How to talk to your partner about money (without fighting)

Arguing with your partner sucks. Arguing about money sucks. When you dreamed about your future with your partner, I bet none of it involved yelling at each other over the grocery budget and fighting about money. So how do you set up your finances to make it less likely you will be shouting at each other when you should be enjoying your life together?

My steps to reduce the fights with your partner about money are:

Have regular money date nights
Share your goals and your dreams
Understand your money mindsets
Let’s talk about debt, baby
Both take responsibility for setting your budget
Track your spending against your budget, and adjust as needed
Stop playing the blame game
Work out if money is really the problem

I’ll go into each of the above in more detail just a little later. It might help first to explain how I worked out the steps to being on the same page about our finances.

Table of Contents

Our financial journey as a couple
Reducing the arguments about money
Final thoughts on not fighting with your partner about money

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Our financial journey as a couple

The saver and the spender

When my husband and I first got together, we had quite different approaches to money. I’m a saver and a planner. I have always focussed on investment. I’m that person who always plans my big purchases. I do not take out debt for anything except buying a house (that means no cars on finance!). There is a credit card in my purse that I use to build up air miles, but I pay off the full balance of the card every month.

My husband is the type to spend everything he earns, and for big purchases like holidays, he used to borrow money from his parents and then pay it back over several months. Luckily, he never got a credit card as he was worried about running up debt and spending years paying it back.

Lack of shared responsibility for our finances

Because we approached money differently, I would get very frustrated with trying to get my husband on board with my plans. Often, we would end up having a fight over money, even though we weren’t poor. We would talk about saving money, and then the next minute he would be wanting us to spend hundreds of dollars on concert tickets, or a weekend away, or a huge holiday!

I would feel like I was always the one who had to say ‘no’. It made me feel like the mean one. But it also felt like he didn’t need to take any of the responsibility for thinking about savings and being sensible with money. It forced me to be the decision-maker, even for things I thought we had agreed on.

Understanding money mindsets

We were having the same argument again and again. And I finally realized that my way of looking at money management was not the same as his way – we had completely different money mindsets. If we were going to succeed, and not fight over money, then we needed to agree on our financial plans by having real conversations about money.

Getting on the same page

I needed to accept that my way was not right (whaaaaaat?) and his way was not wrong, but we needed a compromise that we could both agree on, and would get us to our shared goals. We needed a proper money conversation, not for me to give a money lecture.

Once we made the decision to work at it as a team, rather than coming at our finances from our own viewpoint only, life became much easier. It’s not always perfect, because I’m a bit of a control freak. I have to work hard to not step back into trying to stamp the way I want to do things all over our financial plans.

We now do our best to make financial decisions together, and compromise, compromise, compromise! I think it has given us both a better relationship with money, and with each other as we have worked to find common ground with our finances.

husband and wife fighting about money and spending

Reducing the arguments about money

Have regular money date nights

You may have seen a few people mention the idea of a money date night. I highly recommend doing this. Set a date, maybe once every two weeks or once a month, where you have a date night to talk about your finances. Use these as the key time that you go through each of the steps in the rest of this article, and do them in order! Don’t jump to setting your budget before you have talked about your goals.

In general, try to make the money dates constructive, and use them for all manner of money discussions. Use them for making sure you have stayed aligned to your values, for keeping track, and for making adjustments.

The reason I suggest having regular finance dates. and making it a date, is that you need to be connecting as a couple for the money talks to work well. So make sure it feels like a date. Cook something nice, or go out to eat somewhere that you both like. Make the effort to both get dressed up, and compliment each other. Ask about your partner’s day, and show them you care. This all sets the scene for a positive conversation about money, instead of a fight over finances.

The first thing to cover in your money date schedule, is goals, hopes, and dreams. This is both short term goals and long term goals, and don’t forget to include financial goals. What holidays do you want to take in the next three years? Do you want to buy a house in the next five years? Are you wanting to start a family? Is your dream to retire at the age of fifty with a large investment portfolio? Do you only want to work twenty hours a week after you have had kids? What are your savings goals?

Once you have shared your own goals, make sure you take the time to understand your partner’s goals, and that you get to a point where you agree as a couple. This may include some compromise – if you have different views on your dream holiday then you need to work together to find the solution, which may be planning to go on holiday separately with friends, or finding a different location that you both want to travel to.

Remember to be realistic and think about your current financial position. If you are in $50,000 credit card debt, your short term goal should not be a holiday to Bora Bora! But you could have a goal to pay off your debt, and then save up to pay for that amazing holiday.

Talk about how you feel about money

To really get on the same page as a couple, you need to understand each other’s money mindset.

When thinking about money mindset, or your relationship with money, think about questions like:

How does money make you feel?
Have you ever felt that you are not in control of your money?
Did you grow up with lots of money?
Have you ever set money goals before?
Was money often a cause of arguments in your family?
Have you ever suffered from financial stress?
What does enough mean to you?
Do you believe that we will always have enough money?
Would it worry you if we didn’t have an emergency fund?
What do you see as the major risks to our finances?

The questions above and others like them are great to understand one another because you may be coming at finances from a completely different place. If you grew up always having enough, but your husband grew up in a household where money was a source of tension and there was never enough to pay the bills, that is going to shape a lot of the behaviours you both have today.

Discuss your attitude to debt (good and bad)

Have you spoken to your partner about how you feel about debt? Some financial gurus will tell you to never take on debt, and to pay off all of your debts as quickly as possible. If you have ever run into trouble with a credit card, then debt can seem scary and you might want to avoid it altogether.

My personal view is it is not always bad to take on debt, and you and your partner should talk about your views on debt. Unless you can save enough to buy a home with cash, you will probably need to take on debt to buy a house. You may want to go into debt to pay for education that will give you a higher salary. This is what I would see as good debt, because it is an investment in your future. I see bad debt as debt for things that are not going to earn you more money in future, and that includes car loans, credit card debt, and personal loans.

Talk to your partner about attitudes to debt, and make sure you have agreed what circumstances you will and will not take on debt, and how much you are comfortable with. If you currently have debt, then make sure you have discussed it, and both know exactly how much debt you are in, and the minimum repayments. Setting that out as part of your financial planning and goals will make all the conversations down the track so much easier!

Both take responsibility for setting your budget

Nothing is going to happen without both you and your spouse doing something actively to put money in savings accounts, in investments, and keeping your debt low. If you are both on the same page, and discuss and make plans together, it’s more likely to happen the way you envision it.

Work out income and expenses

Firstly, you need to know how much money is coming in the door, and how much you are currently spending – yes, it’s budgeting time. If you have never tried to work out your household budget before (either alone or as a couple), or if you have and it has failed, then head over to my post about how to make a budget, and download my free budgeting spreadsheet. It has all the expenses categories you could think of, so you won’t miss one and then be surprised when your expenses are more than you expect!

Agree on reducing your spending

Secondly, you need to agree on what you want to change in your current spending habits to hit your goals. You should both be involved, as if you don’t agree on this, then your partner won’t stick to it, and you will be back to arguing about your money again! If you agree upfront, then each time you are talking about spending money on eating out, new furniture, or a weekend away, you can look back at your agreed spending to see if it works in your budget.

The key here is not to tell your spouse that he can’t have the new couch that he wants – ask him to look back at your agreed budget and your goals and then consider how this purchase fits in with that. Which goal does he intend to delay to buy the couch? Make him responsible for working out the answer. When a new couch means you have to put off the dream holiday for another year, it can make the new couch seem much less important.

Don’t forget some fun money

Thirdly, you need to leave room in the household budget for fun and treats. Unless you are in serious amounts of debt, you should keep doing the things you most enjoy, like eating out once a month, going to sports games, or going to the movies. If you make the budget too restrictive, just like a diet, you won’t stick to it! Consider building in an extra reward if you hit a savings or investment goal.

Also try to make sure the budget and the plan always work in a way that each of you gets some money that you can spend any way you want to – and put it in a separate account so you don’t go over. It may not be very much while you’re trying to pay down debt but try to make it fair and equitable. If one partner is the sole earner and the other is a stay at home parent, it is not fair that only the current earner gets a fun money allowance. If this is something you are struggling discussing with your partner, take a look at my thoughts on getting a joint bank account.

The budget should be realistic

Fourthly, don’t make the budget too drastic or unrealistic. If you currently spend $200 a week on groceries, then setting a budget of $50 is likely to fail. Try aiming for $150 or $160 a week to start with, and then you can always reduce the spending even more once you have got the hang of it.

Remember, you should both get to raise your values, what is important to you, and how you want to spend your money. Even if one person in the relationship earns much less income or no income, they need to have a say in the household finances. And one partner does not get an outright veto over something important to the other. If your partner loves music and wants to buy records every couple of weeks, find a way for it to work in your budget, in the same way you will be expecting them to find the space for things that are important to you.

Regularly track your spending against budget, and adjust if needed

You have to track what you are spending, and you should both be doing this together, as it helps to reinforce the shared financial plans, and progress against your shared goals. I follow a monthly budget as I get paid monthly, and that’s about as often as we need to look at how our financial situation is tracking. If you have struggled to stay on budget in the past and lose focus quickly you need to do the check-in at short intervals, like every week. If you are great at sticking to a plan, then you may only need to check in every quarter.

There are a few different ways you can track how you are going. Some people like budgeting apps. I currently use a paper planner as right now I’m tracking more than just the budget. Do whatever works for you.

If you find you are overspending in one area, then look at if there are ways you can reduce that spend, or if there any other areas you can cut back on your expenses. If you can’t lower your expenses anywhere, then maybe your budget was not realistic and you need to go back and have another look at it. As you’re creating your budget avoid placing blame for anything from the past. Start fresh from today with what is your reality. If you’re in debt due to poor planning even if it’s just one of you at fault, let it go and work from now to change the future. After all, you really cannot change the past. It’s done and over, time to move on.

Stop playing the blame game

It’s easy to blame and criticize your partner if things go off track. Try to look at it instead as an ongoing learning exercise in finances, rather than an all or nothing approach.

Before you even think about criticizing your partner, make sure you have been honest about your own actions and spending. Have you spent outside of the agreed budget?If you have missed any of your goals, it can be easy to let that frustration with yourself be projected to your partner instead. You need to make sure you are demonstrating good habits if you are going to ask your partner to make changes to theirs.

Rather than blaming your partner if something has not worked, try to have a discussion where there is accountability without any judgment. You may discuss that your partner spent money on take-out, but do not argue with them about it. Look instead at what caused the issue, and how you can work together to remedy it, or adjust your budget. Make them feel you are on the same team, and not looking for an opportunity to fight with them for every little thing they do wrong.

Is money really what you are fighting about?

The final thing to consider, and discuss at your date nights, is whether money is really the issue. It may be that you don’t have a money problem as much as you have a problem connecting as a couple.

If you can’t agree on a path forward with your finances, consider getting someone to help you look at it independently. A financial advisor or financial counselor may be able to provide advice to help you to get to a compromise position, or offer up new ideas or strategies that you had not considered.

Alternatively, a relationship counselor could help you to work through other issues that may be impacting your relationship. Learning to communicate better with your partner across all areas, not just your finances, could lead to fewer arguments and less frustration all round.

Final thoughts on not fighting with your partner about money

When you are in a marriage, or any relationship, you need to be approaching your problems as a team. If you aren’t working together on the problem and the solution, then you will keep falling back into the same patterns of arguing. Getting a shared view of how you want to tackle your finances going forwards and continue to avoid financial issues, is the best way to move forwards together – it needs to be a team effort.

Talking about money doesn’t have to be hard. Money is only one part of your life together, but it’s what is going to help you meet your goals and live a happy life. Talking about it and setting yourself up for success by managing your money carefully will simply remove the stress that doesn’t even need to exist.

What are your big financial dreams and goals? Let me know in the comments below what you and your partner are working towards. Also, if you have any additional amazing tricks and tips for getting your partner on board with your budget, or how you talk to your spouse about money, feel free to share them!

How to talk to your partner about money (without fighting)