How to navigate and work with the household’s joint financial decisions
museum was not a good investment of time and money. He had a long walk along the river on his mind. The children were staring at the arguing parents and suggesting that they go to a theme park instead. We systematically underestimate the complexities of joint decisions in a household.
Two people, who are different in many ways, come together in a marriage. We also know that children born to the same parents, growing up in the same household, end up being very different people. However, we celebrate the family as a unit, enjoy spending time together, and hope to amicably collaborate and make joint decisions. Authority works for a while. Persuasion lasts a little longer. Mostly, it is willing or unwilling compromise. When it comes to money, it is usually worse.
The first idea to internalise is that we all have distinct and different money personalities. Some of us love to spend, some can’t let go of money. Some take risks, others don’t. Some obsess over the long term, others live for the now. The list is long. We may remain together as a family unit, but hold very different views about how to earn, spend, save and invest.
Doesn’t the family unit enable imbibing common cultural values? Yes, we are impacted and influenced by family members in our attitudes towards money, but research shows that we respond in diametrically opposite ways to rituals and rules of childhood. Children brought up in poverty may grow up determined to earn and live in opulence, or turn out to believe they can never be rich. Wealthy inheritors
