155. Couples and Money: How to Stop Waiting for Your Partner to Get on Board

Are you waiting for your partner to get on board before you fully step into your financial life?

What might shift if you stopped waiting—and started leading your own transformation?

What if the thing holding you back financially isn’t your partner—but the belief that you need them to change first?

In this episode, I share a perspective that can feel both confronting and incredibly freeing: waiting for your partner to get on board with money work is a limiting pattern.

I walk through why making someone else the reason you can’t move forward is one of the sneakiest ways we give our power away—and how this pattern is often rooted in our own survival wiring.

We explore what’s actually possible when you take full ownership of your relationship with money, regardless of what your partner is or isn’t doing. Because the truth is, you don’t need your partner’s buy-in to create meaningful financial change.

And at the same time, I also share how powerful it can be when couples do come into alignment—not through pressure or ultimatums, but through invitation, embodiment, and trust.

This episode is really about shifting from waiting… to leading. From needing external permission… to reclaiming your own agency.

Because when you change your relationship with money, it doesn’t just impact you—it has the potential to transform the entire dynamic of your relationship.

“Waiting for your partner to get on board is a limiting money pattern.” –Kate Northrup

“Anytime we make someone else the reason we can’t have what we want, we are giving our power away.” –Kate Northrup

🎤 Let’s Dive into the Good Stuff on Plenty 🎤

00:00 Introduction to Plenty and Relaxed Money
02:32 You Don't Need Your Partner to Do the Work
04:59 Waiting for Your Partner: Limiting Patterns and Secondary Gain
07:17 Meeting Your Edge: Practices, Sequencing and Nervous System Work
09:37 Couples' Success Stories and Program Benefits
13:15 How to Invite Your Partner Without Pushing
14:19 Practical Conversation Steps and Money Date Suggestions
17:40 Commit to Your Own Work and Lead by Example
19:14 Program Results, CTA and Closing

Links and Resources:

Couples Guide
Relaxed Money

When Does Money Actually Feel Good?

I’ve watched a pattern play out for years—and I know you’ve felt it, too.

Making good money doesn’t automatically make you good with money.

Even as my income increased, the stress didn’t disappear. There was still that low-grade pressure. That quiet hum of not-enough. I kept asking myself: When do I finally get to exhale?

I know I’m not alone in that.

I’ve worked with brilliant, high-capacity people — earning anywhere from $50K to $300M—who are still walking around feeling uneasy every time they open their banking app. Guilty when they spend on themselves. Confused about where the money actually goes. Like they should have figured this out by now. Successful on the outside, but not truly resourced on the inside.

More money alone doesn’t fix this.

Because money isn’t just math—it’s an ecosystem. And if the architecture underneath isn’t designed to support wealth, more income just amplifies the pressure.

So what actually works?

Good With Money is a 3-day live experience designed to help you upgrade the system beneath your financial life — so money can finally feel as good as it looks.

Day 1: Audit Your Hidden Money Ecosystem

Identify where your system is strong, where it’s leaking, and whether it’s currently built for survival or for expansion.

Day 2: Install Financial Infrastructure

Strengthen the foundation beneath your money so it can come in, stay, and grow — sustainably.

Day 3: Your Relaxed Money Roadmap

Walk away with a clear, structured plan for the kind of expansion your system can actually support.

This happens once a year.

If you’re ready to stop managing money from pressure — and start experiencing it from a place of safety, clarity, and real support — this is your moment.

More money isn’t the answer. A stewarded system is.

Register now.

Replays are available for a limited time.

Related Episode:

Recalibration Series Episode 1: How to Increase Income Without Increasing Pressure (150)
Recalibration Series Episode 2: The Hidden Money Ecosystem – And What State Yours Is In (151)
Recalibration Series Episode 3: The Subtle Money Leads that Shape Your Life (And What to Shift First) (152)
Recalibration Series Episode 4: The Architecture of Healthy Financial Overflow — And How Your Money Starts Supporting You with The Wealth Stewardship Pyramid (153)

What is Plenty with Kate Northrup?

What if you could get more of what you want in life? But not through pushing, forcing, or pressure.

You can.

When it comes to money, time, and energy, no one’s gonna turn away more.

And Kate Northrup, Bestselling Author of Money: A Love Story and Do Less and host of Plenty, is here to help you expand your capacity to receive all of the best.

As a Money Empowerment OG who’s been at it for nearly 2 decades, Kate’s the abundance-oriented best friend you may not even know you’ve always needed.

Pull up a chair every week with top thought leaders, luminaries, and adventurers to learn how to have more abundance with ease.

Kate Northrup: 00:00

The best part hasn't even been the money. It's that we're now on the same page when it comes to money. Waiting for your partner to get on board is a limiting money pattern that you have. Be the one to start and see the miracles that transpire. Welcome to Plenty, a weekly recalibration of power, money, and safety for high capacity humans.

Kate Northrup: 00:26

I'm Kate Northrup, best selling author and creator of Relaxed Money, and this is where neuroscience meets ancient wisdom meets real wealth strategy. This is the sacred conversation at the intersection of money, the body, and the life you're truly here to live. If you're ready to reimagine what's possible for yourself and for the world, you're in the right place. Let's go. Today, we are talking about couples and money, and specifically getting your partner on board with money work.

Kate Northrup: 01:03

Whether it's sitting down to actually look at your finances, whether it's more of the inner work around abundance and expanding our capacity to receive and moving out of scarcity, whether it's simply getting on the same page with your goals and your dreams, whatever it is, today we are talking about the opportunities that exist with money and couples around money. So I will say first that one of the most thrilling parts of running the Relax Money program is that I hear so frequently from people who say, yes. We've made more money. Yes. We've paid off debt.

Kate Northrup: 01:44

Yes. We've grown our net worth. We're investing. We're we're living so many of our financial dreams. However, the best part hasn't even been the money.

Kate Northrup: 01:54

It's that we're now on the same page when it comes to money. We're now moving towards a shared vision. We're having the most productive, even connected, even romantic money conversations that we've had in ten years of marriage, twenty years of marriage, thirty years of marriage, forty years of marriage. The healing that happens in couples as a result of doing money work together astounds me, thrills me beyond belief, and is something that I actually never set out with an intention of with this program. It is a natural byproduct of doing this work.

Kate Northrup: 02:35

And I wanna be very clear. You do not need to get your partner on board in order to get results with your own money work. Your partner doesn't have to have anything to do with it. You are fully sovereign. You are fully able to get incredible results by stepping into your own money work and healing your nervous system around it and upgrading your money systems and stepping into greater power and financial stewardship.

Kate Northrup: 03:06

So just know that partners do not need to get on board for you to be able to win in this regard. That being said, the results can absolutely amplify when and if your partner should decide to join you in these pursuits in their own unique way. Because it's really important to understand that any couple, whether we're in a same sex partnership, a heterosexual hub couple, whatever, any partnership is going to have two different kinds of people. And it's impossible that you're gonna relate to money in the exact same way that your partner relates to money, and therefore, their journey around upgrading their financial life and their relationship with money is gonna be really different than yours. And it's very important that you allow them to have their own journey and that you not try to get them to do it like you.

Kate Northrup: 04:04

My friend Chris Carr always says, and I quote her all the time, the only time we can change someone else is when they're in diapers. So if you're trying to get your partner to be a different way, I'm just gonna say cut that out now because you will both end up feeling frustrated and disconnected. What I hear a lot is some version of the following. And by the way, we created a guide for getting your partner on board over at relaxedmoney.com/couples. So if this is something that's been on your heart and on your mind, head over there and grab the guide.

Kate Northrup: 04:42

But I'm gonna give you a bit of an overview today, and this podcast episode could be considered a companion to the guide, or the guide could be considered a companion to this episode. And, of course, the link will be in the show notes. So we hear some version of the following. My husband won't let me spend the money. My partner doesn't believe in this kind of thing.

Kate Northrup: 04:59

I'd love to do this, but I need to get them on board first. What I wanna say very clearly is this. Waiting to step up and waiting to step in to transforming your relationship with money, waiting for your partner to get on board is a limiting money pattern that you have. So anytime we make someone else or something else outside of us the reason we can't have what we want, we are giving our power away, and we are staying small. So if you're giving the reason, I can't do this because my partner won't x y z, then you're essentially giving your power away.

Kate Northrup: 05:45

And what you can do instead is take a look at that and ask this question. What do I get to get out of doing or looking at or addressing by making my partner the reason that I don't get to do this? Said another way, what's your secondary gain? So our secondary gain is when we want to do a new habit or we wanna change something about our life, but despite our quote, unquote best efforts, we don't actually do the thing that would be required to have that transformation, it is often because there's a secondary gain. And the secondary gain is that you get to not do something, or you get to keep doing something, or you get to avoid looking at something, or addressing something, or tending to something by not doing the thing that you say you want.

Kate Northrup: 06:36

So as an example, a secondary gain of saying, well, I can't do relaxed money because my partner isn't onboard with it. The secondary gain of that might be you get to stay in limitation and essentially allowing your child self to run your financial show, which allows you to not need to grow your capacity. It allows you to get out of being a financial adult, and it allows you to stay in a lack of maturation around that area of your life. And I'll tell you what, I have seen this over and over and over again with like a 100% of the people I've worked with. When you actually start to address the thing you've been avoiding, whether it's looking at your numbers, whether it's starting to charge what you know you need to charge, whether it's increasing your prices, whether it's leaning in more heavily to upgrading your marketing in your business so that you can make more money, whether it's, you know, beginning to invest or working with a new financial adviser or whatever it is.

Kate Northrup: 07:50

When you actually do that and you meet the edge, you meet your edge where you've previously been like, oh, this feels scary. But when you meet that edge and you stay with yourself, and by the way, we have sequencing specifically for these moments inside Relax Money, like we have practices and sequencing so you know how to meet these moments where you're at your edge with love and compassion and with power, and then when you expand into a fuller version of yourself, wow. The power you feel when you learn what you're made of cannot be overstated. It is so profound. It will completely change your life, and I want that experience for you.

Kate Northrup: 08:38

I want that experience for absolutely everyone in the world. The experience where they were playing small, and then they met themselves there. They stayed with them. They walked themselves past their edge, and now they have access to more capacity and more power than ever before. That's what happens when we fully commit to transforming our relationship with money regardless of what our partner is or isn't doing.

Kate Northrup: 09:10

So I will just say one of the sneakiest ways our survival wiring keeps us from changing is making our partner the reason you can't move forward because then you don't have to do things that make you uncomfortable. But I promise you, within the Relaxed Money community, it is so much easier. It is so much yummier. It feels so much safer because you have all the support and the tools and the sequencing so you know what to do first, second, and third. We have so many stories inside Relaxed Money of one partner doing the work, and then the other partner's financial life transforming as well.

Kate Northrup: 09:45

So one of them is Dave and Shana. They say it's like Dave and Shana two point o. There's an aliveness, a freshness, a newness to our relationship that has all the great things about when we first got together. There's hope for me and money, and there is a link to their case study. But what I wanna say is we also have people like Annette who did this money work, and her her partner wasn't even involved.

Kate Northrup: 10:09

But then all of a sudden, he started making all this money, and he paid off a bunch of debt, and he started making a much bigger income. I hear stories like that all the time because when the ecosystem shifts inside a partnership, inside a couple, it shifts for everyone, not just the person who has stepped fully into this work. And so I really love that. So I really wanna be clear. The your partner is not the obstacle.

Kate Northrup: 10:33

Your survival wiring is. And it really can feel like a legitimate constraint, but what's also true is that making your partner responsible for your financial healing is a very convincing story that our survival limited wiring tells us, because if it's their fault, we don't have to change, and we get to stay the same and call it their problem. So ask yourself, am I waiting for practical reasons, or am I using my partner as the reason I get to stay small? Now I also will say, and I already said this again, but I'm gonna say it, your partner does not need to get on board for you to have incredible results in this work, whether it's within Relax Money and you decide to join us inside this program or whether it's in anything that you are doing, whether it's your own spiritual journey, whether it's a health journey, your partner does not need to get on board in order for you to have incredible results. When one person in a relationship genuinely shifts their relationship with money, their beliefs, their body's response to it, their relationship to receiving, the energetic field of the entire relationship shifts, and you becoming more relaxed about money doesn't threaten your partner.

Kate Northrup: 11:47

It actually opens up a new possibility for both of you like it did with Sadiya. So she said, my husband and I stopped fighting about money with Relax Money, and this was after she did twice as many sales during the holiday season when usually that's their lowest season. She said, we couldn't even talk about it, and he was in total avoidance. But we're a team in abundance now. Relax Money didn't just save my business, it saved my marriage and made us fall in love all over again.

Kate Northrup: 12:14

Or we have Carolyn who said, this program changed the way my spouse and I talk about money. We were on very different pages, and it was typically a source of argument, and we're now making plans to build a new home, which I never thought was possible. Or we have Anne who says, after twenty six years of looking away from our finances, my husband and I now have a shared picture of all of our accounts, and it's bringing us closer together. Or Annette, who I already mentioned, who said, I saw such a difference, not in me, but in him. It was like the information was coming through osmosis.

Kate Northrup: 12:49

After Relax Money, he got a promotion. Money started flowing in, and he took us on vacation with his own money. I love that. Okay. So now that we've established that you can have an incredible experience with or without your partner, and that you fully stepping in and doing your own work and taking responsibility for your own side of the sidewalk may very well also change your partner's life by accident.

Kate Northrup: 13:15

And by the way, there's a great story of that on the podcast with Lizzie Langston and her amazing partner, Abe Langston. So keep an eye out for that case study. I think that's gonna be coming up later on this week. So how can you invite your partner into this work without pushing? I will tell you, using an ultimatum is definitely not the move.

Kate Northrup: 13:37

Being whiny or naggy is definitely not the move, and being disapproving of how your partner is or isn't with money is definitely not the move. If you're coming at this from resentment or expectation or an imperative of you must, it is not going to work well. So I'm gonna really recommend that if you do want your partner to join you in Relax Money, and by the way, if you have a shared household and you have two people in a romantic partnership living under the same roof, you don't need to pay for a second person to have their tuition. They just get to join you for the price of one romantic partnership, which is one of, I think, the best features of the program. So first, open your heart before you open your mouth.

Kate Northrup: 14:23

Find yourself in a place where your body feels safe. So if you need to take a walk, hug a tree, do some grounding, take a dance break, do some breath work, do one of our nervous system healing practices. We teach many of them inside Relax Money. Do that first, and make a list mentally or even better on a piece of paper of all the things you appreciate about your partner. I promise you when you come to this conversation with an open heart, with a body that feels safe, and with appreciation in your field, it's gonna go so much better.

Kate Northrup: 15:03

Now let love be where you're speaking from, and speak from a place of vulnerability too. This does not have to be, I have this idea. I want you on board with it. This is what we're gonna do. It can really be from a something like this.

Kate Northrup: 15:18

I've been thinking about what I want for us, and I want us to be building something together, a real financial life that reflects what we care about. I'd love for you to be part of this with me. That can be a beautiful invitation. So this is an invitation. Just like, hey, babe.

Kate Northrup: 15:34

There's this new Thai place in town. I'd love to try it out. Do you wanna go with me? Like, you can really invite from that place. You wanna make it specific and flexible.

Kate Northrup: 15:45

So instead of I think you should do this with me, try would you be open to sitting down together on Sunday afternoons for a couple of months? It's flexible, and some money dates we do on our own, and some we do together. So allowing them again to do it in their way or to do a small amount. Maybe they're not gonna do all 13 money dates with you. Maybe they would will be willing to start with one, and then let the work speak for itself.

Kate Northrup: 16:13

The most powerful invitation you can ever make is to simply begin, and then let your partner witness what has shifted in you. The work really speaks for itself. You don't have to. So Dave said, I really didn't wanna do relaxed money. I did this because I love my wife, and I love our relationship, and I want it to be the best it can possibly be.

Kate Northrup: 16:35

The hardest thing in our relationship was money. And then Alison said, I just told my husband what I was learning. He didn't take no for an answer from the banks, and we went from 3 to $4,000 a month for a decade to 9 to $20,000 a month. Relax money is amazing. I tell everyone about it.

Kate Northrup: 16:54

We also have Brian and Jeannie who I love. Brian said she was in receiving mode, ready when I was. Because she wasn't a threat, I was able to show up, and we were able to do things with our finances we hadn't done in forty years. And Jeannie said, I wasn't pushing. I just said, I'm ready when you are, and that created the space for everything to change.

Kate Northrup: 17:14

And then Kelsey said, my fiance said marriage wasn't possible without financial alignment. Now I know our numbers, and I paused a $10,000 purchase just from tuning into my body. We have the alignment he needed. So remember that two people building a life together with a shared clarity and financial purpose is a beautiful thing, and you do not have to wait for your partner to do it in the way you would. You don't have to wait for them to get on board with this particular program in some particular way on some particular timeline.

Kate Northrup: 17:47

Commit fully to doing your own work. And by the way, I think this is obvious. I've said it, but this applies whether we're talking about a program like Relax Money, whether we're talking about a meditation practice, whether we're talking about eating more vegetables, or starting a fitness routine, or anything that you would love your partner to do with you. The most powerful invitation is your own commitment, and the shift you make that will make it obvious that this work is working. Don't let them be the reason you don't get to have what you want because that's just your resistance preventing you from growing.

Kate Northrup: 18:28

Be the one to start, and see the miracles that transpire. So that is couples and money. That is getting your partner on board. I hope this was helpful for you. Again, you have your guide at relaxmoney.com/couples to help support you with this, and I hope we see you inside Relax Money.

Kate Northrup: 18:52

The doors are open right now, and you can go to relaxmoney.com to learn more. You can also check out the link in the show notes, and you can always send me a DM on Instagram to learn more. Thanks so much for listening, and remember, love and money do really mix well. If this episode resonated with you, that's a signal. Relax money is where we do the deeper work, integrating neuroscience, financial strategy, and nervous system healing.

Kate Northrup: 19:24

So your income doesn't just grow, it compounds. Inside this signature program, students have renegotiated assets for a $150,000 cash. They've doubled their income in six months, and they've closed on 7 figure acquisitions. That kind of change doesn't come from pushing harder. It comes from upgrading the systems underneath your money.

Kate Northrup: 19:49

If you're ready for that kind of experience, the link is in the show notes, or you can go to relaxedmoney.com.