The Importance Of Budgeting With Your Partner

Budgeting is an important factor in making the most out of your money and using it wisely. However, do you budget alone and your partner just agrees with your choices? This is how my husband and I have budgeted for years, one person looking solely looking after the money and making sure that it worked hard. The only combination that we have never tried was budgeting together. I thought it was about time that we worked through the budgeting and the bill paying together and the results are interesting. Have you tried budgeting with your partner? 

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Zero Based Budgeting

We have always practiced zero-based budgeting, this is where we allocate our funds down to the last penny, it doesn’t mean that we spend all the money we earn, far from it, but we assign tasks to all of our money to ensure that we are making every last penny work as hard as it possibly can.

However, with just one person making all the financial decisions it puts a lot of pressure on one person and the other person is unaware of the money situation. This is something we wanted to change, we wanted to make the monetary decisions together, so we both knew the financial situation and were able to talk about money and make joint decisions.

I was unsure at allowing someone else to look at and influence the accounts, I have done them on my own for a few years now and I am an account balancer, down to the penny, whereas my husband is happy as long as it is within a few pence either way.

I worried how this was going to work, would it cause arguing or would it actually work?

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Budgeting With Your Partner

I am a control freak when it comes to money; I will be the first one to admit, but I wanted to work together with my husband on this one. We haven’t discussed our financial goals for about a year and without us both looking at our budget I couldn’t understand how he could make an informed decision, without leaving the burden on my shoulders.

The first joint budgeting session went well, I explained everything I could and we progressed quicker than I imagined. We discussed our options and our payments on various items and quickly we were bouncing ideas off one another. It was a success.

The problem came when I would normally do things during the day but I had to wait until evening to ensure that we were making the right financial choices. I wanted agreement on everything that we spent as a couple, our weekly money that we have is still ours and that is the only money where we don’t discuss the spending of, that is a personal choice, but our joint money was just that, joint.

I think it was a very difficult transition process to get us both into the mindset that any money spent was a joint decision and based on the budget we agreed.

It has taken the pressure off me, we can talk about money and we are both more aware of our current financial position and that is great, it means that when there is a request for an item, it is something that we can both work out to see if there is the money available in the budget.

Therefore, for me, it has been great. I have less pressure and stress as to our financial position and I am able to have money discussions with my husband and for him to know exactly what I am talking about; it has given him a sense of understanding of our current money situation. I think it has been a positive experience and one that we are going to continue for the foreseeable future. I didn’t think it would work, I’ve been surprised but budgeting with your partner is possible and workable!