“How do get your husband to do the budget with you?”

It’s a question I get asked almost on a daily basis. I talk endlessly at work, home and with my friends about budgeting. I get many of them on board and we lay out a budget for them, but then the inevitable happens. They bring this budget home to their spouse and almost immediately get shut down.

“What’s the problem?”

Many times, it is just how you go about bringing up the idea of a budget and other times it is the basis of communication itself that the relationship is lacking. I’m sure you’ve heard it before, but communication so crucial in a relationship, and it’s been proven that talking to your spouse about money is the key to budgeting

Money is a sensitive subject and for many people is the MOST PRIVATE aspect of their lives. Everyone has a few financial skeletons in their closet and most of us try our hardest to hide them. Go ahead and ask a friend about their financial situation the next time you’re just hanging out and see what kind of response you get. Awkward. Even my tight group of friends that deemed ourselves “full disclosure friends” have some secrets in the finance world. Why? I’m not 100% sure, but I would like to break through that barrier by being completely open about our story.

The beginning of our financial journey and the genesis of our communication

I was about 6 months pregnant with a baby we had tried for over 3 years to conceive. If any of you have had fertility issues you know how expensive that can be. We were living in a rental waiting for our new home to be built and my husband came home one day and basically said “We are going to go on a budget and paying off $120,000 in debt in the next 2 years”.

Well, as you can imagine I looked at him a little funny. All I could muster out was “What?…..”

He had been listening to podcasts, reading forums, and researching his heart out over the previous months to come to this conclusion that we needed a budget. Now mind you not but one day before this (and for the previous 5 years) I had been in 100% control of our budget. I use that term loosely here.

I admit. It was a huge stress. Daily I would look at our checking account and compare it to the calendar of bills and the various credit cards, crossing my fingers that we would have enough money to pay everything off and have enough until we got paid again. Any time we had a vacation coming up, holidays, and emergency expenses like medical bills or a flat tire, I would cringe and be scrambling to find an overtime – which we prided ourselves in not taking previously.

But that stress had me 100% in control and here hubby was preaching what I thought was a life of deprivation following a strict budget, giving up things that we wanted to do, places we wanted to go, things that I needed. I felt so overwhelmed I can’t even tell you.

Aside from losing control, I was scared. Scared to show him that I hadn’t been handling our money well, that we were worse off than he even knew and scared that I had failed him. You see we were just like the majority of Americans. I would put things on credit cards and plan to pay the off but then something else would come up and more and more money would go on that card. In addition to the credit card debt we had car payments, medical bills for both hubby and from our IVF journey. We even were paying off the furniture we were sitting on as we made that first budget!

For over 2 years while we were in the heart of our fertility journey, when the money was pouring out to doctors, procedures, drug companies, I also kept our previous lifestyle of buying and traveling. It was my way of trying to ignore the stress and emotions of our fertility journey, but where I went wrong was hiding it from my husband.

“We were in debt. We were in a lot of debt and we needed a way out.”

We sat down and talked. It wasn’t pretty. There was stress, tears, possibly me saying bad words about this “stupid budget”, and lots of pauses. I did not want to be having this conversation and I am sure he did want to be arguing with a largely pregnant woman all night, but we kept talking. We laid it all out there. Every dollar of debt was staring us in the face and it was terrifying. We laid down our archaic form of a budget (INSERT LINK TO MAKING A BUDGET) and I reluctantly said I would try it.

Tips for that first conversation:

1. Be Honest. The only way to truly have open communication is to have a conversation with full disclosure. You need lay out all of your debt together and you have to do so without judgment. There is no way to move forward if you don’t see your past clearly so you can fix your mistakes.
2. Don’t point blame. Point blank – you are where you are now and there is nothing  you can do about it but work on fixing it together. At this point it doesn’t matter who spent more on what, who was irresponsible with the credit cards, or who forgot to pay that bill. What matters is that you both agree to work together and make sure you don’t go back to those bad spending habits (LINK TO BAD SPENDING HABITS)
3. Don’t overuse the words “I” and “you”. This links back to pointing blame, but this in particular is something that can immediately put your spouse on the defensive. There are going to be many many more talks about money after this initial one and you don’t want your partner to feel like they can’t speak freely.

Now I’m not going to tell you that things magically transitioned from me feeling insanely overwhelmed, stressed and partially attacked to a life of perfection overnight, but day by day things got easier. Day by day I was realizing that my hubby was not preaching a life of deprivation but rather it was finding the things we value and spending our money on those things and those things alone. We simply cut out wasteful spending. It was the first step we made, and it was the biggest. But it was the little steps that came next that had the biggest impact on our lives.

I found we were talking even more than before. We had always had our finances linked together, but, as I said, I had previously been in charge. Having the stress of complete responsibility taken off of my shoulders was INCREDIBLE! I had let my husband see me at my worst by showing him my mistakes and now, as a team, we were creating a new life together – one that wasn’t depriving but was simply optimizing the money that we already made.

“The key to getting your spouse to talk about money is getting on the same page for your vision of your future and your goals.”

1. Talk About Your Dreams and Goals for the Future. Where do you want to be in 5 years? What goals do you have – paying off your credit cards this year, paying off all of your debt within 2 years, being able to work less?Let’s be honest. If you both don’t have the same goals this is never going to work. But there’s hope! You can find common ground. I know I fought it initially. I didn’t think I wanted the same things my husband wanted by putting our family on this budget, but we talked (and talked and talked and talked) and realized that we did want the same thing. Our mutual goal was to move to an area where we could spend more time outdoors with our daughter and live a simpler life without the stress of debt.
2. Create the Budget Together. Sitting down and working together is the first step. Just like your goals have to be in sync so does your plan. This gives both of you shared responsibility in the process.
3. Be Thankful for Small Wins. Every step towards your goal is a positive one. My favorite quote from my husband is “Don’t compare yourself to others. Compare yourself to your yesterday”.
4. Account for Every Dollar Spent. You both have to be just as honest as the initial conversation. There is no hiding expenses anymore. Document every dollar you spend. Use whatever method works for you. Hubby and I use the Every Dollar App from Dave Ramsey. (It’s FREE)
5. Don’t Give Up. There are going to be setbacks. Your spouse may not respond the way you were hoping at first, but don’t give up. Don’t quit. Keep making the positive changes and set an example for them. Show them that small changes can have huge impacts. Lead by example.

Fast Forward 18 months

That insane statement that my husband came home with a little over a year ago doesn’t sound so insane now. We are mere months away from our goal of paying off over $120,000 in debt. Months away from something that seemed so impossible.

I will tell you that paying off that first car loan was incredible, but I can’t even imagine how we will feel when we pay off the last debt we will EVER HAVE. We will officially be debt free except our mortgage, and we didn’t change our income. I’m a pediatric ER nurse and my hubby is a fire medic. So, no matter where you are in life, what you make and what you owe. It can be done. You just have to set your goals – reasonable and achievable goals – and work together to achieve them.

I am beyond amazed at the changes that have happened to our family, to our relationship, to our life! Budgeting has become second nature to me. Every month we have figured out small ways to spend less on the frivolous things and use our money on the things that truly make us happy. I sound cheesy. I know. Trust me. But I cannot tell you level stress that has been lifted off of my shoulders.

I’m no longer solely responsible for the finances of our home, and any obstacles we have we work on together. The key was continuing our communication. Remember we started out where you are. What began as what I saw as demeaning to have to “report” every dollar I spend actually just became a way of us respecting one another by not hiding our spending. This transferred over to other aspects of our lives. We talked more, shared things, worked together. There’s this level of communication that wasn’t there before, and we didn’t even know we were missing it. 

“How do you get your husband to do the budget with you?”

Talk to him.

First Name

Email address:

Leave this field empty if you're human:

 

 

-If you’re still having problems talking to your spouse about the budget, take a look at whether or not you’re communicating about other things. Budgeting may not be where you should start. Remember it is the most private aspect of most people’s lives. Check out this post on communication in marriages if you need some help getting started.

Thanks for reading and post any and all budget questions below. I would love to help you make budgeting a part of your every day life.