Fight, you say?! Yes, it is true… all couples fight and all fight over money. Especially during the holidays, money is usually being tapped and emotional tensions are higher. This combination can make for some serious blow ups.
Being able to discuss money is critical in all relationships. If you are a young couple starting out, look for clues as to how your date responds to money situations. As brutal as it sounds, if you are really on different pages early on… this relationship is not long term material.
But really, this is not a blog on dating! It is about dealing with money and in this case, money and fighting. First off, money is a component of most everything we do and it can come with some emotional baggage. Getting on the same page and working through differences is a necessity in any healthy family.
How do you fight about money then? Often money battles over finances come from either control or differences in spending habits. Let’s work through these both briefly, today and tomorrow. Our first main issue will be control. Tomorrow I will review spending habits.
Control
Couples should try to develop some established roles over how money should be handled. This can change as the relationship changes as well. At first you may keep your money separate, sharing expenses based on an agreed system. Later, you will most likely combine your money and manage it also throughout some set system.
The key to disagreements over control is to determine ahead of time – before you start yelling – who does what in the relationship. This obviously won’t heal arguments, but what it should do is help the disagreements be more productive. If a bill doesn’t get paid, it should be easy to see where the mistake happened. If one person is in charge of all the bills, it doesn’t have to be her fault – but at least the two of you should be able to determine how the problem occurred.
The other advantage of having a set system of who does what is that you can focus more on the money problem itself in your argument, rather than the person. If in the case of the bill not getting paid, focus on what went wrong rather than blaming the person who made the mistake (or simply blaming each other!)
Overall, take some important steps now, before you start disagreeing, to set up a system of how money will be handled and by whom in your current relationship. Then, when you do have an issue of control, like who gets to decide what you buy for Christmas presents… you can focus on the actual problem and not direct that anger at each other.
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