Here’s why you need to open up to your wife about your finances

Counselor and Managing Director of LM Total Wears, Mrs. Linda Mante, has advised couples to be more open with each other about issues concerning their finances.

She observed that a lot of times, men like to keep their finances to themselves and they go as far as not communicating to their wives about anything because they fear that when the woman is aware of their good financial status, she tends to make lots of monetary requests even when they are having a regular conversation.

In an interview with host, Eunice Tornyi on eTV Ghana’s African Women’s Voices show, she employed the psychologist, Bowen’s family system theory which says that the behavior of individual in a family has an influence on everyone in the family because families are interconnected, to explain why it is important for a husband and wife to communicate, especially about the family’s finances.

She instanced, “If a father goes to work today and he is sacked from work, see what happens. You don’t need to be told that he has been sacked especially if he is the sole breadwinner and he has no investments anywhere.

It’s just a matter of time before you see that the children will also be sacked from school for failure to pay school fees. It has a ripple effect and nothing goes on at home”.

According to Mrs. Mante, this should tell that there is an actual need for a couple to sit down together and plan their finances together instead of leaving money matters to the husband only to handle because, in the long run, a financial breakdown on the part of the sole provider will affect everyone in the family.

The counselor also warned that a financial breakdown on the part of the sole provider will not only affect the finances at home but many other things as well. “Something like sex is one of the keys and very important things in every marriage and financial stress or traffic at home causes a lot of trouble.

I usually say that sex is an environment so if the financial climate at home is not conducive, you’ll realize that it’s going to affect the children, it’s going to affect the marriage and it’s going to affect the sex life”.

Again, she mentioned that when the finances and sex life of a couple is affected, then there is a high possibility of the family beginning to tear apart.

Therefore, families that communicate about their finances and hold each other up during such financial crises, will have a higher chance at staying together than one in which there is no communication and financial provision is the responsibility of only one partner.