Ah, life is good. You got the job your were striving for, you live in a great place that you’ve arranged beautifully, you’ve saved enough money that you don’t feel anxious about unexpected expenses, and you’ve got an amazing partner to share expenses with… Except as time goes on, you find yourself paying more and more of these expenses, because your partner can’t seem to keep their credit card in their wallet. Now, money is usually a pretty touchy subject for everyone, but it doesn’t have to be! Below, you’ll find a few tips for confronting your partner about their poor spending habits.
Choose the right time
If you and your partner are already disagreeing on something, and you bring up their spending habits as a kind of retribution, then it’s definitely the wrong time to be broaching the subject. Bringing it up when you guys are already feeling on edge will only serve to make things worse, and will never lead to anything productive. So it’s important to choose a time in which you’re both relaxed and open enough to have a serious conversation about it. It’s also important for this discuss to never degenerate into a fight, so make sure you’re not using any language that could be perceived as an attack on your partner. Let them know how you’re feeling, and how anxious this situation is making you, and think of ways you can better the situation together.
Create a budget
One of the ways in which you can both better the situation together is to create a joint budget. By creating a joint budget, you’ll both be keeping track of all of the money that’s coming in as well as all of the money that’s going out. It could be that your partner had no idea of how much they were spending, because they never bothered to track it. Creating a budget will help rectify that. Moreover, if your partner simply has trouble keeping their cards in their wallet, then an extra set of eyes might make them think twice before spending. Don’t think of it as a way to spy on them — think of it as a way to support them through their transition to spending responsibly. Create goals together so that if they slip up, you can remind them that they’re a little bit farther away from reaching their goal now.
Review your budget
Just because you’ve created a budget together, doesn’t mean you can now take it easy and everything will be fixed. You should constantly be reviewing your budget. Whether you think you need to do that weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly is completely up to you. But one thing is certain — you can’t expect to be following your budget unless you keep reviewing it. If you have an unexpected expense to make, review it. If you got a new promotion, review it. If you need to get something in your home fixed, review it and keep track of all of your spending. Even if you’ve already accounted for unexpected expenses in your budget!
Communicate
Even if you’ve created a budget and are constantly reviewing it, the only way to ensure that you will succeed in meeting your financial goals with your partner is to communicate. Talk about what your goals are, what you intend to save money for, and what you aspire to achieve in the future. This is where you guys should resolve having different goals and figure out how you can compromise and/or turn both goals into a reality. Communication is key for a healthy relationship, and it will get you that much closer to achieving your dreams and reaching financial stability.
If you’re having trouble trying to create a budget or if you’re going through financial difficulties, there are many online tools you can use that will help get you out of troubled waters. The important thing is to act now, so that you and your partner can start your life together without having to worry about the state of your finances.
