Guest post from Kelly of Kelly Cox At Home
My husband and I are quite frugal with our money. Before we got married, we both agreed that debt-free living was the way to go. In order to pull that goal off, we realized that thrifty living would be necessary.
We had no idea how much this mindset would bless our marriage!
As a frugal couple, we learned that we had to work together when it came to our finances. My husband and I had frequent discussions, set a budget, and worked toward the goal to live on one income even while we had two.
As we learned how to be more frugal, we saw the blessings that began to follow. We were able to give more, save more, and grow in our relationship. Here are 4 ways that thrifty living blessed our marriage:
1. Communication
In order to live on less, we had to communicate about our finances more frequently. My husband and I created our budget together, we talked about how to spend our finances together, and each month, we set goals and priorities that involved how we’d spend our month together.
Notice a theme? The togetherness part of handling our finances greatly blessed our marriage.
2. Creativity
We had to get creative on how we spent our money. Our goal was to stretch our budget and cover our expense with less money coming in.
As a couple, we embraced couponing and learned about grocery store sales cycles. We shopped best prices and found that Aldi was our “go to” grocery store.
As we stretched our thinking, we began to stretch and save even more money!
3. Commitment
My husband and I were committed to the goal that I would stay home with our future children.
Currently, we are waitlisted to adopt our first child and I’ll be able to stay home full time! The commitment toward this goal meant that we couldn’t take on anything that would require two incomes.
In fact, we were determined to live on one income even if we were both working. While this took dedication, we found that this commitment was worth it to achieve our goals.
4. Closeness
We are closer as a couple because we discuss our finances and run our home together financially. I feel blessed and thankful that my husband cares about the details of our checkbook. Together, we make budgeting decisions and work toward our goals.
The relationship that we enjoy is amazing and we have fewer arguments about our finances because we spend time together on it all.
Thrifty Tips to Consider:
- Create a budget
- Use coupons and shop sales cycles
- Don’t buy what you can’t pay for with cash
- Avoid impulse buys
- Meet weekly to discuss your budget and finances
- Pray about how you will spend and save your money
Thrifty living has blessed our marriage. We figured out how to handle our finances together, how to budget, and how to live on one income.
The effort was worth it for what we’ve been able to do as a couple. Frugal living is a great way to bless your household and bind you together as a couple.
Kelly is a Christ follower, blessed wife, mom to be and a lover of all things home. She blogs at Kelly Cox At Home about her journey at home and passion for debt-free living. She hopes to encourage others in that goal, while sharing tips on how to manage and enjoy all things that make up HOME!
Kelly,
This is a great post. I agree with all of your suggestions. We began learning about frugality and became debt free about 12 years ago. It’s funny, but we still have many of the same habits-beans are still on the menu. Now we are getting closer to retirement and have learned to live on a budget which requires work by the two of us. We have a monthly meeting and one of my jobs is to put together our monthly report, listing pension, ROTHs, etc. We feel more like a team as a result of working so closely together in planning for our future as well as discussing our giving for the month.
…….one of the best fruits from it all is seeing our children budgeting as well, pulling out coupons and bragging about what a deal they got on this or that. Once again, as a couple we are enjoying the fruits of labor as we see our young adult children using the same concepts.
I’m increasingly convinced it is not so much what we say, but what we do that shapes our children.
Mary, that is fantastic. I hope that we will see the fruits of our labor and that our children will learn both good habits and how to budget. You just encouraged me in this. Thank you!
We have also seen great blessings in being “on the same page” with our finances. We started budgeting within the first five years of our marriage and committed to being debt free for the first time. I truly believe that the way we communicate about finances has been a great blessing to us with the other areas of marriage communication as well. It has truly bonded us closer together.
That is great, Rosanna! It is amazing when we come together with our spouse and come to agreement with a plan in place. Communication happens and blessings follow!
We’ve been married for over 21-years, and for most of that time we had very little wiggle room in our budget. One great thing about those extremely lean years is that even though we have a bigger income now, we know how to live on a lot less, if we should ever need to. It’s great to know that we have years of experience in being frugal-ninjas, just in case we ever need to cut back again. It’s also been great for our kids to know how to shop sales and live frugally. They don’t expect us to run out and buy whatever it is they happen to want that moment. It will be much easier for them to be content in their own ultra-frugal-by-necessity young adult years. I think it will actually be a gift for their spouses one day for them not to expect to be living the “good life” from the very beginning.
How wonderful that your children saw your example. I am sure it will pay off in their own marriages too. I enjoyed the frugal-ninja bit…will share that with my husband. Haha!
Great article! Totally agree that financial commitment helps the couple grow closer. I can’t pin point how it helped in our life. But I can tell you that it’s a major blessing that we both think alike when it comes to finances and it helps tremendously in our relationship.
That is awesome, Uma. Money is one of toughest issues in marriage and being like minded helps so much!