Marriage Saving Money Tips - Finally Stop Fighting Over Money!

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When we talk about marriage, it is no surprise that money problems can put a huge strain on a relationship. Fighting over money is one of the leading causes of divorce. Check out the video below or read on to learn how you can avoid this in your marriage.

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Imagine building a strong relationship with a foundation based on love and trust, only to be ruined because neither of you can figure out how to make it work when it comes to budgeting your finances. I have seen this so many times with people I have worked with and this was even the case early on in my own marriage. I will share with you the tips that saved my own marriage as well as so many other marriages from fighting over money.

When Matt and I got married, we had $41,000 in debt and our combined income wasn't even $40,000 per year! We both decided that it was time to get serious about budgeting and our finances, otherwise, we would be drowning in debt. We agreed on most areas of the budget, but surprisingly, the area we were fighting over the most was our spending money. You would think spending money would be the easy part because that was the money we could do anything with. This was the fun part that is supposed to cultivate your marriage, but instead we were regularly fighting on what to spend it on. We were hit with the reality that although we had a lot in common, we were still two separate human beings with a lot of different interests. He loved doing triathlons, sports, beer – really just living his best life. I, on the other hand, preferred to save as much as possible to get out of debt as soon as possible. As we continued down this path the resentment and fighting continued to grow because he felt like I was holding him back from living life and I felt like he didn’t care about getting out of debt. Neither of us were wrong per se, and either extreme is not healthy. Tired of the stress this was causing our marriage, I came up with the two-step process that finally saved us from fighting about money.

The first thing we did was go line by line through our budget and we applied the test “Do we both use it and/or care about it?”. For example, Matt felt like beer should come out from the grocery budget. However, I do not drink beer so I did not think this should come out of the grocery budget. Another example would be a spouse who goes to the hair salon and spends $150 on a hair cut. Most likely this is not something that is important to the other spouse. Once we had gone through the budget and pulled out all of the items that we both did not use and/or care about we out those items in the “Parking Lot” until we go through the the next step.

The next step was to divide our spending money into cash allowances. For example, if the spending money for the month was $550 then we would each get a cash allowance of $250. This money could be spent on whatever each person wanted, no judgement. The additional $50 per month, in this example, would go into the date night bucket so we weren’t fighting over who paid for what when we went on our date night. This is also very important if you have kids to have a family fun portion so there isn’t fighting over who is paying for these outings as well.

Once we had the allowance amounts divided out then we circled back to the “Parking Lot” mentioned above. So all of the items for each spouse in the Parking Lot are things that would be paid from your spending allowance and not the general budget. So in the example given above, Matt’s beer came out of his spending allowance and not the grocery budget. Going back the example above for the wife’s $150 hair cut. It is possible that both spouses get their hair cut, so maybe the husband’s hair cut is $15 and the wife’s haircut is $150. Another solution would be to make a budget for each spouse to have $15 hair cut in the budget which would mean that the additional $135 would come out of the wife’s spending allowance. So there are 2 ways this can work if both people use some part of the item or if only once spouse uses that item. The key to making this work is once the cash is divided out each month each spouse can spend that money on whatever they want.

The best part of this strategy is that it makes you start prioritizing what you really want. When you aren’t tracking your spending money you tend to just spend money on anything that comes or goes. However, when you have your own cash to spend on whatever you want you tend to start being more picky about the things you spend that money on.

I hoarded my money. I kept it in a small envelope under my mattress and as time went by, I kept adding more money to it. I would get so excited watching it grow over time. Matt, on the other hand, spent his allowance, but he was living his best life. Win-win. Neither of us were wrong and we were both happy.

Let me know in the comments below what you think of this strategy. Do you think this would help ease the money troubles in your marriage? I would love to hear from you! If you want even more details about this process check out the video above.

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