Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing - Jenny Anderson on Love and Dirty Dishes

Episode Date: February 11, 2020

The key to a lasting relationship is…economics? Jenny Anderson, co-author of the best-seller “Spousonomics: Using Economics to Master Love, Marriage, and Dirty Dishes” offers tips on how your loving relationship can benefit from cost-benefit analysis. (Yes, really.)   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With the Motley Fool Money Extra, I'm Chris Hill. Valentine's Day is right around the corner, so it's natural to think of romance or, at the very least, chocolate. But Jenny Anderson says the key to a happy marriage isn't necessarily romance or love. It's economics. Jenny's an award-winning business reporter who co-authored the best-selling book Spousonomics, using economics to master love, marriage, and dirty dishes. When the book first came out in 2011, we talked about the benefit of commitment devices

and taking a cost-benefit analysis approach to the everyday life in a marriage. Marriage can be romantic, but dishes are not romantic. Trash is not romantic. You know, deciding who does the carpool, these are not romantic issues and do not require romantic solutions. They require practical solutions, And I think we sometimes just hope that because we're married and because we're in love, all of these things should be easy.

Like, you would never run a business that way, being like, well, I hope my business partner just knows what I need. You know, you would assume that, like, you would sit down and say, all right, here's how we're going to divide up the tasks. Here's what you're going to do. Here's what I'm going to do. And when it doesn't get done, you would be upset about it. So we're really trying to address the business of marriage because there is a business of marriage. And that's very sad probably for those, you know, prospective to-be-marrieds. But it's true, and it doesn't have to be a bad thing.

But the less bickering you do about that business, the more time there is for romance and sex and love and hanging out with your kids and doing all the great things you want to do if you're not sort of, you know, at wit's end arguing about school lunches. What is one thing right now that every listener can do to improve their marriage? Commitment devices. I'm going to say this, and I would probably not say this to a lot of audiences, but you have a smart one, a really smart one, so I'm going to go out there with this one. Better intertemporal decision-making.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I know. Decisions we make today that have consequences in the future. We are procrastinators as human beings. We say we're going to save for our retirement. We don't. We say we're going to exercise. We don't.

We say we're going to eat well. We don't. We say we're going to be a better husband or wife. We don't. We need to put in place commitment devices to be the husband or wife that we want to be. So, you know, if you've been talking for the past eight weeks, about, you know, eight years about how you want to do more new things together or you want to go on more date nights together

or, you know, you really do want to find a babysitter that you love so that you can get out of the house every once in a while, do it. Find a way to commit to it. Force yourselves to do it. You know, prepay a babysitter. You know, find the best babysitter in the town, book them every other Saturday night. So you have to go out. You are forced to plan.

Do something to make yourself do some of the things you say you're going to do and you never do. So, you know, as a couple, I've heard a lot of couples say, you know, there's scary research that says that married couples exercise much less than single people. Say, okay, let's say you as a couple have said you want to get into shape. Commit to doing a race where you have to raise money for a good cause. Like, are you really going to screw over all those people who are giving you money to cure cancer? No. So go do that. If that's what a court requires to get your lazy butt out of bed every Saturday morning

to go running, you know, I feel like these commitment devices are a very powerful tool to get us to do things that we want to do, but we just never really get around to doing. You heard the lady. Get yourself a prepaid babysitter and have some fun this weekend. I'm Chris Hill. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. Thanks for watching!