engaged in our finances. And I found even myself slipping through various life experiences that we were going through one unprecedented event after the next as the elder millennials that we are. And I thought to myself, if we're having a difficult time with this, everybody else is too, right? So I think we set out to solve a problem that we saw.
- [03:46]
Doug Bonaparte
You have to understand that Heather is such an incredible writer, and as long as I've known her, which is a long time, has always been writing. And I'm someone who's infatuated in the personal finance space, and it just seemed like such a great combination to put this kind of thought leadership out in the world.
- [04:03]
Ben Johnson
So I'm curious, while you both contributed to the book, it's written in the first person by Heather and Heather very clearly, I think, in your voice. I'm wondering how you landed on that decision.
- [04:16]
Heather Bonaparte
Well, as Doug mentioned, I mean, writing is beyond a passion to me. It is a part of my life. I feel inauthentic when I'm not writing. And I think it was very important for the story to be told, even though so much. We had actually considered this being written as a we, but it did not feel as authentic that way. I really want to give readers a perspective of someone who has struggled with money in various ways throughout my life and in our relationship, before and during our relationship. And we really wanted to bring that human element to this, the vulnerability and the self awareness. And that came from writing in my first person. I mean, there's, you know, countless, countless books out there by financial experts, you know, and they can include tidbits from their own life, but I think there is a level of relatability that comes from really A layperson saying, I want to explore my own relationship with money, my relationship with my financial expert husband and our relationship with money. I think it's going to bring people in that would not have picked up a book like this before.
- [05:26]
Christine Benz
Well, Heather, I have to say I especially enjoyed the personal stories that you both share in the book. And I'm wondering if you can talk about the decisions to share those personal journeys, financial and non financial, and whether there were any sort of bright lines like in the interest of protecting your family's privacy. Did you say, okay, we'll talk about this, but not that? Did you have to have a little bit of a navigation there while you were settling on how much to share?
- [05:56]
Heather Bonaparte
Well, yes and no. You know, I always err on the side of writing whatever I want to write in the sense that we probably wrote more and a lot got left on the cutting room floor. Because I think one, this is not a memoir. It is a love story, but it is not a memoir of our lives. We really wanted to include the stories that felt pivotal with respect to our relationship with money and each other. So we did leave certain details of our lives out. Of course. Were there things that we left out because we wanted to protect?
- [06:28]
Doug Bonaparte
I don't think so.
- [06:29]
Heather Bonaparte
I don't think so. I mean, we made decisions, you know, we spoke about my family more because it was more relevant to my relationship with money as a young adult. And as an adult, you know, I wouldn't say that there were things we said. These are entirely off limits topics. I mean, it was really, really important to us in the context of writing this book, especially if we were going to ask couples. Right. We interviewed dozens and dozens of couples over the course of over a year. We were probably doing those interviews. How could we not share as well? We make a point of saying we're going to go first.
- [07:02]
Doug Bonaparte
Yeah, it was a lead by example there. And more importantly, our lives are pretty open books. I'm out there on the Internet all the time, so I don't think that was much of an issue for us.
- [07:15]
Ben Johnson
You mentioned leading by example and having read the book, just have this mental image, Douglas, of you reaffixing a headlamp to Thomas the Nissan Altima that could with double sided tape. Is that an example that ultimately allowed you to discover some of the other couples, some of the other individuals featured in the book. How did you go about finding all of these different stories that you've so elegantly woven together in the pages of the book?
- [07:46]
Doug Bonaparte
You're going to hear me give Heather, a ton of credit over and over and over again. But I'll tell you how I used 20 years of experience in working with clients. This is just part of what I do on any given day, which is go deeper than numbers and try and figure out what's really moving people when it comes to their money. So from a practitioner standpoint, this is kind of, you know, what I do in the laboratory every day. And then I think about Heather and what, you know, her skill set is. And, you know, as an incredible attorney, for the 13 years she practiced or was inside a large corporation lawyering, not only did she develop amazing skills when it comes to.
- [08:24]
Heather Bonaparte
I'm pretty good at asking questions is.
- [08:26]
Doug Bonaparte
What she maybe has deposed a person or two in her. In her time in law. But more importantly, Heather's a fantastic storyteller and, you know, best story wins.
- [08:37]
Heather Bonaparte
Well, I think also, though, we definitely leveraged Douglas's social media.
- [08:41]
Ben Johnson
Yeah.
- [08:42]
Heather Bonaparte
To find these couples. I mean, Douglas is. Is perpetually online. And I said, well, let's put this to good use. And that was really the best place to start, was online. And. And so we did know some of the couples we've interviewed from various places in our lives, friends of friends who had been in a situation and somebody, you know, recommended them to us. And we. But then, yeah, social media really played a big piece in how we were able to find the couples that we interviewed.
- [09:08]
Doug Bonaparte
It's the gift that keeps on giving as far as, you know, the professional and personal endeavors that we've gone down.
- [09:16]
Christine Benz
So delving into the substance of the book, early on in the book, you make the point that so much of the discussion about how couples interact with money relates to scarcity, that there's not enough money and decisions have to be made, and couples disagree about those decisions. But you make the point that couples money problems are not limited to scarcity, that wealthier couples tend to disagree and have issues with money as well. Can you talk about that? And Douglas, maybe you can share some perspective from your practice, because I'm guessing that your client base is not especially strapped, so maybe you can start there.
- [09:53]
Doug Bonaparte
Yeah. A lot of the things that come up in practice and certainly in some of the interviews that we had are, you know, what's the formation or what's the identity of the individuals, you know, their values, their upbringing, their culture, their religion. These are the areas that have shaped you and your attitudes around money. And you don't just find the person you love. And, you know, it's all, you know, it's all homogeneous and you all get along when it comes to the thoughts that you have around financial goals. So there's no amount of money that solves for some of these differences that inherently exist between two individuals. And it goes further than just your beginnings. It goes how power goes back and forth in your relationship, how people value their time, and it even extends into appetites of risk and the visions that people have to move forward in their lives. These are all critical components that go, again, well beyond just how much money you have.
- [10:52]
Ben Johnson
When you talk about people's money histories, their backgrounds, you wrote in the book, we were lucky to meet young, not necessarily so we could influence each other's formative years, but so that we could bear witness to them. As somebody who met my own wife now of 20 plus years, first date was Patch Adams when it was first in theaters over a quarter of a century ago. That really struck a chord with me. And I'm curious, from your perspective, do you think that couples who meet younger in life have the opportunity to influence the other? And is that because you're still sort of unformed as a human being, you're still sort of malleable?
- [11:33]
Heather Bonaparte
I think, in a sense, sure. I think when you grow up together, you certainly have an opportunity to influence each other's decisions, goals, even things like where you live, what career you end up pursuing, what job you might take. Sure. But in the context of that statement, you know, I view it like the benefit was not just that he was there to help me. The benefit was so that he saw the emotions that were infused in the facts surrounding my story. So it's different from saying like, yeah, my parents got divorced when I was a teenager. He was there. He was there to emotionally support me during that time. And he, yeah, he saw it firsthand. So I think he, as we grew up together and became adults together, was able to really understand and have context for why I acted the way I did, whether it was right or wrong as an adult. So that context, that emotional context, is really, I mean, it's a gift to have when you've known your partner that long.
- [12:41]
Christine Benz
You make the point in the book that it's essential for couples if they are to get along with respect to their financial affairs, that they do understand their partner's earlier life experiences and not just around money, but relationships. Can you talk about how couples can sort of inquire about each other's lives to help better understand how they're approaching money matters?
- [13:09]
Doug Bonaparte
Absolutely. Absolutely. And it doesn't always need to be directly to the ones and Zeros around money. It's simple things like, what was it like growing up in your household? How did your parents go about dealing with money? Do you remember your first memory of money? What kind of friends did you hang out with? All of these questions help paint a picture of what life was like, particularly around money, during your partner's formative years, during their childhood, their adolescence.
- [13:40]
Heather Bonaparte
These stories really, they really reveal a lot. You don't have to directly talk about. Well, you know. Right. You don't have to. You don't have to understand your partner's parents complete financial landscape to understand how it made your partner feel. And that's why we focus a lot on feelings and on subjective perception of somebody's upbringing, because that's what they're carrying into adulthood. And for us, it was really important to make that distinction because what you don't want to do is have this race to the bottom of who had it worse. Right. Well, you're not allowed to carry those feelings into adulthood because you had more money than me when you were growing up. You know, you had whatever you wanted.
- [14:23]
Doug Bonaparte
Food, insecurity and that much worse.
- [14:25]
Heather Bonaparte
You don't want to do that because that really discounts so much about the way their feelings are infused into their actions today. Even if they need to change, it's not going to be constructive for you now in a partnership. Yeah.
- [14:39]
Ben Johnson
I think one of the areas where that manifests most prominently is in potentially differing definitions of what is enough between a couple. And you note that some of these differences can be a source of stress in relationships. So I'm curious how couples can kind of come to the table to clarify their own definitions of what's enough and begin to try to reconcile those differences.
- [15:10]
Heather Bonaparte
I think perspective is incredibly important, perspective on your values. But first, opening up the door to that question, I mean, I don't know if I'd ever explored that question before. We started in this work, you know, and we asked every. Almost every couple we interviewed at the beginning, I think we were still, you know, fumbling around a bit in the early interviews. But early, yeah, lots of questions. But, you know, as we got going, we started asking every couple, do you have enough?
- [15:40]
Doug Bonaparte
And they would say, enough of what?
- [15:41]
Heather Bonaparte
They'd say, enough what? Some of them, enough money, Enough time. Time. Well, you know, and it was interesting because some of them did, right. Some of them questioned. And then some of them said immediately, yes, I have my health, I have our family, we have a roof over our head. I have my faith. I received that a lot. Some people Were crystal clear. And I think understanding the difference between those that answered without hesitation yes or no was really a greater insight into their values and whether they were crystal clear on what they were.
- [16:15]
Doug Bonaparte
Also their motivations. We had a lot of serial entrepreneurs who consistently answered that they did not have enough. One even questioned if they ever would. And that's the question brought her to tears. Yeah. This realization that they may never be satisfied or satiated no matter how hard they worked was an interesting moment to catch in the life of someone we were talking to.
- [16:40]
Heather Bonaparte
And I cannot tell you how powerful this one question is, because I feel like this book is my enough for a host of reasons. And to identify that during the course of working on this project for the past two plus years, I mean, it was really. It was eye opening.
- [17:00]
Doug Bonaparte
Yeah. Even Heather and I, you know, answering our own questions that we were asking of the people we interviewed, we would say, hey, let's do this exercise for ourself. And Heather just said it like, hey, I'm working on feeling like I have enough. And I was one of those people that was, yeah, I have everything I need. Got my health, my family. What more could I ask for?
- [17:19]
Heather Bonaparte
And identifying that is so important. See, I think especially when one partner says yes and the other partner says not yet, then that opens the door to the conversation of, well, what is it that you're not feeling content with? What is it? I mean, and if it is a material thing, then you gotta dig a little deeper and say, well, why is that so important to you? And what can we do to get us there? Maybe we can start forming our financial goals around reaching that version of your enough that you know.
- [17:49]
Doug Bonaparte
Or maybe you find there's a hole that needs to be filled or addressed that goes deeper than a material possession. And that brings us right back to those values, the things that you've experienced in your upbringing that require a much deeper introspection and honestly, a lot harder work to deal with.
- [18:09]
Christine Benz
You talk to Manisha Thakur in the book, and she calls it the cult of never enough, that there are some people who are just constantly str. Beating themselves up. I loved her contributions in your book.
- [18:22]
Heather Bonaparte
As did I. I loved her book.
- [18:25]
Christine Benz
She's amazing.
- [18:26]
Heather Bonaparte
Yeah, she is. And it really. That book gave me a lot of perspective on my own life. Because never enough, not just things, that mindset is damaging because it can manifest in accolades at work. Right. There are so many ways to feel like what you have is never enough. And the danger of that is eventually feeling like your partner's never Enough, you know, like you end up looking at the people closest to you and never being satisfied with any of it. And your partner's not going to want to feel like a moving target.
- [18:59]
Doug Bonaparte
Yeah, yeah. And I think we'll, we'll probably talk about this later on, but social media and how noisy things have become, the influences that are constantly bombarding us has not made this any easier, certainly over the past, you know, decade or so.
- [19:16]
Christine Benz
Well, yeah, let's talk about that because I did wanna follow up on that. As you say, you know, social media as well as Kardashian, real housewives culture. To what extent is that exacerbating this problem where people see these sort of glossy, perfect lives and experiences and really feel like they're falling short and just feel bad about themselves? What do you think we can do about that? And how can couples help each other feel better in the face, all that stuff?
- [19:48]
Doug Bonaparte
Oh yeah, I think it's a lot more difficult today. You have algorithms that are trained to pull you in the directions that they want to pull you in. Whether that is to consume, whether that is to compare or whether that's to motivate you to do something you wouldn't normally do. This environment we're contending in, it's sometimes insidious.
- [20:15]
Heather Bonaparte
I think one of the most toxic parts of social media is the message that you should be doing something else. It's not just a showcase of what other people are doing. That's bad enough because that creates envy and feelings like that that can result in all sorts of financial consequences. But this idea that you should be or that you've normalized that everyone is doing this, right, like that is the feeling that seeps in that I deserve to do this because everyone is doing this and it's not true. But that is the way the algo works. So it makes you feel that way. What can couples do? I mean, the danger in that. Of course financial consequences are very real. I firmly believe that if you know that your partner is consuming content and messaging online that is damaging to your relationship, particularly in this context, content that has financial consequences that's causing your partner to overspend. But we could even go beyond that. I mean, there's all sorts of, you know, really like damaging gendered content. If we talk about like trad wives and allowances and over glamorizing this fake idea of like the stay at home girlfriend and how she's like pampered, there's all sorts of negative, negative messaging that we get online. And if your partner is over Consuming that, and that is seeping into your relationship. You absolutely have a right to say, hey, I really think we need to have a conversation about your media diet and what you're consuming online, because this is really harming, you know, what you value in our relationship. And it doesn't feel good for me.
- [21:55]
Ben Johnson
So everything we see on social media is clearly a very, sort of narrow framing from a very specific perspective, mostly of people living their best lives as the best version of themselves. When you think about coming into a relationship, you know, and I'm happily married now for over 20 years, so I haven't been on the dating apps, but I can guess that on the dating apps, as a form of connectivity and a venue of socialization, people aren't sort of sharing their balance sheet.
- [22:27]
Doug Bonaparte
Right.
- [22:27]
Ben Johnson
And their W2s and saying, hey, look at me, I'm over six feet tall, I've got a quarter of a million dollars worth of student debt, and my income is below the national median. What sort of forcing functions do you see? You've got an interesting take, for example, on prenups of coming into a relationship being sort of fully transparent and trying to as quickly as possible reconcile everything from combined income statements to balance sheets to lay the groundwork for a healthy financial relationship, which ultimately bleeds into all other corners of a couple's relationship.
- [23:09]
Heather Bonaparte
Yeah, look, when it comes to prenups, I think that they're losing a lot of the stigma that you saw in the late 90s and the millennial aughts. I mean, when divorce. I mean, there was a time when, when my parents got divorced, nobody was getting divorced. There were not conversations around prenup. They were reserved for the ultra rich, not for the everyday person. And now we see this becoming a lot more normalized. Because prenups are not setting your marriage up to fail. They are about setting in situations where, you know where that is warranted, whether that's for your own personal comfort level or because your financial landscape as an individual, let's say, really warrants it. Where maybe you are marrying. I'll just give an example. You are marrying into money or someone who will likely receive a sizable inheritance. That's one reason to have a prenup. Second marriages are another reason to have a prenup. These are just two examples that we give in the book. And it's really about outlining expectations for the duration of the marriage, not just for whether it doesn't work out. You know, you can outline all sorts of details on how you're going to share your money during the course of the relationship, too.
- [24:22]
Doug Bonaparte
Money is a practice, certainly in your relationship. And even as an individual, this is something you get better and better at. So recognize that you are not going to get married. And all of a sudden, everything's merged. You're on the same page. It takes time. It takes effort and energy and a commitment to being consistent around this. And again, like Heather said it really well. When you think about prenups, it's setting expectations for, you know, a whole host of outcomes that could occur throughout your life together with someone.
- [24:52]
Christine Benz
I like that. The book discussed a lot of common problem spots that couples might run into with money. And one of them was student loan debt. And especially if one partner has a lot of student loan debt and the other doesn't, and it's sort of this burden on the shared household. Can you talk about that? And I thought your stories there, your personal stories, were illuminating in this context.
- [25:18]
Heather Bonaparte
I think that my story juxtaposed against the other couple that we spoke with, was just the quintessential example of how two people can experience something incredibly similar and take away completely different feelings around it. And it was the perfect example of that. And, you know, the danger in calling something a mistake is the shame that comes with it. And shame is such a damaging feeling for you as an individual and for you as a couple.
- [25:56]
Doug Bonaparte
Absolutely. You know, in Heather's own story around her student loan debt from law school, this was a very big piece of our financial relationship as things became more serious and even into getting married. And you'll see how we tackled that throughout that story. And it took me a while to realize that what was getting Heather down was the shame she experienced through the decisions she made to go to law school in the first place and carry that into the relationship. And it form into something that wasn't allowing us necessarily to move forward.
- [26:32]
Heather Bonaparte
You know, Brene Brown said that shame is not I made a mistake. Shame is I am a mistake. And I felt like my student loan debt was not a number on a ledger. The way that the other couple felt like this was a financial hurdle that was part of their life that they had to tackle. My debt was me. I was the deficit. I was the person that wasn't deserving of the job. I wasn't deserving of the love. I wasn't deserving of the support, and I didn't deserve to have driving seat in our family finances. When Doug and I started getting more serious and talking about marriage and building a life together, I really believed it like it is, so incredibly powerful. In a bad sense, should I share.
- [27:20]
Doug Bonaparte
What we did to break through that?
- [27:23]
Heather Bonaparte
Yeah, sure.
- [27:24]
Doug Bonaparte
So I realized there was not a lot of lip service or words that would really help her through that. I could tell her every day, you're doing great. Don't worry about it. We're working hard, we'll overcome it. But ultimately, it's actions that will speak louder than words. And we had the opportunity to refinance that debt. And the way that we would be able to do that would be if we both signed off on that loan, if I joined her on that note. And for me, it was a no brainer. We were together, we were committed to each other. This was a financial opportunity of a lifetime. And I would discover that those actions of putting myself in her shoes to alleviate the shame that she was experiencing would ultimately be the action that allowed us to move forward and her to reconcile those decisions.
- [28:21]
Heather Bonaparte
You entered the fog with me. But it's true. It was somebody for the first time and again, like I'm a product of divorce. I'm an only child and grandchild. On both sides of my family, there are you need. Those are unique circumstances. And I had not had someone be willing to reach out a hand to me and say, you burdens are my burdens and I believe in you. I cannot tell you how powerful that was in my life. But I wanna also give this caveat anytime we share this story that Doug doesn't hold himself out as my savior.
- [28:57]
Doug Bonaparte
No way.
- [28:58]
Heather Bonaparte
He is not a white knight that you know, with a savior complex that has come in and swooped in and saved me as this damsel in distress. It may have felt like that at the time, but I commend my husband and I make this point in the book as well, that like, he could have held this over me my entire life and instead we've used it to empower me, to pull me up to his level and for us to say, no, you deserve a seat at the table here too. Not in any sort of like negative power sense that he would hold this over me my entire life.
- [29:30]
Schwab/Ameritrade Announcer
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- [29:38]
Heather Bonaparte
Access.
- [29:39]
Schwab/Ameritrade Announcer
New online courses, insightful webcasts, articles, engaging videos and more, all curated just for traders. Plus guided learning paths with content designed to fit your unique interests. No sifting to find exactly what you need so you can spend your time learning to trade brilliantly. Learn more@schwab.com trading that's a very powerful.
- [30:03]
Ben Johnson
Example of how via refinancing you effectively turned a me and I into an us. In all instances, across all of the conversations that you've seen where you net out on merging finances across a couple and where it might make sense to keep certain elements of couples financial lives separate. What are the pros and cons to each approach?
- [30:32]
Doug Bonaparte
Yeah, all the studies and statistics that we've looked at bear out that couples that join their finances together and operate as a team tend to do better overall and that's financially better, relationships better. So in practice and personally, I believe the best thing that you could do is create a shared financial environment to operate out of. Now having said that, truly the thing that works is what works best for me, for you and your own household. I've seen every configuration imaginable and even though I might recommend something different, I've seen a lot of other setups work. So a lot of that really is there being autonomy for the individual. So people still like to feel like they have a level of independence. So definitely have your own checking account. There are just things that go on in the lives of people where you want to be giving gifts and you don't want your partner to know about that. You just want the feeling of independence. Fine, I get all of that, but I think maybe greater than that is maybe having a shared number when it comes to spending. Is there a number you should check in with with your partner so you don't really need to worry about individual accounts versus joint accounts. It's just a matter of, hey, you have systems in place to make sure that the decisions you're making, whether that be on a daily basis or throughout the year, are ones that you both agree with. But again, for me, and I do like that the statistics bear out, you know, you're playing a team game here. And also just from a transparency point of view, I would add everyone having access and the ability to see everything again just creates better teamwork and a better framework around money.
- [32:16]
Christine Benz
One topic you delve into in the book related is financial infidelity, where someone is, you know, maybe has a serious overspending problem and isn't sharing any of that and racking up credit card debt and forth. Can you talk about that? How big a problem that is?
- [32:34]
Heather Bonaparte
Oh, it's a problem, yeah.
- [32:36]
Christine Benz
How would you define it too financial infidelity. What is it, do you think?
- [32:40]
Heather Bonaparte
It's a two part. And of course I love this as a lawyer, like lawyers love frameworks and we love like rules. So it is a two part Definition, according to a wonderful professor who's doing great work in this space, Jenny Olson and her colleagues would be one, when you engage in financial behavior that's going to elicit disapproval from your partner, and two, not disclosing the behavior, lying about it, covering it up so it's a two part decision and being bad and lying about it being bad and then intentionally covering up that you were bad. And I think that it's the COVID up part that you really lean into a. It's not just an omission. I wouldn't quite say that. Oh, I took a trip to Target and I bought a little something. Something for myself. Is not quite living up to the definition of financial infidelity and the gravity of how that can impact a relationship. But the intentional covering up of something that you know your partner would disapprove of is a breach of trust, and that is worthy of the definition.
- [33:49]
Ben Johnson
I'm curious, in such circumstances, a case where there has been a breach of trust. If you've got any specific examples or Heather, maybe as a lawyer, some frameworks that you can share with respect to how couples might repair and recover from an instance of financial infidelity.
- [34:09]
Heather Bonaparte
Well, I wish it was as simple as having a framework to recover from financial infidelity because I think these cuts are deep. These cuts are deep. It can be a breach of trust that is as damaging as actual infidelity in your relationship because it impacts your family's livelihood. I mean, an example of financial infidelity that is, I think cuts incredibly deep would be taking out debt that the other partner doesn't know about sometimes in their name. I mean, we've seen it happen. And this, you know, has a grave impact on a relationship. So it may not be as simple as just saying, like, okay, I'll never do it again. I mean, the level of transparency that you need, it's radical transparency. You know, you really have to completely bear your financial life and maybe even more than that in order to even begin to step forward and move forward from it. And also there has to be a desire to get better from this. Like, I think sometimes you see these things happen in patterns. And if one partner and I asked this to one of the couples therapists that we interviewed for this section, I said, like, how do you know when it's time to throw in the towel, you know, and what happens? Like, how do you know, she said, when one of you is committed to moving forward and the other is standing still and is not showing any true interest in evolving or improving or Getting better. And that's very relevant in the context of money behavior.
- [35:47]
Doug Bonaparte
I think a lot of people are very afraid of a very realistic outcome that it might not work moving forward. And you'll do almost anything to avoid the tough conversations or answering what Heather had pointed out or discovering that one person's not committed to doing it. So it's obviously very delicate, very hard, and it requires a ton, a ton of work. And you obviously want to potentially work with other professionals that can help navigate, you know, this very, very tender stage. Hopefully you never find yourself in.
- [36:23]
Christine Benz
I wanted to ask about household financial management. You know, when I think about, like my parents generation, it was very common for the man certainly to handle investment matters and sometimes his wife would, you know, be sort of the bill payer, the check writer. Douglas, from your perspective in your practice, having done this for quite a while, have you seen an evolution? Are couples getting better about sharing responsibilities and it not being so gendered as perhaps it was in the past?
- [36:52]
Doug Bonaparte
Yeah, I love that. I do bear witness to and I serve mainly a millennial demographic, Gen X, millennials on down. And whether that's because we have dual income households to a greater degree than ever before. Technology as well, access to technology, the ability to have equal access and transparency, these are all tailwinds for both partners to be active participants in their financial life. What I think still holds true is we see one person handle more of the day to day. There was an article about the CFO of the household versus the CEO of the household in our own relationship. Obviously, as a financial professional, I'm going to handle the day to day stuff, whether it's the investments. But there is not a moment that Heather doesn't understand what's going on, where our money is, how to access these things, what would happen if I'm not around? And I see this throughout my practice. I see this with my clients, I see this with our friends. And it's very refreshing that it's there. And it gives me a lot of hope that we'll continue down this road. There's a lot of work to go. So from a relative measure. Yeah, historically speaking or across generations, things have improved. Do I wish them to happen a lot faster? Absolutely. I hope we get there.
- [38:21]
Heather Bonaparte
And I think you brought up a good point, which is, I mean, yes, money management can be broken down into tasks. Right. And we talk about that in the context of division of labor and these tasks being part of the labor of a household. And you can divide those up and you can take ownership over them from the other partner. But what you can't delegate is your knowledge of money and your understanding of where things are to the extent that you'd be able to carry on should your partner not be able to, whether that's for a period of time or forever, you know, and we're a great example of that because of course, Douglas is going to handle more of our family finances. This is what he does for a living. And it is complex when you open your own business. You know, I mean, this is our, our family finances and our personal finances are.
- [39:15]
Doug Bonaparte
Yeah, we don't have the luxury of just being two W2 employees. And you know, it's a little bit more.
- [39:20]
Christine Benz
Right.
- [39:20]
Heather Bonaparte
It's a little more complex. But because of that, and especially now that I've joined our firm, you know, full time as of 2023, we spend even more time talking about it because I have questions constantly and we make meet often to kind of see where everything is. And Doug never shuts me down, just even like out of a curiosity standpoint, I've got something I want to know about. Even how the business is run, we talk about it.
- [39:47]
Doug Bonaparte
The vast majority of clients that are partnered up or are married are coming to the financial planning conversation together. I rarely find what we call like a one legged, you know, process where we're just dealing with, you know, one partner. And I love that.
- [40:05]
Heather Bonaparte
But I, I think that has to do with demographic.
- [40:08]
Doug Bonaparte
Absolutely. And that's the point. Are we seeing, you know, this happen more with younger generations than what maybe we've historically viewed from older generations, and that's a good thing.
- [40:20]
Christine Benz
Yeah. Going back to Heather's point about how one person may not be able to do the job. You know, even if you divide and conquer that from a practical standpoint, that may not be possible. There was some research, I think it was from John lynch at University of Colorado that looked at how if you don't practice something, your skills can go fallow. You know, like if you have not been the one who has been the bill payer, you didn't realize that, oh, we do it this way, you know, I pay it through the bank portal or whatever. It seems like there are real risks if you're doing too much of the delegating, where one person is taking sole responsibility and the other really doesn't have the ability to do the job well.
- [41:03]
Heather Bonaparte
I think you could, could broaden that. And it's one of our goals in this book to broaden the conversation around money to also include other types of labor and ways that we contribute to the household. Because I think you see a lot of women who don't feel like they have the support at home that they need through all the other tasks and responsibilities, both visible and invisible, that women and mothers, it ends up falling on their shoulders. Money may feel like the only thing that they can tap out of that they know will be taken care of. So I think you see that happen. And I don't know if women who are truly shouldering 98% of the family operation, you know, I don't know if they can step into a greater role in their finances unless their partner is willing to step into some of their responsibilities too. Which is one of the main goals of this book, is to also view this so much, much more holistically. It's not just about money management, it's about your household and partnership and teamwork as a whole that allows these things to kind of reach a more equitable playing field.
- [42:16]
Ben Johnson
I'm curious, in that broader framing, you're just thinking about division of labor and one of the most critical jobs that I think we all have, especially when it's not just a couple, but there are family members in the mix, is caregiving. And I think the book includes a lot of different stories, a lot of different insights, including from your own perspective. So, Heather, if you could maybe touch on your own decision for a period of time to be the primary caregiver for your daughters, which having lived through similar circumstances in my own life with my wife, it's very difficult and sometimes simultaneously oddly very easy decision to make.
- [43:01]
Heather Bonaparte
Well, I have to first, I guess correct the record that I did not take a step back from my corporate law career to care for my children full time. But what did happen was during COVID we found ourselves in a situation where we were both working full time from home and caring for our children full time from home. And. And in that moment in our careers, Doug's firm had taken off, his platforms were rising, his star was rising, as we would say. And I felt completely plateaued in my legal career, which is not a surprise when you look at the environment for women and the broken rungs and the ladder oftentimes that women find themselves facing when they have young children in careers like law and many others. So when we were faced with this unprecedented time right of COVID of having an 11 month old and a 4 year old and Doug was earning three times my salary, it was not difficult for us to come to the conclusion and for me to come to the conclusion that his time seemed to matter more than mine. That was not a correct message. That was not the right message, but that was the message that I had told myself. And it wasn't just in that moment of COVID but that was built in up from the years of trying to navigate my career as a young mother and attorney at the same time. So we found ourselves in a position where I was handling the lion's share of caregiving for our children. I was also handling the mental load that came with COVID I mean, going through a pandemic with young children carried a different level of decision fatigue that. I mean, do we have an hour on that alone? You know, you want to say something? I can tell. So say it.
- [44:56]
Doug Bonaparte
Well, yeah. I mean, ultimately, that's what brought us to where we are today. I mean, it started to create resentment, which is absolutely corrosive in a relationship. And I give Heather a lot of credit. I give us a lot of credit for, you know, sitting down together, finding out what wasn't serving us, pointing out the imbalance of workloads across all of the things that Heather mentioned, from mental to physical to the work that we were doing in our careers, and putting ourselves in a position to correct that. And it, for me, was super uncomfortable. And I'm glad I got uncomfortable because it put us in a better position to move forward.
- [45:36]
Christine Benz
One thing that you repeat as kind of a mantra in the section about caregiving is that caregivers are providers, which I loved. Can you talk about why it's so important to mainstream that line of thinking if one partner does step back from paid work, how it's important to really recognize his or her. Her contribution to that household, you know, that it is providing in a truly important sense.
- [46:03]
Heather Bonaparte
You know, it's funny. I usually answer this question, and Doug gave such an amazing answer the other day about this, that I'm like, you know what? You can talk about caregivers, because I love that. I love that you're the one speaking to this point.
- [46:16]
Doug Bonaparte
Yeah, we.
- [46:16]
Ben Johnson
We.
- [46:17]
Doug Bonaparte
You know, the stigma here is that people feel that they're. You know, the financial contribution is the most important part here. You know, the typical setup of, well, I bring in all the money, you take care of everything else. And, you know, when you think of it like this, it becomes quite a joke. Like, the person that feels that way would not be able to do anything that they were able to do if it wasn't for their partner who was holding it down virtually in every aspect of their lives together. And when you hear it like that, you start to understand that, yes, caregivers are absolutely providers because the person bringing in the money wouldn't be able to do that without that being there. Without that person being there. And this is something, such a fundamental shift that needs to take place when we realize that our time should be valued the same. The time that we put into navigating our lives together, but ultimately in pursuit of the goals that we share. And I think that's a more salient point. Right. We are or should be in a partnership working towards the same ultimate outcomes here. Whether that's financial independence, whether that's a certain kind of lifestyle or experience you're looking for, for on a reoccurring basis, or, you know, what it is you hope to do with your kids and the people that they will become. So again, going back to this notion that I do this and it's the most important thing, you're not playing. You know, this isn't an individual sport. This is a team game that requires you both to be participating to get to the results and the goals that you have for your yourself.
- [47:56]
Heather Bonaparte
Well said.
- [47:59]
Ben Johnson
When you think of your own family and your daughters and the people they'll become, how do you work with them? Be it directly through just trying to educate them about financial concepts, what money is, what enough may or may not be. And I think equally, if not more important, how do you think about modeling some of the lessons that you convey in the book to them?
- [48:24]
Doug Bonaparte
Yeah, so I love this question. I'm asked this quite a bit. Given that, you know, our clients and our friends all have young kids and they want to know, how can we start instilling, you know, good money lessons and behaviors. And for the record, I have given two money presentations.
- [48:38]
Heather Bonaparte
You sure have.
- [48:40]
Doug Bonaparte
At my daughter's Girl Scout troop meetings here.
- [48:43]
Heather Bonaparte
One went very well.
- [48:44]
Doug Bonaparte
One was all right, the other one just so off the rails. The eight year olds were a little bit better than the six.
- [48:51]
Heather Bonaparte
There was cancer candy involved.
- [48:53]
Doug Bonaparte
Yeah, there's always, there's always the candy represented stocks. We might have gotten a little too far in that.
- [48:58]
Heather Bonaparte
You went a little too deep. Yeah.
- [48:59]
Doug Bonaparte
But I remember being asked this when our girls were, were even younger than they are right now. And, you know, the first thing I wanted to do was create an association between, you know, work and the experience and things that they have in their life. My older daughter once asked, why does mommy? When I was taking care of her, her at home in the mornings and Heather would commute into the city on the train, she'd go, why does mommy have to go on the train? I'm like, well, sweetie, do you like all this fun stuff we do on the weekends? Do you like the experiences we have when we see your grandparents and things like that? She goes, yeah, that's fantastic. I'm like, well, that's why mom gets on the train. And it's that simple, certainly for young kids to create these connections of work. Why we earn money. Money, what it does in terms of our ability to have experiences buying goods and services, things like that. And I think when we put this in the context of money together and the book that we wrote, we're the ones who have the greatest influence as parents in our children's lives. And just like we talked about in Beginnings, what your first memories around money are, do you want that first memory to be about. About your inability to communicate with your partner? When it comes to an important subject like money, we're the ones setting the examples and the tone. So I think if you're practicing the work and biting down on the stories that we share as examples of how to improve your financial life, you too, will find yourself leading by example with your own children.
- [50:33]
Heather Bonaparte
I think the best thing that Douglas and I model for our children is equality between the two of us. And the way that the kids see it most is equality of our time, that Douglas and I both have time not only to work, but for the things that interest us. We each take terms doing things. It's not. There are very few jobs in our family that we can't, you know, toggle back and forth between the two of us. And that in itself models such an egalitarian family unit for them that I think sets their expectations higher for their own partners someday. And this all has to do with money. Time and money are inextricably linked.
- [51:19]
Doug Bonaparte
Absolutely.
- [51:19]
Heather Bonaparte
And so I think that, yeah, I.
- [51:22]
Doug Bonaparte
Mean, look, they know because we do. They know. They, you know, not one of us controls any, like, one thing in that regard. So they can go to either one of us.
- [51:31]
Heather Bonaparte
Yeah.
- [51:31]
Doug Bonaparte
If I say I can't do it right now they're running over to Heather to see if she can.
- [51:35]
Heather Bonaparte
But. But I do. I do that. Our generation of parents do have a major uphill battle in front of us in terms of teaching our kids about money because of how seamless payments have become. And, you know, money is conceptual to them in many senses now, because you don't even see it like, they know that we use our phone, we use Amazon Prime.
- [51:55]
Doug Bonaparte
We, you know, I've lost my goggles. You can get another one tomorrow.
- [51:58]
Heather Bonaparte
I'll never forget that when our three year old once said to us when she was three she said that's okay that I lost my goggles at camp Mad will order a new one on prime and it will be here tomorrow. Like that we face an uphill battle that requires conscious decisions to teach those lessons in new ways. It's not just counting and math and like the little math sheets with the dimes and the quarters.
- [52:23]
Doug Bonaparte
Things don't just show up. Need to explain that you used to just go to the store and go through this whole process to acquire this thing. Now it just shows up next day on your doorstep.
- [52:34]
Heather Bonaparte
But that's why like we have to manufacture some of those lessons in ways that they just kind of happens in everyday life I think for generations before us. And that is a challenge we don't have all the answers to.
- [52:47]
Christine Benz
Well Heather and Douglas, this has been such a fascinating conversation. Congratulations on the book and thank you both so much for being here.
- [52:55]
Doug Bonaparte
Thank you so much for having us.
- [52:56]
Heather Bonaparte
Thank you both.
- [53:02]
Christine Benz
Thank you for joining us on the long view. If you could please take a moment to subscribe to and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, you can follow me on social media, hristinebenz on X, oristinebenz on.
- [53:20]
Ben Johnson
LinkedIn and at Ben Johnson come CFA on LinkedIn or Ben Johnson on X.
- [53:28]
Christine Benz
George Cassidy is our engineer for the podcast and Cary Gretchik produces the show Notes each week. Finally, we'd love to get your feedback. If you have a comment or a guest idea, please email us@thelongvieworningstar.com until next time. Thanks for joining us.
- [53:48]
Disclosure Announcer
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