Sonya Lutter — The Intersection of Love and Money with Sonya Lutter

[00:00:00] Sonya Lutter: Something like 50% of couples don’t talk about money before they’re married, and about 12% of them don’t talk about money ever. I can really think about one out of every 10 couples, which would fit the statistic where they keep all money separately, they have separate bank accounts. And so I think it’s very plausible that there are 12% of couples out there who just don’t talk about money. When couples keep joint accounts, their relationship satisfaction is higher. So the more joint accounts they have, the higher the relationship satisfaction they have. And so are those 12% of people happy in the relationship?

[00:00:38] Intro: Do you think money takes up more life space than it should? On this show, we discuss with and share stories from artists, authors, entrepreneurs, and advisors about how they mindfully minimize the time and energies. Spent thinking about money. Join your host, Jonathan [00:01:00] DeYoe, and learn how to put money in its place and get more out of life.

[00:01:11] Jonathan DeYoe: Hey, welcome back on this episode of the Mindful Money Podcast.

[00:01:14] Jonathan DeYoe: I’m chatting with Dr. Sonya Lutter. Sonya is the inaugural director of the Financial Health and Wellness at the School of Financial Planning.

[00:01:23] Jonathan DeYoe: She leads curriculum and continuing education in the areas of financial psychology, financial therapy, and financial behavior, all things we talk about on a pretty regular basis here. Sonya is also the owner of ENLITE.world, a research and training consultancy firm for financial planners and therapists. I love that combo, we’ll talk some about that. Work is featured in major news outlets, including New York Times, Wall Street Journal, lots of other things. She draws upon decades of experience in academia to apply theory to practice. Her developmental work in financial therapy is summarized in Financial Therapy: Theory, [00:02:00] Research, and Practice, with co-editors, Drs Brad Klontz and Kristy Archuleta. Dr. Lutter’s work in financial wellness involves multidisciplinary teams to focus on food insecurity, relational dynamics as it relates to money, and I wanted to have her on the podcast to talk about her work and her book, Love & Money: 15 exercises to strengthen your relationship. Sonya, welcome to the Mindful Money Podcast.

[00:02:25] Sonya Lutter: Thank you so much. I’m so excited to see where the conversation takes us today.

[00:02:29] Jonathan DeYoe: It’s gonna be fun. First, uh, where do you call home and where are you connecting from?

[00:02:34] Sonya Lutter: Yes. So in the lovely introduction and very long introduction that you gave of me, the one part that you didn’t mention is I am the Director of Financial Health and Wellness at Texas Tech University. So. that is where I work, but I reside in Kansas and so it’s a little bit confusing for people of why I live in Kansas and I’m very lucky to have a remote [00:03:00] position, so I live right here in the middle of the United States of America.

[00:03:05] Jonathan DeYoe: Did you grow up there?

[00:03:06] Sonya Lutter: I did grow up here.

[00:03:08] Sonya Lutter: Not so much of a destination state, but it’s, it’s not that bad.

[00:03:15] Jonathan DeYoe: , , you know, growing up, you grew up in Kansas, what’d you grow up learning about money and entrepreneurship?

[00:03:20] Sonya Lutter: Yeah, so I grew up in a really small town. Um,, farming was the primary industry, so my grandparents were custom harvesters. Are you familiar with this term?

[00:03:32] Sonya Lutter: Yeah, so they cut other people’s fields. So they would harvest wheat

[00:03:37] Jonathan DeYoe: Oh, sure.

[00:03:38] Sonya Lutter: and they would drive down to Texas and then they would make their way up to South Dakota, I think even North Dakota sometimes. So for me that was very normal, that this was their livelihood. They spent pretty much early spring through fall on the road as their. Income, that’s what they [00:04:00] did. , and that’s kind of an unusual way to think about life. I, I have come to realize

[00:04:05] Sonya Lutter: outside of Kansas, that’s not so normal. , it’s really not even all that common within Kansas. So I suppose from an early childhood, that’s kind of what, , my perceptions of money were. But I also grew up in this very small town, so having multiple jobs was not uncommon. So I had multiple summer jobs and then even jobs throughout the school year. And then I went to college and I thought I was gonna be a speech pathologist and I wanted to work with deaf children because I had met this deaf girl who I just really adored at a summer camp, and I was a camp counselor there.

[00:04:48] Sonya Lutter: And it was just a really fun experience to see how much she enjoyed life and she. She was just a real inspiration for me, and I went and I even shadowed some teachers who [00:05:00] were also working in speech pathology. Then I got to college and I did not fail out of the classes, but I self-selected myself out of those classes because it was clearly not gonna work out for me. And then I, but I still really loved working with people and I loved the education element of it. And that’s how I found my way into financial planning. So really financial planning as a profession had nothing to do with my childhood per se,

[00:05:30] Sonya Lutter: but just happen chance that the classes happened to be next to these other science classes that I

[00:05:36] Sonya Lutter: was taking.

[00:05:37] Jonathan DeYoe: It sounds like your experience with, , speech pathology is similar to my experience with microbiology. Right.

[00:05:43] Jonathan DeYoe: Not my, not my wick. At the end of the day, let let other people do that. That’s,

[00:05:48] Sonya Lutter: Yes. Yeah.

[00:05:49] Jonathan DeYoe: that stuff. , so I, I’m curious. , so I’m from South Dakota, so I do, I do.

[00:05:54] Sonya Lutter: Oh yeah.

[00:05:55] Jonathan DeYoe: had a ranch and so I, I do remember my dad telling stories about, and I , didn’t know the term [00:06:00] about how one family would have, , a wheat field and they would hire somebody else to come in and actually harvest the wheat. And so that’s what your parents did,

[00:06:08] Sonya Lutter: My grandparents. Yeah.

[00:06:09] Jonathan DeYoe: did they do it together?

[00:06:11] Sonya Lutter: Oh yeah. Yeah. It was a whole family thing. They had six kids and all eight of them would load up every summer and go do this

[00:06:19] Jonathan DeYoe: Wow. Okay.

[00:06:20] Sonya Lutter: isn’t.

[00:06:21] Jonathan DeYoe: It is very interesting. , and on the road, I, I just pictured from my own upbringing that it was the. Usually the father and the eldest son that would go out. My dad was the second and they lived on a ranch and he was the second eldest son, and he would stay in the house with mom and cook and help mom, but eldest son would go out and the other kids would all go sort of crazy.

[00:06:42] Jonathan DeYoe: Uh, you know, this is a ranch.

[00:06:44] Sonya Lutter: hold on. We gotta stop on South Dakota for a minute because this is where my husband is from

[00:06:49] Sonya Lutter: and Right. So if it’s South Dakota, you must know each other.

[00:06:55] Sonya Lutter: He is from Northeast, South Dakota, so near

[00:06:59] Jonathan DeYoe: lin.[00:07:00]

[00:07:00] Sonya Lutter: Aberdeen, that area.

[00:07:02] Jonathan DeYoe: Okay. , so, , I’m from Southwest, so I’m from Rapid City, but I dated a girl in Lon, South Dakota, which which is a, which was a, um dairy farm, a dairy farm area

[00:07:12] Sonya Lutter: Oh fun.

[00:07:16] Jonathan DeYoe: back.

[00:07:16] Sonya Lutter: past girlfriend.

[00:07:18] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. Hmm. No, no, no. Let’s not, let’s not go there. , , so can, can you name like an experience with your parents when you were very young, , that might have become integral to your money story, or as we’ll talk about in a bit your money scripts. I.

[00:07:32] Sonya Lutter: Yeah, I don’t know that it was my parents per se, but an experience that was very memorable for me, and one that I’ve talked about before is, I don’t know how old I was, maybe let’s say 12. For the sake of putting a number on it and old enough to where I had some money, but not a lot of money from birthdays or other gifts of whatever sort. And I had it in an actual piggy bank in my [00:08:00] room, and my sister had a friend over and she stole my money from my piggy bank. And I don’t know how many dollars it was. It felt like a million dollars because that’s all I had. And she took all of it. And I remember telling my mom about it and she was just like, oh, that happens. And I was like, oh, like this is everything I own. It’s all gone. And so there wasn’t a lot of sympathy for that experience that I had been through. And for me that was really impactful for, and I. I. seriously couldn’t even imagine how many dollars it was, like who, maybe it was $12 or something. And so that would explain her reaction of, oh, that happens sometimes.

[00:08:45] Sonya Lutter: But for me

[00:08:46] Sonya Lutter: it did a lot and I think that was very impactful for me, recognizing that it doesn’t, the dollar doesn’t matter as much as what that experience was like for me as a [00:09:00] person.

[00:09:00] Jonathan DeYoe: Hmm. The attachment to the dollar, not the

[00:09:02] Sonya Lutter: Yes.

[00:09:03] Jonathan DeYoe: Yes. Oh, beautiful. before we get into the book. , you kind of already described it, but how was your, what was your early career like in, in financial planning and becoming a CFP? , and was it always academic or were you practitioner

[00:09:16] Sonya Lutter: I was actually a practitioner first, but not in financial planning. So my first professional job was in therapy, so I

[00:09:25] Sonya Lutter: got ready to graduate in financial planning and realized I wasn’t so sure how I was going to work with couples with conflict that they might come in with. And again, my life tends to revolve around.

[00:09:39] Sonya Lutter: One door was next to the other door, literally. And so next to my financial planning class was a poster for. Marriage and family therapy for graduate school. And this was in my last semester. So I’m sitting there in the hallway before my capstone class looking at this poster. I was like, maybe that’s what I’m [00:10:00] supposed to be doing. So I got my graduate degree and marriage and family therapy. And after I finished that, I, , worked in a private practice and then I. Preschool facility, which seems a little bit removed, but it was a preschool facility as the mental health coordinator.

[00:10:19] Sonya Lutter: And largely they wanted me because I could talk about financial issues with the parents. mental health issues were definitely part of that. But the financial element was really big for them too. Preschool is wildly expensive, children are wildly expensive, and so it was a really neat experience there. And then also working in private practice with your everyday clients, if you will.

[00:10:41] Sonya Lutter: Mostly couples, um, their struggles with money and, and that was really good. And then, several years later, I went and got my PhD and then pretty much academia since then.

[00:10:52] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, so one of the purposes of this podcast is to normalize this conversation about money, which that’s why we ask all kinda the [00:11:00] personal money questions in the beginning. , most of us feel like we’re pretty alone in these money issues, right? So, , whether that’s solo or issues within a couple. So can you rattle off a few of the survey statistics and let people know, you know, that they’re not alone.

[00:11:15] Jonathan DeYoe: , , how many people argue with their spouses about money? How many people feel like they’re not smart with money? Like these kinds of things.

[00:11:20] Sonya Lutter: , you’re putting me on the spot when you said specific statistics, so I’m gonna do general

[00:11:25] Jonathan DeYoe: Okay, perfect.

[00:11:26] Sonya Lutter: Okay. , I couldn’t tell you the exact percentage, but it is very high. Something like 50% of couples don’t talk about money before they’re married, and about 12% of them don’t talk about money ever. Okay. Imagine

[00:11:43] Sonya Lutter: 10

[00:11:43] Jonathan DeYoe: How.

[00:11:43] Sonya Lutter: couple friends. I know I have the same reaction. Like how is this even possible that you’re not talking about money? And I mean, if I struggle, I can really think about one out of every 10 couples, which would fit the statistic where they keep all money separately. They have separate bank [00:12:00] accounts and. I contribute X amount to the household bills, and I buy the groceries that I want. I can eat your groceries and you can eat my groceries, but I’m doing my grocery shopping and he’s doing his grocery shopping. And so I think it’s very plausible that there are 12% of couples out there who just don’t talk about money. . Having said that, this is some of my own research, and I think this is really impactful, that when couples keep joint accounts, their relationship satisfaction is higher. So the more joint accounts they have, the higher the relationship satisfaction they have. And so are those 12% of people happy in the relationship?

[00:12:44] Jonathan DeYoe: I’ve actually had couples ask me, you know, before they get married and I never have a solid answer for them. But you’re, I mean, the answer is you should, have joint accounts.

[00:12:52] Sonya Lutter: Yeah. , Scott Rick is somebody who’s done a lot of

[00:12:55] Sonya Lutter: research in this area. You should look up some of the Yeah. He is super fascinating [00:13:00] and they actually did this experimental study, which is really phenomenal to have a controlled to experiment, a controlled. Research study, looking at which one comes first.

[00:13:11] Sonya Lutter: Are they happy because they have joint accounts or are they happy and therefore they get the joint accounts? Like which one of these is coming first? And what they did is they. Had this group of people who were getting married, , so young people generally speaking, and , they told one third of these couples to put all of their money into joint accounts, don’t have anything separate. And then they told one third of the couples to keep everything separate and then don’t put anything together. they didn’t tell the third, the final third, anything they just said, you know, do what you want. We’re just gonna follow your relationship satisfaction. They followed them for two years, and after two years, the people who were told to put their money into joint accounts had a [00:14:00] higher relationship satisfaction than either two of those other groups, which is really significant.

[00:14:07] Sonya Lutter: And knowing that this is different than being told to keep it separate, but it’s also. More important to a person’s relation, a couple’s relationship satisfaction than just doing whatever they want. So I do think , that was very clear evidence. It could be a protective feature to keep joint accounts. Now. But hold on.

[00:14:27] Jonathan DeYoe: Go ahead.

[00:14:28] Sonya Lutter: The caveat

[00:14:29] Jonathan DeYoe: that everybody likes to review is, well, what if it’s a second marriage or a third marriage? Or what if there’s kids involved? And yes, I totally agree. There’s a lot of what if scenarios. This is for your typical first marriage. Joint accounts do seem to be a protective feature, if you will.

[00:14:50] Being told to do it and doing it two different things. So they were told to do it. Is there follow through to see that they did it.

[00:14:58] Sonya Lutter: Yeah.

[00:14:59] Sonya Lutter: Yep. Yep. [00:15:00] They were. Mm-hmm.

[00:15:02] Jonathan DeYoe: So how, how does the sense that , , I’m alone in these problems or, you know, as a couple, how does that reduce our collective wellbeing? How, how does that sort of come through?

[00:15:12] Sonya Lutter: Yeah, definitely the stress of money is big for couples and we do also see that people are not likely to divorce over money conflict. it is the number one type of conflict that couples divorce over, presumably on record, but I. Money arguments are more predictive of relationship satisfaction than divorce. Even more specifically. I did a longitudinal study and I looked at the amount that a couple argued about money in the beginning of their relationship and then followed them over time. And what we see is how much they argued at the very beginning of their relationship was more predictive of later relationship satisfaction. than how much they argued later. [00:16:00] Or an increase in arguments. So it really is that beginning of their relationship. Are we on the same page or not? So to your question of do they feel alone, are they even talking about if they feel alone or not? Do they have the same values? Do they have. Values that are parallel or that could work together or are their values so divergent that they feel like they’re living in their own islands and they can’t even have any sort of conversation about joint financial goals or our joint financial future because they feel alone.

[00:16:35] Sonya Lutter: And that certainly is a large portion of couples, especially early in the relationship because we’re not socialized to talk about money. You’re not supposed to ask me about my early. Memories about money. Definitely don’t ask me how much money I have or make,

[00:16:51] Sonya Lutter: like those are just off limits, right?

[00:16:53] Jonathan DeYoe: Right. I, you know, when I got married, both times I got married, I had this, uh, short course we went through, like [00:17:00] the first time was with the church. The second one was just the class we took together with like, we, we met as a group with other couples gonna get married three times or something like that.

[00:17:09] Jonathan DeYoe: , and it was a class to introduce difficult topics and one of the topics that was introduced was money.

[00:17:14] Jonathan DeYoe: Do people do that still? Do you know?

[00:17:16] Sonya Lutter: That’s what my book is all about. If you were bringing it

[00:17:18] Sonya Lutter: back around, I.

[00:17:19] Jonathan DeYoe: I definitely know. Yeah, that, but if the course exists, like if the pub,

[00:17:25] Sonya Lutter: I have not seen anything that is mass marketed in that way. Yes, there are definitely little pockets of what I would call more premarital financial counseling.

[00:17:35] Sonya Lutter: That is the element of traditional, we’re getting married of. What is all of this mean plus the financial element. , I don’t think that there’s any. Big organization that’s doing that on a large scale, but a couple’s guide to love and money is precisely meant to be for that. And, and really, I did a lot of research with this and all sorts of different couples. Couples who are getting married, [00:18:00] couples newly married, and couples who had been married for many years, decades, and. Across the board, the couples had not been exposed to these types of conversations before, and so just the element of having somebody ask them about their earliest money, memory and what that meant for them, it was really pivotal. in their relationship satisfaction and their financial satisfaction.

[00:18:26] Jonathan DeYoe: So how, how do you recommend people, , go through it? They get two copies of the book. They each answer it separately and then they talk about it. Or do you get one copy of the book and just kind of sit together and. You know, read the question and kind of talk about the answer or what’s the best way to, really engage the book for couples, do you think?

[00:18:41] Sonya Lutter: Yeah, the way I designed it was for each person to have their own book.

[00:18:46] Jonathan DeYoe: Got

[00:18:46] Sonya Lutter: But, there was some pushback in that a little bit. So you can buy just one book and there are pages where you can tear it out of the book and you can each do it separately. But what you’ve suggested of each doing the activities separately and [00:19:00] then coming together really is the key thing.

[00:19:02] Sonya Lutter: And because you don’t want to feel like you’re on the defense right there. Like people need time to process. You and I have talked about and thought about our money memories because that’s what we do, but the average person that would take some time and sitting there and feeling pressured to have to come up with something is a lot, and it may not be the authentic answer for you, and not because you were trying to not be transparent, just because it takes some time to go back through time and think about those things.

[00:19:34] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. What sort of feedback do you get? I realize there’s some pushback about Yeah, I gotta buy two books, but, , what other feedback have you gotten from couples that have gone through it and, did you do like a, a book tour where you were with people and they were talking about it and, oh my God, this is so great.

[00:19:49] Jonathan DeYoe: Or, you know, we didn’t really do the exercises or what, what’d you, what’d you hear?

[00:19:53] Sonya Lutter: I did not do a book tour. That’s really not my personality at all. If somebody else [00:20:00] wants to run with it, they sure can and I think that would be super fun for them. , but I have asked people what they’ve thought about the book and asked them for quotes that I can use, and it’s been so fun to see what they say because it is. Very nerve wracking to ask for that because they might have thought it was crap or they might be lying to you. But you can also see the authenticity of some of the responses. And there was this one couple I worked with that, they were just so great and they submitted a nice little write up saying that this really changed their life in a difficult point and time for them and. There was just different job changes that were happening for one of the partners and for the other one. To be able to be there, present and hear those concerns of the other partner and then also for them to work together on some solutions was, pretty neat. these were interesting conversations that we’ve never had before.

[00:20:59] Sonya Lutter: That’s a [00:21:00] very common response of like, we kind of. There’s fun couple books or like card games or things like that where you can get to know your partner and it’s like, who’s your best friend? What’s your favorite food? What’s your ideal vacation? And those are all lovely things. I definitely recommend them, but when you have to make it into something so personal as money, that doesn’t happen very often.

[00:21:26] Sonya Lutter: So I think where a lot of people, it was both nerve wracking to enter into that, but also worthwhile.

[00:21:34] Jonathan DeYoe: I’m kind of reticent to ask this question, but I’m, just curious. I. Did you ever have a couple go through it and then say, you know what, we can’t get married.

[00:21:45] Sonya Lutter: Wouldn’t that be awful?

[00:21:46] Sonya Lutter: Um,

[00:21:47] Jonathan DeYoe: It would be.

[00:21:49] Sonya Lutter: I do not think that has ever happened. I feel like I would remember that, and I’m really thinking very hard about the couples, even if anyone has. Suggested [00:22:00] that this was a bad thing for them, and I can’t think of any single situation where people are just like, oh no, definitely this is not gonna work out for us. It really has been an opportunity for enlightenment

[00:22:13] Sonya Lutter: in a positive way.

[00:22:14] Jonathan DeYoe: So I’ve, I’ve interviewed a lot of folks about financial behaviors. , but I’d like to hear from you like some of the emotions and the scripts that underlie the behaviors.

[00:22:25] Sonya Lutter: Yeah. So this largely goes back to work that I did with Brad Klontz, and he’s a really fun guy if you have not

[00:22:34] Sonya Lutter: chatted before. Yep.

[00:22:36] Jonathan DeYoe: He’s fun to watch on social media too. He’s fun to just

[00:22:38] Sonya Lutter: Oh yeah, yeah.

[00:22:39] Sonya Lutter: , , we have definite divergence and personality there. So he could do the book tour for me, he would be great at it.

[00:22:46] Sonya Lutter: And we did some work on money scripts and created, , what he now refers to as the Klontz Money script inventory. And there are four scripts associated with that. [00:23:00] More or less, these are buckets or ways of thinking about money that are based off of unconscious early moments in life. And so the way that you can kind of figure out these scripts on your own, you can go take the CLS money script inventory, great idea, but also when you think about how you would finish the sentence, money is, or rich people are poor people are. And that was the formation of these money scripts. And we did some factor analysis to see how these different ways that people think about money form a cohesive script or idea about money. So money avoidance or , money worship, or money status or money vigilant and. Not that any one of those are better or worse than the other.

[00:23:55] Sonya Lutter: It just simply is the way that people think about money. And it’s [00:24:00] useful to understand if somebody has this idea of money status, that money is, . Power, and if only I had a little bit more money, then this other really great thing could happen. It helps you understand how that person is framing their conversations, how they’re thinking about their relationships, how they’re making career choices, and it doesn’t mean that they need to be a different person at all.

[00:24:29] Sonya Lutter: It’s Simply trying to balance some of that out of how else can they find meaning or feel this sense of control that is necessary for them to find fulfillment in their life.

[00:24:43] Jonathan DeYoe: so I’ve had a therapist for, I don’t know, multiple decades and one of the things we talk about is triggers, like what are the things that trigger the be a certain behavior? And it sounds like understanding a money script might be a way to, to get to what might trigger something.

[00:24:56] Sonya Lutter: Yeah.

[00:24:57] Jonathan DeYoe: Uh, inter relational or something like that.

[00:24:58] Jonathan DeYoe: So it’s like a pre a [00:25:00] pret trigger recognition kind of a thing.

[00:25:02] Sonya Lutter: Yeah. Yeah,

[00:25:03] Sonya Lutter: it does make sense. And again, it’s not a bad thing and it doesn’t make the person less than, it just is

[00:25:10] Sonya Lutter: what it is.

[00:25:11] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. So I often interview advisors and I’m glad to have you here because advisors have one sense of what’s important about what they do. So I’m a little curious about your consulting with advisors and firms specifically given the intersection between love and money, what are the circles of competence that you think advisors need to work on?

[00:25:32] Jonathan DeYoe: I’m trying to pick my words very carefully. , what are the things that advisors, I know they do a lot of things well, but what are the things that advisors should work on?

[00:25:41] Sonya Lutter: yeah, great question. I heard you being very particular about your words there. I would say that my biggest thing that I push with advisors is they can learn how to communicate therapeutically without being a therapist. You are very familiar [00:26:00] with the way that therapists work and the way that they talk, and. For advisors to be able to replicate. Some of that is very possible, but they don’t need to fix the problem. Thera as therapy. The root of that means to treat, and I think that’s where we get hung up as a general. Discipline, field, profession, whatever you wanna call it, is anytime you mention anything that’s remotely psychology, therapy oriented, people immediately go to trauma or I need to fix something.

[00:26:35] Sonya Lutter: So. And that’s not at all what I’m implying. I think that we can communicate in a way that is therapeutic. Just like we would go get a therapeutic massage or a therapeutic facial. It helps us feel better about our situation ourself. It probably even has legitimate health benefits,

[00:26:55] Sonya Lutter: but it doesn’t need to be fixing something deeper [00:27:00] and. There’s a whole host of things that come into that. So it’s understanding the people that are important for the person sitting across the room for you. So systems theory is super relevant here, and genograms would come into that, and I think that advisors get very scared when you start throwing out those fancy words like.

[00:27:20] Sonya Lutter: Genogram or family tree, and this is where I come back to advisors and say, it doesn’t have to be perfect, and it doesn’t have to be the same genogram that a therapist would make. It shouldn’t even be like that. All what you’re trying to do is diagram visually the people and things that are important in this person’s life.

[00:27:40] Sonya Lutter: So as they mention their grandpa, write down their grandpa’s name and draw some sort of symbol so you remember who that person is, and then you recognize. Grandpa’s, two other children besides for the person sitting across from you and their parent, and you just start building that out as time [00:28:00] goes active listening. , you asked for stats, another one, the stats that I really like to throw out and I can’t. If you forced me to find a citation for this, I would struggle, but it’s just kind of commonly out there that the average American looks at their phone every four minutes.

[00:28:17] Jonathan DeYoe: That’s.

[00:28:18] Sonya Lutter: a lot of times I think you and I have been doing very good for the past 30 minutes. Everybody who’s listening has probably looked at their phone six times over the course of our conversation, and that’s totally normal in the society that we live in. So when advisors are able to offer that undivided attention and not take a peek at their watch or their phone or their email up on the other screen, it matters.

[00:28:44] Sonya Lutter: And clients see that, and that is being present and being, having that therapeutic communication. So I could go on, but that’s

[00:28:54] Sonya Lutter: kind of what the gist of it is, of getting to therapeutic communication.[00:29:00]

[00:29:00] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. I’ve actually never heard anyone say that before. I’ve heard advisor coaches talk about. emotional quotient instead of intellectual quotient or EQ instead of iq., I’ve heard of that. You know, there’s sort of a table stakes. You gotta know your financial planning software.

[00:29:14] Jonathan DeYoe: You gotta know, you know, debits and credits. , you gotta know some basic financial stuff and you gotta understand how to build a portfolio, but that’s not how you affect people’s outcomes. Having that knowledge doesn’t affect people. , and I often, , am talking to. Clients and prospective clients and speaking from a stage, and, I say that and just tell me if this is, if this sort of fits, I often say that, your advisor should be able to question your decision and you should be able to trust that question

[00:29:48] Jonathan DeYoe: without, right?

[00:29:48] Jonathan DeYoe: So the, the time and advisor relationship is tested is when we disagree and if your advisor always disagrees. That are always agrees, then you’re really just, you’re not really [00:30:00] getting advice. Does that, does that make sense?

[00:30:02] Sonya Lutter: it absolutely makes sense. And that’s just like you would expect of a good friend, right?

[00:30:07] Sonya Lutter: That they would challenge you and also support you. And that in and of itself is a great definition of therapeutic communication. You don’t need to be weird or different, or. Inauthentic with your clients. Have that conversation just like you would be willing to have with somebody in your circle of influence.

[00:30:28] Jonathan DeYoe: I have no idea how you’ll answer this, but if that’s the goal, if a client wants somebody that can do that, I. What are the markers? How do I know the first time I interview somebody or the second time I interview somebody, that they will be able to do that for me a year from now?

[00:30:44] Sonya Lutter: Yeah. Um, you feel it, first of all,

[00:30:49] Sonya Lutter: and I know

[00:30:49] Jonathan DeYoe: a.

[00:30:52] Sonya Lutter: Yeah, and I know that’s an unfair thing, but if I were the client, you can make a pretty good judgment if you’re gonna like a person, right? Like when you meet [00:31:00] somebody for the very first time, it’s pretty quick of, yeah, I trust this person. Or something’s off and maybe you don’t know what the thing is, that’s off, but.

[00:31:08] Sonya Lutter: It doesn’t feel comfortable with you. So that rapport, that ability to communicate back and forth in a comfortable fashion is so important. And it really is something , that you feel heard, but also that you learn something new about the other person. And so it wasn’t that you were being talked at the whole time by the advisor.

[00:31:29] Sonya Lutter: It was, but also that the advisor. talk back to you in some ways about their personal experiences or something that was, Intimate, and I hesitated to use that word because I don’t mean it in like a romantic, intimate way, but like in a way that I felt like they heard me and that they could relate to what I was saying. And it doesn’t mean that they also had to have lost a spouse due to divorce or [00:32:00] death, but that they under, I could tell that they understood what that meant for me, for example. First of all, I would say another big cue is when the advisor is, present with you, so they need to share something back, , I don’t want to hear my advisor talking about any other clients or any other professional situation, right?

[00:32:23] Sonya Lutter: Because this is a time for me, and if they’re talking about another client to me, even if not by name, they’re gonna do that with me too.

[00:32:32] Sonya Lutter: And trust is out the window.

[00:32:35] Jonathan DeYoe: So you’re looking for three main things. Really trust, empathy, rapport in that very first meeting. And yeah, you can feel those things, but also there are slight indicators of things that people say or do that would suggest that trust, rapport, and empathy are not there.

[00:32:55] have people asking me all the time, , how do I find a good advisor? I’ve [00:33:00] written about it. I’ve, I’ve talked about it, but people keep asking and keep asking and keep asking. I think how to pick an advisor would be a fantastic book that someone like you should write.

[00:33:09] Sonya Lutter: I am on it.

[00:33:10] Jonathan DeYoe: You’re on. Alright. Get

[00:33:12] Sonya Lutter: You can add it to your ginormous shelf back there.

[00:33:14] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, I will absolutely, I’ll, I’ll have 10 copies and I’ll give them to people when they ask.

[00:33:18] Sonya Lutter: Great.

[00:33:20] Jonathan DeYoe: , so there’s an enormous amount of noise out there, and then I’d like to just introduce some simplicity. , and I know you have 15 questions, but what’s one thing that you would recommend a couple focus on, you know, before they tie the knot, you know, what’s one conversation or one question that they should definitely answer?

[00:33:38] Sonya Lutter: I already mentioned the money memory. . So I’m not gonna do that one, so I’m gonna pick a different one, but just keep that one in the back of your mind. I think that really is crucial. There’s another activity in the book that I absolutely love, and it’s one that couples say has been most important for them as well. And it’s called, that’s me. That’s you. And the way this works [00:34:00] is. You can cut out these little note cards or you could just make ’em up on a note card or whatever, and you write down common household tasks. I have some in the book as examples, and it would be things like who takes care of the yard work?

[00:34:16] Sonya Lutter: Who schedules the car maintenance? Who does the dishes? Who prepares the taxes, or who gets the stuff ready to prepare the taxes? Who is in charge of every day? Expenses, who’s in charge of long-term financial decision making? So you start with easier things of yard work, like we can probably come to an agreement on that, but then it gets harder with short term versus long-term financial decision.

[00:34:43] Sonya Lutter: Who’s in charge And what they’re the couple is doing is while they’re answering these questions, they’re sitting back to back with their own little flag, if you will, of one side’s. That’s me. The other one’s that’s you. And that’s all what I do is I That’s you. That’s me. And what’s been [00:35:00] really fun when I do this with couples is sometimes they’ll hold up both and I don’t say anything while they’re doing this ’cause they don’t see each other’s responses.

[00:35:09] Sonya Lutter: I’m just taking note of it. So if you’re doing it without a third party person, you’re just writing it down on paper instead and then comparing responses. I love it when they put up both signs because it shows more of that equality and sometimes it is me, but sometimes it’s them , and that’s pretty cool too. But the reason why I think this one is so important when couples very first get married is they’ve already been together for. A bit of time, maybe a short time, maybe a long time, but they’re pretty well established in what it is that they’re doing out of habit or sometimes out of necessity, like maybe I am taking care of the household responsibilities because I work from home, so I can do that.

[00:35:54] Sonya Lutter: And I’m here, so the laundry needs put in the dryer, so I put the laundry in the [00:36:00] dryer, so I’m doing it, but maybe I don’t feel good about that, and I don’t feel like that’s fair. And what this activity has really highlighted is that those imbalances that compound over time that become really big issues, like right now who puts the clothes in the dryer is not that big of a deal. But if I’m putting the clothes in the dryer every week for 15 years. It starts to add up, right? I’m not such a happy camper anymore and, and when it gets to the financial issues, what I’ve come to discover is sometimes that also happened out of necessity to where one person was able to do the grocery shopping, but actually they really wanted to be more involved in the long-term decision making. But the other person thought it was fair that they were taking charge of that because this other person was doing the short term stuff. And so it opens up the door of conversation of how can we balance this to maybe sometimes you do it, sometimes I do [00:37:00] it. Or is there something we want to change?

[00:37:03] Jonathan DeYoe: One of the conversations I have a, a lot is the one around gender dynamics in the household. And I think having that exercise would just open that up.

[00:37:12] Jonathan DeYoe: because I think most of us just kind of fall, like you said, we just fall into a habit. I’ve done the laundry for 10 years, I’m just gonna keep doing laundry.

[00:37:18] Jonathan DeYoe: Or I’ve done it for six months, I’m just gonna keep doing laundry. Right? That’s just always gonna be the thing that I do. And I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all, but. It’s just habit. Right? And then we, you can’t buck the trend 10 years later. You right, then you’re a

[00:37:29] Sonya Lutter: Right. But nobody even brought it up and that’s the

[00:37:33] Sonya Lutter: problem.

[00:37:34] Jonathan DeYoe: No one talked about it. It just happened.

[00:37:36] Jonathan DeYoe: So that’s, that’s an exercise to do. I’m just wondering, is there one thing that people might be doing that you should, you would tell them, Hey, stop doing that thing.

[00:37:45] Sonya Lutter: , I can actually think of something with this and that is one person totally deferring to the other person with all things financial

[00:37:56] Jonathan DeYoe: So important. Oh my God,

[00:37:57] Sonya Lutter: And you’ve seen it multiple times too,

[00:37:59] Sonya Lutter: [00:38:00] right? There’s nothing good about that.

[00:38:02] Jonathan DeYoe: Nope. And I’ve seen that happen, and then divorce happens, and then one person is completely outta their depth and have no idea what’s happening and are terrified in the process. And it’s just, it’s Not good.

[00:38:13] Sonya Lutter: Yeah. Divorce Or death.

[00:38:15] Sonya Lutter: I’ve seen multiple times with

[00:38:17] Jonathan DeYoe: I’ve seen both actually. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. But actually my brother, my brother died, his wife, had no clue what was going on in the money.

[00:38:24] Jonathan DeYoe: And so it’s, so, it’s like I end up stepping in and being that, support person for their family. So it’s, it’s so hard.

[00:38:31] Sonya Lutter: Yeah.

[00:38:32] Jonathan DeYoe: Before we, uh, wrap up, I like to come back to personal again.

[00:38:35] Sonya Lutter: Oh, okay.

[00:38:35] Jonathan DeYoe: Uh, so, , this isn’t meant to be a zinger. Some people receive it as a zinger, but, uh, I’m curious, what was the last thing you changed your mind about?

[00:38:44] Sonya Lutter: Last thing I changed my mind about,

[00:38:46] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

[00:38:48] Sonya Lutter: I changed my mind a lot.

[00:38:50] Jonathan DeYoe: Good.

[00:38:53] Sonya Lutter: you know, I think it, I would have to go with as recent as today, exercise [00:39:00] to where every day before I go to bed, I think, okay. When I wake up in the morning, the very first thing I’m gonna do is go for a walk on the treadmill. And then the day opens up and the stupid phone is right there, and I’m reminded about all of the things that need to happen.

[00:39:18] Sonya Lutter: I’m just like, oh, I’m just gonna do this one thing real quick. And then before you know it, it’s 10 o’clock in the morning and it’s just not so good.

[00:39:26] Jonathan DeYoe: Totally hear it. , Me too. Plug your phone in someplace else.

[00:39:29] Sonya Lutter: Right.

[00:39:30] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. That’s, I constantly am like, okay, if I, if my phone is right there next to my bed, that’s the

[00:39:35] Jonathan DeYoe: first

[00:39:36] Sonya Lutter: just what I do

[00:39:36] Jonathan DeYoe: I. If I plug it in a different room, I don’t do it. Just the, you know, for what it’s worth.

[00:39:42] Sonya Lutter: That’s a good tip.

[00:39:44] Jonathan DeYoe: , let people know how to, where do they find your book? How do they connect with you if they’ve got a question?

[00:39:48] Sonya Lutter: Yeah, super easy. My name.com, so sonya luter.com.

[00:39:54] Jonathan DeYoe: Great. Thanks very much for coming on the show. , we’re gonna make sure all that stuff that you mentioned is in the show notes and I really [00:40:00] appreciate your insight and helping couples be better couples.

[00:40:03] Sonya Lutter: Thank you so much for having me.

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