When It Comes to Marriage and Money, Opposites Attract
Spouses reshape each others’ financial behaviour, for richer and poorer, marriage research suggests
3 min
The person you marry will often change your relationship to money.
We tend to choose our partners based on shared values, in-common traits and other similarities, marriage researchers say. But money-management styles are one case in which opposites do attract, said Jenny Olson, an assistant professor of marketing at Indiana University who studies couples’ financial decision-making.
We are drawn to people who can check and balance our own rigid rules about money, Prof. Olson said. Someone who feels they are too focused on saving and not focused enough on using money to enjoy life might look for a partner who can help them feel more comfortable with an occasional splurge.
Over the decades, however, spouses often grow more alike. The spendthrifts married to the tightwads manage to find some middle ground, learning from one another in the process, said Scott Rick, a marketing professor at the University of Michigan whose studies marital finances.
“The spouses who don’t converge have a harder time and those marriages are probably more fragile and could end in divorce,” Prof. Rick said, referencing his analysis of 1,303 couples, which will be published in a forthcoming book.
This mutual influence along with the built-in financial accountability couples get when they pool their assets are partly why married couples have a financial advantage over their single counterparts, researchers say. The median net worth of married couples 25 to 34 years old was nearly nine times as much as the median net worth of single households in 2019, up from four times as much in 2010, according to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
When Kristen James, a 33-year-old product manager in Austin, Texas, first started dating her now-husband, Ben, a 35-year-old startup co-founder, she noticed they came to the relationship with different approaches to their finances. Mr. James considered himself much more of a financial risk-taker; Ms. James preferred to manage her money more conservatively.
Instead of their differences erupting in conflict, Ms. James said her husband’s approach had a positive influence. After talking it over as a couple, Ms. James made the leap to change her career, moving into the technology industry and ultimately earning a higher salary as a result. Without her husband’s encouragement, she said she wouldn’t have felt secure making such a huge life change.
“He said, ‘You’re worth far more than what you’re making,’ and he pushed me to take on more risk and challenge myself in different ways,” she said.
Couples who communicate about the differences in their financial beliefs are better able to make decisions together, as tedious as that practice may initially feel, said Matt Lundquist, a psychotherapist and the clinical director of Tribeca Therapy, a psychotherapy practice based in New York.
He points to clients who take a regular weekend trip and have made it a habit to use the driving time to discuss their finances. While the children snooze in the back of the car, the parents review the state of their budgets and check in on progress toward longer-term goals.
Talking as a pair also prevents an imbalance of power in which one partner appoints themselves money manager, said Adrian Ward, a marketing professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
In his own research looking at how couples manage their money, Prof. Ward found that one partner often takes charge of the finances, not because they’re better equipped to do so, but because they have more time for the job. The in-house money manager—whom Prof. Ward calls “the household CFO”—often shuts the other partner out of the decision-making. Sometimes, the other person is relieved, but over time, that partner’s financial literacy suffers.
“Even though it’s hard to make decisions together and we’re both busy, and it would be way easier for one of us to just do it, it’s the best long-term way to care for each other,” he said.
Marcella Mollon-Williams, a behavioural financial adviser based in Bowie, Md., runs a premarital financial counselling session for couples.
The main issue she sees early on in relationships: Couples too often talk about the things one partner wants the other to avoid doing with their money, as opposed to the things they want to do together.
“Talk about the desires money brings, the things you want to accomplish,” she said. “When you start dreaming together, identifying the things money can buy, it’ll become easier. It’s sort of looking ahead and then working backwards.”
To stay on the same page financially, Kristen and Ben James set a monthly family finance meeting. Talking about their goals, reviewing financial allocations and having time to connect on those topics helps them keep their sights trained on the bigger picture, Ms. James said.
When she’s tempted to scroll through Redfin real-estate listings, she relies on her husband to hold her accountable.
“We have each other to say ‘We’re not buying a new house right now’ or ‘We’re not buying a new car right now’—you have that other person to ground you,” she said.
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The voices reshaping how Australians think about money — and why credibility matters more than reach.
6 min
The best financial advice many Australians are receiving right now is not coming from licensed advisers charging by the hour. It is coming through a phone screen, in the ten minutes between work and dinner, from creators who have built credibility the hard way: by being right, being transparent, and being specific in a space where vagueness has always been the easy default.
This is not a ranking by follower count. Follower count is a measure of distribution, not of quality. What follows is a ranking by substance — credentials, accuracy, community depth, and the quality of what an audience actually learns from following these accounts. The distinction matters, because the Australians acting on this content are making real financial decisions with real money.
1- Queenie Tan – Corporate Authorised Representative; Co-Founder & Director, Invest With Queenie & Billroo
There are finance influencers who talk about building wealth, and there are those who document it in real time with receipts. Queenie Tan belongs firmly in the second category. Starting from a $400-per-week income, Tan built her net worth past $1 million while publishing the actual numbers — income, savings rate, investment decisions — for an audience of more than 400,000 across platforms.
She is a Corporate Authorised Representative, co-founder of the personal finance app Billroo, and the author of a book that has become a practical reference for young Australians navigating ETFs, superannuation and property. What separates her from the crowded field of money educators is precision: she does not talk in principles when she can talk in percentages.
2- Alan Kohler – Editor-in-Chief, Eureka Report; Editor-in-Chief, InvestSMART Group; ABC News finance presenter, host of Inside Business.
If Queenie Tan represents the new wave of personal finance creators, Alan Kohler represents something the new wave will spend decades trying to build: institutional credibility that has survived multiple economic cycles. As Editor-in-Chief of the Eureka Report and InvestSMART Group, and a decades-long presence on ABC News, Kohler has spent more than thirty years making financial analysis accessible without dumbing it down.
His coverage of RBA decisions, market movements and economic policy is cited by podcasters, journalists and fund managers alike. He is not chasing virality. He does not need to.
3- Aleks Nikolic – Corporate lawyer; host, Big Swinging Stocks podcast
Most finance creators address the mechanics of money. Aleks Nikolic addresses the psychology — and that distinction explains why her following is as loyal as it is. Operating as Broke Girl Wealth across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, Nikolic covers ETFs, crypto and investment strategy, but her real differentiator is a willingness to discuss the emotional architecture of financial decision-making.
Shame around debt. Fear around market volatility. The limiting beliefs that stop people acting on what they already know. In a space where confidence is routinely performed, her candour is a genuine competitive advantage.
4- Bryce Leske & Alec Renehan – Equity Mates Media
Equity Mates did not build a following. They built a media company. What began as a podcast by two friends learning to invest has grown into Australia’s most established investing media brand, covering ASX stocks, ETFs, global markets and fund manager interviews across podcast, social and YouTube.
The longevity is the credential. Equity Mates has operated through multiple market cycles, a global pandemic, and a generational shift in how Australians engage with investing — and its audience has grown through all of it. When the hosts speak, their listeners know they have been paying attention for years.
5- The Lazy CEO – CEO & Founder, Showpo; Shark Tank Australia investor
The metric that matters most on social media is not followers — it is engagement, because engagement signals trust. Jane Lu, known as The Lazy CEO, maintains an engagement rate of approximately 1.15 per cent on Instagram, which is exceptional for a finance account of his size. Her 242,000-plus followers are not passive consumers: they ask questions, share experiences and apply what they read.
Her content focuses on business finance and wealth building, and the active comment sections are the clearest possible evidence that her audience does not merely scroll past.
6- Tash Invests – Founder, Tash Lends; Forbes Australia 30 Under 30
Tash Invests built her following on a premise that sounds simple but is rarer in practice than it should be: she publishes the actual numbers. Not approximations or ranges or anonymised case studies — her salary, her savings rate, her portfolio value, her net worth, updated and on the record.
Having bought her first property at twenty-two and grown her documented net worth past $1 million, she has become the primary reference point for young Australians trying to understand what building wealth on a moderate income genuinely looks like. The specificity is the product.
7- David Scutt – APAC Market Analyst at StoneX Group
The authority of most finance social media content rests on research and reading. David Scutt‘s authority rests on having done the job. A former Treasury Dealer at Arab Bank and the Commonwealth Bank, former ASX Business Supervisor, and former Global Markets Editor at Business Insider Australia and anchor at ausbiz TV, Scutt now brings that direct market experience to his role as APAC Market Analyst at StoneX Group, rather than relying on secondary commentary.
When he discusses foreign exchange movements or ASX dynamics, it is not because he has read about them. It is because he has traded them.
8- Meddy Demars – Investing & crypto content creator
The gap Meddy Demars fills is specific and underserviced: connecting global macroeconomic events to the practical reality of Australian investors. When the US Federal Reserve adjusts interest rates, when inflation data moves, when commodity prices shift — most Australian finance content either ignores the local implications or translates them poorly.
Demars, operating across TikTok and Instagram from Sydney, does the translation well: explaining what global conditions mean for Australian stocks, savings rates and investment portfolios in terms that are accessible without being condescending.
9- Simran Kaur – Founder, Friends That Invest
Friends That Invest is arguably the most successful community-building exercise in Australian personal finance, and Simran Kaur is the reason why. The New Zealand-based creator — whose audience is predominantly Australian — built a podcast, a book and a social media presence around a single insight: that the personal finance world was not speaking to young women, and that the consequences of that gap were significant.
The measurable cultural shift that followed — women engaging with investing concepts in communities that had not previously existed — is the kind of impact that most financial literacy programmes aim for and rarely achieve.
10- Effie Zahos – Money Editor at 9News
Effie Zahos is one of Australia’s most recognised financial commentators, appearing regularly across 9News, A Current Affair, Today and Today Extra as 9News Money Editor. Her role puts everyday money questions, from mortgage rates to cost-of-living pressures, in front of a national broadcast audience.
Before television, she spent years as editor of Money magazine, building the editorial foundation for her current commentary. She is also Director and Money Commentator at InvestSMART, an ambassador for Canstar, and a published author, with her financial advice available in print as well as on screen.
That combination, decades of editorial experience, an active broadcast presence, and a body of published work, is what makes her commentary carry weight beyond any single platform or post.
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