When you complete this exercise, you will have gained useful information about your own and your partner's financial personality styles. This information can be a powerful tool. If and when you have an argument about money, understanding your different financial personality styles will help you to find and name the source of your conflict. You can also learn how to turn things around, so that the personality differences that cause problems actually can become an asset on your road to financial prosperity.
Here's a quick example to illustrate the value of understanding these personality parameters:
Suppose you're a Homesteader, and your partner is a Pioneer. In the worst-case situation, you may feel as if you're stuck with the all the "dirty work": staying at home taking care of the children, and doing the same old boring chores every day, while your partner goes out into the exciting world of business and commerce. Not only do you resent your partner for enjoying the prestige and status of a career, but you also resent the financial control that comes with this. Your partner, on the other hand, may feel as if he or she is shouldering the entire financial burden and all the responsibility, and that you are a dependent "hanger-on."
Now let's look at the same styles from a different perspective. I will take it as a given that you are both bright, competent people who respect and love each other. Let's also suppose that you've just had you're first child.
For many reasons, having someone stay home with the baby is a priority for both of you. If you're in a secure relationship, it makes great sense for the Homesteader to be the one primarily responsible for taking care of the baby and for the Pioneer to bring home the money. Both are difficult, valuable roles. The Pioneer will feel good about the baby's safety and development; the Homesteader can concentrate on child rearing and worry less about financial security.
The tradition in most societies has been for the man to be the Pioneer and the woman the Homesteader. But when two people are particularly secure about their relationship and themselves, they can reverse these roles, or can move back and forth between roles at different times.
In the next few chapters, you'll see how to best work together with your partner, in light of your different personality styles. You'll learn what problems to expect, and how to view your roles in ways that will improve your relationship and increase your potential for financial success.
One more comment about your test results. These simple tests were designed scientifically, and they are good measures of the way you deal with money. (See Appendix A for information about how the tests were developed.) But no test is perfect. Your test results can change over time. Also, extreme scores mean more than scores that are near the cut-off points. For example, if you score 0 on the Gambler-Banker scale, then you are more clearly a Banker than if you score 3.
Clearly, these tests can't possibly capture everything about your personality, life situation, and relationship. After reading the descriptions of the financial personality types, you might feel that you or your partner is somewhat different than the tests say you are. That's fine. If you score as a Gambler but feel that you're basically a Banker, then feel free to try some of the Banker exercises in the chapters that follow.
Excerpted from The Couple's Guide to Love & Money by Jonathan Rich copyright 2003 by Jonathan Rich. Excerpted, with permission by New Harbinger Publications. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
