Seven years ago, when I married my husband in our $500 wedding ceremony, we decided to forego the whole “pre-marital counseling” thing since we weren’t getting married in the Church (for more on that story, head here).

Truth be told, I think we just thought that we could survive on our love for each other and everything would be rainbows and sunshine and maybe some unicorns would show up too…

Yeah, about that…

Anyway, if you’ve been married for any length of time you know that it’s not always pretty and that the real definition of “love” isn’t a feeling at all – it’s an act. It requires action – it requires you to choose your spouse over yourself every.single.day.

And it’s hard.

It’s hard to put someone else before you especially when their snoring is the reason why you didn’t get a good night’s rest and then they attempted to be helpful by unloading the dishwasher but put everything up in the completely wrong spot so now you’re fumbling around just trying to find a spoon to stir your coffee with.

It can be hard to be “thankful” in those moments – those “you annoy the hell out of me” moments (and yes, for all you newlyweds/engaged couples, you will annoy the living daylights out of each other at least once in your marriage).

And since we didn’t go the pre-marital counseling route, we didn’t know anything about managing money together. In fact the first year and half of our marriage, we basically had separate accounts.

We had a joint checking account but that really just had my paycheck in it and was used to pay the bills and buy groceries and then we had my husband’s business checking that was all our “fun” money and he could do whatever he wanted with that money.

Then life happened…

We didn’t start “sharing” money until we found out that I was pregnant with our oldest and since our plan was for me to be a stay-at-home mom once babies came along, we knew we had to figure out a game plan quick. Which of course included us having to finally share a checking account and actually manage money together.

It was weird, I’m not going to lie. My accountant/saver brain mixed with his impulsive/spender brain didn’t really see eye-to-eye on money.

For instance, my husband likes knowing that there’s money in savings (I mean who doesn’t like knowing they have a fallback), but what my husband doesn’t like is that he can’t just spend that money when he wants to.

Meaning, if he wants to make a big impulsive purchase, he can’t just take the money out of savings. To him, it kind of feels pointless to have the money in savings if he can’t spend it. Whereas me, I wouldn’t spend a dime if I didn’t have to. I’d have a zillion dollars sitting in the bank but my furniture would be made out of cardboard.

Give and take. Opposites attract. Whatever you want to call it, we still had a battle (and still do) on our hands to figure out how to manage money together instead of separately.

So how did we figure it out and how can you learn to manage money together?

Spender or Saver

First, you need to determine if you’re a spender or a saver and your spouse needs to do the same. By knowing your natural strengths with money, you’ll both have a better understanding of not only each other’s strengths with money but also their weaknesses.

Now, Savers, don’t just assume that because your spouse is a Spender that they are terrible with money. Spenders can actually be really great at saving money. I know my husband is actually way better at scoring an amazing deal on things than I am. He may not be great at making sure money ends up in a savings account but he’s really great at stretching the money he has to spend.

Strengths and weaknesses – if you understand what they are it becomes easier to work together on the challenging aspects of money management.

Who will bear the burden?

Okay, so let’s face it. Money management works best when there’s ONE person bearing the burden of CREATING the budget – notice I didn’t say STICKING to the budget, because that’s up to BOTH spouses.

Hopefully those all caps words got your attention…

The thing is whenever my husband and I have both attempted to create a budget together it ends up in a serious fight. It’s too many conflicting ideas and then on top of it, trying to make decisions on what to include and not to include becomes even more overwhelming when more than one opinion is involved.

Now, what we do is I create the budget and then I give my husband veto power. He can say, “well I don’t think we really need to put an extra $100 in savings this month because we really need to replace the air filter in the HVAC system and the fridge filter”.

Seriously, I don’t keep up with the home maintenance stuff – that’s his job in our home, so I trust that he knows what he’s talking about and I’ll make the adjustments to the budget as necessary.

Does this prevent every argument about money?

Nope. We still disagree about some things when it comes to where to spend money but those are now far and few in between which means when there is an argument we know to take the issue more seriously.

Stay within your fence.

I really like what my friend Lauren Greutman says in her book, The Recovering Spender about staying “within your fence” when it comes to budgeting. Basically, the best way to look at a budget is as if it was a fence for your money.

Just like a fenced in backyard will keep your dog and even your children safe from running into the street, your budget will keep your money from running wild. By looking at a budget through this lens of “keeping your money in check” it, in my opinion, becomes a little easier to manage your money.

Avoid the double standard.

Now, the trick here is to make sure that both you and your spouse are committed to staying within that fence. That’s why you need to make sure that one of you has the veto power when it comes to the budget and that you both agree on where  the money is to go that month BEFORE you actually spend it.

Then you have to keep each other in check. I know that even though I’m a Saver, I can get bit by the spending bug when I see something adorable for one of my kiddos….like a cute new dress for Charlotte. And since I manage the money it would be easy for me to be like, “whatever, it’s just $5 and it’s sooooooo cute!!!” but then I have to answer to husband on why it was “okay” for me to go over budget but it’s not okay for him to go over budget.

Double standard anyone?

So not only do you need to stay within your fence, but you need to hold each other accountable. You’re a team – not individuals, so hold each other accountable for your actions with money.

This isn’t a fail-proof system for managing money together and it won’t prevent every argument with money but it’s an amazing start to figuring out your family’s unique needs when it comes to managing money.

What advice can you give to a couple just starting out on their journey towards managing money together?

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