Tips for Less Financial Stress in a Marriage

It's the first Saturday of the month, which means it's time for a financial blog post! I may not have any sort of financial degree, but I have learned a thing or two about finances throughout my young life. Most of this knowledge has come within my four years of marriage (yay for our 4th anniversary this past Wednesday!)

You may have read my series of financial posts at my previous blog, Life with Jake and Sybra. If you haven't, you should read through our first financial year, our second financial year, and our third financial year to get a background of where I am coming from with these financial posts. To sum it up, my husband and I got married young with a lot of student loans, have navigated ourselves through tough financial times, and have a plan to gain financial peace. (Wow, how many times can I say a variation of the word "finance" in this paragraph? I digress.)

Through that experience, we had one constant: our marriage never strained or suffered from financial woes. Considering finances are one of the top reasons for divorce, we are thankful that this has been the case. I've decided to break down how we have accomplished this. Some of the points were intentional when we got married, some are born from reflecting upon our experiences and how we handled things.

Here are my Five Tips for Less Financial Stress in a Marriage

1. "What's Ours is Ours"

It was never a question for my husband and I to combine our money (and our debt) when we got married. Maybe it was because we were young, maybe it was because our parents practiced this, or maybe it was our naivety in thinking this was the norm. Only when we started making more "couple friends" did we see this wasn't always the case. We came to know plenty of couples who combined everything on the wedding day, and couples who would be in a similar financial state if they were single.

Whether you quote the Bible or the Spice Girls, two become one (when you get married). My husband and I took this quite literally. In the month preceding our wedding, we opened joint checking and savings accounts. In the months after our wedding, we added each other to all of our assets. His car was my car, my credit card was his credit card, and all new bills had both of our names on them.

Why is this so important? When your finances are truly combined, there is no fighting over "my money". When I was in between jobs, we still paid the student loans in my name. Now that we both have full-time jobs, we don't compete over who really is the "bread winner", how we pay bills, or when either of us can go out to lunch. We don't (and won't) income based resentment because we view all of our finances as a whole, not as two parts.

Your challenge: If you're married, talk to your spouse about your finances. When the officiant at the wedding married you, you were declared as one. Consider making your finances so!

2. Don't Just Compromise - Sacrifice

Compromise can be paraphrased as meeting halfway. When a husband wants a sedan, and a wife wants an SUV, they can compromise and get a crossover. Compromise is good. Compromise is essential. But when two people only ever compromise over disputes, neither is ever getting what they want. In a marriage, when both parties only ever compromise over monetary disputes, neither is really feeling good about money.

Sometimes you just need to sacrifice. Sacrifice, of course, only really works if both people participate.

If you read through our previous financial years, (links above), then you know there was a time when the hubby and I carpooled to work/ grad school. The hitch was that we each needed to be different places at different time. Each day I had to be at least two different places, so even though it was incredibly tiring, boring, and inconvenient, my husband often sacrificed his sanity by letting me use the car. We would leave our apartment by 6:30am, I would drop him at a bus stop near my school, and we would figure out the rest of the day. He wasn't off of work until 5 or 6, and I had to be in class or at work by 4, so he would constantly have to take the bus (if he stayed late at work he would miss the last bus) or wait around for me to pick him up at 9:30 or 10pm. What a sacrifice!

On the other side of things, I would spend my evenings attempting to stick together rides and carpools for the coming days so that Jake could have the car. Sometimes I would catch a ride with other student teachers at my school heading to class, sometimes I had gracious friends that would pick me up on their way to work, and sometimes I would walk a short distance (in dress clothes) to make it work. Again, what a sacrifice!

Why is this so important? We sometimes had less than no money. In the situation above, we often had less than no money. No only were we constantly filling up two gas tanks before we started carpooling, but we couldn't afford new tires for my husband's car, so it wasn't safe to drive. By sacrificing, and putting the good of our family above personal comforts (and sanity), we were able to avoid going in to debt just for transportation. We can now look back on those times and appreciate how each of us was trying hard to keep our little family from getting into a worse financial situation. When you and your spouse are willing to sacrifice for each other, and for the whole family, you develop a new appreciation for the effort they are putting in to the financial well being of the relationship. It may wear at your sanity when you are the one sacrificing, but if your heart is in the right place, it will grow your marriage and your wallet.

Your challenge: Find a way to financially sacrifice for your spouse/ family. Find something that takes physical/ mental/ emotional effort on your part to make things better for your finances and family in the long run. Talk to your spouse about the importance of sacrifice so it's not one-sided!

3. Be Humble- Live Within Your Means (Keeping up with Who?)

Keeping up with the Joneses has morphed into Keeping up with the Kardashians. (Is anyone actually trying to keep up with them, or do we all agree that they aren't real? Seriously, I want to know- leave your thoughts in the comments!) We look at our neighbors, our coworkers, and our Facebook friends and we have the inexplicable need to be as good as them (or better). We want to look nicer, have more fun, be more productive. Our image is our  pride, and it's important to us. Humility doesn't look good on Facebook, it doesn't help us one-up the cooler conversation on expensive dinners and cars. Living within your means has turned into a last resort to avoid bankruptcy instead of everyday common sense. Somewhere along the American Dream we got really turned around!

My husband and I are young professionals. Jake works in the real estate field, and I am a teacher. Both of us spend a lot of time around coworkers. We also happen to have older, and not fully functioning cars. It's easy for us to envy the other cars driving up with us- modern, shiny, always washed. It's easy to look at our coworkers and wish we had a car that was less than a decade old. It's easy to come home and lament at how we have the least-cool car among everyone at work.

You know what's not as easy? Realizing that our 10+ year old cars are helping us gain financial peace in our marriage. We are working towards a goal, and that goal doesn't include new cars- yet. Today, we are living like no one else so later we can live like no one else.

Why is this so important? If you and your spouse always live within your means- meaning you spend less than you make- money will never loom over your relationship. If you are able to be happy with what you can actually afford, you won't fight over the new boat you want but can't afford. If you can live on a budget, you won't argue over whether to buy food or pay the water bill. Staying humble with your lifestyle, and not trying to keep up with whoever you're trying to keep up with will save a lot of stress when you fail to keep up. And in reality, no one can ever keep up with everyone.

Your challenge: Spend less money than you make. Seriously!

4. Grow Up

There are different times when young people are told they are "really adults". You're 18, you're an adult! You made it to college- you're an adult now. 21? You're really an adult now! You say you graduated college? Now you're an adult. 40 hours a week at a job with benefits? Oh, this is actually what we mean when we say you're an adult. But don't try and rent a car until you're actually an adult at 25. These are all actual ages and milestones that, to someone or another, classified me as a real adult.

It doesn't matter when everyone else says you're really an adult. You know what matters? Acting like one. I wish I had known this the moment I turned 18 (or sooner), but at least I know it now. You know what grown ups do? They pay off debt, they work, they budget, they work hard, they pay bills (on time), they work harder. Life isn't automatically easy. This isn't 1954, when you could graduate high school and jump into a 40 hour work week (no overtime) and buy a house in a year so you can get married and have kids comfortably. (I wasn't actually around in 1954 and have no first had experience or knowledge if that was the case, but I've watched the history channel, so doesn't that make me an expert?)

My husband and I go through phases of learning this lesson over and over. Sometimes being an adult means we don't go out to eat so that we have food budget left in the month. Sometimes being an adult means going to the dentist on time to avoid cancellation fees or expensive cleanings. For us right now, being an adult means doing everything we can to pay off our student loans as soon as possible. As much as we could spend out time complaining about the inflated prices of higher education, the reality is that we borrowed the money, so we need to pay it back.

Why is this so important? If you (and your spouse) don't grow up when it comes to finances, your finances are going to suffer. When your finances suffer, your marriage is going to take a hit. When the debt piles up, it's easy to fight about how you never have any money. When you can't stick to a budget, it's easy to blame the other person for their failures. When you don't want to work hard, it's easy to feel like you are never going anywhere. Fights in marriages happen, but they happen less when we all act like the adults people keep telling us we are.

Your challenge: Choose one thing to do right now (not literally if it's the middle of the night or something) that shows you have grown up.

5. Keep the Future in Mind

Emergencies happen. Retirement will come one day. Kids will go to college. Christmas comes every year at the same time. Money can't always be about the right now. The future is coming, and sometimes it comes faster than we would like. Are you thinking about the future? When you think about the future financially, you are thinking about an emergency fund for flat tires and cavity fillings. You are thinking about sending your child to college debt-free. You are thinking about getting a great deal on a house because of how much you can put down. You are thinking about all the Christmas presents you want to buy even though it's only July! These things are going to happen no matter how hard you try to slow down time!

Finding out I was pregnant was one of the happiest moments my husband and I have experienced. For a good two weeks we lived in the right now- telling family and talking to my belly. Soon, of course, our minds turned to the future. As my belly started to grow, we realized that we needed to be prepared. I'm not talking about a super cute nursery and a going home outfit for baby- I'm talking money. We temporarily stopped making extra payments on our student loans and shoveled as much money as we could into our savings account. We tried to keep the budget tight (though my waistline was growing) so that we would be as prepared as possible for the delivery costs for baby. We wanted to have extra money in case I or the baby needed extra care after birth.

I'm happy to say that we were extremely blessed to have a fast, drug-free, and healthy delivery, and baby and I needed minimal care. But do you know what the icing on the cake was? When we got home, the hospital called to let us know how much we owed, and that if we could pay within the week, we would get a 20% discount. Could we pay within the week? You bet we could! We had spent six months piling up money for the hospital bill, and it was just sitting there waiting for us to get that discount! If we hadn't had the money readily available, not only would we not have gotten a discount, but we would have had a variety of late charges or service fees for the extended payment time.

Why is this so important? As you can see with our hospital bill, it pays to be prepared (literally). Paying for college while you're in college saves on the tens of thousands of dollars in interest on student loans. Having at least a 20% down payment on a house saves you from needing PMI, which can add hundreds to a mortgage payment. Saving for Christmas presents can keep you from racking up consumer debt on a holiday that is on the same day every year (it's not a surprise!). Saving for retirement early can exponentially multiply your 401K. The future will always come, and being prepared will make life changing events, emergencies, and milestones financially seamless, so that you can focus on the emotional tornado that accompanies them. Instead of stressing over the hospital bill, I got to focus on cuddling with my sweet boy day and night. I felt financial peace, which balanced out the physical stress and emotional highs. Planning for the future is important because your marriage needs peace.

Your challenge: Talk to your spouse about what is in your future. Plan, plan, plan, and get ready for the future before it's here!


So there you have it! Those are my Five Tips for Less Financial Stress in a Marriage. They have worked for my hubby and me, and I hope they work for you, too!