An adviser’s guide to navigating rands, sense, and relationships

Sanlam’s 2025 Financial Confidence Index reveals that only 33% of South Africans say they don’t feel scared or self-conscious talking about money. This means almost two-thirds still find “money talk” awkward or taboo. With February celebrating the month of love, the conversation around how couples communicate about money feels especially relevant.

In that context, when couples fight about money, they’re rarely arguing about rands and cents alone. They’re dealing with past experiences, unspoken expectations, and often, entirely different Money Personalities: the deeply ingrained ways each partner thinks and feels about money. Sanlam identifies seven distinct Money Personalities – the Prepared Protector, High-Stakes Achiever, Adventurous Enthusiast, Calculated Planner, Relaxed Planner, Spontaneous Buyer, and Generous Guardian – each reflecting a unique relationship with money.

Financial advisers, this is where the job quietly shifts from technical expert to something that looks a lot like a referee, coach, and translator rolled into one.

Money Personalities, from the cautious Prepared Protector to the freedom-loving Spontaneous Buyer, show just how differently two people in the same relationship can experience money. Unless those differences are named and understood, they can affect the quality and sustainability of financial plans. If partners can’t talk honestly about how much they earn, spend, save, and invest, then even the best financial strategies can unravel.

Same team, different playbooks

Each Money Personality comes with strengths to be harnessed and blind spots to be managed. Consider a couple where one partner is a Generous Guardian, who wants to be the safety net for everyone they love, and the other is a High-Stakes Achiever, single-mindedly focused on building wealth.

Without a shared language, the Achiever might see the Guardian’s constant helping as sabotaging long-term goals, while the Guardian may feel the Achiever is hard-hearted or obsessed with money. The real issue isn’t that one is right and the other is wrong; it’s that they’ve never been helped to see how their hard-wired money traits collide.

It’s here that an adviser can help couples understand their Money Personalities, giving them a neutral framework and vocabulary. Instead of “you’re irresponsible” or “you’re too controlling”, the conversation shifts to “this is my money personality, this is yours, and this is how we can work together.

Why advisers can’t ignore the couple dynamic

In practice, many advisers still predominantly deal with one partner, often the higher earner or the person who traditionally “handles the money”. This is a risk. Time and again, we see situations where one partner passes away, and the surviving spouse has absolutely no idea where the money is, how it’s invested, what’s still owed, or even who to call.

Beyond bereavement, misaligned expectations often only surface late in life. One spouse may be planning a quiet, frugal retirement, while the other secretly imagines extensive travel, helping adult children, or starting a late-life business. An adviser misses these vital insights when they only ever engage one half of the couple.

Practical tools for healthier money conversations

Advisers looking to help couples understand themselves, each other, and the trade-offs behind their financial decisions can start by asking both partners to complete a Money Personality questionnaire before a joint meeting. This helps the adviser gain objective insights into how each partner thinks, feels, and behaves around money. This also helps establish a foundation to:

• Assign money “positions” based on strengths and stories. Instead of simply handing one partner the spreadsheet and the other the big decisions, invite them to talk about where they feel confident and where they feel out of their depth. The Calculated Planner might take the lead on budgeting and risk management, while the High-Stakes Achiever helps evaluate growth opportunities.
• Unpack childhood money stories. Many flashpoints in the present are rooted in the past, like the home where money was never discussed, where every rand was monitored, or where debt was normalised. Simple, coaching-style questions (such as “What did you learn about money growing up?”) help partners see that they’re often fighting their inherited money scripts.
• Encourage “financial date nights”. Suggest that couples schedule regular, distraction-free check-ins where they review goals, celebrate wins, and talk about what’s keeping them up at night financially.
• Anchor everything in a shared vision.Once the couple understands their personalities and stories, guide them through crafting a joint financial vision: What do we want life to look like in 10, 20, 30 years, and what individual dreams do we want to protect along the way?

Turning conflict into collaboration

Ultimately, helping couples navigate money clashes isn’t about blowing the whistle on who’s right or wrong. It’s about giving them the insight, structure, and support to move from opposition to collaboration.

* Coetzer is the general manager of distribution strategy at Sanlam.

PERSONAL FINANCE