I am co-hosting the Love Blog Challenge today. The prompt is “Money.” I’ve shared the prompt list for the rest of the month below but also feel free to head over to Brita’s Introduction Post for more details and ideas for each prompt. We’d love to have you join us!
Ah money. It’s the root of all evil, right? Well actually, it’s the love of money that’s the root of all evil. But we won’t get into that right now. Money is also a major pain point in a lot of marriages. In fact, according to a survey I conducted in 2015, finances were the second biggest thing my readers struggled with in their marriage. It was right under communication.
Pearson and I have never argued much about our finances. Whether we’re on top of our budget and paying off student loans really quickly (like the first 3 years of our marriage) or slacking off, overspending and not reaching our goals (like years 4-6), we’re always on the same page. It’s really been great over the last two years as we’ve buckled down on our budget but also allowed ourselves space to have fun and enjoy not being in grad school anymore!
So here are some tips that have really helped us stay on the same page in the past couple years. We’ve been getting back on track and I’m actually really excited about budgeting for the first time in a while.
Table of Contents
5 Tips to Stay on the Same Page with your Budget
ONE || Make the initial budgeting process fun.
Talking money with your spouse can be scary and setting a budget is never fun whether you’re married or not. So make it a little less dreadful. Make a date of it. Get out of the house. Go to your favorite coffee shop or dinner spot. And don’t spend the whole time shaming each other or feeling bad for past failures. Look to the future and make goals together!
TWO || Specify a Date Night Budget
We used to lump our “date night” budget in with our “restaurants” budget. Then we’d run through a drive through or order from grub hub so much that our date night budget for the month would run out in a week or two. Yeah. It was that bad. Splitting those up has really helped us be more intentional about how we spend the money.
THREE || Specify a “spending money” budget for each spouse.
Our spending allowances aren’t huge, but they’re each of ours to do with as we please. We don’t feel the need to keep secrets from each other, nor do we need to keep tabs on each other. In fact we share all accounts, so we just naturally know what each other is spending. But it’s nice to have those line items built into the budget so we don’t feel guilty or like we need to justify every impulse buy or the fact that we’ve been “saving” for months for something big we really want.
FOUR || Keep money in the budget for things that don’t happen every month.
We do this as sort of a “saving” tactic as I mentioned in the last tip. For example, we try to budget about $50-$100 every month for “Christmas Gifts.” That way when November and December get here, we have months worth of money saved up in the budget for it. We also do this for unexpected things like car maintenance. If we’ve set aside $50 every month for maintenance and haven’t actually spent it, by July when our car breaks and we have a $300 repair staring us in the face, it’s not a big deal.
FIVE || Open multiple savings accounts for multiple goals.
These days, opening a savings account is a breeze. I mean it sometimes literally only takes a couple button clicks. Saving up for a down payment on a house? Make an account separate from your “emergency savings.” Will you need to replace your car soon, open an account just for that. Planning a big vacation next year? Open another account! It keeps things organized and definitely lessens the temptation of instant gratification!
I really hope these tips help. Again, finances can be a huge stress on a marriage. But if you communicate and work together, you can stay on the same page, tackle your debt, and save for your future with little headache.
So what do you think? Do you have any tips to add to my list?
Thanks for reading!
Meet Your Hosts:
Brita Long is the pink and sparkly personality behind the Christian feminist lifestyle blog, Belle Brita. On her blog and social media, you’ll discover more than authentic storytelling–she’s brutally honest about pursuing a fulfilling and joyful life even with Crohn’s Disease and depression.
Laura is a part-time artist hoping to go full time some day. She has a little black bucket list book filled with adventures. She writes with the hope to inspire. She’s known to be quite the workaholic sometimes. She’s an INTJ- A and she believes a cup of hot tea can solve almost anything. She embraces perseverance. She’s spent a lot of time emerged in self-discovery practices over the last several years, and finds she is still learning as she goes. She is here in the blogging world because she believes the buzz about self-care, wellness, and self-love needs to be heard. You can also find her writing over at www.blogfivebiz.com chatting about blogging and business stuff.
Charlene is a 30 year old wife and fur-mama living in Portland, Oregon. She’s a follower of Christ, watcher of SciFi, reader of fantasy, singer of show tunes, and lover of her husband! She uses her blog, Enduring All Things to help couples build a marriage that will endure whatever comes their way.
In the “spending money budget” category, another approach is to specify a dollar limit on spending without talking to the other person – like “We don’t buy anything more than $25 without agreeing on/talking about it.” I think either one of those gives both people freedom to splurge every so often.
Yes! We actually do that. We don’t have a hard and fast, spoken boundary in place, but we always consult each other before big purchases. Maybe we should make it official!
These are amazing tips!! Mark and I are working on some of these already and will be adding the rest to our list. I love the idea of making the budget planning a fun time because let’s face it, budgeting isn’t much fun on its own.
That was exactly my point! If you don’t make it fun, it’s either miserable or you just keep putting it off!