When it comes to having a healthy relationship with your spouse involving money, it requires openness, understanding, and realism. After all, if you don’t have money for an expensive item, having and maintaining respect for each other is what is important. Saving and working towards buying that dream car can bring you closer together, where as one person making a selfish, unwise purchase can tear your relationship to shreds. If you cannot be realistic and consider each other’s feelings, it’s going to be hard rocky relationship.
- Do Talk About Money – Hopefully, even before you get married money should be an important topic of conversation so that you both understand where you stand. While you don’t want to call off a marriage based on money sometimes, there may be such big issues that you need to. Therefore, always talk about money before However, if you do wait, be willing to work through the issues openly and transparently.
- Don’t Be Accusatory – When you are discussing money set aside a time to talk about it in a safe environment. Accusing your spouse of being ignorant about money isn’t going to help. Instead, both of you can accept the problems without being accusatory. Simply stating that mistakes were made and now we’re going to fix it, and this is how we’re going to fix it should be enough to move forward. No one needs to be right or wrong to fix it.
- Do Put a Budget in Place – Once you start talking about money set up a budget immediately. Realize that you can change the budget over time as you live it. However, setting a budget first, and then working toward perfecting it will help you avoid huge issues later with unplanned spending.
- Don’t Avoid Budgeting – The sooner you put a budget in place the sooner you can avoid any problems in your relationship regarding money. Avoiding putting a budget in place only causes poor spending and never helps any money problems at all.
- Do Select Contributing Roles – There are cases in a marriage where one spouse is better at budgeting and planning for the future. It’s okay to allow the one who is best at it to do this job. It does require that the other spouse is willing to let the spouse who is better with money to make final decisions.
- Don’t Be Uninformed of Family Finances – Even if one spouse is in control of the finances due to them being better at it, don’t avoid knowing how it all works. You should know how the budget works and why it’s in place and how it’s working out throughout the years.
- Do Include Priorities of All Family Members – When you have kids your budget should change to include your children. Every family member will have different priorities and needs that the others may not have. If it fits in with your financial possibilities, all needs for every member should be accounted for.
- Don’t Make Others Give Up Important Priorities – Sometimes the person in charge of the money in a family forgets about the others. At some time, each family member should be able to do or get something special for themselves. Any time favoritism is shown towards one person, everyone else will feel that they don’t really matter and may even feel unwanted or appreciated. Make sure everyone gets their fair share of attention and are valued.
- Do Keep Good Financial Records – Every family member should be keeping records of their expenditures and be able to show how they’re contributing to the budget and helping stick to the budget. Having a place to turn in debt and / or credit card receipts each day can help.
- Don’t Hide Finances from Your Spouse – This seems like a no-brainer, but it’s amazing how many spouses lie to each other, often by omission, about how they’re spending money and what they’re buying. Just don’t do it. Even if it’s a small expenditure, you should own up to it and not be worried about sharing. You’re both adults.
- Do Provide a Pocket Money for Each Spouse – No matter who earns most of the money, and even if it’s all the money, each person should be given an equal amount of money to spend on whatever they want to spend it on. Even if you have a small budget, $25 a month each can make a huge difference.
- Don’t Tell Your Spouse How to Spend Their Pocket Money – When you designate pocket money, it’s important not to tell the other how to spend it. Of course, there can be guidelines such as this is for gifts, coffee, personal care or other things that aren’t part of the joint budget so that expectations are understood.
- Do Provide an Allowance for Your Kids – Every child should get an allowance of some kind that they can use for the things they need and a little of what they want. This will teach the child how to handle their money including investing and saving.
- Don’t Overly Control How They Spend Their Allowance – Again, other than a few guidelines don’t micromanage how your child spends their allowance. Even if you know they need to save some of that money for their band trip if they don’t do it, don’t bail them out. They need to learn.
- Do Get Professional Help – One way to help cut down on money issues is to get professional help setting up a budget and talking about money. Not everyone was taught how to deal with money or the best way to set themselves up for success. That’s not a bad thing if you are open enough to find professional help.
- Don’t Avoid the Issue – Avoiding money issues is the worst thing you can do. Time goes by relatively fast when you’re looking back on it in hindsight. If you avoid the issue, 20 years could pass by, and you’ve lost 20 years of compound interest.
Being able to work together in your relationship regarding money is a good sign regarding your ability to work together on other topics too. Money is often the hardest one in which to get on the same page together. However, it can be done if you’re both honest and want the best for your future.
