Arguments over money and how money is managed may seem inevitable in any relationship. After all, it’s hard enough to make the right financial choices without taking into account someone else’s feelings and ideas. It can be even more difficult when you are both coming from different financial angles and pasts. So if your styles of dealing with money are different, here are 4 tips for overcoming financial stress in marriage.
- Be frank in discussing how you and your families handled money and how it went when you were growing up. It’s important for both of you to understand where the other is coming from. You want to be frank enough to know what the actual financial situation was and what the family spending habits were – i.e. living paycheck to paycheck and spending rather than saving, or hoarding every dime and being exceptionally frugal whether the money was available or not
- Discuss honestly how that history and past experience may influence your spending and saving decisions. Be sure to discuss whether or not you can both understand where the other is coming from and you need to see if either of you can recognize patterns of behavior
- Discuss honestly your long and short-term goals. For example, we have a savings account devoted to vacations and we deposit something from every paycheck into that savings account whether it’s 10 or 100 dollars.
- Discuss where you each envision being twenty years from now – the frugal husband may be thinking of when you have children and saving enough to allow one of you to be at home with the kids for a few years, a new home purchase or other – the wife may be thinking of all the nice things she’d like to add to the house during a renovation
These tips may not resolve your financial frustrations in one fell swoop, but they can bring you both in touch with where the other is coming from and potentially help you achieve a compromise that reduces the financial strife in your marriage.
How do you and your spouse avoid financial strife in your marriage?
Related Articles:
Living and Buying Unconciously
Marriage: Solving Problems Together
Marriage Dynamics: Spenders & Savers