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Balancing Your Life 237

Your Balance Sheet may look something like this:

Family Balance Sheet £ or $
House
Car
Savings
Investments, including pension
Other items
Total

Since reading Stephen Covey’s book, we have started to include the
wonderful concept of the Family Emotional Bank Account. As
Covey writes, “The Emotional Bank Account represents the quality
of the relationship you have with others.” In this case, you would
be interested in the quality of your own relationship. Now that you
have started to think about money, you will find it easier to make
the connections between an account and the important issue of
your emotions. Every time you do something positive for your part-
ner—express your love, help them out, do something extra for
them—you are making a deposit in their Emotional Bank Account.
Each time you hurt your partner or disregard their feelings, you
make a withdrawal from their Emotional Bank Account.
In a normal joint account you receive one statement of the
total balance. Think of this as a different kind of account, one in
which each person receives a different statement. If you have been
giving a lot to your loved one, their statement will show you to be
well in credit. If you have been thoughtless, grumpy, and selfish,
your statement will show that you have a low fund balance.
The idea, of course, is for you both to feel that you have
made significant deposits. That way, when times get tough, you can
make withdrawals, consciously depending on the emotional sup-
port of your partner.
You don’t want to find that the account is empty when you
need to do this—what you do after sharing the idea of the account
is more important than working out who is in credit or not! It can
be a really helpful way of beginning to understand your partner’s
feelings about a range of matters. You will need to give more than
you take at this stage.