Budgeting as a couple
Living direct deposit to direct deposit is the absolute worst feeling. Not knowing if you are going to have enough money at the end of the week to get gas into the car, or what if something unexpected happens and you need something out of the blue? Your kid gets sick and you need a fever reducer. Or your oldest gets invited to the movies, and you just don't want to say no to that smile. Living this way never feels good, and the vicious cycle is overwhelming and emotional. Let's face it, we all know that feeling of talking about money with your significant other(from one time in our life or another). Emotions are high and the blame game is vicious. No one walks away a winner, that is for sure.We have had money issues in our house for as long as I can remember. Honestly, we never even really had a savings account with money in it, just a savings account with maybe five or ten dollars in it. For our entire married life, we have literally lived two ways financially, paycheck to paycheck and direct deposit to direct deposit. Now, finally looking at a bigger picture, I see that we lived that way because we thought that way. We thought, lets get through this week and deal with next week when it gets here. Sure we knew we had bills due all throughout the month but we where a disaster about it. No plan is a real quick way to fail.So how do you end that cycle? How do you put a stop to just plain avoiding the money talks? How do you get some money into a savings account? This is our journey and hopefully you will get some inspiration from it. Always remember teamwork works! If you are a couple then you are a team. No matter how you divide the bills, who has what for a checking account or if there is a secret savings account; you have to play as a team.We have taken a long time as a couple to really start to understand our finances. I think this is mainly because we never could talk about them. It would always turn to a fight. One of us would feel attacked and the other would feel wasteful. How can that ever feel good? We needed to make a change on this if we wanted a different life. Do you know this feeling? I feel like so many of us do.We loosely started making a plan a while back and things started to get better. We were not in a great situation but it was better. Nothing, and I mean nothing, was being paid on time. Endless phone calls to pay this or that to make sure everything at least stayed turned on. We always felt in over our heads. Yet we knew, deep down that we could get it right.A few months ago we sat together and got all of our accounts going to the same email address, one we opened together. That was quite a chore and it took a long while to accomplish. We use that email address for all things that involve our finances now though and it has made our lives so much easier. Having all our accounts going to one place makes things a whole lot more organized, which makes everything easier. I will say this was really our first giant step towards improving our financial situation. We had a wonderful night together and shared a lot of good laughs and wrote a pretty awesome list of things we want to do and see. Best of all though, we didn't fight. There was nothing to fight about. We where just enjoying each others company and planning our future together and with our kids.We sat down again on September 28th after the kids went to bed. Yes, on a Friday night... Date Night, we did our finances together. We started a new notebook that would be just for bills and we made a list, a list of every bill that was due and when for the entire month. We went through our online accounts and through our bank statement and wrote down when any EFT's where happening, We made a list of all the monthly amounts and we added it up. We made a list of our incomes and we added it up. The income was a bigger number than the outgo... Phew. If it had been the opposite we would be getting rid of something or finding time for another job. Thankfully, it did not come to that. We had money left over after our bills to go for groceries, gas and other things. Not as much as we would like, but we can make this work.Things seem to have shifted after this. We are talking about money in ways I never thought were possible. We are making our finances a priority and we are making our money work for us. We are really paying attention to where our money is going. So October 1st, we where on a real budget. We wrote down all the pay periods and our income for each week. We divided our bills up between all the pay weeks for the month. And honestly, that felt so good we did November and December too! We Are In Control. We Have A Plan.We looked at our bill due dates and we decided what we would pay that first week. We would be paid on October 5th and we knew where our money was going. We had pulled together our spending amount for food, gas and random purchases and on our first week, we had money left over. We had a plan for the week, now we needed to put it into action. We were actually excited to talk to each other about our list and who we would be paying. We ran the numbers over again and it all seemed to check out so we went for it. We paid all the bills, we grocery shopped and we stayed on our budget, we filled up the gas in our truck and we did it, we had money left over... just as we suspected. Now we needed to get through the work week without spending what we had left. That was a true test, and we did pretty well. We spent a little but we still did great and were able to transfer a small amount to our savings. And, we still have not fought!Week 2 just happened as we were paid on Oct. 12th. We had our list of bills to pay for the week and on Friday when we got our money, we paid those bills. We had our set amount for groceries and gas and we got all our supplies over the weekend. Our bills are paid again this week and I honestly can't wait until payday on the 19th to see what we have left in the bank. There is still some week left but we are looking pretty good at being able to transfer some money to our savings account again this week.Week 3 went over very well with our budget. We were paid on October 19th and paid all our bills that afternoon. At this point, we seem to be getting in a good flow and understanding our spending habits. We have kept track on all of our purchases and really paid attention to where our money is going. We ended up doing an odd job and making some extra money this week, which was pretty great for our budget. We were able to register our truck and order propane, which were not in our original budget. That felt so good to both of us. We were able to really sit down and figure out a game plan together. This week in particular, we seem to be talking a lot about money. It is almost like we have a new found excitement, something neither of us has really felt before. The enthusiasm out of both of us is pretty tremendous and seems like something we will build on!Week 4 was actually a pretty easy week for us in terms of our bills. We hit all of our due dates and only had some smaller bills to pay for this week. We did spend some extra on a few things, but we were able to put a good little bit in our savings account! We decided to do a few extra treats for the kids and we spent a little more than we needed to. But honestly, the kids have done such an amazing job with being a part of this process. They really deserved to be treated with a little something special. Anders had a lot of great questions over the month about our bills. He was very curious about how our money was flowing. He wanted to know who was paid and what the bill was for. He was genuinely interested in being a part of the process. I think we will see him grow with this a lot. I love his participation! Wylder had an amazing amount of restraint. He loves to buy things. He loves to spend money! He was able to really hold back on his desires and seemed to really appreciate our family movement. He was not nearly as interested in the details but his heart is in this, I can tell. He really seemed to enjoy that we are saving money. I think he will eventually want to know more of the details, but for now he is dreaming of a trip to Universal Studios as a family. Aaiko honestly could care less about our money talks. She tends to interupt us while we are talking in the car with a song or yelling about seeing a pumpkin on someones doorstep. To be perfectly honest, I hope she never has to live through the struggles. I hope she just gets to learn from us that you have to live within your means and you have to save money to do big, fun things!. All in all, our first month of budgeting went over very well! We ended the month with all of our bills paid and were able to save a couple hundred dollars in our savings account. We also did some things that we didn't think we would be able to do. It almost seems surreal that we did all of this without a fight! I know that each and everyone of us in this family is proud and we all will be better people for making this change in our lives. We are all excited to see what November will bring! We hope you will join us on this journey and we hope this inspires someone else to work through their money and make it work for their family. We would love to hear other couple's budgeting stories, so feel free to share yours with us! Maybe we can learn from each other! We have quite a journey ahead but it seems like it will be a good one!Budgeting Dates are all the rage! Read the full article