Finances are one of the most common reasons for arguments among couples, and sometimes even lead to divorce. Understanding how to make finances a strength in your marriage can bless your relationship, and also your life in general! While I have only been married a few years, I can proudly say that the squabbles my husband and I have had have seldom been about money. I contribute that largely to things I have learned from Dr. Jeff Hill during my time at Brigham Young University. I would like to share some of those things with you today!
Regularly go over your finances together.
I have never been great with money, but my husband is fantastic. By sitting down together regularly to go over our finances, it helps me learn a bit more about good financial management and it also keeps us on the same page as to how we are doing. By both understanding our financial situation, it is easier to make joint decisions about how much we can afford to eat out or spend on groceries.
You might ask yourself, “Well, how often is regularly?!” I know many couples do it once a week and it is really helpful! But if that isn’t possible for you, maybe try every other week or even once a month. Whatever you do, stay consistent. Your consistency will pay off big when it comes to financial harmony in your marriage!
Use a budgeting tool like Mint.
Gone are the days of needing to set up the perfect spreadsheet with all the right calculations to know exactly what you are spending or having to save all your receipts to put into a budget planner. With Mint, you can connect your bank accounts and it automatically puts your purchases into categories that you pre-determine. You also can set your own budgets for each category and keep track each week of how well you are staying (or straying) from that budget. It also tracks things like net worth (I promise this is not sponsored – I am sincerely passionate about Mint!).
**Pro tip: Make sure you always have a miscellaneous category! Random things will come up, even if it’s small things like an Amazon package or a new plant.**
Mad Money
This is my go to piece of marriage advice I give couples because it has been so transformative to my marriage and those of my friends and family members! Mad money is the concept of having a bit of personal money set aside each month for you and your partner. When you’re a spender like me, it can feel a bit confining to need to run purchases through your spouse. Especially when it’s just a cute sweater that you want, but don’t really need. Mad money allows me to have a set dollar amount each month of money that I can choose to spend or save. It can even be as little as $10! Just something that is yours.
One way you could do this would be to set a monthly date that you and your spouse go to a bank or ATM to take out that personal cash each month. You could also set up separate bank accounts and either deposit the money their monthly from a joint account, or most employers will offer an option to split your paycheck and send parts of it to different accounts. So, from my paycheck $50 goes to my personal account each month, another chunk goes to savings, and the rest goes to our joint checking account.
Mad money has saved us from several arguments! An important rule with it is that because the money is yours, your partner cannot comment on how you choose to spend it. I usually spend mine every month, whereas, in almost 4 years of marriage my husband has only spent his once! He has chosen to save up for a new laptop. Even though we spend it differently, we let the other spend/save how they want. It is so freeing!
Set financial goals together.
Financial goals are important to a marriage. What are things you hope for in your future? A trip to Tahiti? Buying a house? A jeep? Having millions of dollars set aside for your retirement? Whatever you want, decide together and make a plan to make it happen. This can be really hard when paychecks are small, but even if you are setting aside $5 a month for something you care about, that is important!
Setting financial goals as a couple shows the other person that you are excited about continuing to build a future together and that it is worth investing in. Never stop investing in your marriage!
There are so many other tips I could give, but these four are what I believe to be the foundational principles of financial harmony. If there are any that you would add, I would love to read them! Be sure to add them in the comments.
