Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash
Maintaining a stable and healthy relationship can be a bumpy journey for some couples, and once you get on a steady path, managing finances as a couple comes as another obstacle. But things don’t have to be as messy as they sound. Nowadays, making a relationship or a marriage work takes a lot of time and diligence, as well as dealing with many hardships, including finances.
Money mustn’t be the thing that holds couples together, at least love and respect must be in the number one place, however, it’s a necessary tool that makes a relationship work.
From leasing an apartment, paying electric bills, and resolving debts, couples need to budget things out very smartly in order to stay committed to one another and make their relationship work. Whether you are married, engaged, or in a stable long-term relationship, learning how to handle money with your significant other is a work in progress. Luckily, here are some successful ways to start budgeting as a couple, reach your monetary goals, and avoid financial red flags.
How to Budget as a Couple?
When two people get together, get married, and start living together, they start sharing their belongings, traits, the good, the bad, and the money. When you bring your assets and income into a relationship, you need to delegate those mutual funds effectively to make the relationship work and to keep a household neat and organized.
The best way to budget as a couple is to combine all your earnings and share all your expenses. This would help avoid any future disagreements and make the budgeting a smooth-sailing. Another way to budget as a couple includes dividing everything, having separate accounts, and being separately responsible for different things.
For instance, the wife would get the groceries and pay the bills, while the husband would pay the rent, and the lease, or be responsible for monthly utilities, installments, and loans. But of course, this is not any rule or similar.
No one-size-fits-all approach
If you want to make budgeting as a couple work, you need to be attentive to each other’s needs, spending habits, and have mutual financial goals, but also outline individual desires. To budget successfully as a couple, you should set your financial goal, both individually and as a couple, and implement some of these tips to create a diligent plan that you would stick to.
1. Set long-term goals
For some, it’s buying a car together, while for others it’s buying a home or it’s opening a joint retirement fund. As a couple, it’s important to have a clear vision of what your mutual life would look like further down the road.
No matter if you wish to remodel your home, start a new business for which need to have an extra investment fund, get new furniture, save for a college fund, or pay down your rent, you should have a clear insight into what your financial future holds, and make a financial plan that would help you get through any obstacles.
2. Estimate your monthly costs and spending
The best technique that would help you budget as a couple is to estimate all your incomes and earnings on a monthly basis and delegate the costs.
Your monthly spending is not the same every month, that’s for sure, however, there are a few costs that remain the same (at least for some period) such as rent, lease, electricity and utility bills, paying internet and streaming services, etc.
Therefore, with a close estimation of your monthly expenses, you can budget as a couple all those things neatly and cover all the expenses and have money for other guilty pleasures. Put all your earnings and spending pen to paper, calculate how much money you spend each month, and note down how much money you need to set aside for all the expenses, and you will be budgeting as a couple like a pro.
3. Manage your combined income sources
It’s perfectly normal to have individual or separate accounts, however, to retain relationship stability and have a mindful and nurtured life together, you need to combine your income source. Combine all your earnings, paycheck salaries, bonuses, and other income prospects, and calculate everything.
With a steady monthly calculation, you will manage to adequately divide monthly fees and utility bills, afford fancy dinners and travels, and have enough saved money aside for future requirements.
When you cover all the monthly costs and pay the required expenses, you won’t have to worry about experiencing financial red flags in a relationship, nor have any monetary difficulties as a couple.
4. Split and track expenses
If you want to learn how to budget as a couple, you need to get to terms with the way you will split expenses. Once you have made a plan about who will cover which expenses, the time has come to track them.
First and foremost, split the basic grocery expenses, for example, agree on who would go to the supermarket to get the food, and who would pay for food delivery and expensive night outs. Next, choose what technique works for you when it comes to tracking expenses.
You can have a joint account as a couple and see how much money each side spends on a weekly basis. Or you can create a fun Excel spreadsheet and track expenses like that. In any case, create a plan and make sure you both understand, and again – stick to it.
5. Review your spendings
If you were to have regular talks with your partner or spouse about your spending habits, you would always know where your monthly earnings have “disappeared” and be able to budget as a couple without any difficulties.
Talk to each other about how your budget is going, what you want to purchase this month, do you need to set aside some vast amount of funds for unplanned expenses, and whether you need to plan out some huge investments.
Budgeting as a couple shouldn’t be like a chore, but it should be part of your lifestyle.
Additional budgeting tips for couples
Budgeting is a very important thing in a marriage, and in any other serious relationship, but it’s not the most detrimental thing. There will be plenty of ups and downs in achieving your mutual financial goal and while trying to avoid financial red flags.
Therefore, it won’t be such a big deal if you can’t afford friends’ spending habits because you are focused on budgeting as a couple, saving for the future together, and making “that” relationship work.
Find a silver lining, grow your income as a couple, get a takeaway instead of going to restaurants, and do whatever you believe would be necessary to avoid relationship anxiety and retire totally debt-free.
