What if the most important money decision you’ll ever make has nothing to do with credit scores or savings accounts?
We spend so much time stressing over budgets, investments, credit scores—basically, all the numbers. But what if I told you the biggest financial decision you’ll ever make isn’t about money at all? In today’s episode, I’m getting real about the one life choice that will shape every part of your financial future—and yet, almost nobody talks about it. This isn’t another investing episode (though those are important too). This is about who you choose to build a life with, and why that decision matters more than almost anything else when it comes to your long-term wealth, career growth, and personal freedom.
Whether you’re single and dating, in a committed relationship, or reevaluating your partnership, I’m breaking down what a healthy, equitable financial relationship actually looks like—and the red flags you cannot ignore. If you’re ready to make smarter decisions about your love life and your financial life, this is your episode. Let’s dig into the conversation that could save your money—and maybe even your peace!
What you need to know:
1. Your life partner is your biggest financial decision.
Choosing the right (or wrong) partner will impact every dollar you earn, save, and spend—for the rest of your life. This decision affects your financial stability, emotional health, and even your ability to pursue big goals. It’s not about spreadsheets—it’s about who’s sitting beside you as you make financial choices.
2. Supportive partners fuel your success, not shrink it.
Tori reflects on past relationships where her ambition was seen as “too much” and emphasizes the need for a partner who champions—not competes with—your goals. Your partner should never see your financial success as a threat.
3. Financial equity > financial equality.
The idea of splitting everything 50/50 might sound fair, but it rarely reflects real-life income disparities—especially in hetero relationships. Tori advocates for equitable contribution over equal contribution, using her own 70/30 setup with her partner as an example.
4. Domestic labor is part of the financial equation.
From cooking to emotional labor, uncompensated household tasks must be discussed. Tori stresses the importance of clear expectations, like assigning weekly “cooking nights,” and recognizing domestic labor as real work with real value.
5. You need your own bank account. Always.
No matter how strong the relationship is, financial independence is non-negotiable. Tori breaks down why separate finances are not a sign of mistrust—they’re an insurance policy against being stuck in a relationship due to money.
6. Build financial safeguards: prenups, money dates, and estate plans.
From monthly money check-ins to legal protections like prenups and wills, Tori walks through the practical steps for keeping your financial future secure—whether you’re married, partnered, or planning ahead.
Notable quotes
“Your partner should champion your goals, not feel threatened by them.”
“Make the biggest decision of your life with someone who shows up, not someone you have to drag into the conversation.”
“You don’t have to be equal partners in financial knowledge, but you do need to have equitable conversations.”
Episode-at-a-glance
≫ 05:18 Choosing the Right Partner for Financial Success
≫ 20:03 Navigating Financial Conversations with Your Partner
≫ 24:14 Discussing Life Goals with Your Partner
≫ 25:35 Identifying Financial Red Flags
≫ 32:52 Creating an Equitable Financial Relationship
≫ 38:02 The Importance of Prenups and Estate Planning
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Register for our ‘Don’t Panic’ workshop
‘Building Equitable Relationships with Eve Rodsky’ episode
‘How to Talk About Money with Your Partner with Ramit Sethi’ episode
Our recommended financial resources
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Transcript:
Tori Dunlap:
We all want to make smart financial decisions, but what if I told you there’s one decision you’ll make that will completely alter the course of your financial life? And it’s the one decision no one ever thinks about. What it is and how to make the right choice, today on Financial Feminist. Let’s get into it.
Hi, financial feminists. My name is Tori. I am so excited to see you. Thanks for being here. I am a money expert. I am a New York Times bestselling author. I fight the patriarchy by making you rich, and I have helped over five million women save money, pay off debt, start investing, start businesses, and feel financially confident. And if you’re listening to the show today, you are listening to the number one money show on the planet for women, and we appreciate you being here and supporting feminist media.
There’s a lot of craziness going on in the financial world, between talks of the recession, the stock market downturn, tariffs, all of it. And I want to make sure that you feel supported and encouraged and that you have a plan to take yourself out of the panic you’re feeling right now. And I wanted to let you know about a free resource me and my team created. It is a Loom that I did really quick. We just whipped this up. It’s about 20-ish minutes. It’s a class with a three-step plan to take you from panic to plan. So you can go to herfirst100k.com/SOS, help, herfirst100k.com/SOS to get this Don’t Panic plan free workshop. Again, herfirst100k.com/SOS, and we will put the link down below in the description. I want to make sure you feel supported right now and encouraged and like you have a concentrated way, step-by-step, to control the things you can control right now.
Now, today’s episode was inspired years and years ago when I was at a speaking engagement. So my book came out in December of 2022. Hard to believe it was that long ago, but I did a book tour before the book tour. I went and I spoke in partnership with Capital One Cafe at five different locations across the US. So I spoke here in my hometown of Seattle. I spoke outside of Miami. I did Boston, Austin, and then we ended in D.C. And I would give my classic personal finance 101 presentation. This is one of my hallmark signature talks. And at the end we would do a Q&A, a meet-and-greet, a book signing. It was a lot of fun, and it was actually the first in-person events I did since the company and since Her First $100K went viral and blew up. Our popularity, our information really started taking off during the pandemic, during 2020, during 2021. And so this was one of the first opportunities I had to actually not only meet with financial feminists across the country, but also have financial feminists meet each other.
And I’ll never forget one of the questions I was asked, and I believe it was in Austin. I get to the end of my presentation. We’ve talked about budgeting, we’ve talked about saving, we’ve talked about money mindset, we’ve talked about value-based spending, we’ve talked about retirement accounts. And I’ve taken some questions around how I built my business, my career, some general financial questions that felt specific to the audience.
And there was one question from a gentleman. We don’t get a lot of dudes in a crowd at Her First $100K. It’s always, for me, exciting because it means, one, they’re dialed into our feminist mission, two, they’re probably very supportive of the women in their life, and three, they’re trying to figure out how to be better feminists in their lives and in their money.
So he raised his hand, I called on him, and he asked me this question, “Tori, what is the biggest piece of financial advice that no one thinks about? What is the biggest piece of financial advice that you’ve never really talked about, that no one ever really thinks about, that I should know?”
And I sat there for a second because the question kind of caught me off guard, right? I give a lot of pieces of financial advice. I give a lot of workshops and resources. We do weekly episodes of this podcast. At the time, the book was just coming out but I had written an entire 300-page book full of financial advice. And so I wanted to give him a genuine answer. I wanted to give him an answer that wasn’t something people thought about a lot, but that had the potential to impact literally every financial decision somebody was going to make in the future.
There are dozens of these choices that we make about our finances. We make decisions about our careers and what we do in order to earn money. We make decisions about where we live. And if/when we move, the cost of that and the potential of where we live. We think about how much we’re saving, whether we’re investing our money, how we’re negotiating if we’re negotiating for raises, if we’re starting businesses.
All of those are great, but when this person at my event in Austin asked me the question of the biggest piece of financial advice that nobody thinks about or that I haven’t really talked about before, there’s an obvious answer. The biggest piece of financial advice that no one talks about, the one that will impact every single dollar you make, every single dollar you save and invest for the rest of your life, is who you choose to partner with. That’s it. Who you choose to partner with, especially for the long term. Who you pick as your life partner will have insane consequences, both hopefully good but also potentially negative on your life and your money for the rest of your life and your money.
So when we’re talking about the biggest decision you can make for your money and the biggest piece of financial advice that doesn’t get talked about, it’s not really related to money. It’s not related to numbers. It’s not related to the graphs or the charts or the spreadsheets. It’s about who you spend your time with, who you are yoking yourself to for potentially the rest of your life.
And yeah, we can talk about the emotional side of that and we’re going to spend some time there today, but we’ve seen time and time again in our community the incredible support that partnership can offer to the women at Her First $100K, in our community of financial feminists. And we’ve also seen just how potentially damaging a partnership can be for someone’s mental health, their physical health, but also their financial health for the rest of their lives.
Why choosing a partner, especially a life partner? Why does this matter for women uniquely so much? Well, marriage and partnership can be huge drains on a woman’s ability to earn income. That’s the reality. Many women get into partnerships or marriages and completely combine their finances. Many women actually completely abdicate responsibility of money and of finances to let their partner, typically a man, handle all of the financial decisions in the household. And we also know, very seriously, that domestic violence, domestic abuse, has a financial abuse component. 99% of domestically violent, abusive relationships have some sort of financial abuse tied to them.
That’s kind of the scary stuff, right? That’s the serious stuff, but let’s talk more generally, okay? My scenario, I’ll give you an example. I’m a multimillionaire. I’m a multimillionaire as a 30-year-old woman. My partner I have been with for three years, he and I make vastly different incomes. I make a lot more money than he does. And if we are to continue life together, whether we get married or not, if we spend significant time together … We’re talking years, if not decades. This is something that I and every single person has to think about, is not only the financial outcomes of being in a long-term relationship, how do we split costs? If we move in together, how do we split a rent or a mortgage? How do we split groceries? How do we just navigate day-to-day finances? When we go on trips, who pays for what?
And we’ve had all of those conversations. That’s one thing, but when we start getting more serious and we start making these big financial decisions together, do we buy a home with both of us on the deed? Do we buy a car in both of our names? When we’re making decisions about how we’re going to think about children possibly coming into the equation, how are we affording those children? If someone in our family passes away and we get some money from an inheritance or something like that, how does that money get split?
So you can start to see, just financially, this is challenging enough to navigate with your partner. You want to make sure that you have a partner who is going to be willing to navigate those things with you.
But also, I am a high-power, successful woman who has no plans of slowing her roll anytime soon. I have no plans to step back significantly from my business, and I need to make sure I am in a partnership that is not only supportive of that, but is championing that so hard, that doesn’t see my success as a threat, that doesn’t see me wanting to earn income as a threat, either to our relationship or to his masculinity or to something else entirely. You need a champion as your partner.
So when we’re talking about this as a financial decision, it’s so much more than that. It’s going to impact the bottom line of your finances, how much things cost, your ability to save, your ability to hit certain life milestones and financial milestones, your ability to retire, but also it’s going to affect your ability to earn income. It’s going to affect how your career trajectory ends up mapping out. It’s going to affect if you feel supported enough to make big decisions about your life and to take big risks. This is the impact on our life and our money.
So let’s talk about how to choose a partner. Before we get into the rest of it, let’s start at the beginning. How do we find and choose partners where we can make a smart decision, where this biggest financial decision we’re ever going to make feels like the right choice?
The first is to find someone who supports you and does not make you feel smaller and does not make you feel less than. I have been in relationships where I felt less than. I have been in relationships where he made me feel smaller in order to make himself bigger. Yes, your person that you come to for confidence and financial advice was in those kind of relationships. And you know why I am so confident? You know why I can come to you right now and tell you how to find a good partner? It’s because sometimes I wasn’t in good partnerships. It’s because sometimes I didn’t feel supported. It’s because I was called too much in relationships or I literally had … We’ve all heard the Tori on a beach story, but I had my partner and his family diminish my confidence by making extremely critical, borderline abusive comments about my body. That’s what it feels like to be in a partnership that is unhealthy.
So when we’re looking for the kind of people we want in our lives, when we’re looking for the kind of partnerships, when we’re trying to make the right financial decision, yeah, we’re looking for somebody who supports us, but we’re looking for somebody who doesn’t feel like they have to cut you down to size in order for them to be the best, fullest versions of themselves.
And I will take this one step further to say, especially … I’ve only dated men, so I can say this with some certainty, at least for men. But I think often what happens with men is that … We know patriarchy hurts them just as much as it hurts women. We know this. And I think a lot of men don’t know who they are at their core. I think a lot of men deal with a lot of identity crises, especially in their 20s. And often, rather than understanding that this is a problem that they need to work on and that this is a problem for them to figure out, they put the blame on their partner.
And in my relationship currently, which is not perfect by any means, but is by far the healthiest relationship I’ve ever been in, I will tell you that my partner, one of my favorite traits is that he acknowledges when he is wrong. He acknowledges when he needs to work on something, and then he goes out and does it. He was the one who suggested to us, “I think we should go to couples therapy.” He was the one who suggested that.
So when we’re talking not just about somebody who supports you, somebody who doesn’t make you feel smaller, we’re also talking about somebody who owns when they’re wrong, owns their own mistakes, owns their own shit, and works to actively change it.
The second thing we’re looking for is that when you do talk about money, they are open and honest about where they’re at, even if they are struggling. We’re not looking for somebody who has a perfect credit score and has never made a financial mistake ever, because that’s nobody. Maybe you have a perfect credit score. Great, good on you, but no one has ever not made mistakes.
So when we’re looking for a partner, we are not looking for somebody that ticks all of the perfect personal finance boxes, someone who has aced their personal finance test, but we are looking for someone who is able to be open, honest, vulnerable about money, even if it’s imperfect and even if they’re struggling.
Someone who hides their debt from you, someone who doesn’t want to talk about money and just says, “Hey, can we just drop this?” Someone who gets really defensive about their choices when you just try to have a conversation, those are the red flags, in addition to the bigger stuff like financial abuse and gambling. But when we’re just talking about having conversations about money, being open and honest, you’re looking for somebody who, even if they’re struggling, is willing to come to the table with you.
The third thing we’re looking out for when we’re choosing a partner or finding a partner, when it comes time to make things more serious, when it comes time to figure out how you’re going to start building life together, they need to be willing to discuss things, like how to share expenses, in an equitable way.
Now, notice I did not say equal, okay? I didn’t say equal because very few relationships, I would argue almost none, are 100% equal financially. Nobody has the exact same amount of debt, the exact same amount of savings, the exact same career trajectory. And if you’re a woman dating a man, you’re probably going to have an income disparity. So when we’re thinking about making things more serious, your partner or potential life partner should be willing to discuss things, and especially with a focus on equity.
So me and my partner, I talked about before, I make a lot more than my partner. I make significantly more than my partner. My net worth is higher, my income is higher, but one thing that we’ve done is we’ve had conversations since the beginning about splitting costs equitably. So it’s not 50/50. It’s 80/20 or 70/30. So when we eventually move in together, that’s going to be a conversation. I don’t expect him to split rent with me 50/50. That’s not equitable. That’s not fair. That does not make sense for how much he is making compared to me. These are the kind of conversations you want to have.
And finally, so important, I would argue probably the most important because it’s the one that gets overlooked, you need to agree on domestic labor. You need to agree on domestic labor. Full disclosure, this is something that’s actually been really challenging for me and my partner because I love to cook. If you’ve been listening to this show for a while, you know that cooking is my love. So I love to do that. It’s one of the ways that I show I care about somebody. It’s also meditative for me. I really enjoy it. He doesn’t know how to cook. He’s learning. And so the distribution of the cooking labor is not even close to equal. It’s pretty unequal at this point, but I’ve had to reckon with … Do I feel comfortable doing all of the cooking because it brings me joy without getting a little bitter that I’m doing all of it?
And it’s led to a lot of conversations. In the early days, it was a lot of the arguments and the fights, and we’re still trying to work through that. So literally, we’ve decided … Literally as of this week, this is the first week we’re doing this, that Thursday nights are his night to cook. And we made rules and parameters about what good enough was for this meal.
And I took this straight from Eve Rodsky, who is the founder of Fair Play, who we’ve had on the show before, and fantastic episode, by the way, to listen to after this episode. We’ll link it down below. But one of the things she talked about is what is the good enough thing?
So we talked about with our meals. Dinner needs to be on the table by 8:00. I love this man, but he takes forever to cook because he’s not good at it yet, and he’s just slower. He’s slower. And so a meal that should take him 45 minutes takes him two hours. So I’m like, “Okay, meal needs to be on the table at 8:00.” We agreed on this. It needs to have one vegetable. It needs to not be burnt beyond being inedible. And what was the other thing we agreed to? I’m trying to remember. Oh, just every Thursday. And then if it’s not on the table by 8:00, we decided what happens after that.
So it’s work. It’s work to figure out who is not only taking care of the kids or taking care of the laundry or taking care of the cooking or the cleaning, it’s also the emotional labor, the mental load of making sure you’re project-managing your household.
It’s so important to not just think about, again, is this somebody who is open and honest about money, is this someone who I can see building a financial life with, but also do we agree on the things that need to be done that we’re never going to get paid for? All of the uncompensated labor that has to happen in order to make a house, in order to make a home and a family function, because unfortunately, the vast majority of women, especially who are married to or dating men, this falls on you, and that is unacceptable.
When we come back from a word with our sponsors, we’re diving into the nitty-gritty of how to talk to a partner about money for the first time, and the red flags to look out for.
As we’re sitting down to talk about money, we just had a beautiful conversation with Ramit Sethi who just wrote a great book all about how to manage money as a couple. We will link that conversation down below, another great one to listen to after this.
Let’s talk about how to talk about money with your partner for the first time. The first hack I have, make it fun. Make it a fun date. Get yourself a down comforter cocoon. Get yourself a glass, bottle of wine. Get takeout from your favorite. Literally go to a restaurant if you want. But try to make it something you actually look forward to, and yet you’re bribing yourself and your partner a little bit. That’s okay. We got to talk about money. Especially in the early days, it might be tricky, so we want to make sure that we’re making it actually fun, something that we can look forward to.
My second tip for you, the first time or the first couple times you’re talking about money, discuss your first money memory with your partner and vice versa. If you’re new to the show, money memories are the practice that I use. I’ve mentioned it many times on the show. We have an entire journaling exercise in my book, but your first money memory is an incredible tool for you to immediately get to the heart of your money trauma, of the narratives you’ve been believing about money and people with it, and can allow you to do some serious emotional unpacking when it comes to understanding the root of a lot of money problems. This is the practice that can single-handedly change the way you view and manage money for the rest of your life, from a psychological perspective.
So it’s not only important for you to do, but it’s important for you to do with your partner. You should know what their first money memory is. They should know what yours is because this might affect the way that you still see money. If your first money memory was trying to go to school and buy school lunch and realizing your family couldn’t afford it, and now you hoard all of your money because you’re so worried about shit hitting the fan, those things are directly correlated. You’re hoarding your money maybe because of how you grew up, worrying about money, living paycheck to paycheck.
For me, I’ve said this many times, but my first money memory was saving enough money to go see a musical. It was a local production of Annie. I really wanted to go see it. And my parents told me, “If you want to go see this musical, you have to save money.” Now, I was five. I didn’t have an income source. I didn’t have a job, but I took my lemonade stand money, I found pennies on the ground, and I saved it in an Altoids tin. And yeah, that one money memory tells me a lot about the way I view and manage money now. It’s probably one of the reasons why my relationship with money is actually pretty good. I learned from an early age that if I wanted something, I had to save for it.
So when we’re talking about our money memories, it is so important to not just do some excavating for yours, but to also understand where your partner’s coming from. The amount of times me and my relationship with my partner right now, Mr. Chef … The amount of times we have said or done something that we regret but we can go and say to each other, “Oh, that was because of this. That was because of a past experience in a previous relationship. Oh, that was because of the way I was raised and the way my mom spoke to me about this particular topic.” For instance, I told him he gets to say nothing about my body unless it’s fantastically nice, not like he would anyway, but because that’s triggering for me because of previous relationships.
So knowing someone’s baggage, knowing someone’s background, knowing your partner’s previous experiences can be so helpful when you’re starting to have these financial conversations together.
And finally, the first time we talk about money is a great time to not talk about money at all, and to instead talk about your goals. What are the goals that you have for your life? Do you want to travel internationally every single year? Do you want to start a company? Do you want to have three, four, seven children? Do you want to be a homeowner? Do you want to live in another country?
If we start talking about the lives we want to live and then we ask ourselves how do we use money as a tool to get there, this conversation isn’t actually about money at all. It’s about how we build a life together. And when you’re talking about your goals and hearing from them what their goals are, it’s a good time to figure out are those goals in general alignment? Is that something that you can both maybe agree on? Yeah, travel’s also really important to me. That’s a shared value. Yeah, I think I do want to live abroad, or I’d like to at least try it. Great. You know now. And you can also be inspired by your partner. Maybe your partner has a big audacious goal of starting a business and maybe you wouldn’t have even considered that, but now you can start to consider it.
So ask them about their goals. Share yours, whether they’re financial or otherwise, and then see how they react. See what that conversation looks like. See if there’s some alignment there.
Let’s talk about some financial red flags. And yeah, you’re going to get spicy Tori because I have no tolerance for these red flags. Absolutely none. And if you’re starting to experience them, especially, it’s not just one instance, it’s many instances, and you bring it up to your partner and your partner’s not working on it, run. Run, because again, it’s less about the mistakes, although I think there’s some mistakes that might be unforgivable, but it’s less about the mistakes and more how they respond to them. We’re all allowed to make mistakes. We’re all allowed to fuck up in some way. We all say things or do things that we regret, but we’re looking for their response to the mistakes.
And we’re also looking to see if that is something that we couldn’t get over either, right? If somebody makes a mistake in a relationship, maybe for you that’s cheating or lying, being dishonest in some way, right? Maybe that’s a full deal-breaker for you. So as we’re talking about these red flags, it’s not just what to look out for in your partner, but it’s also to understand what feels like a deal-breaker for you. Most of these for me would be a deal-breaker.
First red flag, if they just get weird about money and it’s more than just trauma or stress. They don’t even want to have the conversation, or they’re so secretive about it, right? Now maybe they’re Christian Grey, multi-billionaires, but you’re going to figure that out when they wine and dine you and they take you on their private jet and they … I don’t know. You’re going to know. But most people, if they’re being secretive about money, it’s probably shame, right? It’s probably shame. It’s probably they’re worried about somebody else judging them. But if you’re in this relationship and you’ve been in it for a while, you’ve been in it for … I would say even maybe over a year or maybe many years, and they’re still not willing to talk about money, they’re still not willing to have an open conversation with you, they get weird every time you bring it up, they get defensive, they get angry, they shut down, that is a red flag.
The second red flag, this is the one I have no tolerance for. If they get weird about your goals, your wants, your desires, absolutely not. And I’m not just talking about … Okay, you want kids and I don’t. That’s fine. That’s a conversation to be had. But I’m talking about when you have ambition that they don’t like, when you have friends that they don’t want you to see, when you have a life outside of your partner and your partner takes that personally, absolutely not. That is a form of control. That is a form of toxicity and straight unhealthy behavior, and I need you to absolutely get out.
If you are someone … I don’t even have to say, “If you are someone.” I know if you’re listening to this show, I know you’re ambitious. I know that you want to earn your own money. I know you want to feel financially confident on your own without somebody else. And if this person is making you feel and getting you in a scenario where you are then dependent on them emotionally, financially, they’re trying to control your behavior, they’re trying to control your career, they’re trying to control your actions. No, thank you. Nope. Absolutely not.
The same thing is echoed in our third red flag, which is if your partner wants to completely control the financial picture. I know a lot more about money than my partner. My partner is actually very good with money. He’s very well-educated, but this is what I do professionally for a living, so I tend to be the one that helps make those strategic decisions. We’re literally recording this on tax day. Every year around this time, he has a ton of questions for me about write-offs and taxes and IRAs and self-employed options and all of that. And so I imagine when we start making bigger financial decisions together that I will be the one who is maybe probably the more strategic partner, let’s put it. I will probably be the one who is the more strategic partner in that sense.
However, if I start to completely control our financial decisions, and especially if I start to completely control his money, that’s a red flag. That’s unhealthy behavior. If I’m wanting to control the entire financial picture, if I am wanting to be the sole keeper of the keys, that’s not great. And if you’re in a relationship with somebody, or maybe you are this person that feels like you have to have complete control, at worst you’re a narcissist, but at best you probably just have control issues. It’s back to your financial trauma. It’s back to your first money memory. It’s back to worrying that you’re not going to have enough money at some time, so you have to control all of it. That’s a red flag.
And our final red flag is if your partner wants you to control the entire financial picture, if they want to completely opt out and just let you take the reins on it. And again, maybe this is you. I see, especially in heteronormative relationships, a lot of women hand over the reins to their male partner. They go, “Oh, I don’t know anything about money, and it’s complicated. But you do, so you can just manage the money.”
My dad is more financially strategic than my mom. I think my mom would be the first person to say that as well. This is my dad’s hobby. The stock market is his hobby, the most white dad hobby in the world. He loves that. But they make decisions together. They make big financial decisions together. She has login information. She has money in her own name. She has credit cards in her own name. There is not a complete opt-out by either party. There’s not a complete control by either party.
And that’s what we’re looking for here. We never want a partner to completely control money, completely control … And again, be the keeper of the keys at the expense of the other partner. And we don’t want a partner who immediately comes into the relationship being like, “Ah, you can handle it.” You don’t have to be equal partners in this knowledge share. You at least need to have some sort of conversations, some sort of equitable share of the financial understanding, of the financial decisions, of where the money’s kept, how it’s kept, what the financial decisions are.
When we come back, we’re talking about the next steps to take to make sure your money is protected before and after you get married. We appreciate you supporting our sponsors. It allows us to do this show for free. We will see you back here in a second.
So how do we create an equitable financial relationship with our partner? How do we make sure that the biggest financial decision we’ll ever make is a good decision and continues to be a good decision? Because as we all know, relationships are a choice. Showing up in a relationship, showing up in a marriage, showing up in a partnership, that’s not a given. It’s a choice. It’s a choice to show up every day and try to show up as the best partner possible.
So how do we continue to show up as the best partners we can be? One, have your own bank account. Always. This is one of the only times I will not say to you, “Personal finance is personal.” This is one of the hard and fast rules that I do not make exceptions for. I don’t care who you are. I don’t care how much debt you or your partner has. I don’t care how much in savings you have. I don’t care how long you’ve been together. I don’t care how long you’ve been married. I don’t care how many kids you have. I don’t care where you live. I don’t care about any of it. You need your own money. I don’t care if you are the partner who is a non-compensated working parent. You need your own money.
I have two really good friends who got married a couple years ago. They literally have in their prenup … And I’ll talk about prenups in a second. They have in their prenup that if they choose to have children together and she has to take time off work, which she will if she is the birthing parent, even if she goes back to work after her leave, that she will be paid money from his income, from his salary because she’s saving him money. She is taking care of childcare. She’s taking care of cooking and cleaning and chauffeuring kids around. She is contributing to the overall household. And if she didn’t exist and he had to take care of children, well, he would have to pay somebody, on average, $160,000 to be a nanny and a caretaker and a cook and a housekeeper and a chauffeur.
That’s what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about equitable relationships. We’re talking about having your own money. We’re talking about making sure that you have a plan and that you have a partner that you can build a safe financial life with. You always need to have your own money. You always need to have an escape hatch should something happen, but you also need to make sure that you are in this relationship because you want to be, not because you have to be.
So many people come to me and they’re like, “But that means I don’t trust my partner. I think we’re in a marriage, and marriages are about what’s mine is yours and yours is mine, and we should completely combine or else it shows that this relationship is not healthy.” No. You know what’s not healthy? Staying in a relationship because you have to be in it, because you’re financially unable to leave. That’s the reality.
Fucking Rachel Cruze. Oh my god. Okay, so Rachel Cruze is Dave Ramsey’s daughter. And she was on stage somewhere and was like, “The marriages that lead to divorce are the ones where they keep separate finances. So if you want to stay married, you’re going to completely combine your money.” I’m like, “Rachel Cruze, do you know why couples who completely combine their finances are less likely to get divorced? Because they can’t.” Because they can’t. They financially can’t. If a partner, typically the woman, especially if she’s with a man, wants to get out of the relationship, she financially can’t. She is stuck. Of course there’s less divorce, because you can’t leave.
And the health of my relationship should not hinge on whether I’m held hostage or not. That’s what we’re talking about here. We’re not talking about whether we trust our partners. We’re not talking about if we’re in this relationship for real or not. We are just talking about having enough money to get out of situations. And believe me, I know you think it’s not going to happen to you. I know, but I wish I could show you our email inbox. We get hundreds of women in our inbox every single month, telling us they cannot afford to leave their marriages. Even the ones where it’s not abusive, it’s not terribly toxic, they just don’t want to be in the relationship anymore. They’ve outgrown it or they’re not in love with their partner. Their partner’s a nice person, but they’re not in love with their partner anymore. They can’t leave. And even if you never leave, don’t you want to be in a relationship with somebody because you know that they love you and that they want to be here, not that they’re financially forced to?
Second thing you need to do to build a safe financial relationship and a financial life with your partner, have money dates. These are designated times for financial self-care. We’ve talked about them many times on this show. I have an entire chapter, chapter seven, in my book about how to do this. These are designated times to look at your money. These are the times where we are having conversations with our money, but also with our partner if we’re managing life and money together. This should be at least once a month for a half hour, non-negotiable time to sit down and make financial decisions together.
The third thing, you need a prenup. I don’t care who you are. I don’t care how much money you have. And fun fact, if you got married in the United States, you have a prenup already, and it’s the prenup that has been designated for you by the state you got married in. So I’m here in Washington State. If I get married in Washington State and I don’t change the arrangements, if my partner and I split, it’s a 50/50 split. The state decides that. I don’t want the government in my marriage. I don’t want the government in my business. I want to be able to make the decision that’s right for me and my partner. We want to be able to make the decision that’s right for us. You need a prenup.
And prenups get this bad rap that they’re for gold diggers, right? They’re for people who have billions of dollars. Prenups are for everyday average people. My friends, who I was just talking about, that prenup, they’re pretty everyday average people. They’re not billionaires, but they want to outline what happens if they were to get separated. Who gets what? What happens?
And the fun fact about prenups is that most people who get one don’t actually need one. They’ll never actually use it because it shows that you’re willing to go through the process of having uncomfortable conversations about money with your partner that will probably prevent you from ever having to separate. You already have a prenup in the state you’re in. You need to dictate what that prenup actually looks like.
And finally, you need to have an estate plan. You need to have wills. You need to have life insurance. You need to have a trust, if that makes sense for you. We have a free tool that we’ve partnered with called Trust and Will that can get you a will really inexpensively without having to go through a whole estate planning, attorney, all of that, especially if your financial situation is more cut and dried, which for the average person it is. But if one of you dies, if both of you die, and especially if you have children, if somebody is reliant on your income or your partner’s income in order to survive, if you have children, you need a will and you need life insurance.
And yeah, nobody wants to talk about death, but let me tell you, it is the best, most selfless thing you can give to somebody else, is you having an estate plan and having taken strides and taken steps to make sure all of this is not on their shoulders should something happen.
Team, this is the biggest financial decision you’ll ever make. When I got asked that question in Austin, it was something that absolutely shifted the whole conversation of that evening. When that gentleman stood up and asked me, “What is the biggest piece of financial advice you have? What is the biggest financial decision that people make that they don’t even think about?” And I said, “Choosing your life partner,” every single person in the audience, and especially every single woman, nodded her head.
And that’s what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about making smart financial decisions that actually have nothing to do with numbers and nothing to do with math, but everything about who we surround ourselves with, who we are yoking ourselves to for years, if not a whole lifetime. Make that decision well. Make that decision as informed as possible. Make that decision with someone who is going to support you, who is going to champion you, who is going to be open and honest and vulnerable, even if they’re not perfect, when they’re not perfect.
And if you’ve been wondering how to talk about money with your partner, this is the episode to send to them. If you’ve been wondering how to start these financial conversations with somebody that you’re starting to get serious with, let this episode be the start to that conversation. Go ahead and send it to them. I’ll wait. I’ll sit here. I’ll say hi to you. I’ll say hi to your partner when they come back. Hello. Thank you for being here. Let this be the moment you start having those financial conversations. Let this be the moment that you reset, if you’ve been in this relationship for a while. And if you’re single and you’re looking for a life partner, let this be your guide to making the best decision of your life.
Thank you so much for being here, financial feminists. Thank you for the support of this show and feminist media, and we’ll see you back here very soon. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, a Her First 100K Podcast. For more information about Financial Feminist, Her First 100K, our guests and episode show notes, visit financialfeministpodcast.com. If you’re confused about your personal finances and you’re wondering where to start, go to herfirst100k.com/quiz for a free personalized money plan.
Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap. Produced by Kristen Fields and Tamisha Grant. Research by Sarah Sciortino. Audio and video engineering by Alyssa Midcalf. Marketing and Operations by Karina Patel and Amanda Leffew. Special thanks to our team at Her First 100K, Kailyn Sprinkle, Masha Bakhmetyeva, Sasha Bonar, Rae Wong, Elizabeth McCumber, Daryl Ann Ingman, Shelby Duclos, Meghan Walker, and Jess Hawks. Promotional graphics by Mary Stratton, photography by Sarah Wolfe, and theme music by Jonah Cohen Sound. A huge thanks to the entire Her First 100K community for supporting our show.
Tori Dunlap
Tori Dunlap is an internationally-recognized money and career expert. After saving $100,000 at age 25, Tori quit her corporate job in marketing and founded Her First $100K to fight financial inequality by giving women actionable resources to better their money. She has helped over five million women negotiate salaries, pay off debt, build savings, and invest.
Tori’s work has been featured on Good Morning America, the New York Times, BBC, TIME, PEOPLE, CNN, New York Magazine, Forbes, CNBC, BuzzFeed, and more.
With a dedicated following of over 2.1 million on Instagram and 2.4 million on TikTok —and multiple instances of her story going viral—Tori’s unique take on financial advice has made her the go-to voice for ambitious millennial women. CNBC called Tori “the voice of financial confidence for women.”
An honors graduate of the University of Portland, Tori currently lives in Seattle, where she enjoys eating fried chicken, going to barre classes, and attempting to naturally work John Mulaney bits into conversation.
