5 signs your relationship is headed for financial stress

When they first met, Mabel Burgos, 26, admired everything she knew about her boyfriend: he was passionate about music and could be disarmingly sweet toward his sisters. He wanted to be a teacher, like her. He could sing in Italian.

It wasn’t until years later, when they’d decided to share an apartment in Brentwood, that Burgos started asking about his other qualities — the ones that didn’t casually come up on their dates. How interested was he in saving money? Could he set a budget? How capable would her new roommate be at paying his share of the rent?

“I had to wait for the right moment to bring it up,” Burgos said. “It was kind of touchy. I didn’t want to push.”

Burgos still feels anxious about money, even after her boyfriend proved time and again to be a patient and reliable financial partner (the two are now engaged).

She’s hardly alone.

For many couples, the requirements of being a good romantic partner sometimes feel at odds with what it takes to foster a healthy financial partnership. This may be especially true on Valentine's Day, as Americans splurge on expensive meals, flowers and jewelry. 

You want your partner to pursue whatever pleases them, but you also need them to sacrifice some things if you’re going to set a budget.

You want to respect their privacy, yet one of the best ways to prevent ID theft is to be a vigilant micromanager with a sharp eye on every credit card expense, including those charges your partner made in private.

You want to commit to a future together, possibly one with a house you both own, but doing so can be difficult if one of you comes into the relationship with loads of debt or bad credit.

It’s a tension that has broken far too many relationships to count.

A 2015 Harris poll found that people with troubled personal relationships said they were generated by financial stress more often than any other cause — a finding that resonates today with many divorce lawyers and relationship counselors on Long Island.

James Joseph, a family law and matrimonial attorney in Garden City, said a general lack of communication about money undergirds many of the squabbles that ultimately drive clients into his office.

“Many people still grow up with the thought that money isn’t something to be spoken about in polite company, and not even with their spouse,” Joseph said.

“One spouse may feel that it is his or her role to be the provider, and if they’re not providing financially at the level that they feel they should be providing, they’re not comfortable talking about it,” he said. “In many relationships, one spouse is left in control of the finances, and the other really has no idea what’s going on.”

How to tell if your relationship is in trouble

Relationship experts say attitudes about money form early, usually as a by-product of the ways in which we were raised. These attitudes are sometimes tough to identify early on in a relationship, and they’re even harder to change.

Steven Pybrum, author of “Money and Marriage — Making It Work Together,” lists several telltale signs that your financial habits are not pairing well with your partner’s.

Couples who have trouble talking about intimate issues will likely have a lot of financial stress, he said. It’s also a problem if one partner is buying things in secret. And if one or both partners refuse to commit to building a better financial future, the relationship is headed in the wrong direction, he said.

These signs don’t mean the relationship is over, Pybrum said, just that it’s time for some introspection. “It’s time to see if you can do what’s needed to get better.”

David Mark, a relationship expert who founded the Long Island Couples Institute in Cedarhurst, pushes his clients to explore their financial anxieties and to question where they came from. If a couple is already dealing with trust issues, he’ll suggest they follow what amounts to a spending pact: notifying their partner before they buy anything that costs more than a pre-set limit.

 The point is to create what Mark calls a “corrective emotional experience” — changing the habitual way in which a couple handles their finances that increases communication and leaves everyone feeling a little better. 

“If we can’t talk about money, then we can’t manage the conflict around it,” Mark said. “If we can’t do that, then you’ll never get to run around the house playing naked hide and seek with your spouse.”

Teaming up

For Burgos, that corrective experience happened early on with her fiance, Aaron Andia, 29.

After dating in college, they moved back to Long Island for jobs as music teachers. The positions didn’t pay them over the summer break, and so Burgos and Andia needed to figure out how to stretch their dollars enough to make rent.

This was as stressful as it was exhilarating. They were thrilled to be moving in together. But Burgos, the daughter of two accountants, was raised to treat her finances with the severity of a CFO.

“I’ve always been nervous about money,” she said.

As they scouted apartment locations and shopped for furniture, Burgos sorted out what she was going to say.

After some hesitation, she remembers blurting out: “‘Saturday, we’re going to talk about our finances.’ And when that day came, I told him I have this much in my savings, this much in my checking."

They were starting a life together, and for that to work she needed a partner who could be honest with her about his finances and commit to a budget.

“I said, ‘Here’s what I’d need to make this happen.’”

Andia remembers only positive feelings about that first financial conversation. “She made me feel special,” he said.

 He found it invigorating that his girlfriend was actively crunching the numbers to see what it would take to have a future together.

“It felt like someone is here doing this with me,” he said. “That made me feel secure.”

From that point on, they were a financial team. They set budgets and spoke regularly about how to maintain them. Burgos learned to restrain herself from buying more at Old Navy and Target. Andia held back from collecting new percussion equipment.

The two set up a joint savings account for the rent, which they later used to buy a two-bedroom house in Mastic. Now they’re using the account to save up for their wedding in August.

Looking back, Burgos said that conversation about the rent served as a keystone for her relationship, making everything that came afterward possible.

If Andia had responded differently, “I’m not going to say it would have been a deal-breaker,” Burgos said, “but it would have been something we’d have to work on.”