What's money got to do with it: How financial issues relate to marital satisfaction

This study examined the associations between financial issues and marital satisfaction. The financial issues in this study included: materialism, financial satisfaction, shared financial decision-making, shared financial task implementation, and conflict over finances. Participants for the study were 104 married couples participating in a conservative Protestant church in a major metropolitan area of the mid-west. The study utilized self-report measures for obtaining data and multiple regression procedures in the analysis. For both husbands and wives, financial satisfaction was positively related and conflict over finances was inversely related to marital satisfaction. For husbands, but not wives, shared financial decision-making processes were positively related to marital satisfaction. For neither husbands nor wives did the extent of shared financial task implementation demonstrate any significant relationship to marital satisfaction. The findings clearly demonstrate that financial issues are multidimensional and are strongly related to marital satisfaction. The findings also suggest that when presented with money complaints, marriage and family therapists should attend to individual attitudes and interpersonal processes related to financial matters.