Guest post by SB of One Cent at Time
If you’ve been married for a while, there’s a pretty good chance that either you or your spouse is the one “in charge” of the family finances. And if you’re like me, your spouse might not be nearly as involved as you would like — or they might even refuse to get involved.
This dilemma, which is be a huge issue for many marriages, can be addressed in an agreeable manner if you have the proper tools and attitude. Here are five tips that could help your spouse to get more involved in your family’s finances:
1. Focus on solving the problem, but don’t fight.
A two-way conversation is the only tool that will result favorably. It’s easier to gently persuade someone into changing their mind and it helps if you both focus on your goals which are mutual.
Try opening with the feel/felt/found method. For example, “When you bull up and refuse to discuss the finances with me, I FEEL like my concerns don’t matter. What I’ve found is that when I FEEL that way, I am not as careful about how I spend our money because I’m hurt and angry.”
2. Use the “switch-a-roo” method.
If you spouse usually is not the bill-payer, let them give it a try for a month (and of course offer to help if necessary) This will give him or her a better understanding and appreciation for how important it is to be involved in the decision making process of your family’s finances.
3. Dream together.
We all have dreams of what we would do if money were not issue… but the reality is that without team work between couples, all of these wants and desires remain unrealized pipe dreams and may never come to fruition. Communicate your ideas and listen to your spouse’s ideas. Realize that you need to develop a plan TOGETHER to make your dreams come true.
4. Do the math.
If your spouse still can’t see the importance of his or her participation in the financial decision making, sit down together and look at your budget (or create a budget). When the numbers are right there in front of your eyes, it’s easier to be involved in the family finances.
5. Have regular discussions.
Open communication is so important if you want to get your spouse more involved with the financial future of your family. Any purchases that are going to come out of the monthly budget should be discussed. Not argued over, but discussed like adults!
Treat each other like business partners.
Listen to the concerns of the other, but don’t let anything get blown out of proportion. If you can’t communicate with your spouse without losing your temper, you will never be able to realize your common goals and dreams. Only gentle persuasion and mature discussion will get your spouse to participate in the family financial decisions.
What about you…
Do you do the finances in your family? Or do and your spouse tackle it together?
Do you have any other tips for encouraging your spouse to get involved more in your family’s finances?
SB is a personal finance blogger who writes about saving money, becoming rich and earning extra money over at One Cent at Time.
I really like the tip about asking your spouse to take over the bill paying for the month. I handle our checkbook and pay all the bills as well as do all the grocery shopping-my hubby never spends any money because I take care of everything. Lately we have been having regular meetings about our finances and even doing that has helped him see things clearer.
I am the book keeper in the family. When we began using (and sticking to) a written budget, I made a list of our goals and a little chart that showed “we are here” and “in _______ months we will reach our goal for ___________.” Just fill in the blanks with your goals. This year I made pie charts – in color – for him. REALLY cool! The whole idea is that men tend to be very “goal oriented”. Once I showed my husband – on paper – that we really could live within our means and save money, he was ON BOARD! Interesting note – Our 16 year old is currently in charge of the finances! That’s right. For high school credit we enrolled him in a free, six week credit seminar- and attended with him. Then, I opened up our finance books to him. He enters all of our expenses into the ledger, keeps track of each category, makes a spread sheet at the end of each month showing what we spent in each category and what we have averaged thus far this year. He also makes recommendations on what changes we need to make in each category – if any. At the end of the year he will make up our “end-of-the-year” log which displays our net worth, savings this year, what percentage of our income went to each category, and help make next year’s budget! (I’m counting it for 1/2 a high school credit). And he is SO aware of how much money it takes to make it from one month to the next – and he is very proactive in helping us stay on target. Money has become a reality to him!
What a wonderful gift of knowledge you will be sending your son off into the world with.
In our pre-marital counseling, our pastor advised us to “split” the finances – allocate responsibilities to each person according to what they know. For instance, I used to work in insurance, so I do all insurance-related bills, groceries, tithe, and mortgage. He takes care of cars, phones, and gas/electric for the house. Anything that doesn’t fit into one of those categories is handled together. In this way, we are both involved but neither of us is “in charge” of the finances.
Husband wasn’t really on board when we first got married. I tried everything to persuade him and nothing worked. He always said he was a visual person and seeing things helped him more than explaining them.
So I showed him. I just started budgeting and using cash envelopes on my own. When he looked at our bank account one day he was shocked to see that we finally (FINALLY!) had savings. After that, he was sold on budgeting. WIN! 🙂
I realize once you are married it is a bit late for this, but my suggestion to young couples not married is always to discuss finances (among other things) prior to marriage. When my husband and I did pre-marital counseling before we were married (a long time ago) we talked about lots of issues – faith and its role in our family, children (how many, when,), legal issues (wills, if we passed away who would we want to take our children) and of course finances. We filled out what amounted to detailed financial worksheets to talk about with each other – my husband was in the military and had an IRA by the time he was 18, I had just finished college (with plenty of debt) and had never met a sale I didn’t like! But we had the opportunity to talk about financial goals, how we would spend/save, and make a plan together. It was an invaluable experience and honestly we have never had an argument about money – ever, in lean times and good times. We got on the same page from day 1 and have stayed there because we learned how to communicate about money in the beginning and talking about our past experiences with money and how we wanted to build our financial security was great. I am not saying you shouldn’t marry someone if you have differing financial views, but you can eliminate some stress up front by being honest and learning about your partner’s viewpoints before you are combining your finances. If you are already married and are having a tough time sorting it out, counseling with an emphasis on money management could be helpful.
We definitely dream and discuss together (although I am currently the bookkeeper). We have 1 Student Loan of $26,000 to go until we are debt-free except for our mortgage, and at the end of each month we have about $25-$30 left in our checking account after all expenses have been paid (including tithe and savings).
We keep our financial goals, our debt-pay-offs, and our budget posted, and we talk about it a lot. When we want something that is outside of our budget then we have to try to figure out a way to earn the money to cover it or find a way to do it for less money. Often if we put off a purchase for a while, we’ll later decide that we didn’t need it after all.
I’m really proud of “us.” We’re not identical in personality by any means, but we make a great team, and we work hard for one another. We both want to see the others’ dreams come true. We’ve made a lot of mistakes along the way, but we’ve taken responsibility for our mistakes and learned from them. 🙂
I do all the book keeping in our family both for our home and our rentals. My husband is not overly involved as his ADHD often gets in the way but I have discovered a few tricks to help A) I make it easy for him to keep track of receipts for purchases for rental repairs by placing a zippered case in his truck and one in the house for him to dump them for me to record B) For his vehicle gas and spending money I give him cash C) I have our budget written out step by step as simply as I can. D) He sets the limits of personal spending since he is the spender and I am the saver,(but he is very good about being realistic with this number)
I handle most of the financial aspects of the family, budgeting, bill paying, etc. Over the last 6 months or so, we’ve abused the debit card and been pulling money from savings to cover day-to-day items. This should NOT be happening. So, at the beginning of September, I started using an envelope system for entertainment and groceries. Then we each have our own acct for some personal expenses (gas to name one). We each get a certain amt in cash that is ours…no questions asked. I nagged (yeah, I did) about how much money we were blowing, etc., no change. Initiating this has helped tremendously. We are working together more in the financial area than we were. Baby steps, baby steps.
I manage the finances in our family and have definitely felt out of alignment with my husband at times. I’m the frugal one in the family. In my experience, #3 is the most impactful step you can take. My husband continually overspent his allowance and used the credit card (until we froze the credit cards and then he used the debit card) until I finally said – it feels like we aren’t working toward the same thing. I explained why I wanted to be debt free and talked about the things we could do once we were debt free. I asked what he really wanted. Turns out we wanted a lot of the same things! That was a big turning point for us and he was MUCH better after that. Once we paid off the cars and student loans, we increased his monthly allowance so he didn’t feel “deprived”.