My husband is a gambling addict. He also drinks excessively. The problem is that he takes money to feed both of these addictions right out of our checking account.

He’ll go for weeks and weeks without gambling or drinking, then he’ll have a rough day at work, call me on the cell phone to say he’s running late, then withdraws a bunch of cash from the checking account and goes out to a casino. He usually comes home having lost all of the money and incredibly drunk and he passes out in the living room.

I’m not going to leave him. Other than this, he’s a wonderful man who is incredibly kind to me and to our children.

What I’m trying to figure out is how to protect our finances against this kind of behavior. What steps can I take to ensure that these kinds of responses don’t damage our financial state? I’ve had checks bounce because of this behavior before and I don’t want to see that happen again.

Before I dig into the finances of this situation, I strongly encourage you to address this kind of behavior in a more direct fashion. Simply “walling off” the financial aspects of his behavior from your family’s finances is not addressing this problem in any real way, and it does nothing about the emotional and social impact it’s having on you and on your children. You need to seek further counseling on how to fix this problem because this is not a healthy pattern for your marriage or for his life.

However, I recognize that fixing this type of pattern is a long-term problem and simply directing someone to fix it does not help with the short-term impact of that problem. So, let’s look at that short-term impact.

The problem you’re facing is that at irregular intervals, a fairly large and unexpected amount of money is taken out of your checking account. The amount itself isn’t large enough to trigger an overdraft, but it is enough to sometimes cause checks to bounce.

How do we solve that problem?

My first suggestion would be to set up a protection account. By this, I mean that you set up a savings account, preferably at another bank, where you can transfer money electronically back and forth between the two accounts. I’d probably recommend ING Direct for this purpose.

Then, set up an automatic transfer that scoops out, say, $100 or so each pay period, shortly after the check hits your account. I’d recommend setting up that transfer through the second bank so that it’s not a part of online banking at your primary bank.

Then, whenever you see that your spouse has had one of his “benders,” just calmly go to your computer and transfer enough money back from this secondary account to cover what was withdrawn.

In essence, the second account is a special “emergency fund,” where the emergency is the very situation you describe in your email. Your second account is simply there to cover you when this happens.

A second approach you might want to consider is setting up a low ATM withdrawal limit for him. Most banks will allow you to set a very low daily ATM withdrawal limit if you so request it. Instead of the $500 per day that your limit might currently be, drop it down to $100 a day.

At the same time, you need to maintain physical control of the checkbook so that he can’t just go to a cash checking service.

What this method does is that it minimizes the amount of damage he can do when he does these things. If the ATM only gives him $100, then he can’t inflict too much damage on your checking account, after all.

A final approach, and this one depends on his attitude when sober, is to ask for his ATM card. There’s no reason he can’t have some pocket money, of course, but you’d be the one to give him some regularly. If he chooses to spend it on a night of carousing, that’s his choice.

Of course, this final option requires that he’s willing to talk about such things in a rational fashion when not under the influence or depressed. If you can’t have this type of discussion, you need to strongly consider marriage counseling.

Good luck!

The post Building a Financial Firewall Against Addiction appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

There are a few key elements that seem to often come up in my responses to these questions as well, and those elements really form a strong foundation of how people in relationships should think about and handle their money.

It really boils down to four key principles that really flow together.

Talking about money in a relationship is absolutely essential. When you’re in a relationship intense enough that you’re sharing many of the costs of life, you have to be able to communicate clearly about those costs, as well as the income you both have with which to cover them and the plans you each have for the future.

Why?

The debts and expenses of your partner are also your debts and expenses. If you owe a debt and have to make a monthly debt payment, that takes money out of the shared pool that you both have with which to cover your monthly expenses. If you spend money somewhere, that money is removed from the overall pool that you have to cover your monthly bills.

Let’s say you’re out and about on the town. You tell yourself that your partner is going to be able to cover the rent this month, so you convince yourself it’s okay to spend some money. Because you spent that money, you’ve eliminated your ability to help pay the rent.

Now, what happens if your partner isn’t able to pay the rent? You’re suddenly in a serious pickle, one that’s caused not only by a communication failure, but by the reality that your spending, bills, and debts affect your partner’s spending, bills, and debts.

Whether you like it or not, if you’re in a relationship, your finances are shared, whether in actual practice or not. Your actions affect your partner and vice versa.

The third principle is something of an extension of this one.

Hiding debts and expenses from your partner affects them in many ways and is deeply dishonest and damaging to your relationship. Since your spending alters how your partner is able to spend money, hiding a debt or an expense from your partner is essentially the same thing as taking money out of their pocket without telling them why.

It undermines financial stability. It undermines the trust in your relationship. It ensures that your partner is unfairly being asked to shoulder an additional burden without even knowing why.

Usually, the root cause of this is a communication breakdown. You’re afraid to tell your partner because you’re afraid of the retribution you envision in whatever form that may take. You can’t bring yourself to admit a mistake to your partner because that shows weakness.

All of this culminates with a simple statement about the stability of one’s relationship.

If you can’t talk about money with each other, then your relationship is on tenuous ground.

A relationship is about mutual support. If you can’t talk about your financial situation because it shows weakness, then you’re not mutually supportive. You’re antagonistic and combative. If you can’t talk about your financial situation because you fear retribution, then your relationship is at best combative and at worst abusive.

If you can’t communicate through your mistakes and honestly evaluate your full financial situation together on a regular basis, your entire relationship is on tenuous ground. You need to take a serious look about whether this relationship is something you should be continuing, because there are some deep trust issues (and other problems) running right through the relationship you’ve built.

The solution to all of this is simple, and it’s right there in the first principle. Communicate. Talk about everything with your partner. Admit your failings, and don’t brow-beat your partner over his or her failings. You’re both human beings. You’re both going to make mistakes. The entire purpose of a relationship is to be there for each other through both the high points and the mistakes. Otherwise, there’s no point in having a long-term relationship.

The post Four Financial Realities of Being in a Relationship appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Many people responded with the great point that many of the benefits described in that article are also applicable to people who cohabitate. This is absolutely true. The benefit of reducing the cost per person for rent, energy, and so on occur when people are simply roommates, regardless of their relationship. Also, simply cohabitating instead of actually being married also avoids some of the negatives of marriage, such as legal entanglement.

However, there are several specific economic benefits to marriage over cohabitation that, when considered together, paint a positive economic view of marriage.

First, being married means you have the right to receive property settlements and support in the event of divorce. If you’re cohabitating, your partner is on the lease, and you suddenly find all of your stuff tossed out in the yard, your options are pretty limited. If you’re relying on your partner to support you and he or she tells you to get out, you’re completely on your own.

Second, being married means the ability to obtain family health, dental, and other insurance benefits. The exact rules on this vary from state to state, but generally it is much more difficult to obtain insurance through your partner’s employment if you are not married. Being able to obtain that insurance reduces the cost of insurance for both members of the household and often allows one member to take on a challenging (and often lucrative) alternative career path.

Third, being married means receiving your partner’s property in the event of death without a will (and even with an incomplete will). The presence of a spouse greatly simplifies the resolution of a person’s estate, as the spouse virtually always takes the property. If the cohabitants are not married, the door is open to a great deal of legal wrangling. One only needs to take a peek at the battle over Stieg Larsson’s estate for a clear example of what I’m talking about.

Fourth, being married means receiving survivor’s benefits from retirement plans and Social Security. If your partner dies before you and you’re married, you’re likely to continue receiving some benefit from his retirement and Social Security. If you’re unmarried, you don’t get any of these benefits.

Simply put, cohabitation certainly gives some of the same financial benefits of marriage as opposed to living single, but it does not confer all of the benefits.

Now, are there advantages to simple cohabitation over marriage? If you approach the relationship as though an end to the relationship is expected at some point, cohabitation is superior to marriage in many respects. In effect, smart cohabitants would function just like roommates, with clearly delineated finances and possessions, so that there are minimal issues if the relationship fractures.

In my eyes, danger enters the picture when cohabitants begin to share more and more things of financial consequence. When you begin to co-sign for loans and for utilities, you’re creating a serious financial challenge in the event of a messy breakup without clear rules to follow. Even more challenging is a cohabitation situation with a child involved. Cohabitation agreements can resolve some of this, but they have limited legal backing.

Simply put, I strongly encourage people not to financially bind themselves to each other unless they are entering into a legally married state. Such actions include cosigning for loans, co-ownership of major possessions, and having children. The drawbacks and challenges of disentanglement if one partner chooses not to be cooperative during a breakup (that would never happen, right?) aren’t worth it.

The post Why Get Married At All? Finances and Cohabitation appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

The argument against marriage for men is pretty straightforward. The most common reason given for men not to get married is that the financial outcome of divorce proceedings is seen to be unfair. As the argument goes, the average male salary in the United States is higher than the average female salary, yet when couples are divorced, the splits are often 50/50 – or, in some cases, skewed towards the partner with greater financial need.

Usually, along with this, issues and concerns about children are brought up as well, along with other concerns about losing the freedom to make life choices and so on. Generally, these issues fall much more into the realm of the emotional than the financial and vary so much on a case-by-case basis that they’re difficult to reasonably discuss.

Instead, I’m going to stick with the financial side of the equation.

Along with that, I’m also going to make a fairly bold statement for the anti-marriage folks out there: it’s financially beneficial for both men and women to get married. There are a lot of reasons for this.

Almost always, you’re both going to be bringing in an income. There will simply be more money coming in than before. Often, it’s a lot more money, approaching a doubling of income for both of you. That’s a lot more money to live on, day to day. There’s also the fact that you’ll have two sets of benefits to choose between. If one of you has better insurance, then you both have better insurance, for example.

You both benefit from economies of scale, meaning your expenses won’t rise as much as your income will. If you’re living in a one-bedroom apartment, it’s often very easy to get married and stay in the same place. Rent doesn’t go up, and the utilities will barely budge. Even if you do need to upgrade, your housing costs likely won’t double (like your income did). You’ll also be sharing electricity, phone service, internet service, and so on – one bill for each of these things instead of two. While food and household items will jump a fair amount, having both of you at home means that bulk buying makes more sense. Buy a gallon of milk instead of a container and you’ll be spending less per glass of milk, for example.

You have greater earnings stability. If you lost your job while single, there’s suddenly no income coming in. Panic time, in other words. If you’re married, you have a partner that will still be bringing in income, a partner that has a real stake in your survival and continued success. While it’s an urgent situation, it’s not a panic situation.

You have greater earnings potential, too. With a partner at home handling some of the household needs and providing emotional support, people can often use that as a springboard to achieve even greater success. This is often particularly true for males with children.

You have the “stable home” factor. Married couples often find greater success with things such as applying for mortgages and so on, particularly if they’re manually underwritten, because such family units are usually more stable than single folks.

But what about the pain of divorce? Most of the fears that men have about getting married are actually fears about divorce. The truth is that you can alleviate most of those fears by simply taking a few steps right now.

First, don’t get married until you’re absolutely sure. If you’re not sure, don’t sit on that reason, either. Don’t be afraid to talk about your concerns and make it clear to your partner why you don’t want to get married. If you can’t have that kind of open conversation about marriage, either you’re not emotionally ready for marriage or your partnership isn’t ready for it.

Second, if you have assets you want to protect, get a prenupital agreement. Part of a good prenupital agreement is a base understanding that you’re both going to financially benefit from this marriage for many of the reasons stated above. An agreement that says that one of the partners takes nothing away from the marriage in case of divorce isn’t a healthy agreement for either party to sign. One approach is to use your current individual net worths as part of the equation, perhaps setting aside the assets you entered the marriage with before dividing up the rest in some fair fashion. Remember, if you’re coming into this marriage with no net worth but big dreams of getting rich, a big part of you getting rich is the support of your partner, who has earned that stake because of the support provided.

Finally, look at your behavior and your partner’s behavior honestly. Are you engaging (or seriously considering engaging) in activities that would lead to divorce when you’re engaged? Is your partner? If you find it easy to engage in patterns that would lead to divorce while you’re seriously considering marriage, then your relationship has problems deep enough that you shouldn’t get married. In short, don’t ever put yourself in a situation where divorce looks likely.

What about children? The decision to have children is a complicated one and, in my opinion, is a very distinct one from the marriage question. Many of the concerns that men express about marriage tend to actually be concerns about becoming a father, and I think that becoming a father is a decision guys should never enter into lightly.

My opinion is that many people fear marriage for emotional reasons, but often find financial ones easier to state. Modern marriages usually are financially beneficial to both people involved.

I’ll certainly say that, in our case, marriage has been an enormous financial benefit. It was because of my wife’s stable job that I was able to make the leap to turning The Simple Dollar into a sustainable business, and it was because of that sustainable business that my wife was able to leave work for most of a year to be a stay-at-home mother. After all that, the only debt we have is our home mortgage. None of this would have happened without our marriage and the stability it has given us.

The post Why Should a Man Get Married? appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

One of the most regular themes in emails I get from readers is a desire to somehow change the nature of the person they’re married to. “My husband is uninterested in our finances and just wants to buy more gadgets.” “My wife wants to eat out every night and tells me that the future will take care of itself.”

When people make statements and put forth behaviors like these, they’re acting upon their nature and what they believe about the world. Your husband considers finances to be unimportant and, right now, is passionate about gadgets. Your wife values dining out with you and truly believes that your bright future will take care of any problems that might come.

I understand all of these perspectives because I’ve been on both sides of them. I understand what the first reader’s husband feels like when he’s uninterested in finances and much more concerned with getting new gadgets. I understand what the second reader’s wife feels like when she believes that her future self will handle the problems and that dining out tonight seems like the most enjoyable and reasonable options. And, of course, I understand how both of their spouses feel. The behaviors of their spouses are interfering with the frugality, sensible financial planning, and beautiful future that they envision for their marriages.

How did I turn that page? It’s easy and trite for me to talk about the moment when the “switch” flipped for me, but to be honest, that was just one key moment in a long progression from being a wasteful spender to being someone more in control of their money.

First of all, I had inklings that a serious financial change was needed a year before, at least. It was not an overnight change. It was the result of a lot of observations and thinking about my own life.

If you want your partner to become more financially conscious, make a fertile ground for your partner to think about those kinds of thoughts. Talk about the future in terms of specifics – and how you’ll get from here to there. Whenever you make a purchase, talk about what you’re not getting because of that purchase.

Do not expect overnight change. The journey to financially reasonable thinking can be a very long one. Each time you encourage some positive thinking in that direction, view it as a mere step on a long journey. It could take months. It could take years.

Avoid confrontation. If it starts to be confrontational, change the subject. Most people do not like to have their beliefs challenged. In the end, it has much in common with a discussion between a liberal and a conservative on political issues: once it starts getting emotional, the conversation is nothing more than a shouting match between two people who have no real interest in what the other side is saying, only an interest in being “right” while the other person is “wrong.” When you’ve reached that point, you’re both wasting your time.

Second, even after reaching that tipping point, it wasn’t all smooth and perfect. Simply put, there were a lot of individual bad habits that I needed to disrupt. It was not as if I were immediately a financially wise frugal Zen master when I woke up one morning.

For you, this means be patient, even after your partner is starting to make positive moves on their own. They might be getting it, but then they’ll go buy a gadget or go out for an expensive dinner. Don’t blow up – be patient. Give it time and look for ways to find balance between what you want and what they’re becoming.

Plant more ideas for them. If your partner is a reader, put books like Your Money or Your Life or my own book on their bedside table and let them read the books at their own leisure. Send them a link to The Simple Dollar.

The key thing overall is to be patient and don’t give up on them. A radical change in a person’s perspective on how money and the world works never happens overnight. Instead of expecting a thousand mile journey at once, look for the small steps and encourage them.

Eventually, you’ll have a partner who isn’t merely doing things just to please you and get you out of the way, but making financially wise choices for their own benefit.

The post You Can’t Make Someone Be Who You Want Them to Be appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

We both want to eventually live in the country with some wooded area and a small barn.

We both want to focus on raising our children as well as we possibly can.

We both want to achieve complete debt freedom (we currently just owe on our mortgage) to give us even more career and personal flexibility in the future.

Here’s the interesting part: these goals do not reflect everything I want to do in life, nor do they reflect everything Sarah wants to do in life.

Instead, they’re the goals we share together and because we both share them, there’s a lot more power and mutual motivation and mutual benefit in achieving those goals.

How did we get there from each having our own goals? Here’s the process we went through – and are still going through.

We each sketched a picture of what we wanted our future to look like. What did I want my life to look like in five or ten or twenty years? I spent some time really thinking about that question. I made a list of some of the things I wanted to happen in my life over those timeframes. I had career dreams and family dreams and personal goals I wanted to achieve.

We compared our pictures of the future. What we found is that some of our goals overlapped, some of them did not, and some of them were personal goals that affected our partner in various ways.

So, for example, we both had a dream of living in the country with woods and a small barn. I had a dream of building a fully self-sustaining farm there (with wind power, geothermal heating, and so forth), but Sarah didn’t share that vision as strongly: “It’d be cool, I guess, but is it really worth the cost?” I also had career goals that impacted Sarah a little bit (because of the time and energy investment), but not too much.

We agreed to focus on the larger goals we both shared. I listed those above. Those goals are not a list of the goals I came up with – if I listed all of the things I wanted myself, the list would be longer and have a much different flavor.

However, a big lifelong goal that your partner is not on board with is not only much more difficult to achieve, pushing hard for that goal can put problems in your relationship. On the other hand, sharing a goal and both working towards that same goal encourages an environment of mutual support. Focus in on the goals you both deeply share – and you identify those by coming up with your own list of goals on your own, then sharing and comparing them.

Our next step was to settle on a small handful of key goals that we both shared. For us, this was very easy. We had three very obvious key goals that we each individually wanted – a house in the country, complete debt freedom, and strong parenting.

If you find that you’re coming up with a lot of shared goals, that’s a good thing. I recommend settling on just a few – the ones that are most deeply important to both of you.

If you find that you’re not able to come up with shared goals, I would suggest spending more time together and focusing on building your relationship with each others. Not having shared goals is a sign of being on diverging paths in life – and that means if you take your relationship seriously, it needs some work, whether you can see that on the surface or not.

Once you’ve figured out those shared goals, work together to keep them front and center. Remind each other regularly of the goals you share and the little steps you’re both taking to make it happen. If you’re not both engaged with a goal and working towards it, it’s hard to do it alone. You’ve got to be together, and if it’s a goal you both share, reinforcing each other and helping each other should come somewhat naturally.

A final tip: revisit your goals on occasion. We talk about ours all the time. Usually, it’s motivational. Sometimes, we refine the goals a bit – for example, we’ve been thinking about the location we’d like to move to. The key thing, though, is that we talk about it together, cement our bonds to each other, and motivate each other to move forward.

It’s a lot easier to reach for something great if you’re doing it together.

The post Setting Goals with Your Partner appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

In our marriage, my wife and I have agreed not to open financial statements addressed to each other. We supposedly did this so that we would be able to hide things like gift purchases from each other. Whenever we talked about our finances, we just talked about balances on accounts and didn’t worry about individual items on each other’s bills.

Over the last few years, I’d noticed more and more bills from various banks sent to my wife, but I hadn’t really thought too much about it. Yesterday, we received a call from someone from Citi who wanted to speak to my wife about her account and made it clear that the account was overdrawn and past due.

I was frustrated and worried, so I dug through the mail and found her most recent statement from Citi, which was unopened. I opened it. She had a balance of over $7,500 on it. I was just shocked, so I opened some of the other statements with her name on it that I could find. From just what I could gather in a few minutes, I found that she has $30,000 at least in credit card debt.

I put all of the statements in my bedside table for now. I don’t know what to do next. We certainly don’t have $30,000 to pay these off right now and even the minimum payments are difficult. It looks like my wife has been juggling accounts a lot because there aren’t many payments on our recent bank statements.

What do I do next? I don’t know what to do and I’m afraid of the big fight we’re going to have.

I originally included Archie’s note in my reader mailbag for this week, but I had enough to say about his situation (and I figured readers would, too) that I decided to devote a whole article to it.

First of all, this isn’t just about your discovery of the credit card debt. There has been a long history of dishonesty here – and that’s what I would call it, dishonesty. Marriage is a union based on trust and $30,000 in credit card debt is a pretty strong violation of that trust. It is going to take a lot of work to dig out of that debt.

In short, my suggestion would be that you seek marriage counseling, first and foremost. You’re in a situation now where you’ve both violated the trust in the marriage – your wife has been hiding tens of thousands of dollars in debt and you’ve opened up private correspondence to her. You have a perfectly good reason to feel that your trust has been violated and to feel upset. So does your wife.

This means your marriage has some very serious trust issues that you need to work through in order to be able to move forward successfully with a financial plan.

Why? A financial plan in a marriage only works if you can fully trust one another. You need to be able to trust that your partner is actually working towards the same goals with the same methods as you are and that if either of you run into trouble, you’ll work it out together. If you can’t trust each other, then a financial plan cannot work.

The first order of action, then, is to re-establish the trust.

If you’ve reached a point where you feel that you can trust each other again, then turn your eyes to your financial situation. View the past as water under the bridge; instead, focus on where you’re at now and how you can make your situation better from your current position. What-ifs don’t help with the here and now.

The first step to recovery would be a mutual commitment to spend less than you earn. Remember, of course, that part of your required spending is the debt repayment and also remember that you (as a couple) are spending far beyond your means (witness the $30,000 in credit card debts). Thus, this will be a lot harder than you might think. This step will take some serious work on its own. You’ll both have to face your spending head-on and make some difficult choices. But you have to get that spending under control.

Second, you need to create a debt repayment plan. A debt repayment plan is easy to set up and helps you develop an orderly method for paying your debts down.

Finally, and most importantly, the two of you need to discuss goals together. What do you want for your mutual future? Where do you see yourselves in five years or ten years or twenty years? What exactly will it take to get there? Obviously, getting control over your spending and getting rid of your debts are two big steps, but those are just two steps. You need to work together to figure out what comes next and how to get there.

Good luck.

The post Privacy, Honesty, Marriage, and Debt appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

I’m getting married in March. My future husband and I are talking about when and how to merge our finances and we’ve had some difficulty coming up with a plan. What did you and your wife do? What would you suggest for other couples on the cusp of marriage?

First of all, I’ll point out that when my wife and I were first married, neither one of us had any clue about how to manage our money. We basically left all of our accounts the same, keeping accounts and direct deposits at separate banks and without any sort of shared savings or checking accounts. This worked for us for a while, but it had serious disadvantages, chief among them the fact that it was hard for either one of us to really get a grip on what our true financial situation was.

I would not recommend doing that unless you have a very good, clear reason for doing so. It’s very clear in that wonderful 20/20 hindsight that the disadvantages of such a split far outweigh the advantages.

Instead, I would fold your accounts together at whichever bank the two of you already use that offers the best customer service. Don’t worry about things like savings rates and such for your primary accounts – if you want to seek out a great savings rate, seek that out separately and use a second bank for your savings purposes. The most important factors on your primary checking account and bank services are the customer service provided to you and the lack of fees on the account for various things (keeping the account open, ATM use, and so on).

I would not do this until you’re married, but I would follow through with the plan pretty quickly after you’re married. Before you’re married, you’re basically opening yourself up to the potential for a very sticky situation without any real benefit other than just a bit of short term convenience.

Instead, invest your time coming up with a detailed plan before the wedding so that you can just quickly execute it after the marriage, getting your affairs in order as quickly as possible.

You may also want to consider a prenupital agreement. You may be deeply in love right now, but people can and do change. A prenupital agreement makes any divorce process that may happen much simpler and less fraught witn anger and emotion, both of which you can surely live without in such a situation. If you find agreeing on a prenupital agrangement is difficult, you may want to step back and have some discussions about why this is – and what that might mean for your relationship.

Another thing worth considering is life insurance. Now that you’re merging your financial lives, you may find yourself investing in things that you may not be able to afford individually, like a home, more expensive cars, or children. A term life insurance policy can ensure that your partner is not stuck in an incredibly difficult financial situation should you pass away unexpectedly. Even if you don’t have such expenses now, term life insurance is still worth considering because the cost of a policy is much lower when you’re young than when you’re older (or have pre-existing conditions that may be discovered later on).

It might seem strange at first glance to suggest this as financial advice, but I would strongly encourage you to have discussions about such issues as having children now rather than after you’re married. If you have differing feelings on such key issues and haven’t come to an understanding about them (and trust me, quite often one side thinks there’s an “understanding” and the other side does not), they can fester within a marriage, turning a loving situation into something painful and often quite financially costly for everyone involved (well, except for the lawyers – they clean up). Talk things through – items such as future career plans, dreams, ambitions, children, and so on should be discussed and understood and both partners should at least understand each other’s positions, even if they’re not fully on the same page.

Marriage isn’t something that benefits from being entered into lightly. Merging your accounts is just the first step – you’re often merging lives in ways you never even considered before. Take the time now to at least consider these changes – and talk about them – before you take the plunge.

The post Merge Left appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Here are seven things we’ve found to be true about our marriage once one of us became self-employed.

“Keeping score” is dangerous. When one person shifts to a completely different lifestyle, the various dynamics of the marriage will shift. This is true of any major change – stay-at-home parenting, a major career shift, even a significant change in the hours worked.

Dynamics change (and I’m going to talk about some specifics below). Don’t “keep score” based on what the previously-established norms were. Instead, focus on figuring out the new norm and forget about the old ones, and talk about it carefully along the way.

The balance of household chores subtly shifts towards more chores for the self-employed spouse. Here’s an example from our own life. I’m about to start my day, so just before I begin, I’ll toss a load of laundry into the washing machine. Then, at lunchtime, I’ll go downstairs and toss the clothes in the dryer. During my afternoon break, I’ll fold those clothes and put them into the kids’ drawers. Still, after work is over, the remaining work is split 50-50.

It’s easy to say that such an arrangement is completely reasonable – after all, the self-employed partner has the time to do this, right? Well, on the other side of the coin, the partner working outside of the home is also taking breaks but not filling them with housework.

It’s unsurprising that, over a long period of time, the self-employed partner may feel some sense of … unbalance, while the partner working outside the home still feels the arrangement is 50-50. This can easily create hard feelings. The best way to handle it is to talk it out.

The social needs of both partners change. When both of us worked outside the home in fairly social environments, we had similar feelings about how much to socialize with others on evenings and weekends.

Then, when I began to work solo, my ideas in that area changed. During my work day, I interacted with others much less than I did before and thus, after work, my desire to socialize went up quite a lot. At the same time, Sarah’s desires remained unchanged.

Our solution has largely been that we invite people over a bit more often than we used to. On top of that, I’ve started to become more involved in community groups and organizations of all kinds, even taking on significant responsibility in one of them. This balance works out well for both of us.

When children are sick, the self-employed parent ends up being the nurturing one most of the time. As I write this, my son is currently watching a program on PBS (Caillou). He’s home sick for the day and I’m busy trying to get some work in.

While this means I’m rushed a little bit, I am the partner with the more flexible schedule, so when the children are sick, I’m almost always the one that steps in to take care of them. This, of course, means that my wife is less interrupted by such things at her work.

Again, this can sometimes feel unbalanced and, if left undiscussed, feel unfair. The instant one partner begins to feel things are out of balance, it should be discussed openly. Such things can easily fester.

The work of the self-employed partner can often bleed into time that used to be shared doing other things. Today, I’m spending much of my time with my son. I’ll make him snacks, make him lunch, put him down for a nap, and if he feels better this afternoon, I’ll play some games with him and work on writing the alphabet with him.

That means that, unexpectedly, I’ve lost most of a day’s worth of work at a time when I can’t really afford such leakage. So, this evening, I’ll need to make up for it. As a result, Sarah will find herself doing solo things. Thankfully, she doesn’t mind this – she’s an avid reader – but it does mean that we won’t be able to do something together, like play a board game.

It can become harder to discuss work. A few times a day, I’ll go do something completely unrelated to my work, simply because I need the mental break. I’ll read the rules for a board game. I’ll wash dishes. I’ll read a book for personal enjoyment. I’ll visit messageboards.

At first, when I told Sarah about this, she was fairly annoyed. “Why are you wasting time?” was her immediate response.

Here’s the thing, though. Most workplaces do offer breaks – and quite often, other break times are squeezed into work times. We gather around the water cooler and chat. We stop in another worker’s office or cubicle and see what’s going on. We go to meetings. In other words, most “real” workplaces have tons of time for mental breaks.

Since I’m self-employed, I don’t have nearly as many opportunities for those kinds of breaks, so I have to make my own. This usually involves things that would be seen as a time-waster in other environments. Again, this is something that’s worth discussing openly.

Here’s the most important thing to remember if you make this change. It offers a lot of benefits, but it changes countless dynamics within your relationship. The best way to deal with this is to talk about it. If one of you is bothered by how a dynamic is changing, say so. Don’t let it fester and grow and become something seriously problematic.

Good luck!

The post When One Partner Is Self-Employed appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Well, for every mention of the word “I,” my wife is there in the background, doing something little to make sure it all happens. She’ll cook a great meal, do something amazing for our kids, come up with a plan for some purchase we have to make, or simply be there in the moment with a great smile and a hug.

It’s pretty simple – without Sarah in my life, I would never be able to reach for my dreams. She provides so much of the foundation of our day-to-day life in many subtle ways – and, from my perspective, it is these subtle things that build the foundation of a strong, financially stable marriage.

Here are twelve little things that she does to make it all work. If you want a checklist of little things to do to help your marriage click, this can seriously help.

She listens. When I have something to say that’s actually of any importance, she listens. She stops and considers what I have to say, and she incorporates that into what she’s thinking. She doesn’t simply discard it, but she doesn’t adopt it as gospel, either – she simply listens and actually absorbs my thoughts.

She’s not afraid to say what she thinks. On the other side of that coin, she’s not afraid to say exactly what she thinks. If she thinks I have a good idea, she’ll say so – but if she thinks it’s bad, she’ll say that, too, and support it with reasons. Such open and equal give and take enables us to constantly come to the best decisions for us – in our money, in our work, and in other aspects of our lives.

She’s honest about her mistakes. No one is perfect, and neither is she. However, when she does mess up, she’s willing to admit it. She’ll say things like, “I just didn’t get it done. Sometimes I’m lazier than I’d like to be.” That simple effort in admitting to mistakes makes it much, much easier for us to work together to overcome the problem.

She picks up the slack when I leave it behind. On the other side of that coin, there are often times where some responsibility of mine will interrupt things. I have a phone interview. I have a television interview. I need to get a piece of writing submitted somewhere. Whenever these things occur, Sarah always just steps up. She knows that if I succeed, she succeeds – and I know the reverse is true.

She’ll go over things as many times as I need to. Sometimes I don’t pick up on things. I’ll put things in the wrong place in the pantry. I’ll not get the towels washed, or I’ll forget to use the cold rinse on the cloth diapers. Instead of going ballistic, she just checks to see if I did things the appropriate way and, if I did not, she just reminds me of how to do it. She does it so coolly and calmly that the only upset I feel is at myself for not picking up on the right way to do things.

She has a good sense of humor and a lot of tolerance of my own foibles. Along those same lines, she just rolls with who I am. She laughs at (or at least tolerates) my goofy jokes. She knows the things I’m good at and the things I’m not good at – and worries more about accentuating the positive instead of eliminating the negative.

She understands and is committed to spending less than we earn. We sit down and talk about our financial goals all the time – and she’s similarly committed to putting our financial life on a good path. Thus, our choices are in sync – I’m not worried that she’s out there spending money in ways that are undoing my work – and vice versa.

She’ll make good career suggestions – but isn’t hurt if I don’t take them. My wife reads The Simple Dollar and often has suggestions for improvements on it – ways to market it, post ideas, and so forth. (She also sometimes laughs at the things I do to protect people’s privacy.)

She encourages me to grow – and makes room for it. She gives me breathing room for my hobbies and gives me “alone time” when I need it. That “me” time is the time I use for reading, meditating, and personal growth – which are all key for keeping me sane.

If something is clearly a good deal, she’s enthusiastic about pursuing it. She does almost all of the real nitty-gritty bargain hunting when we make major purchases. She also is the one who will find new and useful ways to expand our search and comes up with good criteria to search on. For example, with our car purchase, she was the one who suggested that we include new cars in the search, which eventually led us to discover that in the current car market new cars have tremendous advantages.

She’s there beside me when things are good and when things are bad. When something good happens, she’s there. When something bad happens, she’s there. She doesn’t back away, regardless of how things are doing. She’s just a steady constant, because she knows that we’re going to be there for each other no matter what happens.

She revels in the simple things in life. It doesn’t require an expensive gift or a fancy dinner to impress her – in fact, she’s happy with a spaghetti dinner and a potted plant for Mother’s Day. She’d far rather lay out on the grass or play with the kids than go out on the town or go shopping.

All together, she makes this crazy ride work. And for that, I’m forever thankful.

The post 12 Ways My Wife Quietly Makes Our Life Work appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

You’re now a married couple, settling into a long life together. Now what?

It’s easy to fall into routines in your marriage, and often those routines are hard to break. You can establish routines that lead to a healthy marriage that’s grounded in healthy relationships and healthy money practices, or you can establish routines that are very disruptive.

Which do you choose? Here are ten tactics for getting yourself on a great path to a long-term successful marriage, both financially and otherwise.

Talk to each other as often as possible. Have a healthy conversation every single day. Ask what your spouse is doing and what they’re thinking about. Tell your spouse what you’re up to and what you’re thinking about. The better you understand your spouse in the good times and the normal times, the easier it will be to work through the difficult times.

Listen to what the other person is actually saying. It’s easy to get used to the routines in your life and in your spouse’s life, making it easy to somewhat gloss over the specifics on a daily basis. Don’t fall into that trap. Listen. Almost every time that a problem is developing, your spouse is telling you about the problem in some fashion. Pay attention to the things your spouse is saying, and if something doesn’t seem right, don’t blow it off. Follow up – and be there for your spouse.

Be honest and actively admit your mistakes – you will make them, after all. Everyone makes mistakes in their marriage. They make a poor choice. They don’t correctly interpret what their partner wants. I know I certainly do it often enough. The best thing you can do when you make a mistake – money or otherwise – is to confess to it. Tell your partner about your splurge. Tell your partner about your mistake. Not only will your honesty make it easier to talk about, you’ll also be driven to do better.

Talk about your long term plans together on a regular basis – and be open to changing them as you grow. Where do you want to be in a year? In five years? In ten years? Tell your partner your thoughts and encourage your partner to share their thoughts. You’ll find that some of them are different, but that many of the goals are in common. The common goals are great ones to focus on because you’re both driven to get there – and you’re able to reinforce each other’s resolve. Talk about these goals regularly.

Work together on the small steps you can do right now to reach those big shared goals. Once you’ve figured out the goals you have in common, spend time talking about what you can do right now to bring you closer to those goals. For us, this has been invaluable at keeping our spending choices in check. We talk about almost every significant purchase and decide together whether or not it’s in line with what we want out of life. Which leads to…

Plan big purchases together – and think about how they’ll impact your other big plans. Excepting any “spending allowance” that you both have, any significant purchase should be discussed together. My wife and I discuss anything more than $20 – and often, we discuss it to death (which is a good thing, because then we don’t spend the money). We are basically checks against unnecessary spending for each other – and that enables us to accomplish our real goals faster and keep our less-focused sides in check.

You’re going to disagree. Work on disagreeing well. You’re never going to agree all the time with your partner. Sometimes, your partner is going to be right and you’re going to be wrong. This will happen. Don’t turn disagreements into competitions. Instead, look at disagreements as opportunities to really figure out the truth of a situation. Do your research and figure out the real deal, then follow whichever side is actually in the right. You’re far better off being wrong and then changing your mind than being wrong and sticking with it like a dog with a stick just so you can “win” – that’s a recipe for long-term failure in multiple ways.

Always strongly support the positive moves your partner makes. Whenever your partner makes a good move, congratulate them. Reinforce the idea that the move was a good thing, and then use their good choice as motivation to make your own good choice, not as an excuse to coast because your partner is carrying the weight. At times, my wife and I almost compete at positive things like cleaning the house or saving money.

Don’t plan for retirement in a bubble – include your partner’s plans and income to develop an overall plan for retirement. Plan for retirement together and make choices that will provide you both with the money you’ll need for your later years. This may mean that one partner saves more than the other because they have a better 401(k) opportunity or they have a higher income. Having said that, it is a good idea to not have all retirement handled by one partner – if one partner has a fully funded 401(k) in his/her name, the other partner might want a Roth IRA in their name, just in case. However, the overall planning should reflect your shared goals.

Reaffirm your love every single day. Tell your partner you love them. Give a hug or a kiss or an embrace. It’s so simple to do, yet so many couples miss out on it. Simple little tokens of love provide a constant reaffirmation of your relationship, plus they ensure that you’ll never feel regret if something unthinkable happens.

Here are some earlier thoughts on tactics for a successful marriage, though they’re not financial in nature.

Got any good, reasonable, frugal advice for people getting started in their marriage? Please leave them in the comments.

The post A Reasonable Marriage appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Weddings are a traditional sinkhole of a new couple’s money. In fact, I’ve actually written about it before, denoting eighteen tips for a frugal wedding. In fact, entire blogs are devoted to the topic of frugal weddings – one of the best is A Practical Wedding.

So what do I have to add on the topic? It’s easy to get bogged down in the specifics of wedding planning – and when you start racking up the costs on those little details, before you know it, the entire wedding is out of control and you’re starting married life in a financial (and emotional) hole.

Here are ten “big picture” tactics to apply when planning for a wedding that won’t break your bank – or break your future.

Start your planning as far in advance of the wedding as possible. Set a tentative date as quickly as possible and start planning as soon as you can, even if you’re planning something very simple. The longer you have before the wedding, the more time you have to find sales, discounts, and other opportunities that can shave significant cash off of the total bill. Remember, you can cancel reservations with enough advance notice if you find a better deal.

Be completely open with your partner on what your ideas for the wedding are. Some people want very simple weddings, with just a few friends and family. Others envision huge, elaborate ceremonies with hundreds in attendance. Some people insist on being married in a specific church. Others are happy being married anywhere. As soon as you can after the engagement, talk about both of your expectations about the wedding. You may find your partner wants something completely different. Knowing this early gives you time to find solutions that make both of you happy.

The best place to trim fat for the wedding is the guest list. A long guest list can create a huge bill for your wedding and reception. Instead of inviting everyone you’ve ever known, consider trimming the list down to something manageable. Focus on people genuinely important to you, not merely everyone you can think of. Every additional guest brings a cost – additional supplies, additional food, and so on.

Do as much of the work yourself as you possibly can. You don’t need a wedding planner. Plan it yourself. Poke around online for guides to wedding planning, then move through those guides and take care of them yourself. If you need help with some of the tasks, ask people you trust for advice before you turn to professionals who are usually more interested in selling stuff than actually helping you. You’ll always save money if you go to a place knowing what you want.

Provide as many supplies as you can yourself – go bargain shopping. Minimize the supplies that others are providing and find them yourself. Keep a master list of all of the things you actually need for the wedding, then go bargain shopping. Look at unexpected places like Oriental Trading Company or a thrift store – you’ll be surprised how many quality items you can find for stunningly low prices.

Look among close friends and family for photographers, organists, florists, and other key roles. At our wedding, my sister-in-law (a florist) handled the flowers (at cost) and my wife’s aunt played the piano (for free), plus a close friend volunteered to be photographer (for free) and another friend volunteered to be the DJ (for free). Look around your social network and see what you can find. One great source can be found at the house of worship where you’re getting married (if that’s your choice) – if you have personal ties there, ask the ladies’ auxiliary for help with things like catering.

Hold the ceremony in your home, your parents’ home, or outdoors. Concerned about the fees of renting a place for the ceremony? Think outside the box a bit. Get married outside or in someone’s home. I’ve attended multiple beautiful outdoor ceremonies over the last decade and none of them had any cost.

Make your own invitations. With the quality of home printing, it’s easy to make your own invitations. Get some classy stationery and print them yourself. You can find lots of templates online if you’re unsure about the design. My wife and I designed our own invitations and saved literally hundreds of dollars.

Use a family-owned restaurant for catering. If you are in a position where you have to hire someone for catering, look for a local family-owned restaurant, even if they don’t typically cater. In particular, look for a local restaurant that you have been a patron of so you can be sure of the quality. Family-owned restaurants are usually very civic-minded and are thrilled at the opportunity to be involved – usually at a good price.

Use a good stereo system for the reception music. Don’t hire a band – and don’t hire a DJ, either. Ask around your social circle to find people that have a good stereo system that can be used, then set the whole thing up yourself. Attach it to a computer with a large music playlist and let people DJ by committee – lots of fun and very little (if any) cost.

Got any good, reasonable, frugal advice for people planning their weddings? Please leave them in the comments.

The post A Reasonable Wedding appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

At some point in a relationship, it becomes clear that the people involved are interested in tying their lives together.

What does that mean? It means different things for everyone, but as you prepare for that major change, there are lots of opportunities to build a great foundation for the future. There are also lots of opportunities to watch money slip through your fingers – money that you will wish you had later on.

Here are ten great things to do to make your engagement a successful one – and one that doesn’t have to break the bank.

Don’t buy into the ludicrous expectations for a ring. The hype about wedding rings is in overdrive. Do not buy into it. Two or three months’ worth of salary is not a reasonable amount to spend – it can create a negative financial impact that will last for years. It can delay your ability to buy a home, reduce your ability to save for retirement in the short term, and (quite likely) put you into a debt hole that will be hard to dig out of. And, if the engagement is accepted, it’s a hole you’ll share. So, what can you do?

If you’re expecting a ring, make a concerted effort to convince your partner to spend less. Make it clear that you not only don’t expect but that you don’t want an exorbitant ring. After all, the money could be put to better use on a down payment for a home, on retirement savings, or on other things that will help you both in life.

If you’re buying a ring, be reasonable about it and share your feelings with your partner. Discuss the purchase to some extent with the person you’re considering proposing to. Find out their feelings on the subject and explain your position that a lower-cost ring will provide greater rewards in married life.

Don’t “overdo” the moment. Make your proposal simple and memorable, not something incredibly over the top. One good idea – return to the spot where you first met or re-enact your first date. This will not only mean much more than reserving a table at an overly expensive restaurant, but it’ll keep your wallet from burning up, too.

Seek pre-marriage counseling. My wife and I attended pre-marriage counseling with our pastor and it was incredibly helpful in getting us to talk about the areas where we needed to work on our relationships. If you’re getting married through a church or other house of faith, consult the religious leader there – he or she will almost always help you through this.

Start talking about your shared money situation. This is vital – so vital, in fact, that I wrote a detailed guide to those first money talks during one’s engagement. This is vital, because if you don’t start off on the same financial page with the same ideas about roles and spending and sharing resources, it will be very hard to get on that page later on. Your engagement is the perfect time to do this.

Be completely honest about your individual money situation. Now is the time to open the books and be fully honest with your partner about your true financial situation. Don’t hide anything – get started with complete honesty. Don’t hide anything, because at some point, your partner will need to know about any big debts you are sitting on or other such issues, and that problem will also be your partner’s problem. Talking about it now allows you both the time and space to figure out how to handle it – together.

Start planning long-term financial things together. If you’re considering financial choices that will have a long term impact, include your partner in the discussion. Plan out your retirement savings and your career choices together, because those money choices will affect your partner greatly in the years to come.

Talk about a pre-nupital agreement, even if it seems unnecessary. Some people firmly believe a marriage is for a lifetime. If that’s so, great – it should be very easy to draft an agreement because you’ll never have to execute it, right? Others might believe that they don’t have enough assets to worry about it – but will that be true in ten years? No matter what, a pre-nupital agreement can save you a lot of headaches later on, so talk about it now.

Talk through your problems with your partner first and foremost. Marriage is a lifelong commitment, one where you share everything with your partner. As you move towards that day, you should be talking about your problems and concerns with your partner, not hiding them away. Hiding them now or seeking others to talk to sets a poor precedent for your relationship, one that will cost you time and time again over the long run.

Got any good, reasonable, frugal advice for people who are engaged – or about to be? Please leave them in the comments.

The post A Reasonable Engagement appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

In the most recent reader mailbag, I answered a question about marriage from a reader named Sally: You and your wife seem to have a very strong marriage. Can you give me some tips on how to keep my marriage strong? What do you do to keep it that way?

After I posted the question and my response (which I quoted below), I received a small flood of emails from readers telling me about their troubled marriage at length and asking me for more suggestions along these lines, something that I was happy to oblige in the first email, but by the time the twentieth or so arrived, I realized that this would make a better standalone post than simply reiterating the same ideas in a long string of emails.

First, a general note: my belief is that a successful marriage is built one moment at a time. From what I’ve learned, a marriage is like a stone wall: it’s a mix of big things and little things, all assembled together to form something strong. Sure, there are a lot of big rocks in that wall (the big moments in your marriage, like your wedding day or some other big, key moment), but those rocks don’t fit together without a lot of little rocks to fill in the gaps and make them strong.

Most marriages seem to have little problem with their big moments. It’s easy to think back and think of big, happy moments in the marriage. I tend to believe that most marriages fail because of the small moments. Our individual lives get so busy that we fail to spend the time and effort to put those little stones in place, and when a bit of pressure is applied, the wall falls apart easily. On the other hand, when the little stones are there to fill in the gaps, the wall becomes strong and able to withstand anything that comes along.

I also believe that the little things are hard. Often, it’s not a matter of desire – almost all of us genuinely want to make our marriages work and work well. The challenge for many is that we get wrapped up in the complexity of our own lives. Others simply have difficulty expressing or showing what we feel.

What follows are twelve little things I do quite regularly to put those little pieces into my marriage. Please, use as many of these as seem reasonable. The first five are quoted from my response to the original question in the mailbag.

I tell my wife I love her every single day. I usually do it in the morning before she leaves the bedroom, and on weekdays I’ll also tell her when I see her in the evening for the first time. I usually couple it with a kiss. It’s so simple, but it’s a constant reminder of the fact that I do love her, no matter what.

I ask about her day, listen, and ask follow up questions. I do this not only so I can keep tabs on her professional life, but also to give her a great chance to vent about her situation. Everyone needs to talk about themselves sometimes to someone who is interested – I try to provide that for her as often as I can.

I try to surprise her on a regular basis. I’ll spend an hour preparing a really excellent supper when she doesn’t expect it. I’ll spontaneously give the kids a bath when she’s comfortable on the couch under a blanket, even if it’s her turn. Doing these little unexpected things not only shows her I care, but also often compels her to do similar things for me.

I hold her hand. I do this all the time, whenever it crosses my mind and seems appropriate. I’ll just hold her hand gently while we’re talking or we’re riding in the car or we’re waiting for an appointment or we’re sitting on the couch in the evenings.

I talk about EVERYTHING with her and let her determine what’s interesting. If something is concerning me, I don’t hide it from her. I tell her about it. Most of the time she’s interested and we’ll discuss it – sometimes she’s not and I let it drop (this is key – if she’s not into the topic, I don’t push it). Either way, though, she gets the message that I’m making an effort to share and be open.

I work on building a positive relationship with her family. Whenever I visit or see anyone in her family, I make a special effort to try to establish or build upon a strong relationship with them. This accomplishes several things: it makes her more at ease in a family situation, it helps me to build stronger ties with people that are important to her, and it helps me to understand the influences that were around her as she grew up.

I send her messages during the day. About once a week, during a time where my wife is really present in my thoughts, I send her a little simple note by email. All it says is something along the lines of “I was thinking about you just now. I can’t wait until I see you this evening.” It’s just a very simple way of letting her know she’s on my mind and in my heart.

I put careful thought into gifts I give her. Sure, it’s easy to just run out and get a generic gift to cover yourself during an anniversary or a birthday. However, a gift with some real thought behind it means substantially more than an obviously off-the-cuff gift.

I encourage her to follow her passions and interests, even if they don’t inspire or interest me. If my wife chooses to spend significant time on a project, it’s obviously something that’s important to her. That doesn’t imply at all that it has to be important to me. If she’s involved in her own project, I give her positive encouragement and then work on my own interests instead of saying things like “that seems like a waste of time.”

If she needs me, I willingly contribute to those passions. If something genuinely excites her and she wants me to experience it, I willingly involve myself in whatever it may be: a particular type of art, a craft project, a yard project, whatever. Even if I don’t enjoy it, I do have the opportunity to learn more about my wife and what she’s passionate about, which means that my understanding of her grows.

I look for opportunities to build mutual friendships. The idea that there is a group of people that are “my” friends and another group that is “her” friends can be a big dividing factor between us. Instead, I often focus on building friendships and relationships that we share with others so that something of a community of friendship and love grows up around us.

I hold her every night, even if it’s just for a moment. I might be completely exhausted when I go to bed in the evening, but I take a moment to move close to her, put my arm around her, and hold her close, even if it’s just for a minute or so. That moment of physical contact to end the day is a simple sign of love.

The post Some Thoughts on Building a Successful Marriage appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Luckily, we managed to overcome this tendency over time. What brought about this change, though? How were we able to go from avoiding money talks (and being confrontational when the topic came up) to being able to rationally, calmly, and happily discuss things today?

I made up a list of ten distinct things that worked for us in terms of making conversations about money work in our relationship. Some of these might seem overly simple – others might seem like they won’t possibly work. Don’t overlook them, though. Give these tactics a try, preferably in combination, if you’re having difficulty talking to your partner about money.

Be willing to admit your faults and mistakes. During the conversation, your partner will likely point out mistakes that you’ve made along the way. Be open to this – don’t get defensive. Be willing to admit that you’ve done wrong in the past and also be willing to look for good solutions to these problems that work for both of you.

Pair any accusations with admissions of your own faults. One good way to defuse a situation that might dissolve into accusations and counter-accusations is to pair any statements you might make about your partner’s behavior with statements about your own mistakes. You might point out that your husband spends too much on his golf trips, but at the same time admit that you spend too much on home decorations.

Identify some things you’re willing to sacrifice before you sit down. During any money talk, you’ll likely have to be willing to commit to making some personal changes. This can be hard, especially if it’s simply foisted on you out of nowhere. Instead, all participants should spend some time before the conversation thinking about some changes they would be willing to personally make to achieve success.

Establish a “no yelling” rule. No one involved in the conversation is allowed to raise their voice, period. If you feel an emotional wave coming on, simply ask to stop for a bit and do something to calm yourself down. Likely, when you feel an emotional surge, it’s a good thing, because you’re getting close to a truth that needs to be laid bare and actually discussed.

Open the books completely. Don’t hide anything. You cannot come up with a great solution that you’re both committed to if things remain hidden. Pull out all of the bills, even the ones you’ve tried to hide from your partner, and allow your complete financial state to be an open book for both of you.

Don’t swallow the whole bite at once. Quite often, when couples sit down and begin to address their financial issues together, they find that the rabbit hole goes much deeper than they thought. Instead of trying to address everything at once, break it up into pieces. Focus on optimizing your spending during one conversation, then coming up with a debt repayment plan together during another talk, then tackle retirement planning later. If you’ve clearly hit a stalemate in a talk, back off for a while with just a pledge that you’ll both think about the problem and talk about it again later. Remember, it doesn’t all have to be done at once.

Talk about goals FIRST. Before you start digging into details, you should make it clear what you both want out of the conversation – and also what you both want in the long term from your situation. Establish the purpose of your conversation as clearly as you can so you have something to work toward. At the same time, talk about where you want to go in the future as a couple. Do this before you do anything else – not only is it a great way to open in a positive fashion, but it also gives you a nice framework for the rest of your talk.

Be realistic. You aren’t going to make diamonds out of coal. You’re also not going to make truly radical changes in your life, particularly if your partner’s not deeply committed to the change. Instead, look for smaller steps you can make to achieve the goals you want. Don’t expect to change everything in one conversation – if you do, you’re likely wasting your time. Focus on a handful of realistic, smaller things that you can do to head in the right direction. Then, if those work, have further discussions and add more changes to the mix.

Share your thoughts asynchronously. You may find that a face-to-face talk simply isn’t helping you get past a particular stumbling block. If that’s the case, try using email or another written form to help you work through the situation. Each of you should simply write down your thoughts on the situation and give them to each other, then respond to those thoughts, then respond to those responses, until you’ve reached some conclusions. This can be easily done over email. While you lose the face-to-face advantages here, you do gain the ability to carefully and calmly gather and organize your thoughts and share them in a way where the conversation can be followed later.

Develop very specific, clear, and tangible tasks for you both to follow. If you both commit to spending less, find ways to make that reduced spending specific and tangible. Agree that you’ll both live with a $100 allowance for “free spending” this month, for example. If you’ve decided to set up retirement plans together, you should both be charged with getting the information needed from your respective places of employment. If you’re trying to dig out of debt, you should both commit to tossing your credit cards. A one-sided sacrifice or one-sided task is a sure recipe for resentment – you should both be involved in the solution.

Good luck!

The post Ten Vital Tactics for Making the “Money Talk” Work appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

I was… wrong.

My wife was pretty upset with me. She had thought carefully and put together a really thoughtful gift for me, which she sprung upon me that evening. When I told her that I didn’t have a gift for her, she thought I was kidding, but eventually she realized I wasn’t. And it wasn’t pretty.

Since then, we’ve adopted a policy of getting each other very simple but thoughtful gifts for our anniversary – books, journals, simple trinkets that clearly represent that we’ve been paying attention to each other.

This is the custom that we’ve established within our marriage. Neither one of us feels that an anniversary calls for a huge, ostentatious gift of any kind. Instead, we view it as a day to recall our wedding vows and our pledge to combine our lives together, and we’ve found that simple and thoughtful is the way to go for us.

Having said that, I’ve observed many different patterns in different marriages that I’m familiar with. One marriage, for example, seems to revolve around absurdly huge gifts given by the husband to the wife, and I know from outside conversations that the husband really resents this pattern.

In another marriage, the couple sticks very carefully to the “traditional” list of wedding anniversary gifts – paper, wood, and the like. They try to think of thoughtful gifts for each other that center around the “theme” of the anniversary. I can tell from both of them that this is a tradition that they both value.

Another marriage seems to involve spending a lot of money on something frivolous that they’ll both enjoy. Recent gifts include a week-long trip and a Lexus.

In yet another marriage, their sole remembrance of their anniversary is a kiss for each year they’ve been married.

Why am I reporting all of these things here? There is no established pattern for anniversary gifts, so don’t get caught up in trying to chase something that’s an illusion. From what I can see, anniversary celebrations are as varied as the marriages they represent.

If you think that there’s something “expected” as an anniversary gift and you don’t like it, talk to your partner. It’s likely that you’re harboring an expectation that may or may not be real – and that expectation can be very expensive in the short term – and can establish a very expensive pattern over the long term.

The key to celebrating any personal event is to find a way to celebrate it that’s in line with your personal values. For us, the most valuable thing in our marriage is the fact that we know each other almost as well as we know ourselves, and we focus on celebrating our anniversary in a way that represents that.

Remember, it doesn’t have to be about frivolous spending at all. Instead, it needs to just be a remembrance of a key moment in both of your lives – and it should reflect on both of you in a way that fulfills you both.

How do you celebrate your anniversary? Share your tactics in the comments.

The post Some Thoughts on Anniversaries and Their Requisite Gifts appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

What advice do you have for a frugal wedding? We’re getting married in the fall of 2010. Since we are both in our early twenties and don’t have a lot to spend we were hoping to keep our wedding as small as possible. We were thinking no more than six to eight people including ourselves.

Glad you asked. My wife and I were married in the summer of 2003. Our wedding was actually pretty frugal, but afterwards we recognized several additional factors that would have made it even less expensive. Here are eighteen tactics worth trying to cut the costs of your wedding event without diving into cheapness.

1. Avoid guest list bloat.
For some people, it can feel very tempting to invite hundreds of people to the ceremony. Howver, with each addition to your guest list, you’re adding a person that’s of lesser importance to you compared to the people you’ve already invited. To a degree, this was a trap we fell into with our own wedding – our guest list grew and grew to the point where we invited people that we didn’t know well simply out of a sense of obligation. Instead of just adding more and more people, consider inviting fewer people and making the event more intimate. Try cutting your list in half and see if you’re happy with it.

2. Ask for wedding help instead of wedding gifts.
We were lucky that several of our friends and family had musical talent, so they were able to provide musical accompaniment for our ceremony. We also have a close friend who is an extremely skilled amateur photographer and he was willing to serve as photographer for our ceremony as our wedding gift – after the ceremony, he provided high quality digital images of everything.

3. Have the ceremony at home, or outdoors.
You may find that the cost of renting a building for your ceremony and reception is expensive. Instead, consider using your own home (or the home of a parent) for your ceremony, or perhaps a public park with a beautiful view. In each case, you can also have your reception outdoors, often eliminating the cost of renting a place as well as creating a memorable ceremony.

4. Do the catering yourself, or hire a family-owned restaurant.
For our wedding, we handled our own food preparation and catering with a lot of help from my wife’s family. This drastically reduced the food costs for the ceremony. If this isn’t your forte, look around your community for a family-owned restaurant and ask the owners directly to cater your wedding. Family-owned restaurants are always the first place to check – they will almost always go the extra mile to make your wedding special and will also charge a reasonable rate.

5. Go minimal with the flowers.
Instead of having huge piles of flowers everywhere (something that will only really last for an afternoon), instead simply go with a single rose for each bridesmaid and a very small bouquet for the bride. If you know someone with a rose bush, you can actually easily make your own bouquets the day before the ceremony by cutting the roses yourself and trimming away the thorns.

6. Choose very personal books for groomsmen/bridesmaid gifts.
It’s often customary to give gifts to one’s bridesmaids or groomsmen. One very effective (and frugal) gift is to give personally important books to each person. Choose one that expresses something personal that you feel is appropriate for each member of the wedding party and hand-write an inscription on the inside, noting that the gift is for the wedding and why it’s an appropriate book.

7. Make your own invitations.
With a quality home printer and some time, you can make very classy invitations on your own. My wife and I picked up a simple blank invitation kit on sale at Staples and made our own invitations to our wedding. No pictures or anything – just a very classic font and simple text. It looked stylish and didn’t cost us much at all.

8. Use a good home stereo system for the reception music.
Rather than hiring a DJ, just use your own home stereo (or the stereo of a close friend). Put speakers around the dance floor area – there’s no need to spread them around the reception room. Then just create a few mix CDs from your own collection – there’s all the music you need.

9. Have “vendor cards” in exchange for reduced rates.
If you’re hiring people to provide services for your reception (musicians, a DJ, florists, caterers, photographers, etc.), offer to advertise for them in exchange for reduced rates. At the reception, put a small card in each person’s place that lists the businesses responsible for each service at the wedding, along with their contact informationc. Since this tends to be very effective advertising, many businesses will happily provide services at reduced rates in exchange for this opportunity.

10. Contact the local university for musical accompaniment needs.
If you’d like live musical accompaniment for the ceremony (and perhaps for the reception), one place to look for low-cost musicians is at the local university’s music department. Contact them and ask if there are any students who are studying a particular instrument or vocal work and see if they’re available to provide music for your wedding. It can help them with their resume and save you on this part of your wedding.

11. Patiently shop for any decoration needs.
Michael’s, Paper Warehouse, and Hobby Lobby all have sales somewhat regularly throughout the year – and they all sell supplies that can be helpful with your wedding. Know what you’re looking for as far in advance as possible and let the sales come to you. Michael’s in particular is a good place to shop, since they often have very strong coupons in the Sunday paper that are perfect for wedding decoration supplies.

12. If you’re getting married in the church you’re a member of, ask the ladies’ auxiliary for help.
Most churches have a women’s organization that is very happy to help with wedding preparation in exchange for a reasonable small donation. Get them involved – they can take a lot of worry off your shoulders for a relatively low price. At our wedding, the “church ladies” were a great help with church decoration and other helpful things on the day of the ceremony.

13. Buy dresses together when a sale is on.
Similar to the tip for shopping for decorations, you can often save a significant amount of money by shopping patiently for dresses as well. Many dress stores have sales on holidays such as Memorial Day – keep an eye out for such sales. You may also want to shop together so that you can all save during the sale.

14. Rent tuxedos as a group.
Unless you have a specific reason for owning a tuxedo (and few people do), you should rent one. It’s often useful to rent the tuxedos as a group through the same business, as you’ll often get a group rate. It’s often useful to rent through a place that’s fairly close to the site of the wedding so last minute adjustments can easily be made.

15. Make a simple honeymoon, not an ostentatious one.
A huge, over-the-top honeymoon might sound fun, but it’s far, far cheaper (and often more enjoyable) to have a much more laid-back honeymoon. Instead of planning a big trip, just hop in the car and spend a week or two together just driving around and enjoying being married. The fewer plans, the better – and the cheaper.

16. Involve your closest friends and family in the preparation.
As you’re developing plans, you should get your closest friends and family involved with the details. Quite often, they’ll have surprisingly good ideas that can save you money and effort – perhaps they’ll know someone that can cut you a deal on a certain part, or maybe they’ll just volunteer to help out with that piece. Good friends and family are always there to help, so you might as well use it.

17. Plan, plan, plan.
List everything you can think of and walk through these items step by step. The earlier you get started – and the more things you think about early on – the less “last minute stress” you’ll have and the more time you’ll have to find sales and discounts and other good ideas.

18. Don’t stress.
Something will probably go wrong at the last minute – a little detail of some sort won’t work out. For us, the pastor almost missed our rehearsal dinner, so we barely rehearsed. Don’t worry aboout it – just assume something little is going to go wrong and don’t respond by throwing cash at it. Most likely, no one will even notice the little issue, and quite often someone in your wedding party (or someone helping out) will come up with a pretty good solution to fix things.

Good luck!

The post Eighteen Tips for a Frugal (Not Cheap) Wedding appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Why did this take so long? A lot of people were surprised that we didn’t just do this by default when we got married, or even earlier. There were several reasons why we did not.

First, we didn’t have genuine conversations about our personal finances before we got married. As our relationship grew, we had deep conversations about almost everything except for our money. It wasn’t until three years after our marriage (and some serious financial troubles along the way) that we finally started talking seriously about our money decisions.

Second, we kept many bills separate from each other. There were simply some bills I paid and some bills she paid, carried over almost directly from our dating days. In short, we just let inertia carry us, instead of rethinking things. This worked really well most of the time, but it made a clear accounting of our financial situation almost impossible. If one of us had a larger bill than normal, could we rely on the other one’s income to pull us through? This was never clear, and we often just muddled through.

Third, we were both fairly concerned about privacy. Not so much in the sense of directly hiding things from each other, but in the sense that it gave the other person free reign to leaf through our spending, likely making judgments on our individual spending choices. It was something that we were both very uncomfortable with for a long time – and something that we’ve become more comfortable with as we’ve talked more and more about our finances.

How did we come to this decision? Mostly, we came to realize that we were simply in a different place than before. Instead of each of us handling our own bills and not really paying attention to what the other was doing, we were pretty clear on what we both were doing. We watched each other grow more careful and frugal with our spending and we came to trust each other’s spending habits more.

We also began to realize all of the little ways our separate accounts were costing us. Instead of having a complete financial picture whenever we needed it, we often strained and stretched to cover our individual bills ourselves. We also realized that some of our banking choices were still dinging us with fees, and there was no better time than the present to start over and choose a better account.

How did we choose a bank? We basically did a canvas of all of the banks within a fifteen mile radius, comparing their basic checking account offerings. We wanted a free basic checking account with free checks and free online banking, plus reasonable hours. Ideally, I wanted one that I could easily reach on a bicycle ride.

Basically, we wanted easy access to a real live teller for services such as check cashing and change redemption, plus a paper checking account that had no maintenance fees, online banking access, and a wide ATM network. Since we planned on keeping most of our money with ING Direct, we didn’t care about interest rates much at all – we mostly sought to avoid fees.

Knowing this, I just perused the websites of every bank in the area, gathering information about their checking accounts, and we found four that had all of the criteria we wanted. We decided to simply select the one of the four with a branch closest to our home.

One big piece of advice If we learned one lesson from our experience, it’s this.

Communicate with your partner about money from the beginning, and don’t leave anything hidden when you talk about it.

Complete honesty and regular, deep communication about your finances as you begin to merge other parts of your lives is vital. My wife and I now have very regular talks about our personal finances and we’ve moved to a complete open door policy of looking at any statements or material that comes in the mail.

This communication opened the door to financial success. We set goals together. We learned what we needed to do to reach those goals together. We created microgoals to help us get started along that path. We talked through our important decisions.

And now, our financial future is completely linked.

The post Our Path to (Finally) Merging Our Finances appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Financial infidelity – in other words, the situation in which dishonesty creeps into a relationship due to money – is probably the most common source of emails that I receive. I’ve heard some incredibly devastating tales of woe – suddenly discovered five-figure credit card bills, closets full of clothes still in their sacks, huge purchases done without discussing things with the partner, guilt about little white money lies, and so on. These issues are ones of dishonesty, ones that can be the earliest cracks in the foundation of a marriage. A little withheld truth about a credit card debt can be the first pebble in an avalanche.

What can you do if these little things are creeping into your own relationship? That’s the topic of Financial Infidelity by Dr. Bonnie Eaker Weil. The book focuses in on both preventative and responsive solutions to relationships where dishonesty and money are an issue – or might become one in the future.

Is the advice solid and distinct, or is it just three hundred pages that can be boiled down to one word – communicate? Let’s dig in and see what the good doctor has to say.

Part I: What Is Financial Infidelity?
The opening section lays out the basics: what is financial infidelity, are you susceptible to it, and how should you react if you discover it (or decide to confess to it).

Understanding Financial Infidelity
Financial infidelity is a pretty wide umbrella term, including any situation where anything less than the full truth about your money situation is shared with your partner. This not only includes outright lies (from the big ones down to little white lies), but also deception by omission and deception by misdirection as well. In short, any time you actively manipulate information to give your spouse a false impression of your personal financial situation, you’re committing financial infidelity, and since it is an act of dishonesty, it interferes with the trust in your relationship.

Financial Infidelity: Are You At Risk?
Unsurprisingly, this portion of the book revolves around a self-assessment – how honest are you with your partner about your money? Weil is actually more forgiving than I actually feel is appropriate – you could be awfully dishonest about money (from my perspective) and her self-test would indicate that you’re doing just fine. My expectation is, though, that many people will either ace these self-tests (meaning they’re pretty honest about their money) or do devastatingly poorly – most of the items here seem pretty interconnected.

Facing Financial Infidelity
Weil focuses on communication technique here, a key piece of the puzzle if you don’t want things to erupt into an angry, resentful shouting match. In short, even if you think the other person is sincerely the one at fault, ask yourself if you’re bringing any faults to the table at all, then mention those when you start discussing it. If you thrust the burden of blame on the other person, they will react emotionally and you won’t get the resolution you want, and it’s because of that fear of a bad resolution that people let these wounds fester. Don’t. A truly excellent chapter on communication.

Part II: The Seven Steps
The next part provides a seven-step plan for healing the wounds of financial infidelity.

Step 1: Calculate the Cost
In order to get honest, you need to sit down and look at the full picture together. The first step is to do a real and thorough calculation of your combined net worth, exposing the complete truth of all of your assets and all of your debts to both of you. From that, you should also talk about a budget and, more importantly, the goals you both have and how your individual spending choices fit into that goal. If one (or both) of you is spending money like it’s water, it will be very difficult to achieve the dreams you share. The real key is to revisit this regularly and look at the change. Sitting down once and setting goals is great – revisiting everything in three months by recalculating it again, seeing each of your contributions towards the big goal, and taking stock of the situation will really show how things are going.

Step 2: Examine Your Power Dynamic
Does one member of your relationship earn more – and thus use that fact as a power trip in your relationship? Quite often, this can cause continual problems revolving around mistrust – one partner feels powerless about money and thus tries to exert power by spending foolishly, for example. One tip (among many good ones) is to spend some time seriously trying to put yourself in the other person’s shoes. How would it feel to be the low wage earner, knowing every day that you’re not contributing as much money as the other person? Be honest and sincere about that perspective – and share what thoughts come to mind – and you’ll likely find that you have more empathy and common ground than you think.

Step 3: Divest Yourself of the Past
For many people, their past – both their personal experiences and the lessons learned from family and friends in childhood – defines how they think about money. They take the lessons from their childhood and repeat those moves in adulthood. They also fall in with the status quo bias, repeating the patterns they’ve been following their whole adult life, only making changes when circumstances pushed them into it. When you’ve reached a point of understanding that things have to change, it’s worthwhile to look at the patterns of your past and separate the wheat from the chaff.

Step 4: Break Up with Your Money
Many couples allow money to become the focal point of their relationship. It becomes the glue holding things together – hey, we both have money to do the things we each enjoy, so even though there are other problems, we use money to whitewash it (or greenwash it, I suppose). What, then, do you suppose happens if the flow of money goes away? That’s why it’s important to compartmentalize your money discussions and interactions. Have a scheduled, regular money meeting, talk about your finances then, and follow it up with something fun to do together that doesn’t involve money at all.

Step 5: Define the Currency of Your Relationship
Instead of letting money be the fundamental currency of your relationship, base it on something else. Figure out the elements of life – the values – that are most important to each of you and let those be the foundation of your relationship, not money and things. Sit down together and talk about those other things that you share. Focus on those commonalities and let everything else fall into place behind those key things. Because, in the end, you didn’t marry each other for the money (hopefully).

Step 6: Refinance Your Relationship
The next step is to focus in intensely on the non-financial mechanics of your relationship. It really can be hard work to get along with someone for years and years, even if it’s someone you care deeply about. Put in some time and effort to do nothing more than make your partner happy. Look for the little things – go out on dates, give in to some of the things that they want, plan little surprises here and there. If your relationship is clicking, it’s a lot easier to make the money click, too.

Step 7: Invest in Your Future
The final step is, in effect, maintenance. The previous steps are all great at getting you back on track, but if you just do them once and walk away, eventually events in your life and your relationship will bring back all of those nasty patterns. Don’t let it happen. Work on maintaining the positive state you’ve built. Weil offers a ton of little suggestions here, but they mostly revolve around being continuously mindful of the other steps and going back to them very regularly to keep things together.

Part III: The Biochemical Component
The book closes with a pair of short pieces on related topics.

The Brain-Body Connection
Sometimes, these steps won’t work, due to the result of other interpersonal and biochemical factors. If you’ve tried sincerely and honestly to work on these issues and found that the same nasty things keep repeating themselves, you may need professional help. Addictions, psychological issues, and other things may be at work, and no matter how hard you try, you’re always facing an uphill battle against such things. Seek professional assistance if these kinds of things are in play.

The Case for Financial Fidelity and Lasting Love
Financial fidelity is just one piece of the puzzle of lasting love. If you commit yourself to actually working hard on your relationship and doing it consistently, you’ll find that love can remain all throughout your life. It’s not easy and it takes consistent effort, though – don’t let it slip through your fingers.

Some Thoughts on Financial Infidelity
Financial infidelity is just a surface issue. Weil more or less makes the point here that financial infidelity is usually the result of a deeper issue in the relationship – money issues are just a symptom. That’s why most of the steps revolve around brushing away the money issues themselves and figuring out what’s really going on.

Relationships need (and deserve) nurturing. It’s very easy to get caught up in what we want without thinking about what our partner wants and needs. I usually avoid relationship advice, but I’ve found one thing works really, really well for my marriage: spend one hour a day focused entirely on what your partner needs. Forget what you need or want, focus on your partner entirely for one hour a day and you’ll be fine. Sometimes that need manifests itself in household chores. Other times, it’s just sitting together near each other watching a movie. Once in a while, it’s a back rub. Quite often, it involves some kind words and support after a hard day’s work. But one thing’s for sure – that one hour a day is well worth it.

Is Financial Infidelity Worth Reading?
You probably know from the title whether you need to read Financial Infidelity. From my perspective, it absolutely nails the problem – financial infidelity is usually just a symptom of something else going on. Weil does a great job of providing tons of easily workable steps for piecing out what exactly that issue is – and what you can do together to solve it.

If you don’t trust your partner when it comes to money, Financial Infidelity is essential reading. This review really only scratches the surface of the wisdom within. Financial Infidelity is an excellent book that really hammers down on something that is a real problem in many, many relationships.

The post Review: Financial Infidelity appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

It’s always going to be hard if you set clear personal goals and then later find out that your spouse, either intentionally or otherwise, has been taking actions in the opposite direction of your goals. You feel betrayed, let down by the person you care for the most. You often feel angry that all of your efforts have been tossed aside so effortlessly. You feel helpless – after all of your efforts, you’re right back where you started.

This moment is make or break time. It’s one of those times in your life when you figure out what you’re made of – and what your spouse is made of, too. Here’s how I would handle it.

First, take a breather
As soon as you find out that your spouse hasn’t been on the same financial page as you, you’re going to be upset in some fashion. You might be angry. You might be sad and disappointed. You might want to just walk out and not come back.

Don’t.

Sit back and breathe for a while. Don’t say or do anything about it for a day or so, but don’t let it boil up, either. Instead, find another medium to vent. Write down what you’re feeling. Punch a pillow if you need to. Go for a long walk. Just don’t start discussing this when emotions are overwhelming you or else it won’t end well.

Think about what caused the situation
It’s also important to give some consideration as to what caused this situation. Obviously, if you’re upset right now, you’ve got a different vision of your finances than your partner. This leads to some important questions.

Are you sure your spouse was aware of your feelings about money? In many relationships, a partner might adopt a new set of ideas about money without ever properly discussing it with their partner. If you’ve turned over a new leaf of frugality without really discussing it with your spouse and they’ve just done like they’ve always done – spending money if it’s in the checking account, etc. – then you need to communicate with your partner a bit more. Your partner’s probably completely confused as to why you’re so upset right now.

Is your partner actually on board with financial progress? Another potential situation is that you talked things over with your partner, but without your partner’s buy-in. You might have had all of these big plans, but if your partner wasn’t really invested in all of these plans or if they felt like you were just preaching ideas at them, they probably have no real motivation to change anything.

Did your partner simply make a mistake? Everyone is human and makes mistakes, and overcoming a pattern of spending is a very difficult thing. Perhaps your partner is committed, but their will faltered a time or two. It’s a very human mistake, and forgiveness is always the correct path to take here.

If they were intentionally lying to you or misleading you, deeper marital issues may be involved. You may want to consider seeking a counselor, or at the very least address these concerns face to face. If your partner is being deliberately misleading, there’s likely a deeper problem that needs to be addressed.

Have a rational discussion about it
Once you’ve calmed down and reflected on the situation, have a discussion about it. Explain why you were upset and listen to the reasoning that your partner gives to you. Most of the time, the problem is the result of a lack of communication or confusion in communication, so make sure you both understand what the other is thinking.

The key is listening. Clearly, if you were shocked and surprised by a financial choice that your partner made, he or she is thinking differently than you are. Sit back and listen to your partner’s perspective without comment and make an effort to understand their perspective.

Don’t get angry. Anger solves nothing in a long-term relationship. Save your anger for later when you have a healthy channel for it. If you find yourself getting angry, excuse yourself and deal with it in another room, then return when you’ve calmed down.

Re-evaluate your shared dreams and goals
One common problem that often triggers such a divergence in behavior is that you’re not on the same page with your goals and dreams. You might think your partner has the same dreams that you do, but in fact in their heart they want other things. Or, perhaps you feel a goal can be achieved pretty quickly, but your partner feels that the goal is far off in the future.

Be honest, and ask your partner to be honest, too. If you’re planning things that he or she is not fully committed to, they’ll undermine those plans, whether consciously or otherwise. A long term shared goal doesn’t work unless you both want it, and you won’t know whether your partner truly wants it unless you’re committed to being honest.

Recognize that your partner may have different dreams than you. You might desperately want a bigger house, for example, but your partner might have no interest in such a thing and was simply acknowledging your dream. Instead of dragging your partner along for the ride, look for big dreams that you both share.

Let your partner lead. Let your partner identify the goals he or she finds deeply valuable, then identify the ones that you can share. Letting your partner lead in this process gives him or her a sense of ownership over setting the goals and defining the plans, and that means more commitment and emotional investment in success.

If all of this fails…
If you try all of these things and nothing seems to help the situation, a marriage counselor might be in order. Long-term relationships are built on trust and communication, and if either of those two aspects are failing without a clear root cause, you need to find someone who can help you find that root cause.

Good luck.

The post How to Deal with a Partner That Hides Money Problems appeared first on The Simple Dollar.