Why Couples Fight About Money: What the Research Shows

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If you and your partner argue about money, you are in large company. Researchers have studied this for decades, and the findings are more mixed than the usual headline suggests. This article walks through what the studies found, what they did not find, and a few low risk ways to act on it.

How common are money fights?

Johanna Peetz, Zoe Meloff and Courtney Royle studied what couples argue about when money is involved. They analyzed 1,014 posts from a relationship advice forum and then surveyed 481 married people about a recent financial disagreement. The authors note that conflicts about money make up around 18 percent of all conflict, yet remain disproportionately damaging to relationship quality.

The diary study by Lauren Papp, E. Mark Cummings and Marcie Goeke-Morey adds a useful twist. Using diary reports from 100 couples, the authors report that spouses did not name finances as their most frequent conflict topic at home. Money conflicts stood out in another way: the authors describe them as more pervasive, problematic and recurrent, and they stayed unresolved even when couples put substantial effort into problem solving. Frequency and weight are different things, and money seems to carry more weight than its share of arguments would suggest.

Money arguments and divorce: a more careful picture

Jeffrey Dew, Sonya Britt and Sandra Huston followed couples from a national longitudinal survey. The authors report that financial disagreements were the strongest disagreement type for predicting divorce among those they compared. They also report that conflict tactics and marital satisfaction helped explain the link, and that once financial disagreements were in the model, general financial well being alone was not significantly associated with divorce.

Read that last part slowly. In this study, how couples disagreed about money carried more predictive weight than how much money they had.

Now the complication. In a separate analysis of national longitudinal data, Britt and Huston report that money arguments were a significant marker of relationship satisfaction but proved less predictive of divorce than commonly assumed. So the fair summary is that money arguments are a reliable warning sign for unhappiness, and a weaker, more debated predictor of a breakup. These are observational studies, so neither one shows that money arguments cause divorce.

Debt, assets and conflict

Dew's earlier longitudinal work looked at what sits behind the arguments. He reports that assets reduce marital conflict indirectly by lowering economic stress, while consumer debt directly increases conflict whatever the stress level. That fits the idea that the meaning of a financial situation matters as much as the number attached to it. We do not give financial advice here, and nothing in these studies tells any couple what to do with their own money.

Why the same argument keeps coming back

Richard Thaler, who won the Nobel Prize in economics for related work, describes mental accounting as the set of cognitive operations people use to organize, evaluate and keep track of financial activities. In his review, he reports that each component of mental accounting violates the economic principle of fungibility, which means people treat money differently depending on the account it sits in, such as a savings account in the mind versus a spending account.

That gives us a plausible way to read some couple fights. Two people can hold different mental accounts for the same dollar. Thaler's review does not study couples, so this is an inference, and we flag it as one.

The Gottman Institute states that most relationship problems (69 percent) never get resolved and are perpetual problems based on personality differences between partners. Its page does not single out money. It does suggest that a recurring argument may be a sign of a durable difference, which is a different goal from winning the argument.

The secrecy trap

Michelle Jeanfreau, Chelsey Holden and Michelle Brazeal studied why married people keep financial secrets. The authors report two main motivations: avoiding an argument and spending on oneself. Most of their participants kept joint accounts and managed money together, yet many still held money related secrets. Avoiding a fight in the short run can feed the next one, though this exploratory study cannot show that on its own.

When it keeps going

If money arguments leave one or both of you dreading the topic, a licensed couples therapist can help you work through it together. A couples counseling platform is one way to reach one, and a local therapist is another. Papp and colleagues suggest the findings are relevant to relationship counselors and financial advisors, and Jeanfreau and colleagues conclude that therapists should address healthy financial communication.

This article is for education only. It is not financial or relationship advice.