Taking your relationship to a whole other level brings along a bunch of new challenges also. One of them is certainly the management of a mutual (family) budget.
It’s a tough one having another person delve into your pocket every now and then, especially if you’ve been solely in charge of your finances for a long time. Changing ways of doing things and possibly adopting a different mindset is very often inevitable.
So, is there an ultimate way to budgeting as a couple?
Many will tell you that there isn’t. We won’t beg to differ, but there are certainly some strategies to managing money as a couple that you might consider.
In this article, we’ll try to point your attention in the right direction and give you a couple of solutions to successfully manage your family budget.
Building Blocks
Or, maybe more preferably, the building block. You already guessed it – it is trust!
Relationships are always built on trust, so the same goes with the institution of managing money with a joint account. Never skip an opportunity to talk with your partner about your expenses, about what needs to be expensed in the forthcoming period and how much money would you need to spend together.
When you have everything discussed back and forth and probably written down, you will leave much less space for misunderstandings.
So, don’t hesitate to open new topics whenever needed and to carefully budget your way through together. Putting pen to paper is always advised, so you don’t forget what you agreed upon.
In This Together
Living off of two separate accounts is also possible at this stage of the relationship but, if you started building your own lives together, you should seriously consider moving to one joint account. Especially because of the fact that sooner or later there will come the day when you’ll need to make that one big step forward.
And by moving on, we mean maybe building your own house.
Considering a cash loan or opening a bank credit line can come up as a possibility at this stage. No worries, for handling debt together is always easier than going into this endeavors on your own.
Everything else left aside, numerous financial institutions today are giving you lots of options for consolidating debt and speeding up the process of paying it off. You can see one such option here.
Save Smart, Spend Smarter
Finding an equilibrium between spending and saving becomes a true nightmare when two different consumerist habits collide. We mentioned before that changing mindset and making compromises might be inevitable here.
Just so, talking through different situations and making financial plans together once again steps up here.
Generally, there are 3 broad strategies that just married couples resort to when budgeting:
- Completely joint finances – Managed through only one account with no money left aside just for yourself. This one is advised if you have full confidence in your partner and you’re confident that he or she won’t spend on things you don’t need.
- Managing money separately – We talked about this also here; it takes a really high level of independence but could really untie the knots you tied by living together.
- Combined account – That leaves you with a little bit of your money to spend it as you’d like, while at the same time contributing a decent amount into the family budget.
The choice is yours!
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