Nicole Haddow is a journalist and author of Smashed Avocado: How I Cracked the Property Market and You Can Too and The Ethical Investor. She has written for The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, The Guardian, Australian Financial Review, Domain, Madison, Cleo and more. She lives in regional Victoria with her husband, Sam, and fur girls Frankie and Olive, and is working on several projects while they renovate their heritage home together.

For Sam,
who makes each day a way of life

Introduction

A quiet, reflective moment in May 2022 would be the beginning of the end of my life as I’d known it. It’d been exactly a year since I’d packed up my stuff and moved into my historic, dilapidated home. The long-held dream of owning a freestanding cottage had been my motivation. Making it a reality on a single income meant moving ninety minutes from Melbourne to the regional town of Ballarat where I knew no one. The Victorian weatherboard, built circa 1910, was in desperate need of love. Sure, I’d never renovated before, but how hard could it be? Quite hard, it transpires.

I spent hundreds of hours up and down a ladder, patching crumbling plaster and painting rooms. I lifted kitchen floor tiles with the help of family and friends. I upcycled the old floral carpet, turning it into a hallway runner and circle rug. I lacquered cheap timber that became temporary benchtops until I could afford a proper kitchen renovation. It was a challenge, but I relished it, even if it often felt like I’d bitten off more than I could chew.

On that autumn evening, the first anniversary of my arrival, I sipped a glass of wine, gazed out the window of my half-renovated house and sat with a conflicting swirl of feelings. I knew I’d made these choices consciously, and yet I’d never expected to spend the final year of my thirties living alone in a rickety regional dwelling. While getting to this point was something that I was proud to have achieved

– I was gathering a stack of handy skills and the house was slowly becoming the home I’d imagined – it had also been a long and lonely slog. I wondered if things could, or should, be different.

Could I have played my cards more effectively? Was I insane to have held out for a great love? I hadn’t meant to, but even though shouldering a huge financial burden on my own was daunting, I’d become uncomfortable with the idea of someone else having a say in my finances. Perhaps subconsciously I’d stayed single so that if anyone was to blame for a possible fiscal failure, it’d be me and me alone. I did, however, like the idea of having a companion. A partner; an equal. Such a person had so far been elusive.

I hadn’t done myself many favours moving to a regional town, where it seemed everyone within a suitable age bracket was already coupled up, and the number of eligible blokes was extremely limited. An occasional flick through the dating apps was usually over fast. I’d swipe a handful of options in my radius before I landed on a screen saying I’d run out of possible matches in my area.

Continuing to put energy into the digital pursuit of love seemed pointless. And yet, as I drained my wine glass and began to shuffle random items from the fridge into some form of dinner, I decided to give it one last go, this time with a far more open mind.

When I saw Sam’s face, I thought he was handsome, but he was also younger than me. Still, he looked like fun. I swiped right and treated it as an opportunity to meet a new and interesting person. He didn’t have to be ‘the one’.

Soon after we matched, we arranged to meet for a drink at a wine bar. The conversation was slow and cautious to begin with. Halfway through our second drink, he said something incredibly witty, and I thought, Oh, I like this guy.

At the end of the evening, Sam walked me to my car, which I’d happened to park right next to his ute. As we prepared to say goodbye, the lightest misty rain started falling and glowed orange, backlit by a street lamp. A couple argued in the background while we hovered nervously. An uncertain embrace led to the kiss that changed everything.

Our second date went for most of the weekend. By the end of our third date, I had a key to his place, and we’d discussed moving in together. For weeks I wandered around like a dazed, heart-eyed emoji. I’d never felt like this before. We were absolutely head over heels for each other.

Under ordinary circumstances, couples have more time to build their bond before they whip out a budgeting spreadsheet and open a joint bank account, but Sam’s property lease was coming to an end. We knew we wanted to be together, and as a landscaper with several construction skills, he was both willing and excited to help me bring the house to life. ‘My gut is telling me to dive right in,’ he told me.

I had the same instinct – not a doubt in my mind that I’d met my match. But our differing financial positions did have the potential to create tension. Sam was upfront, telling me that he had a bit of debt. By contrast, I had a home. I had worked so hard to secure a property on my own, and I’d always been fierce when it came to telling other women to protect their assets. Yet, I had no idea how to actually do the right thing for myself, without compromising the wonderful early stages of our romance.

Sam told me to do whatever made me feel comfortable – that he’d sign anything that cemented my rights.

If we were going to be together long-term, I wanted him to clear his debt first. So instead of paying rent, he spent the first few months reducing the amount owing on a personal loan. But in lieu of cash towards the mortgage, he contributed to the house in ways that improved it and added value. In the first week, he fixed the shed roof, something that probably would have cost me $500 if I’d hired a handyman. Next, he sourced old Baltic pine floorboards to fix a considerable hole in the bedroom floor that, up until that point, I’d covered with cardboard and magazines. Then we started painting together.

It wasn’t all work, though. Sam regularly crafted cocktails on cold nights and transported us to Hawaii with his record collection and mood lighting. Watching our spending didn’t mean forgoing the romance.

We spent weekends walking around the house working out what was needed in each room and the order in which to do things. Sam called trades for things we didn’t want to do ourselves, such as sanding and polishing the old floors. He arranged the quotes and booked the jobs in. These were things that I could have done but sharing the mental load of the project was a huge weight lifted. Our vision for the property crystalised; our connection grew deeper.

That said, I had to decide what was reasonable to ask of him if things went wrong. Of course we scoffed, ‘Won’t happen to us!’ But I had to know we agreed on a fair outcome if we did split up.

Here’s where I landed:

We’d establish what the property was worth at the point the relationship came to an end, and I’d be entitled to everything that I’d put in before he arrived, then we’d split any remaining profits 50/50. It could potentially mean refinancing the property to give Sam his share; it could also mean selling.

Writing that down makes me feel sick. Saying it out loud was difficult, but it had to be done.

Prior to settling on that arrangement, I did a bit of research, and I was stunned to find how little information there is available to people entering relationships and merging finances. We’ve well and truly moved on from the housewife era. Most relationships are dual income and many people have put careers before family, or they’ve re-entered relationships after separations. Often, when we do find someone to settle down with, each half of the pair is going to be bringing stuff they are within their right to protect.

What’s a fair split of expenses when one person earns more than the other? Should everything go in a joint bank account? At what point should your partner be listed on the mortgage? What are the tax implications?

But, most importantly: how do you manage money in a way that helps you work towards goals, empowers both of the individuals in the relationship and keeps the love story going too?

In my first book, Smashed Avocado, I charted my path to home ownership, while in The Ethical Investor, I explored ways I could diversify my investments beyond housing, thinking about everything from superannuation to shares, all while seeking investments that were good for society and our planet.

I had been so caught up in personal finance that I hadn’t seriously considered what it means to manage money as a couple or family. On the surface it can be easy to maintain a level of autonomy initially, which is what Sam and I did: separate bank accounts, an agreement about who paid for what and a joint savings account.

But I felt that keeping all finances separate was to keep each other at arm’s length emotionally. I’m certain our relationship would be far less fulfilling if I’d told Sam that he could move in and pay rent at my house. The day he moved in, the house became ours. It had to, because it’s not just where we live, the restoration is a shared project that we’re working on together. I suspected this would be the key to our success: equal ownership of the vision, both short and long-term.

This made me realise that some couples might get so focused on the dollars, cents and day-to-day equality of their relationship that they’re not looking up from the budget to the road ahead. Are you going in the same direction? Where are you a year from now? A decade? Sure, the goal posts move over time, but if one person wants to quit their job and live off-grid, while the other is saving for a waterfront mansion, there’s going to be issues at some point, no matter how much you love each other.

That said, I understand why many people focus on their own funds and splitting the cost of living equitably. If you’re anything like me, this mashed-up era of feminism, rom-coms, girl power and personal-finance influencers has you wildly confused about how to balance your own aspirations with being a great partner.

So, in this book I have attempted to clear up this modern mess. I’ve asked couples questions that I definitely wouldn’t ask at a dinner party. I’ve found out how successful pairs are building wealth together and I’ve investigated whether there’s a correlation between great relationships and financial freedom.

But, before we kick off, it’s important to know there’s no one right way to manage your money as a couple. Your goals, lifestyle and current financial circumstances will be different to ours. The aim of this book is not to give you a strict set of rules, but to give you a peek inside the lives of other couples and a seat at the table with experts you mightn’t otherwise have access to, so that you can expand your shared worldview, get aligned and perhaps dream bigger as a team than you have in the past.

In the coming chapters, you’ll hear from qualified professionals. I’m approaching everything as one half of a couple who was curious to know if there was an optimal way to manage our money together, so I’ve consulted with financial planners, lawyers, accountants and tax experts, and their advice is general in nature. It won’t apply precisely to you and your circumstances as a couple. If it does get you thinking about what you’d like to achieve together, it’s best to speak to a licensed professional before making decisions about where you want to go from here.

With help from these experts, I’ve compiled a range of hints, tips and guidance to help you to make better money decisions as a team. Hopefully, it’ll help all of us smash our couple goals.

Finally, this book is not strictly about money, it’s about how the quality of your relationship can help or hinder your ability to achieve your goals. Interestingly, whether I was speaking to financial experts or relationship therapists, there was one common piece of advice. It is essential to have tough conversations, and have them regularly, so at the end of each chapter, I’ll give you questions to ask one another based on what we’ve covered. With honest and transparent communication, I’m certain you’ll be setting and beginning to achieve your couple goals in no time.

Okay, let’s get stuck into it!

CHAPTER ONE

A quick chat about financial inequality

Anecdotally, I know establishing a money-management strategy as a couple can be a messy exercise. I’ve asked many couples if their shared financial processes came easily and the overwhelming response was ‘No, it was so hard!’ That’s because anyone who came of age after the 1990s is setting a precedent for relationships and the way that income is handled as a pair. In fact, dual income couples managing their finances in innovative ways are pretty much pioneers.

Looking back to school yards of the 1980s and 1990s, families were still overwhelmingly nuclear, most often with two heterosexual parents. If you were getting picked up from school, chances were that it was Mum who was standing at the gate. My family was pretty stock standard. For the most part, Dad was the breadwinner and Mum worked ‘part-time’. I put part-time in quote marks because honestly the shit that she did in a day was all work, every hour of it: breakfast, making school lunches, school drop-off, actual paid employment, school pick-up, after-school appointments, dinner, the bedtime routine and preparing for the next day. It was a relentless, demanding and largely thankless full-time role. It just wasn’t accurately reflected in the household accounting.

I had assumed that my millennial generation experienced the last of that. With women getting into the workforce in increasing numbers from the 1960s, you’d think by the early 2000s, full-time dual income couples would well and truly replace a male breadwinner.

And yet in 2016 – yes, 2016! – the Sydney Morning Herald reported:

Australia has a very high ratio of part-time work compared with its peers and women hold nearly three-quarters of all those jobs. That’s helped create the 1.5 worker household – with a full-time dad and part-time mum – which has become one of the bedrocks of modern Australia.

Don’t even get me started on how traditionally gendered that quote is.

I did a bit of digging to better understand that the foundation of this ‘bedrock of modern Australia’ was laid in 1907. This was the year of the Harvester Decision, made by Justice Higgins. In a case before him, a bunch of workers from the Sunshine Harvester Factory in Melbourne were getting paid differently for the same work – some 6 shillings a day, others 5 – and they wanted equality; also, they wanted enough to actually live on.

Justice Higgins reckoned that 7 shillings a day – 42 shillings a week – seemed like a fair sum for an unskilled labourer to take home and support a wife and three kids. By the 1920s, the precedent had made way for Australia’s ‘basic wage’ – essentially the minimum wage we have today.

It was certainly a historic decision that set income standards. Problem was, it also set us up for the gender pay gap we’re still battling to close. In 1912, Justice Higgins was back in the decision-making chair at the Court of Arbitration dealing with the Fruit Pickers Case. In this instance, he thought that women should be paid the same as men, but only if they did male-dominant jobs …

Eventually, we ended up with centralised wage fixing, through which the basic wage for males was set much higher than it was for women. I guess it just made more financial sense for Dad to go out and get on the tools, and for Mum to do absolutely everything else in the household for little to no income.

Obviously, that wasn’t a fair or ideal scenario for couples or their relationships. It has also given us a bleak history of women having a reduced say in how household financial decisions were made. Is it any wonder that marriages began to fail in greater and greater numbers?

It took until 1969 for equal pay for equal work to be recognised in the courts, but it was still a slog from there. And we’re still slogging. In 2022, the national gender pay gap was 14.1 per cent, or about $263.90 a week in favour of males, but by mid-2023, the gap was down to 13 per cent and has been closing steadily in the past decade.

One approach to addressing the gender pay gap is the Workplace Gender Equity Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill, which was passed in March 2023. The reform allowed the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) to publish gender pay gaps of private organisations with more than 100 employees from 2024, with public sector data to follow. But there was no plan for repercussions for those who are found to contribute to the gender pay gap.

Also, these reports will inevitably be flawed. A 2023 article in The Conversation reported that summaries don’t provide a reliable snapshot of individual scenarios. The author pointed out that in a company where everyone is paid equally, but the CEO is paid ten times more, the company would be seen to have a 17.6 per cent pay gap. Contrast that with a tech company, where every woman is paid 2 per cent less than every man, but the founder doesn’t take a salary: ‘The aggregate numbers will show no gender pay gap.’

That said, the financial composition of our households is changing dramatically. According to the 2021 census, there were more than 5.5 million couples, 53 per cent of which had kids living with them and 47 per cent who didn’t have kids at home. There were more than a million one-parent families. And, with the exception of the close to 25,000 same-sex marriages recorded, this data doesn’t account for relationships across the entire LGBTIQA+ community.

In addition, while the gender pay gap remains, some women are either out-earning their partners, or coming to the relationship with an asset they’ve secured solo. Although women required a male guarantor to take out a loan in Australia up until the 1970s, they’re definitely making up for lost time, with millennial women now among the fastest growing cohorts of homebuyers.

The combination of a gender pay gap and a rise in women snapping up homes on their own might be confusing, but the point is that there are so many different financial dynamics at play, it can be incredibly difficult to navigate the countless scenarios.

The gender pay gap is only one part of the overall challenge for women who want to work full-time for the length of their careers. The figures that show women buying property in higher numbers than men don’t account for the nuances of life after the initial purchase. If you plan to have children, and also have breasts, you may intend to use your body as a source of food for your tiny offspring, there’s still a broad expectation that you stay at home, or at least out of the workplace, while you do so. The question becomes, how long will you stay home? How will your housing costs be covered during that time? Will Dad step up to the parenting plate if you want to return to your career? Statistically speaking, he probably won’t take on the kids in a full-time capacity, with the number of Australian stay-at-home dads still hovering around the staggeringly low 5 per cent mark. On balance, to be fair to the blokes, we still have systemic societal conditions that have set up stay-at-home parenting and primary caregiving to be a female-driven operation, regardless of whether the woman works or not. As Annabel Crabb pointed out in her 2019 essay ‘Men at Work’, ‘When a woman has a baby, our society and the vast majority of workplaces are geared to expect – accurately, by and large – that she will be primarily responsible for the care and supervision of that baby. When that baby gets sick, it is she who will stay home from work.’ The physical ability to go out and earn is only one factor in any couple’s pursuit of both wealth and contentment. It’s the overall loss of income, career progression and satisfaction that potentially hits both people at various times, but more often women will fare worse, especially if the relationship ends in the years or decades after children come along. With a prolonged gap on a CV, they may never excel to a position they could have if they’d climbed to senior roles without children tugging at their feet from below. And yet the Australian gender earnings gap research also points to findings from other countries, such as Norway, which have showed the financial penalty that came with having a child was much larger for women in heterosexual couples than it was for same-sex couples.

That shows us that the income loss that comes with parenthood shouldn’t solely be the cost of the person who gives birth. I so often hear that it makes no sense financially for a woman to go back to work due to the cost of childcare. Why is this a mother’s burden to shoulder? Childcare is a family cost, it’s not Mum’s job to bankroll it. If you are a dual income couple, it may be time to start looking at your collective income and your wealth-building power as a team. The costs associated with life as a committed couple, whether you have children or not, are the responsibility of both people. In the coming chapters we’ll explore ways to shift your mindset regarding gender-based financial roles in case that’s a challenge you face in your relationship.

Even if you don’t take the family path, you may experience other forms of financial inequality. For example, at times, one of you may be unable to work due to accident or illness, one party may choose to take a pay cut to pursue a long-held dream or someone needs to make professional sacrifices to care for an aging parent or sick family member. Maximising income, supporting family and nurturing career identity is a couple’s shared duty. You need to talk about these realities as a united team sooner rather than later if you’re going to successfully tackle them together without either of you being professionally or financially penalised in the long run.

Couple goals check-in

In the coming chapters, I’ll give you heaps of talking points that will hopefully help you to refine your views on money, your relationship and your goals. I’m not going to kick off here by asking you to delve deeply into your views on financial inequality and the gender pay gap. But I will ask you to pause for a moment and think about what was modelled to you growing up and how that might affect your partner. This will help you prepare for our next challenge: talking about money together.

• What was the financial dynamic like in your household growing up?

• Did both of your parents work?

• Were you in a single-parent family? If so, how did that parent juggle work and family?

• Did one of your parents experience a financial penalty for staying home to raise you?

• How have these experiences shaped your own attitude towards financial equality in relationships?