Solo Financial Responsibility Struggles as a Married Couple
When you’re married, the financial decisions of either person can have a drastic effect on your money situation. In some relationships, one person doesn’t like to deal with managing money and numbers. They then leave the financial responsibility of the entire family on their spouse.
This situation doesn’t happen with all marriages, but it can be a huge problem when it does occur. It’s even possible for this to happen for non-married couples that live together and share finances, bank accounts and bill paying.
I really wanted to write about this particular topic because I’ve lived it. I’ve always handled the financial responsibilities for my family. It’s okay these days, but there have been times in the past when it really wasn’t working. A lot of stress can be involved when you’re in that position, so I wanted to share some of my advice and tips.
Couples Financial Agreement
The subject of managing finances as a married couple is a personal one for me. I’ve been married for more than 18 years and have three kids. During that entire time, I have been personally responsible for 100% of the family’s money management and financial planning. It isn’t this way because I’m controlling or anything. My wife hates dealing with numbers and math has always been among my strongest skills.
For many years, being alone to deal with money for the family was a huge burden. During many of those years I was even solely responsible for making all of the money too. I can handle this burden for the family. However, it becomes a problem when I can’t make any financial plans because money gets spent out from under me without my approval.
It really boils down to a couple agreeing on how money will be managed in their household. Whenever possible, I think it’s best for both people to be involved in financial planning and major spending decisions. However, if you’re in a situation like me and this just isn’t possible, there is another option. If one person in a relationship has to manage the money alone, the other person needs to agree check with them for big spending decisions.
It’s okay for one person in a marriage to essentially ignore money. They have to be willing to stick to a budget and overall plan for it to work that way though. Coming to an understanding between you and your spouse on this subject matter is key.
Excessive Spending
There were a few times in the past when money was really tight, and a big rent payment was due in less than week. I’ve had $2k in the bank before and had a $1,800 rent payment to make in a few days. My wife plans to go out for a while during the day. I make it really clear that no more than $200 can be spend or else we won’t be able to pay rent. She’d come back with a crazy $1,000 purchase and explain how necessary it was to buy. Needless to say, this completely screwed up my financial plans for the month and left me scrambling to figure out how to make more money in a couple days.
I’ve been lucky in those situations in the past. During the worst of them I was self-employed and was able to actually figure out a way to make up the difference in time. For most people, that would spell certain doom for their finances and might even make them homeless. This simply cannot happen in a marriage. It’s the perfect recipe for disaster. Even with my ability to recover from those situations, it still resulted in a lot of resentment and even some arguments.
When one person in a relationship that shares finances wants to spend money and not worry about how that spending will alter finances, there simply has to be a budget. I keep separate bank accounts these days. One of them is my wife’s bank account. I can simply move the budgeted amount of miscellaneous spending money to her account each money, and it’s not possible to spend more than that. She’s okay with it because it allows her to spend when she wants within those limits and makes it so she doesn’t have to worry about whether that will affect our finances.
Money Arguments
Too many marriages end because of arguments about money. Mine almost did, once upon a time. No matter what type of money issues you may face throughout your marriage, it’s extremely important for both of you to be on the same page and work together towards a common goal.
One person can’t have a desire to shop endlessly while the other wants to pay off debt, buy a house and/or save for retirement. A major clash will occur eventually and huge arguments can erupt from those. The only way to avoid this issue is to find common ground and try to make agreements ahead of time about how certain financial situations will be handled.
In some ways, the way finances work in my marriage now has its benefits. When a situation calls for a major financial decision to be made, my wife has to defer to me. She doesn’t ultimately know how much money we even have at any point in time or what bills are due when, so it’s impossible for her to make those calls. When that’s simply understood in a marriage and doesn’t cause resentment for either person, it helps a lot to avoid arguments.
Paying the Bills
Somebody in each household has to pay the monthly bills like rent or mortgage, utilities, insurance and more. Money needs to be available in your account before the due dates so you can take care of these responsibilities. Waiting until the last minute or trying to juggle which bill to pay each month is not a healthy financial lifestyle.
These payments for housing and other basic necessities cannot be made if too many frivolous expenditures happened recently. It’s important for the bills to get paid first, then put money towards savings and investments, and miscellaneous expenses should only happen when there’s money left over. You can’t get your paycheck, spend what you feel like spending from it, and then hope there’s enough left to pay the bills each month.
This is one of the few areas where I can count on my wife financially, although I may have to remind her about specific dates that payments are due. I still pay most of the bills and all of the really important ones like the mortgage, but she’ll pay a cell phone bill and a utility bill each month. This at least helps her stay in touch with our financial responsibilities as a married couple even if I’m doing the bulk of the work.
Managing Credit Scores
Credit can be another tough situation for married couples when one isn’t financially responsible. Both my wife and I used to have bad credit. When we got serious about wanting to buy a house, I realized that our credit needed to be fixed and that it could take at least two years. My wife more or less just expected the house down payment to magically appear and for a bank to grant us financing without any extra work on our part – no changes in spending habits or better financial planning.
Unfortunately, I spent two years repairing credit for both of us, by myself. Six months before we’re due to buy a house, she takes a trip out of town to where we used to live to visit friends. She goes to the mall on that trip and opens a Buckle credit card for herself to buy jeans without having to tell me about it right away. Payments were skipped for that new account for about 3-4 months. By the time I realized it, the damage had been done and her credit dropped 100 points. All of my hard work for a year and a half for her credit score disappeared.
Luckily, when it came time to buy a house, I had a good enough credit score and enough income in my name to get financing on my own. You really don’t want to put your spouse in that kind of a situation with managing finances and even credit scores. It definitely causes problems.
Long-Term Savings
Another important financial area where both partners need to agree is long-term savings. This could be saving for a few years for a big vacation or a down payment to buy a house. Anyone with kids will likely want to save for college. On top of all of that, you still have retirement savings.
With rapidly rising expenses these days and a dwindling hope for social security to even be solvent by the time I retire, I feel like it’s extremely important to start saving for retirement. This needs to happen from a young age too. 20 years old is best, but you really don’t want to wait longer than 30 years old.
Once again, it’s next to impossible to even begin to achieve these long-term financial goals as a married couple if only one spouse is on board. These lofty but often necessary goals require serious dedication and often sacrifices in other areas of your life to achieve them.