This is part three of the Moneywise series to mark Money and Relationships Month. In part one, we explored our individual relationships with money and in part two, we discovered how our physiology reacts to the good and bad stressors of money decisions.

Our personal relationship with money starts very early on as small children when we become aware of its power to benefit us, as one grandchild solemnly assured me that his “mum gets money out of the machine to buy him toys”.

Money is an integral part of our lives. Whether we want to admit it or not, it can control us, or we can choose to control its use.

We daily confront physically, mentally, and involuntarily the dilemma of conflicting choices relative to our own needs and wants interspersed or influenced by our relationships with our families, peers, working colleagues and community.

Personal relationships are complex in themselves; adding each individual’s relationship with money into the equation heightens the challenges of decision-making processes to achieve successful outcomes.

The boundaries of what used to be traditional relationship classifications have changed dramatically to become more progressive, dynamic, complex, and shorter-lived.

Single-parent households, both male and female, have risen steadily in the US since 1950, for instance, to the highest yet, while adult children are increasingly returning to live at home.

Younger generations may opt out of legally defined relationships completely, while having a family anyway.

Legal contracts in marriages and civil unions have become more individually protective and specific, particularly considering second/third alliances where child custody, fertility outcomes, prenuptial agreements, various nationalities/jurisdictional laws, parental rights and surrogate offspring security, property dissolution, finances, etc, which are much more complicated to define.

There are any number of articles, surveys, research papers, and dissertations of conducted research on money, individuals, and families with the focus on what makes relationships work and how.

Sometimes, the results may seem too obvious or generic. The upside is that realising that the research conducted with views into thousands of other relationships that may also reflect your values can be very reassuring.

There are a number of correlating traits common to relationships (including couples, partners, and families) that are keys to optimise financial compatibility.

Self-value

It starts with you. How you value yourself is the most important component in establishing a relationship with anyone.

How you value your money may define how well your relationship will succeed.

Trust and respect

Working with, relating to others, you can manage a relationship with anyone who shares your values, has mutual trust, and respect for everyone as unique individuals.

Honesty and transparency

Important old-fashioned values that are not often discussed today in our era of me first, get rich quick, and the don’t worry about those still on the lower-paid work treadmill.

Communication diplomacy

Financial matters in everyday life choices will vary, sometimes constantly.

Communication, compromise and negotiation are key building skills to assure financial harmony.

Conversely, understanding that every individual has certain differences in values and convictions that should be regarded diplomatically and respectfully.

Shared and individual goals

Sincere interest in building each individual’s self-confidence in a relationship in order to accomplish shared and individual goals, while motivating them to be the best they can be.

Willingness to compromise

No two people think alike. Compromise means each individual gets something of what they want, but not everything. You know the rest.

Independent not dependent

Life is never guaranteed. The ability to be independent is to be celebrated and encouraged. Each individual has to be strong in their own identity knowing they have ability to be self-supporting.

In 35 years of international financial planning practice, both in the United States and Bermuda, I worked with hundreds, possibly thousands of individuals and couples — seeking to harmonise the challenges of managing their money with their relationships.

No individual was alike; no two couples or families were alike.

The majority were sincere people in their wish to be assisted in managing their way forward to financial security.

They worried about each other, about their families, if one or both departed this Earth suddenly, leaving no protection for their families to negotiate the future.

Their priorities were similarly caring.

They believed in relationships for security, having survival mechanisms in place for contingency planning, education, disability, and related financial planning.

Some clients, no matter the counselling, could not change themselves (or partners, families), sabotaging their financial relationship future success due to: inability to delay gratification, seeing compromise as still having total control, jealousy over career/wage/inheritance/family fortune disparities, gambling issues, lies about credit problems and tax debts, complete resistance to compromise, having inadequate self-esteem and self-worth leading to inability to make decisions, total dependency on one partner, financial infidelity with hidden accounts and more.

One serious example from long ago was seeing the blatant financial deception exhibited by one devious spouse, who having obtained legal rights to all finances, was diligently emptying their bank accounts as fast as possible. It was, unfortunately, not preventable due to the total acquiescence of the totally dependent partner.

In the superb book, The Good Life and How To Live It: Lessons from the World’s Longest Study on Happiness, by Robert Waldinger and Mark Schulz, from the Harvard Study of Adult Development, we witness – from a distance – the study’s scientific research. It is accompanied by marvellous narratives of 724 individuals (a cross-section population) first interviewed in 1938, and now up to more 1,300 descendants of the original participants, more than 85 years later.

Radical for its time, the study set out to understand human health by investigating not what made people sick, but what made them thrive.

Dominant throughout the study is the constant significance of the real power of relationships. Repeatedly, when the participants reached their 70s and 80s, they made the point that what they valued most were their relationships with friends and family.

True, real lessons. Value yourself, value your relationships and you will manage your money, beneficially.

See the YouTube launch of the first Fraud Focus in a series of three – Link here

• Martha Harris Myron is a native Bermuda islander with US connections, Author, YouTube creator, Google News Contributor, and a retired qualified international financial planner. Contact: martha.myron@gmail.com