Grrr my ISP had a glitch and lost the really long answer I’d typed to this!
[angry2]
anyway, when I started out it’s fair to say hubby wasn’t keen. He was working ridiculous hours, and didn’t want to know. Initially I started doing some small share trades, and talking to him occasionally about it, but property was just too big a thing for him to contemplate. All he wanted was to pay off the house and no more borrowing.
Anyway, one day he read Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. It didn’t change him over night, but it certainly opened his eyes to a lot of things. Finally I convinced him to let me buy a rental property. We’ve moved on from there.
I have to say that even today a lot of what I do scares him, he’s not really comfortable with it all. But having said that, he took a package just over a year ago, spent last year studying full time in Children’s Ministry, and is now contemplating how best he can work to help primary school age kids at risk (and it doesn’t matter if it’s paid work or not).
He’s still not entirely comfortable with what I do, and still has a tendency to be a negative nellie when I come up with ideas, but considering where he’s come from, I think it’s brilliant!!!
I’m still the main investor, I still read the books and go to seminars by myself – I don’t know if that will ever change. His passion is helping kids, mine is investing. But at least he’s on the same page now. And he will bounce ideas around with me!
And right from the beginning, even when he didn’t want to know, he still reluctantly supported me.
So I guess what I’m saying is – take it one step at a time. It’s good to paint a rosy picture of the future, maybe even chuck in an incentive or two, but if you try to present the bigger picture right from the start in terms of how many houses you want, etc, you may just scare your partner so much that you’ll never get anywhere.
I started with little share parcels, then options trading, then one rental house, then two rental houses, then wrap houses, and so it goes.
The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step – take your wife one step at a time, and you may be surprised.
But if she’s never interested in being your partner in investing, that’s okay too. All she really needs to do is not block you!

Keep smiling
Felicity