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"  It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to talk dirty. But is it even harder to muster the gall to look your partner in the eye and ask him to put some rent money in the damn joint account already?  &amp;quot;Talking about money is even more difficult than talking about sex,&amp;quot; says Carin Goldstein, a marriage and family therapist and creator of BeTheSmartWife.com. &amp;quot;Money is so emotionally charged, arguably moreso than sex. There&amp;#039;s a lot of control and power around money, and a lot of fear, too.&amp;quot; Consider that each of us has his or her own relationship with money. Maybe you&amp;#039;re the unicorn that has no debt and faithfully saves 30 percent of your paycheck. Or perhaps it&amp;#039;s a super unhealthy, big spender, credit card addict sort of entanglement. Or you&amp;#039;re financially shady and conveniently conceal from your partner that you spend $150 on fake eyelashes, not that I have ever done that. Often our relationship with the cheese is rooted, emotionally, to our family dynamics and the fiscal behaviors we learned growing up. In other words, money can be some seriously loaded, ingrained-in-our-psyche stuff. &amp;quot;If your mother always had to come home and hide the bags after going shopping and the father was leaning over saying, &amp;#039;What did you buy,&amp;#039; the kids are watching and learning that if you buy something, it&amp;#039;s not okay and you have to hide it. And they&amp;#039;ll do the same thing in their relationships as adults.&amp;quot;  Now imagine two crazy kids with their own learned money philosophies coming together and shacking up or getting hitched. There are bound to be clashes, particularly as money relates to power. &amp;quot;For some people, earning power is power,&amp;quot; Carin says. &amp;quot;With couples in which, for example, the husband is the breadwinner and the wife is staying home and taking care of the household and the kids, some husbands say, &amp;#039;I make the money, so I say what goes.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; (By the way, Carin calls that argument BS, saying: &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t care if you bring home $1,000 a day and he brings home zero, if you&amp;#039;re both contributing and building your life together.&amp;quot;) So how do we navigate this dirty money talk? Several experts tells us that best place to start getting your fiscal house in order is to track your spending for a month, judgement-free, to gauge what&amp;#039;s coming in and what&amp;#039;s going out in terms of earnings and expenses. At the end of the month, sit down, look it over and try to come up with a budget you&amp;#039;re both comfy with. Which is not to say you&amp;#039;ll have to reveal every dime you spend or give up the eyelash extension habit you hold so dear. &amp;quot;There are certain things we like to keep to ourselves,&amp;quot; Carin says. &amp;quot;You give up so much when you become a couple; I&amp;#039;m in favor of coming up with an amount that each of you can use as you want and you don&amp;#039;t have to tell each other what you&amp;#039;re using it for.&amp;quot; If the mere mention of a budget convo already has you and your guy snapping at each other, take heart. Money is always near the top of the list of things that couples fight about. Don&amp;#039;t be shy about getting help via a third party financial planner. &amp;quot;Create a space where you can talk about your finances and you don&amp;#039;t have to feel like there are secrets or shame,&amp;quot; Carin says. But whatever you do, don&amp;#039;t not talk about money, unless you want the issue to fester and become a pox on your relationship. &amp;quot;Talk about money before you get into the thick of life. As you buy a house or have kids, it just gets more complicated,&amp;quot; Carin says. &amp;quot;If you can&amp;#039;t talk to your partner about money, if you&amp;#039;re too scared and he puts it off, that&amp;#039;s a little red light going off. If you don&amp;#039;t address it, sh*t happens.&amp;quot; Photo Credit: Getty Images Follow Michelle on Twitter. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/celebs/news/a12568/talking-about-money/>