13 Tips I Learned From Budgeting With my Financially Unsavvy Partner

When I was the editor of a publication and my husband was starting out in the dental technology industry, I was the breadwinner. But now that he’s progressed his career and I’ve taken a backseat freelancing while we raise our preschoolers, he’s the one bringing home the bacon. Through it all we’ve had to adjust who is paying what bills to accommodate our respective paycheques, because as I’ve learned it’s not fair to ask him to contribute 95 per cent of his earnings towards the household bills if I’m only putting in 60 per cent. And vice versa. Just because you split life 50-50 doesn’t mean your respective financial contributions to living together need to look like that.

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When I first met my husband I couldn’t understand how he spent $20 a week on takeout coffee rather than making his own and putting that extra cash into a savings account. But for him, that cup of daily coffee was a bit of joy that he felt he needed in his life and, eventually, we just factored it into our budget. Is it how I would spend my money? Well, no. I’m fine with drip coffee instead of a fancy latte every morning. But I also enjoy going to dinner with friends once a month, or buying the occasional bottle of fancy wine or hunk of stinky cheese. The point is that factoring spending money (if you’re privileged enough to have it) into your budget can actually help you save money and stay on track, because then I find that both of us are less likely to go on a crazy spending spree on random things.

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Retail therapy is real. I learned that the hard way when my husband and I got married, and he would spend more money on takeout or new clothes whenever he got stressed out or was feeling sad about something. That momentary spend on something new or delicious would make him feel slightly better in the moment. Now that we’re aware of that as a couple we try to (not always successfully) talk through those feelings and do something productive about them. Sometimes encouraging him to go for a rollerblade or to call up his friends to hang out is all he really needs to get out of that funk, and it definitely helps our overall bottom line.

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When my husband and I first moved in together I had a mortgage on a condo and took care of most of the bills. He would cut me a cheque every month to help with the condo fees, and we’d call it a day. Then we became engaged and I realized he actually wasn’t paying any of his own bills. That became super clear when we moved into our home and he didn’t know how to set up a payment through his bank. So I started making a point of keeping a binder of all of our expenses and receipts where we could both access it, and eventually he became responsible for some of our shared bills like home insurance or car payments.

I firmly subscribe to the “pay yourself first” theory of saving, and that you should treat savings like its own bill each month. My husband is the kind of guy who will just spend his paycheque and then if there’s any money left over at the end he’ll maybe think about tucking it away. Eventually, when he saw that my automatic $50 transfer every other week resulted in $1300 at the end of the year (aka enough for a vacation!) and he had nothing to show, he made some changes on his own. Now he has automatic savings taken off his cheques too, and he has more money in the bank than ever before.

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When we moved into our new house we decided to set up a joint account for the first time in our entire relationship. The idea was that we would each put a certain amount of money into it each paycheque and then have all of our bills come out of there. It hasn’t quite worked out that way though, and the account has become a place where we put savings for things we need like household repairs, vet bills, or maybe one day a nice relaxing trip together without the kids. The point is that it’s an account we’re both responsible for, and it’s led us to have some more open and honest conversations about what we want to save up for or spend money on.

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My husband loves to tinker around on his phone, whether it’s touching base on social media, playing a golf game, or catching Pokemon. So for him it makes total sense to try and track his spending through an app like Goodbudget or PocketGuard. I personally don’t find them helpful because I like to do that stuff the old fashioned way, on a spreadsheet, but everyone is different and needs to find what works for them.

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I’m the kind of person who can keep my budget tucked away in a notebook or on a computer, but my husband needs to be able to see it front and centre. So while at first it seemed kind of weird to have our monthly budget printed out and pasted to the fridge where anyone could see it, I’ve learned that the best way for my husband to keep himself on track is to have it up there. Right next to the calendar and cute photos of our friends’ kids.

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When we were figuring out how much money we could actually spend on a house, I was shocked to learn that my husband had a small amount of debt he couldn’t account for. He had used his overdraft over and over again on small items, and they had added up to more than a couple of thousand dollars. I was shocked and a bit hurt that he had allowed “our” finances to get that out of control. He was embarrassed that he couldn’t pay for things like cat food. Eventually we figured out a plan to pay off the overdraft, and we reallocated our money so that we wouldn’t be in that situation again.

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It sounds kind of weird to hold a business meeting with your partner, but I guess the key idea for me is that my husband is my partner. And we want to make sure we’re on the same page about a bunch of things, including our finances. We’re not the best at always committing to it, but I find that when we can take 20 or 30 minutes every couple of weeks to talk about upcoming expenses (birthday gifts, excursions with the kids), and how we’re doing with sticking to our budgets, we’re a lot likelier to stay on track.

My father is a financial planner who gifted me a copy of The Wealthy Barber when I was young. My husband’s father likes to gamble in the stock market and put expensive paintings and power tools on his line of credit. So that should tell you a little bit about how we were each raised in terms of talking about money. But at the end of the day I don’t want to feel like I have to “mother” my husband into being responsible with money any more than he wants me nagging him about it. So sitting down and being honest about our feelings towards spending — although often hard — really helps us to let go of any resentment and to hold each other accountable.

Something that really helps both my husband and I be better about our money is when we sit down and talk about all of the fun things we’d like to do if we had lots of it. You know, like winning the lottery only on a smaller scale. In the past we’ve saved up for an amazing honeymoon to Indonesia, we’ve put a down payment on a home we love, and we’re currently saving up to do the kitchen of our dreams. By talking about what we want to spend money on it helps up keep the bigger picture in mind, and that makes it a bit easier for us to say, whip up a last-minute dinner with stuff from the pantry rather than ordering in another pizza.

At the end of the day my husband and I can have the best of intentions, but managing money isn’t something he or I do for a living. Nor do we really want to. So we made the decision to sit down with a financial planner to get a bigger snapshot of our income, our savings, and to make the best decisions with our money based on our short- and long-term goals. It’s a decision neither one of us regret as our savings and relationship have never been better.

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