I had a conversation a couple of days ago actually with James Saxton, who's the divorce expert.

He's a divorce lawyer by trade, but he knows more about divorce than anybody else.

And he said to me there's two things which cause people to end up in his office going through a divorce.

Number one is cheating, infidelity. And the second thing

is money problems in the relationship. So I find it especially sort of pertinent to have this

conversation with you about couples' relationship with money. Because clearly one of the things

that is most likely to end my relationship, or I guess prevent me getting into one is this financial avoidance

that most of us engage in. You've interviewed hundreds and hundreds of couples about money on your

podcast. What have you learned about our relationship with money in relationships from that?

I've learned that 50% of the people I talk to do not know their household income.

90% of the people I talk to who are in debt do not know how much debt they're in.

And 100% of the people I talk to in credit card debt also have trouble saying no to their

children.

Isn't that shocking?

Each of those things, 50% do not know how much

income they make because most of us are simply living by looking at our checking account,

and that's it. The debt part kind of makes sense. Why would you want to know how much debt you

owe? You don't really want to think about it, so you ignore those emails and envelopes.

And the credit card debt part, that is really interesting. The idea that if you can't say no

to spending, so you've racked up a bunch of credit card debt, the same principle applies to

saying no to kids. For me, when I discover these, I find them absolutely fascinating, but the good news is you can

also change these things.

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