How Your “Time Perspective” Can Impact Your Marriage

December 23, 2013

Last week, my wife wrote a blog post to kick off the “couples and money” series.  One of the hot button “budget busters” she talked about was the urge to splurge on non-essential luxury items like clothes, purses, household items, etc. (I thought her timing was perfect for the busiest shopping period of the year.) Admittedly, she isn’t the only one in our household with a taste for big ticket items as I have a long list of wants (definitely not needs) on my list for Santa.  I would love to have a paddleboard, upgraded golf clubs, football season tickets for next season, or a trip to Brazil for the World Cup. 

In the past, (especially early in our marriage) we both would have made every effort to justify these purchases for each other without too much regard for how they fit into the big picture of our financial lives.  Thankfully, we have for the most part replaced a “live in the moment and let the future take care of itself” attitude with more awareness of planning for the future.  (Of course, we aren’t perfect and can always do a better job of planning.  Sometimes when life is coming at you faster than a 100 mph fastball, it is easy to get a little off track.)

For couples desperately seeking ways to get on the same page with financial planning behaviors, it’s important to gauge how beliefs toward the past, present, and future impact key financial decisions. That’s because our past financial experiences have a major impact on how we manage our finances in the present.  These experiences guide how we manage to either plan for the future or avoid proactive planning.

We often have a combination of tendencies that reflect our future time perspective. According to a wide body of research in the field of psychology and other disciplines, time perspective can be broken into the categories of past-negative, past-positive, present-fatalistic, present-hedonistic, and future orientations. (You can complete your own assessment online at www.thetimeparadox.com.)

As a financial planner, it didn’t surprise me to find my survey results indicated I lean towards a future time orientation.  I am goal-oriented and spend a lot of time planning for retirement and our kids’ college educations.  But I also score high on present-hedonistic and past-positive.  Back in the early days of our marriage, I was much higher on the present-hedonism scale and it caused a great deal of tension due to occasional unplanned spending and lack of adequate savings.

My wife, Heather, scored very similar to me and we talked about how our focus on planning for the future has changed since when we first met. Having children likely changed our views toward life and the true meaning of happiness.  The real game changer in our family financial plan was improving (not necessarily mastering) the fine art of communicating about money.

The end of the year gives us time to reflect on our past year. The good, the bad, and the ugly stuff are all there for us to evaluate. New Year’s also gives us a new way to approach how we deal we money. Next week, we will take a deeper look at communicating about money from a couple’s perspective.  In the meantime, it won’t hurt to assess your own preferences for future planning.