Book review: Scott Palmer - The 5 Money Personalities: Speaking the Same Love and Money Language

This book takes an interesting approach to money counseling. Rather than provide advice about which stocks to buy or how to properly and effectively balance your checkbook, the book by the Palmers seeks to counsel couples how to prevent that their marriage is torn apart by financial issues. Appropriately written by the couple of Scott and Bethany Palmer, the books arose out of the statistic that financial issues are a major reason for divorce in the USA. Financial issues does not necessarily mean that people are short on money, but can also include problems such as hiding expenses or how money is spent.

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The authors therefore start their book of with a simple assessment tool to identify the money personality of the partners and help the individuals as well as their partners understand why they handle money the way they do it. Understanding your money personality and relating to your spouse's money personality is an important first step in bringing about honesty in a relationship. No more secret accounts or money in cookie jars; if you know how your spouse behaves with money, you can not only reduce fighting about money, but also lend the necessary support to bring about change or correct money mistakes.

The marriage as a partnership includes together working out finances and therefore the next three chapters focus on communicating about finances between the partners, including sharing a cons with your spouse and discussing them. While these tools are simple and some of the approaches may appear to be common sense to the reader, they also provide a foundational framework to guide partners on ways to start communicating about money.

I got out of this book that it is okay to share bank accounts or keep separate accounts, as long as both partners agree and understand the reasons behind these facts. Being open about how you feel about money and how you prefer to allocate resources is as important as being open about the partnership goals itself. Money talk does not mean stress, it can be an important strengthening factor in your relationship if one correctly and that is what this books hopes to achieve in the end.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book through booksneeze in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed in this review are solely my own and have not been influenced by the authors or the publisher of this book.