Marriage counseling for home buyers
When I wrote about the doer and the planner, a la the book Nudge, this Tuesday, Jim wrote:
It can get very stressful when a couple is buying and one person is more of a planner and the other is more of a doer. hypothetically, of course!
His question went unanswered on Tuesday. The conversation went back to the same old, same old trope of “to buy or not the buy” even though that wasn’t the question. The question was about cognitive styles that come into play, when buying is what you want to do. The still-renting crowd can refer to this when prices are back at 1974 levels and they are ready to jump in.
Today, I launch “Marriage Counseling for Home Buyers.” (I use the term “marriage” loosely here, since some of the couples I work with are not legally married.)
More couples have one doer and one planner than two of one type. Very few individuals are internally 100 percent planner or 100 percent doer. The key within every person and within every couple is to give the planner the planning work and give the doer the doer’s work.
First, a basic idea in all couples counseling: what attracts you to your partner has a shadow side. The character traits you fell in love with are also the traits you occasionally hate.
If you are a planner, you delay gratification and do things right. Then you can fall in love with the devil-may-care joy that your doer-partner brings to the relationship. But, now you are buying a house and the love-of-your-life seems like dead weight in the process; you are doing all the grunt work.
If you are a doer, you are spontaneous. Now that you are looking for a home, you are excited and happy. Your planner-partner is boggling your mind with mortgage math, scheduling deadlines, analyzing commuter routes, and figuring price per square foot.
So, how do they buy a house together? By first agreeing to a goal that both the planner and the doer can stick with. Then by using the planning strengths of the planner and the doing strengths of the doer.
Common planner’s tasks are about time and money. Planners can keep the schedules straight, making sure that the purchase does not interfere with important work and social deadlines. The planner runs the mortgage numbers and finds (or doesn’t find) a level that will work in the long run. The planner analyses the long-term goals and whether real estate is part of that. The planner looks are each prospective house to determine whether an offer should be made.
The doer is the one who can see the house as a home. Doers just know when a house and community are right for a couple. Doers are good at investigating the community, the neighborhood, and the schools to find out whether the house and community are a good match.
Are you getting the idea? More on this tomorrow. For today, what part of house hunting appeals to your internal planner? What does your doer respond to?
