I have debated about writing this blog post at least a hundred times. I hadn’t before today, because while I tend to be very open, I try to keep some parts of my life private, particularly the struggles in my marriage. Every marriage has things that are always their “sticking points” and I hate how easy it is online to give a one-sided perspective that gives one side all the blame, and the other side all the credit for solving a problem.

When I learned about the Sacred Money Archetypes, some of the best parts of my life were better than they had ever been before.

  • My business was making more money than it ever had
  • My husband was planning on leaving his 9-5, which we had constantly fought about
  • Organize Your Biz was growing rapidly, much more rapidly than I expected or anticipated

Behind the scenes, I felt like my life was on the brink of falling apart, like I was Icarus flying too close to the sun. But instead of the sun, I was flying high, covering ground toward my dream life by leaps and bounds. I could feel my wings melting, but didn’t understand why, when everything was going great, I was struggling so much in my marriage. It seemed like the more I succeeded in business, the harder things got between Ian and I. As we made more money, our marriage got more and more strained.

I felt free, because the more my business made, the better we could make our lives through intentional spending. This caused so many fights and spats between us, I felt like as long as we had money to spend, we would be fighting over how we spent it. Slowly, it was eroding the joy out of making money, and of celebrating abundance.

We had people tell us things like “Well, it’s because men don’t like it when their wives make more then them.” But that really wasn’t the issue. We’ve always had a very team-oriented approach to money. Any income we have goes into our bank accounts, and we use it to pay our bills and take care of our family. Even when things were rough, it wasn’t about who was bringing in the money, it was about making sure our family as a whole was taken care of. Maybe that’s an issue for men who are less secure in their manhood, and feel that their only role in a family is to provide a paycheck, but for us, that wasn’t the case.

Really, our issue was fighting over how we handled money, particularly how it was spent, and that was solved when we figured out our Sacred Money Archetypes.

Solving the problem of fighting over spending

I always thought my husband was frugal our of necessity. Since we’d been married, money has always been tight. We’d always lived on a shoestring budget, and I couldn’t understand why, now that we’d had more money than ever before, I felt like he was always grilling me about any money I spent. Our bills were paid, so why did it matter what my new sweater cost? And why was that more important than telling me how I looked in the damn thing anyway? These kinds of arguments became the new normal, and I didn’t understand why.

Of course, it wasn’t actually more important to him to know the cost of the sweater, or whatever purchase we were debating at the time. It was really all about him wanting to make sure that we were financially secure. This was easily the biggest sources of problems in our marriage, and it was really causing a lot of tension and problems for us. It had gotten so bad, I really didn’t know how we were going to be able to stay married. I had always thought he would change and be less uptight about money, and he would be much more carefree as we started to have a better financial situation.

The exact opposite happened, and I began to doubt whether our marriage would survive. I felt like I was being forced to choose between being a thriving business owner who was helping women and making a profit, or being his wife. I wondered if I was going to have to choose between my calling and my soulmate, and that terrified me.

One day, I took the Sacred Money Archetypes quiz and discovered I was a Maverick. Among other things, Mavericks are comfortable with much more extreme levels of financial risk than the 7 other archetypes. My husband was an Accumulator. Accumulators like to, as you might guess, accumulate (aka save) money.

So, the Maverick in me was like, “FREEEEEDOOOOOOM” as new money came in, and I was able to do things like invest in my business in ways I’d never been able to before. I was also able to buy myself nicer clothing that fit well, and that felt amazing to me. As soon as the money came in, I was ready to put it to work to give us the nice life we’d been missing out on.

While the Maverick in me was living it up, Ian’s inner Accumulator was like “WHY ARE YOU SPENDING THE SAFETY NET?!” Now, Accumulators are the bankers of the archetypes, one of their biggest strengths is their ability to easily accumulate wealth. It’s a affectionate joke between the two of us now, but I remember telling him angrily once he was like the dragon Smaug from The Hobbit, sitting in his cave and hoarding his treasure.

As we learned more about the archetypes, we began realizing the way the other one valued money, and how we each wanted to see it working in our lives, things started changing.Our money talks became centered around how we could honor each other’s money values, and how we could work together to compromise in areas that were challenges for us, and how we could let both of us live in our strengths in order to thrive.

Without a doubt, what started off as a fun quiz had created a fundamental shift in our relationship.

From his perspective:

I actually pulled my husband in for this part, this is what he had to say about the archetypes and how they changed how we handled each other after learning more about them! 

Knowing about our Archetypes gave me a platform to work on. The problem we had was that because we are both so damned stubborn, we both believed our way of handling money was the only way. The Archetypes gave us common ground, and a common language to use to work through our issues. – Ian 

From my perspective:

My biggest ah-hah was that Ian wasn’t actually a control freak who hates freedom and fun. He values stability, and wants to make sure how we handle our money reflects that. So, even though stability is totally overrated to me, if we were going to thrive together, we needed to find a middle ground.I wrote in my journal one day, “If I can start to prioritize saving more, he will not hate it as much when I spend money. He’ll never be as free with money as I am, so I need to understand when he sees dollar signs everywhere, it’s not personal.” Sometimes I still think about that, when I get frustrated.

How the archetypes saved my business as well

As Ian and I got our personality differences forted out, it became easier for us to celebrate my growing income, knowing that it wasn’t going to hurt us in the long run having more money coming in.

That confidence, and the knowledge that my marriage was secure, no matter what was going on with our finances was a big deal and allowed me to do anything I wanted to without fear. And really, when you can pursue your dreams fearlessly, that’s like 80% of the battle right there!

I’ve included the quiz below, I would love to know which of the 8 archetypes you are. And also, don’t be afraid to have your spouse take it as well! It just might be a game changer for you, you never know!

Take the quiz for yourself!

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