Jacquette M. Timmons, author of Financial Intimacy, explains why conversations about money are so important to a relationship.

Investor and financial coach Jacquette Timmons explains how women can create healthy relationships with both their money and their life partners!

CommitmentNow:  Financial Intimacy:  How to Create a Healthy Relationship with Money and Your Mate is a helpful guide to creating healthy relationships with both a woman’s money and her mate.  What led you to write this book?

Jacquette M. Timmons:  : The short answer: curiosity. Three things happened sequentially that brought to my attention a pattern. Once I noticed it, I began to see it everywhere, first with friends and then with clients, and finally (gasp!) while reflecting back on my life. The pattern that caught my attention: well-educated, smart, confident, and savvy women weren’t having what I describe as the “right” conversations about money with their mates. As an example, how else do you explain a woman discovering - after her husband’s death - that they were $500,000 in debt! And I was curious as to how this could be. As I dug for answers, what I realized was that many of us grew up in households that didn’t talk about money – let alone love and money! Therefore, many of us don’t have a framework for how to talk about the inevitable challenges that are likely to emerge when money and love intersect. Nor, do we know how to turn those challenges into opportunities to help us learn more about each other and grow together.

CommitmentNow:  What is “Financial Intimacy” and why is it so important in a relationship?

Jacquette:  : I purposely don’t provide a singular definition for financial intimacy because, ultimately, it will look and feel different for each person and couple. That said, there are two themes I want people to keep in mind because they expose why financial intimacy can help strengthen a relationship: The first is the notion of deeper conversations about the ways in which love and money intersect in your life. Avoid engaging in transactional talks about the mechanics of money; that’s easy to do. Less easy, more uncomfortable, yet extremely beneficial is to talk about the context --- in other words why do you each do what you do and want what you want. Having transparent, open, and honest discussions along these lines will lead to a deeper awareness of what is and is not working in your relationship (and not just in the area of money) and, hopefully, a deeper connection.

Second, it is necessary to recognize that financial intimacy is all about navigating and negotiating emotions and information. If you engage in conversations as I’m suggesting, you will inevitably end up talking about the things that influence who you are, what you believe, and why; you’ll end up exploring family background, philosophy, habits, choices, discipline, character, to name a few. Entering into this territory requires a great deal of negotiation and may even require some compassion.

CommitmentNow:  Why do women avoid discussing their personal finances with their mates?

Jacquette:  : For all of us, money is very personal and extremely private. There are very few things that compare to it in terms of the potential disparity between “reality” and “perception.” So, we tend to avoid talking about money because doing so makes us feel vulnerable; it exposes us to someone else’s judgment of our character and the quality of our choices. And if we feel any shame about some of our choices and the consequences, that only heightens the discomfort. But, let’s be clear: on a whole, I don’t think women avoid discussing personal finances any more than men do. However, I do believe, the cost of not talking about money is greater for women than it is for men.

CommitmentNow:  In your book you relay stories of many women and their relationships with money.  The women vary in marital status, earning power and states of residence.  Did you learn anything from the women that surprised you?

Jacquette:  I’ve worked with people and their money for a very long time (I’ve been in financial services for twenty-three years). So, none of the stories of their experiences surprised me. But one story, in particular, broke my heart, and shortly before the book was published, I learned that my instinct about her relationship was right.

CommitmentNow:  What are the steps a woman needs to take before she comes financially intimate with her partner?

Jacquette:  : Before a woman can embark upon the journey of creating financial intimacy with her mate, she must first be in the process of creating it with herself. (Emphasis on process because it is on-going.) She has to learn what makes her financial story hers. This will give her the capacity to ask sensitive and thorny questions of her mate because she’s asked herself the same questions and either has answers or is in the process of discovering the answers. A rule that should always be followed: never ask a question you’re not willing to have asked of you.

CommitmentNow:  Can women “have it all?”

Jacquette:  : Not all at the same time!

CommitmentNow:  What is the Pyramid of Wise Money Management?

Jacquette:   Working with money is like assembling the disparate pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The Pyramid of Wise Money Management represents those pieces and it is a way of thinking about money and approaching financial decisions. A visual I often use to help explain the dimensions of the pyramid is a triangle divided into three sections --  base, middle, and tip.

Base: The base of the triangle represents your awareness, beliefs, thoughts, and behavior. This is where you’ll explore and connect your past to your present and your anticipated future. Here are a few things to examine to get things going: Ruminate on things such as your first memory of money and how it has molded your views about life and money; think about the meaning of money to you and where that meaning comes from; and, consider the role of the media and popular culture in how you view money and make financial choices.   

Middle: The middle of the triangle is what I call the reasoning section. This is where you tap into how you think, literally! Are you linear or more abstract in the way you think and in the way you arrive at decisions? Do you tend to be deliberate or do you operate by the “seat of your pants”?

Tip: The base plus the middle lead to the tip, and it is what enables you to make decisions (financial or otherwise) by design rather than by default.

CommitmentNow:  How does our family history influence our relationship with money?

Jacquette:  Significantly! Your financial intimacy training began with your family of origin, so it is where everything begins and it informs what you expect from yourself and what you will expect from someone else. Truth is, today you are either doing exactly what you witnessed in your family household, thinking you are doing the opposite but really doing the same thing – just differently, or you’re truly doing the complete opposite.

CommitmentNow:  What can a woman do if she and her mate have different views about spending, saving, and the role of money in their lives?

Jacquette:  First, don’t be surprised by the differences! You’re more likely to end up with someone who is the exact opposite of you in this regard; savers tend to attract spenders and vice versa. (I think Life does that intentionally to keep things interesting for us humans!) And even if you are a saver and end up with a saver (or a spender and end up with a spender), one of you will unconsciously scale back.

Second, don’t think of the differences as a problem. Instead, give them a chance to bring you closer. One’s spending and saving habits and their views on the role of money are shaped by a variety of factors, including family, past experiences, society-at-large. So, this is an opportunity to talk about those factors (to get some context) and to both share and get to know elements of each other’s story that you didn’t know before. And if it is the case that you’ve touched upon some of these topics previously, this is an opportunity to dig a bit deeper and potentially uncover something new.

CommitmentNow:  Does a woman have to understand her relationship with money before she tries to determine how money will affect her relationship with her partner?

Jacquette:  : Does she have to? Well, no. But I believe she and her partner will be better off if she does; the benefits of doing so are tremendous, emotionally and financially! When it comes to money and love, there are actually five relationships at play: the relationship you each have with yourself; the relationship you each have with money; and then, the relationship you have together. All of these coalesce to form the interlocking circles of you, your mate, and money and it reflects the practical,
emotional, philosophical, and spiritual natures of money, in general, and money and your relationship, in particular.

Jacquette M. Timmons, a national investment expert and financial coach, is the founder of Sterling Investment Management, an investment education and financial coaching firm. She has worked in the investment industry for 23 years, dedicating more than a decade to teaching intelligent people how to be smarter with their money. Timmons holds an MBA in finance from Fordham University’s Graduate School of Business and a BS in marketing from the Fashion Institute of Technology. She is a Woodhull Fellow.

Timmons conducts numerous personal finance and stock market investing workshops throughout the year and is a sought-after speaker on these subjects. Her recent media appearances include Bloomberg Radio, BET Tonight’s “Nightly News,” WNBC’s “Today in New York” and FOX TV’s “Good Day New York” and “Good Day Street Talk.” She has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal and magazines such as Real Simple, Teen Vogue, Black Enterprise and Heart & Soul, and profiled in the spring/summer 2008 issue of New York Moves magazine, the June 2003 issue of Black Enterprise and in the 1997 book Doing It For Ourselves—Success Stories of African-American Women in Business. In addition, Timmons has written for GURL.com, KUJI magazine and Glory, and also created and writes Financial Profundities, Sterling’s e newsletter and the firm’s blog, TheSterlingChoices. She has also hosted “The Street: Making Your Money Work for You,” a weekly televised investment education program.

Prior to creating Sterling in 1995, Timmons spent nine years with Bankers Trust Company (now Deutsche Bank). The last five years of her tenure were spent in the Private Bank. Among her many accomplishments was the successful launching of Private Investment Planning, an advisory business targeted primarily to emerging affluent individuals and smaller institutions. She served as the sole manager of this business unit for two years and was responsible for business development, client servicing and operations management.

Timmons is a member of the New York Chapter of the National Black MBA Association and is on the Board of Directors for Non-Profit Connection, an organization that provides management assistance to non-profit organizations, and The Laundromat Project, a Brooklyn-based arts organization committed to making visual art more accessible to communities of color living on low incomes. She is also a former member of the Board of Directors for the New York Chapter of the National Association of Securities Professionals, an organization she co-founded.

To purchase Financial Intimacy:  How to Create a Healthy Relationship with Money and Your Mate, click here.