How to Stop the Money Fights and Get on the Same Page with Your Spouse About Money

There’s so much stress and strife over money in many marriages. Money issues are one of the leading causes of divorce in America, but money doesn’t have to be so hard.

In this episode, we talk about how to stop money fights and some tips to get on the same page with your spouse.

Lightly edited transcript appears after the show notes.

Topics we explore

• why we fight with our spouses about money
• tips to turn things around and get on the same page with your spouse
• what not to do when you’re trying to get on the same page with your spouse about money

Resources mentioned

Lifestyle Freedom Starter Guide: https://www.rhothomas.com/start

Wealthyesque, Episode 1: https://www.rhothomas.com/670000-debt-changed-everything/ 

Work with me

Interested in coaching with me?  https://www.rhothomas.com/coaching

Connect with me

The Wealthyesque Community: https://www.rhothomas.com/community

Social media: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn

Email: hello@rhothomas.com

 

Lightly Edited Transcript

Hey friend! Welcome back to Wealthyesque, and happy Friday!

I am so excited that you’re here, and we’ve got a great conversation in store. It’s actually something that was put on my heart this week. It’s not what I was planning to talk about, but I think it’s important.

But before we jump in, I just want to remind you, if you are struggling to balance life in the law, if you are trying to figure out how to live life by design, or even what the life is that you want to live, if you are struggling to figure out how to pay off your student loans, you feel like you’re overwhelmed, don’t know how to create a plan—I am a coach, and I can help you. So head to rhothomas.com/coaching, and let’s grab a call together and see if coaching might be right for you.

Okay, so jumping into today’s episode, if you’ve been listening to me for any length of time, then I know that you want lifestyle freedom.

You want to live more intentionally. You want to live life by design.

And I guarantee that the intentional life you’re trying to live does not involve fighting with your spouse or significant other about money.

But money is one of the leading causes of divorce in America, and I think it’s so important for us to talk about it because it doesn’t have to be that way.

We can figure out how to be on the same page with our spouse about money so that we don’t have that friction, that tension there. And so I want to talk about why we fight with our spouses about money, how we can turn things around, and then some things not to do when we’re talking about money.

So let’s jump right in.

Why do we fight with our spouses about money?

The reason is really just having different thoughts, different opinions, different values around what’s important, what we should spend our money on, how we should manage our money.

And I’ve told this story, I think before, but when my husband and I first got engaged and got married, we were having a lot of fights around things that we were spending on, specifically for him, he was spending a lot of money at Starbucks, and for me, I was spending a lot of money on makeup.

And he had like that little Starbucks card, and he would load it up each month. And he was putting like $100 on there every month. And I’m like, “What is this?”

Meanwhile, I really like beauty products. And so I could spend, you know, $50 on three lipsticks, and not think anything of it. And the tension was coming in because we did not value the things that the other person was spending money on, right?

Like, I don’t drink coffee. I don’t really like it like that. Judge me if you want to.

I’ll buy those little Frappuccinos. Sometimes I buy the chai tea latte, but just straight coffee is not really my thing. And my husband and my coffee drinking friends think that that’s weird, but whatever.

But the point is I wasn’t spending $100 on coffee. That didn’t make sense to me. And then of course for him, he’s like, “How are you spending all this money on makeup?”

But the makeup was important to me. I wanted to get good quality makeup. And so I went to the nicer brands and that kind of thing. And he’s just like, there are cheaper makeup like why are you spending so much money on this lipstick?

It’s something that caused a lot of tension for us in the beginning, and again, it goes back to having different thoughts or opinions about what is important or the value that we place on these things.

So when we’re thinking about how to stop fighting with our spouse about money, we’ve got to figure out a way to remove the source of tension.

One tip is tactical. It’s having a separate “do what you want” account.

And this is not a secret bank account. I’m not telling you to go hide money from your spouse or anything like that.

But my husband and I decided that we would each get an allowance each month, and that money comes out of our joint account and goes into separate accounts for each of us so that we’ve got money to spend however we want to, no questions asked.

Nobody’s judging anybody for spending a bunch of money on coffee or spending a bunch of money on makeup, and it has cut down a lot of the fights that we had around money.

And I know some people decide to have separate finances altogether. And we don’t do that, and I really wonder how that works. Like, who pays for what? If you and your spouse, keep your finances separate, hit me up, and let me know, cuz I really do want to know. I’m sure that each couple probably does it even differently.

But my husband and I decided to combine our finances. And we actually did it before we got married while we were engaged, because we just knew we were getting married, right?

I mean, we also got matching ring finger tattoos while we were still engaged. But we got together when we were 18 years old, like we, we knew that we were going to get married.

But anyway, we did our allowance situation early on after we saw this same recurring fight about finances at the end of the month, and having that separate pot of money that we each could spend however we wanted to, without worrying about what the other person’s going to say, or without hearing any comments or, you know, anything like that from the other person did a lot of good for our marriage.

And so the first tip that I have about stopping the fights is separating out that personal money, that fun money, whatever you want to call it, and just having separate money that you each can spend however you want to without any sort of input from the other person.

The second one is a little deeper. And this is about getting on the same page with your spouse, and it goes back to your priorities, your values, your goals.

And I mean, seriously, I say this all the time, but those things really do guide your life and help you to live more intentionally. And when you’re on the same page with your spouse about your values, your priorities, your goals, then you’re going to have less friction in all areas of your life, including in your finances.

And it goes to these core things that are guiding our decisions everywhere else, right? If we are aligned on the ultimate priorities, the ultimate goals, if we are aligned on the things that we value, then we can make decisions for our lives and make sure that they are aligned with the stated combined priorities, goals, values that we came up with together.

And when we make sure that we are all on the same page with that, then we don’t have to worry about things being at odds. I’m not going to make a decision that takes us further away from those goals, those priorities, those values without having a conversation first.

So that is one thing, just sitting, having that conversation, and getting on the same page about what you value and what you prioritize, what your goals are.

And I’m not sure if I told you this, but I was on the whole pay off our debt quickly thing before my husband. And I kind of consolidated the story, I think, in the first episode, but I had been trying to tell my husband about, you know, getting our finances in order paying off our debt, and he just wasn’t really feeling it.

Like he felt like debt is just a part of life. We could just pay the minimums and keep it pushing. And like I was telling him about how quickly we could pay these things off because, you know, we had our incomes, and if we just manage our money a little bit differently, we could do that.

And he just wasn’t really interested, and I wasn’t super pressed about it, so we didn’t worry about it.

But the mistake I made was I was talking about the what, and I wasn’t talking about the why. When you’re trying to get on the same page with your spouse, like I said, you want to get deeper.

You want to get to those values, those priorities, and those goals. And those things go more to the why of what you’re trying to do than the what of what you’re trying to do.

So you know talking about “well if we could just pay this off. If we could just save this amount. If we could just do this”—that’s the what. But people don’t really care about the what? Right?

The steps that you need to take, don’t really matter so much if the person is not interested in that goal.

And so for us, it was like after we had the baby, and I was telling my husband about the freedom that I wanted us to have to spend time with our family and live life on our terms, and, you know, he saw that, oh, well, this debt is keeping us from making those kinds of changes because a lot of our money was going towards debt payments. And so he then understood where I was coming from, because he understood the why around it, and he came around.

And so after we talked about the ultimate goal, this, you know, priority that we have in our lives and got on the same page about that, the what just kind of fell into place. We’ve been rocking on our debt payment journey for the last four years. We’ve paid off over $350,000 of debt, and we’ve got a positive net worth now and all of that, but I had been talking to him about how we could pay this off, like the what of what we could do.

Let’s pay, you know, more than the minimum, let’s do x, let’s do y, and we can have this result. But he wasn’t interested in the result until he had the why behind it.

So another tip to help you stop the fights is getting on the same page with your spouse, and you can do that with dreaming with your spouse about what you could do if you made this change that you want to make to your finances.

Find out how they want to be living like the dream that they have in their minds of what they would want to do. How they would change the way that you all are living now, if your money situation were different.

Just thinking more about the why. Get on the same page about those deeper things. Your values, your priorities, your goals, the why behind the changes you want to make, will move the needle a lot more.

So we talked about some things to do to get on the same page, to stop the fights. Some things that you don’t want to do:

Don’t nag. Nobody wants to be nagged right? You are your spouse’s partner. You’re not their parent. And so you don’t want to nag them about the things that we’re supposed to be doing because we’re making these changes.

And in the same vein, don’t, you know, finger point, don’t point out all the things that your spouse is, “doing wrong.” You are both adults. You’re living your life.

You can just continue to do things the way that you’re trying to do them, like I guess, model good behavior, so to speak. But you don’t have to point out every time they’re doing something that you don’t agree with.

The other thing or another thing, don’t make everything about what I said, or what some other podcaster or blogger or coach or whatever says.

Although I think what I’m saying is great, and hopefully you think it’s great, since you’re still listening, your spouse doesn’t know me. And they don’t care what I have to say, right?

So just present the information. But it doesn’t always have to be “well Rho says this,” and “Rho says we should do that.” Nobody wants to hear that.

The last thing is don’t expect things to change overnight. So you’ve been learning about money and growing your knowledge on this topic, but you haven’t always been in this place that you’re in right now.

So just like you’ve been learning over time, it’ll be the same for your spouse. So you know, give her, him, them the benefit of their own process. Be patient and give them time.

So let’s recap.

1. Money is one of the leading causes of divorce in America. And a big contributor to money fight is different values around money and how it should be spent or managed different values around money and how it should be spent or managed.

2. Having a separate account for fun money or no questions asked money or whatever you want to call it can tremendously cut back on disagreements over money.

3. Getting on the same page with your spouse requires getting clear on your values, priorities, and goals, and that will help you to get on the same page with your finances as well.

4. When you’re trying to get your spouse on board with a change you want to make focus on the why more than the what. When they understand the why then they can see why the what makes sense.

5. A few things not to do when you’re trying to stop money fights. Don’t nag. Don’t point fingers. Don’t always talk about what some other person has to say. And be patient.

Okay, so that’s it for this episode of Wealthyesque. Come on over to our private Facebook community, The Wealthyesque Community, and let’s continue this conversation about stopping money fights and getting your spouse on board about money.

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Okay, so as we close out, friend, I pray peace over you and your relationship with your spouse.

I pray that you will take these tips and that you’re able to get on the same page with your spouse and stop fighting about money.

And as always, I pray that you will continue to take steps to regain control of your time, build wealth, and live the life of freedom and choice you deserve.

Talk to you later.