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Home › Articles › Financial Fitness › The Dollars and Cents of Marriage

The Dollars and Cents of Marriage

Are Finances Tearing Your Relationship Apart?

By Teri Brown

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  • Embarking upon a very short-term austerity program to jump-start your debt payoff program.
  • Reviewing expenses together initially and then with a follow-up every three weeks to assess and reassess what services and products you can cut with the least impact to your lifestyle.
  • Setting that "threshold" at which you always check in with each other on larger expenses.
  • Consider postponing big purchases or moderating planned upgrades for the house, auto, sports gear or wardrobe until you're seeing progress toward your goals. Then reassess.

    • 3. Track spending like a heat-seeking missile Monitor progress on a regular basis to check financial activity and assess what's working and adjust what's not. One way to do this is agree to put all purchases over $5 on a debit card and make a notation of all cash spent under $5. This way the debit statement does all the work it tracks spending for you!

    "We've just started putting our finances into Microsoft Money and watching how we spend our money," Jackie says. "I've also started doing a budget each month. It's not written in stone, but it gives us a good idea [of] where our money goes each month. Our main thing right now is accountability."

    As far as her emotional spending,Jackie has found tools to help her with that as well. "It boils down to self-control," Jackie says. "If I feel down, I'll get in here and really clean the house. Or I'll stop everything and read a book or watch a movie whatever it takes to distract me from my mood. I've had to think about what makes me feel good, besides spending money, and do it."

    Jackieis confident that as their ability to handle money improves, the fighting will gradually stop, and they will be on their way to financial stability. "We still fight over it," Jackie says. "But not nearly as much as we used to."

    * Last name withheld to protect privacy.

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