A significant portion of Canadians are struggling in relationships, in part due to money, what can advisors do?
Money can break up couples. It’s almost a cliché. In common divorce statistics, financial issues of some kind are cited just after the ‘big three’ reasons for divorce: communication issues, commitment issues, and infidelity. A US study by Experian in 2025 found that 27 per cent of Americans have had relationships end due to their own or their partner’s financial issues. The FP Canada Financial Stress Index from that same year found that 17 per cent of Canadians have reported marriage and relationship problems due to money. 13 per cent report family disputes over finances.
In Jackie Porter’s view, nobody is immune from the relationship stresses that money can bring. Across the spectrum of income and net worth, the Financial Advisor and Certified Financial Planner at Team Jackie Porter of iA Private Wealth sees money posing risks for couples because, at a fundamental level, money is emotional for people.
“It’s just one of those emotional triggers. And those emotional triggers are often unconscious because they might start in childhood when we learn, or don’t learn, from our parents, either with what they said or what they didn’t say, what they did or what they didn’t do,” Porter says.
Porter has seen how those family dynamics and unspoken emotional triggers can carry through into relationships. She notes the example of one client whose father was a gambler. He had a feast and famine relationship with money. That client, despite working in a profession known for lean times and fat times, is now hyper-aware of the need to rein in spending and build a moat. Everyone has an emotional relationship with money, the trouble comes when two people with two distinct relationships with money get married.
For Porter, the struggles can come when couples encounter real money issues that they differ on significantly. One could be more focused on paying down debt, while the other prefers to invest. While a rational-minded advisor might just see that as a clear pros and cons argument, Porter says that the emotional weight behind each stance can turn a simple choice of where to allocate excess funds into a deep and existential conflict for the couple.
We get so emotional about money, Porter says, because “we’re not trained to be financially literate.” People have unconscious triggers associated with their past that can overtake any rational discussion about money. Financial literacy education, she argues, provides the tools to root that conversation in rational concepts that are well understood. She hears from clients, as she works to give them these tools, that she should call her work “financial therapy,” not financial planning.
Planners and advisors can be crucial actors in these moments, Porter explains, because they offer an objective source of rational information. When building plans for fraught family situations, Porter says she ensures she’s not taking sides nor is the blaming and shaming anybody. Her allegiance, she says, is to the couple as a unit and her goal is to help the couple arrive at the best financial outcome for themselves.
That outcome is not always a pure focus on paying down debts and accruing assets. Porter notes that for some clients, especially high earners, she may encourage them to spend more, to live something closer to their dream lifestyles. She says that many of the successful women that she serves have accrued millions in savings because they’re so concerned with the prospect of living in poverty. Showing them that their money will outlive them, she says, can open up a conversation about spending.
When she works with couples, Porter tries to align both parties on their shared goals. Having those goals fully articulated can allow porter to understand what her clients want and where their emotional triggers around money might lie. In finding those shared goals, she tries to build in explicit space for individual goals. Keeping some accounts separate, she says, can help the individuals in a couple engage with money the way they know how, without triggering an emotional response from the other.
The crucial task for advisors in working with couples, Porter says, is to understand them fully without making assumptions. “Shut up and listen,” she says, adding that the host of AI tools now available to advisors make deep listening and engagement all the easier, safe in the knowledge that the conversation will be recorded. That engagement, she says, will be rewarded with a deeper relationship, with a more robust financial plan, and with clients who don’t go down the extremely expensive road of divorce.
“As advisors we take a really key role in our clients’ lives. These are the ways that AI cannot replace us. As far as I’m concerned. If you have a really good rapport with a couple and they trust you,, they’re more likely to follow your advice,” Porter says. “If they trust you and they feel like you can actually offer value in financial counseling, they are more likely to trust you, they’re more likely to follow your advice, they’re more likely to refer you and then you have the opportunity as well to make more of an impact.”
