| April 13, 1999 By Jean Chatzky
Money is the source of
more arguments than any other topic in a family
— more than religion, in-laws and kids
— according to financial counselors PREP,
Inc. And surveys by Citibank and Worth magazine
have shown that money is a leading cause of
divorce.
In fact, that’s
something we’ve known for a while. What’s
new is the cottage industry of experts that has
sprung up lately with advice and therapy aimed at
fixing the problem.
The approaches vary
from legal to financially oriented to some that
have little to do with money at all. Here’s
a summary of what’s available, how it works,
how much it costs, and how to figure out what’s
right for you:
Marital mediation:
Marital mediation is very much like divorce
mediation in that it involves working out a legal
agreement that allows couples to stop battling
and get on with their marriage. Some experts call
this a post-nuptial agreement. According to one
of the leading practitioners of marital mediation,
most couples seek help because of unresolved
money issues. A wife might complain, for example,
that her husband doesn’t give her enough
time to go over their joint tax return before
signing it. A mediated agreement may specify that
she gets it two weeks in advance. If he misses
the deadline, the penalty could be monetary: $100
for each week he’s late. Marital mediation
is usually a 10-session commitment with a
mediator who’ll charge $150 to $225 per hour,
or $1,500 to $2,250 in total. These agreements,
very much like pre-nups, will hold up in court if
properly devised. (Of course if you go to court
over one of these, you’re probably headed
for divorce court anyway.)
Financial Peace
University: This course started in Nashville
and has spread throughout the country. Here’s
how it works: You go to a classroom (which in
Nashville is an actual classroom, though in the
rest of the U.S. it’s the living room of the
couple that’s leading the course) and watch
a one-hour videotaped seminar led by financial
guru Dave Ramsay who believes strongly in a back-to-basics
financial approach. Car leases (which he calls
fleeces) and credit card companies (which he
calls credit sharks) are bad. Hugging your spouse
five times a day to tell you your money troubles
will soon be over is good. And budgeting together
(putting your money for groceries in one envelope
and gas in another like your grandmother used to
do) is terrific, he says, because it brings your
minds together when it comes to your fears, your
dreams and your financial goals. After the video,
there’s a one-hour discussion each week. It’s
$135 for a 13-week course. The couples for whom
it’s worked (there’s a 20 percent
dropout rate) say the course can even be romantic.
Financial
Counseling: A financial counselor is half way
between a financial planner and therapist. The
difference between financial counseling and
financial planning is that the counselor takes a
few steps back. He or she doesn’t just deal
with your stocks and bonds, but will teach you
how to budget, balance your checkbook, get your
basic finances under control and get out of debt.
Financial counselors, who charge about $60 a hour
and up, typically direct a couple to sit down and
plan their monthly expenses. As with the
budgeting workshops, forcing couples to plan
their finances also forces them to talk about
them. At the beginning, you’ll probably need
a two-hour session twice a month, but that
diminishes over time. When financial counselors
are done working with couples, they’ll refer
them to brokers or financial planners rather than
perform this service themselves.
Communication
Therapy: A number of experts believe the
problem isn’t as much about money as it is
communication. They believe that how a couple
talks to each other — and even more
importantly, listen to each other —
determines whether a marriage works or not. So
these programs, the biggest of which is PREP (the
Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program)
teach you how to talk, among other things, about
money. Typically, they restrict when you’re
allowed to speak during a session. In PREP, for
example, you’re not allowed to speak unless
you hold “the floor” which is
represented by a little yellow magnet. A lot of
these programs don’t allow you to directly
respond to what your partner says — they
make you paraphrase what your partner says to you,
to show that you’ve been listening. One
couple and money therapist I observed even turned
couples back-to-back so that their faces didn’t
give their emotions away. The PREP program is
about $99 a couple for the one-day version,
double or more for a weekend depending on hotel
room rates. Couples and money therapists cost $80
an hour on average.
SEPARATE BANK ACCOUNTS?
These programs
confront tough questions about the administration
of your money, including what funds should be in
whose name and whether money should be held
jointly, separately or both. By and large —
and there are exceptions — these programs
believe, as I do, that it’s okay if a person
wants to have some money in his or her own name.
There are several ways
to accomplish this. For example, if a woman makes
two times as much as her husband does, then she
can pay twice as much of the bills as he does.
Whatever’s left over is hers and hers to
keep.
Many experts advocate
that women keep money in their own names, in part
because they believe in financial independence,
but also because according to statistics (divorce,
length of life, etc.) 90 percent of women will be
on their own financially at some point in their
lives.
It’s important
for them to have the ability to handle their
finances before that happens.
How well these
programs work depends on how much the couples are
willing to buy into the particular program. I sat
in on a session at Financial Peace University,
then I followed up with a number of couples.
Those couples who were “in it together”
did well. They didn’t stop fighting
completely, but they did feel a lot better about
their marriages and their money. But in cases
where when one spouse was dragging or threatening
the other simply to get them to go, both partners
ended up resenting each other even more than
before.
WHERE TO GO FOR HELP
Financial Peace University Contact: 888-227-3223 or www.financialpeace.com.
Costs $135 for 13-week course.
Prevention and
Relationship Enhancement Program (PREP)
Contact: 800-366-0166 to sign up for a seminar in
Colorado or for a referral. Costs about $99 per
couple for one day, $199 to $399 for a weekend,
depending on accommodations.
American
Association for Marriage and Family Therapy Contact: 202-452-0109 or www .aamft.org
for a referral. Therapists’ rates, on
average, are $80 an hour.
Academy of Family Mediators Contact: 800-292-4236 or www.mediators.org
for a referral. Mediators’ rates range from
$150 to $225 per hour (10 hours usually necessary).
Association
for Financial Counseling and Planning Education Contact: 614-485-9650 or www.afcpe.org
for a referral. Counselors’ rates are $60
per hour and up.
Copyright 1999 MSNBC
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