Member-only story
№1 Tip To Avoid Arguing With Your Partner Over Finances
Spending without budgeting doesn’t have to hurt your relationship
Money can be a tender subject. We all have our own ideas about money — how it should be spent or saved, which items receive a top spending priority, and how much (or if!) we’re willing to go into debt to buy the things we want.
Money is one of the top conflicts between married people.
And money is important. As much as we like to think that money doesn’t matter and that it can’t buy happiness, many of us have anxiety about money. Where will it come from? How much will I need to retire? Will we be able to pay all our bills this month?
These feelings are exacerbated when we have a partner with different spending priorities.
Different spending priorities don’t have to mean an argument
I remember one of the first fights I got into with my husband about money. I had been shopping and bought a $30 coat, on sale of course. I came home thrilled with my new find, but he was annoyed.
“You already HAVE a coat! Why do you need another coat?”
Of course, I didn’t understand. “Well…because I wanted it? It was only $30, and my other coat is not that warm.” It was my second winter in Nebraska, and let me just tell you, you need a good coat if you’re going to survive here!
But I was annoyed by his spending as well. Do we really need more computer parts? The computer works! It’s fine! What else can you possibly stick in that box that’s going to make our lives better?
This back and forth went on for a while. We were annoyed with each other for making small purchases on things that we thought were stupid. We had different spending priorities and, considering how different we are from each other, it made perfect sense.
But we didn’t want to have to check with each other before we bought something minor; at the same time, we were working hard to get, and stay, debt-free, so we needed to keep each other in the loop with our spending to make sure we were staying on budget.
