Personal Money Style
Sit down together and share details about the practical aspects of your personal money style. If you’re already married, use this opportunity to reevaluate your current financial situation. Ask yourselves, individually, the following questions and then compare answers:
- Do I carry credit cards? How many and what kind? Gas cards, department store cards, general credit cards? Do I pay the cards in full each month, or just the minimum payments?
- Do I carry cash with me? How much? What do I use it for? How do I keep records of cash spent?
- What does my credit history look like? Any debt problems, overdue bills, repossessions, bankruptcy filings, or late payments?
- What sort of insurance coverage and financial contingency plans do I have for medical expenses and other emergencies?
- Do I have a system for paying bills? What is it?
- How do I keep track of receipts and tax-related paperwork?
- Do I buy lunch at work every day or bring it from home?
- Is recreational shopping a favorite pastime? What sort of limits, if any, do I set for my personal shopping sprees?
- How do I decide to make a major purchase such as a car, new furniture, large appliances, or a home?
- How much of my income do I save each month, and what sort of system do I use for saving money?
- What is my philosophy about financially assisting elderly, disabled, or cash-strapped relatives?
- Do I want (or want my spouse) to stay home after we have children?
- Is tithing or regular philanthropic giving important to me?
- How far in debt can I go and still feel comfortable?
If you are the spend-a-holic in the relationship and are already convinced of the need for financial change in your life, the road ahead is much easier. Unfortunately, reforming a loved one from their spendthrift ways can be difficult and requires a lot of sensitivity and tact. Don’t allow yourself to become adversarial with the spend-a-holic in your life. Instead, be reasonable and show how adopting frugal habits can reduce outstanding debt, free up money for fun activities such as vacations, and help to finance large future expensessuch as buying a house or paying for college tuition.
Categories: Finances, Money Tags: Personal Money Style
Recognizing Your Financial Strengths and Weaknesses
If you’re currently involved with someone and considering a serious commitment, or if you’ve never discussed your spending habits with your spouse or significant other, take some time to talk about your financial mindsets.
Identify your differences and spend some time planning how you want to handle them in your relationship. By dealing with your financial differences, you’ll not only cut down on arguments later in life, but you and your partner will become a united front working for common financial goals.
You may well find that your significant other is a spendthrift and you’re a miser or vice versa opposites tend to attract each other. One reason opposites attract may be that on some unconscious level, people are aware of their own weaknesses and shortcomings and know almost instinctively what they need to “complete” themselves. If you have trouble keeping to a written budget, you may choose a life partner whose greatest joy is keeping detailed written records of every flower growing in the yard or every penny spent on bubble gum by the kids and imagine you balance each other out in the process. Having differences is healthy, but we also know from experience that these differences can test your limits of grace and reason.
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Improving Your Relationship with Money
Just as you have relationships with the people in your life, you also have a relationship with money how you earn it, spend it, lose it, waste it, save it. It’s important to take a good, hard look at how you use and misuse money. Otherwise, you’ll never really get a grip on what happens to it, and you’ll always be left scratching your head, wondering what happened to your earnings.
Most people are not in the boat alone, and finding financial common ground can be difficult when one spouse is a spendthrift and the other’s a miser. Being smart about money is a choice that’s easiest to live with if both partners share the same general financial goals, even if their money styles are a bit different. If you both want to save money, get out of debt, live within your means, and attain mutual long-term goals, it’s important to discuss your different approaches to money management and find some common ground. Otherwise your frugal efforts may be voided by your partner’s poor spending habits.
Children can also be difficult to win over. If you listen carefully, you can probably still hear the echoes from the latest whine-fest: “But I want it now!”
Categories: Finances, Money Tags: Finances, Improving Your Relationship with Money, Money
