Managing finances with my spouse has to be one of the hardest obstacles I have ever faced in life. We both have our different strengths and weaknesses when it comes to money and we don’t always agree on what our financial priorities should be. But after 6 years of marriage, I think we have finally figured out what works for us! Please understand that we still have a long way to go before we are 100% on the same page with finances, but I am about to share a tool that has helped us along the way on our journey.

Do you and your spouse sometimes loose count on the amount of bills you have to pay? Are you unsure of your spouses personal debt and/ or progress on clearing it? Do you have a system that helps you adjust your finances as income and bills change? Do you and your spouse sometimes have inconsistencies with who is responsible for what or where you are at financially for your household? If you said yes to any of these questions, read on! I will be sharing tools and methods we use that has helped our household with finances and I am sure it will help you as well.

There are two things that are needed to ensure there is financial understanding between you and your spouse.

Transparency

Money is a sensitive subject. Emotions and pride can often get in the way of being able to effectively manage it. It is important to be able to be transparent and truthful about your debt and means for paying it off. Before we figured out transparency with finances, we often times had one person more aware of bills and due dates than the other. It became a game of one person reminding the other to make a payment. What’s the problem with this? The problem is that spending is happening from both ends while one person was aware of what money we actually have. This can lead to situations like overdrafts. Now, we lay everything on the table: income, debt, bills, credit scores, infrequent loaning of money out to family and friends, etc. When you do this, you have a more realistic idea of where you are at with money as a household and you can tackle debt more effectively together. We use a financial spreadsheet we created to help view our debt, income, financial actions, credit, and overall home planning. Great! We figured out how to be transparent with each other! We started using a financial spreadsheet years ago, but it was not until we figured out how to be consistent, that we could truly manage our finances together.

Consistency

What good is a tool if you don’t know how to use it? We had this amazing financial spreadsheet, however we were inconsistent in updating it and we rarely went over it together. Over time and many silly mistakes later, we realized talking though our spreadsheet on a certain frequency is what we needed to do in order to manage our finances effectively. We started meeting at least once before each paycheck was about to come into our accounts to review and update our spreadsheet, see where we were on our debt and credit journey, and added more future financial plans. Meeting consistently was what helped us to see value in having a spreadsheet and talking through our financial plans together. Being consistent allowed us to feel proud of ourselves when we met our financial goals and to take care of any financial missteps quickly.

Since then, I have shared our financial management steps and spreadsheet with so many friends and family (even my own parents). It makes me happy when they share with me how managing finances with their spouses have been so much easier for them. Want to learn more details on our financial planning process? Let me know and I’d be happy to share with you all!

Until next time,