Keeping your spouse involved in the management of finances can be a tough thing to do. In most situations, there is a nerd (as Dave Ramsey often puts it) in the family who likes doing the numbers stuff. The nerd pays the bills, manages the spending or cash flow, looks for great deals and works on cool spreadsheets.
Even though the nerd is doing all of these things, there is still another money manager in the family. It’s the nerd’s spouse. Now the spouse might not be as involved in day to day management. In many cases the spouse doesn’t have knowledge of how much money is in the bank account. Perhaps the spouse just knows how much he or she can spend on entertainment or clothes for the month and maybe a few other budget categories.
But, this is a dangerous approach to family finances. What if something happened to the family CFO? Would the spouse know how to step in and manage everything? And we are all considered financial stewards in God’s eyes. So, both spouses are responsible for managing resources that have been entrusted to their care by God. If one spouse isn’t involved, how can he or she be managing God’s resources wisely?
The answer lies in a few ideas to get the cool person, not the nerd or family CFO, involved in the family finances. The spouse doesn’t have to necessarily be involved in the day to day finances at the level of detail as the nerd, but should have knowledge of the resources and how they’re being used. So, if you are the nerd, consider these tips to get your spouse more involved in the management of family finances. He or she will appreciate it if done for the solid reasons I just mentioned.
1. Budget together every month
One of the most important things spouses can do together is budget their money together each month. Even though you have fixed spending in place, there are still planning decisions to be made each month for discretionary spending.
2. Provide a weekly status report
While the monthly meeting is important, so is a weekly meeting about money. All this requires is a review of spending for the major budget categories and a discussion around any new significant expenses required for the month. I like to think of it as a status meeting. If you want to take it to the next step, you can write down the balances of the major budget categories for your spouse so he or she knows the overall state of the spending plan.
3. Let your spouse tithe
One spouse may often pay the bills, tithe online, or even write out a check for tithing. Let the other spouse do this important task. Then, either give together online or take your check to church. I can’t stress enough the important of both spouses being involved in prayerful giving each month.
4. Let your spouse pay some of the bills
So along the same lines as above, perhaps your spouse can pay some of the monthly bills. Don’t overload the person who doesn’t normally do this work for the family, but giving them a few key bills to manage is a great way to involve the person and for them to fulfill being a good financial steward.
5. Let your spouse budget or manage areas within the budget such as grocery spending
Along with paying bills, this is another great way. Let your spouse perform the management of an entire budget area. For example, my wife is in charge of clothing for the children, she often buys the gifts for birthday parties and for other miscellaneous needs. She is responsible for knowing how much money has been allocated to those areas and for managing within those sub budgets or categories.
6. Provide visibility to your personal finance software
Turn over a copy of the keys to full viewing and access to the personal finance software. The spouse should be able to log into the account, find the budget and review spending against the budget categories. Looking a checking account balance is not nearly as helpful or as important as being able to know the budget balance by category.
7. Seek your spouse’s input
Finally, a great way to involve your spouse is to ask them questions and seek their input about financial decisions. You’re in dangerous territory if you’re managing the money on an island by yourself without financial counsel or advice from your spouse. If you’re a male, don’t make this mistake. Women have a great sense of intuition and often gifted with discernment. These are important qualities and characteristics you need on your family money management team.
What ideas do you have to involve your spouse in the management of family finances?
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
With regard to #2 Provide a weekly status report and #6 Provide visibility to your personal finance software, one thing we have found helpful is to put our budget spreadsheet on Google Docs and share access with each other. We each have a bookmark on our iPhone homepages to the budget sheet. This way we both have access to the information wherever we are.
I like the ideas that are mentioned in this article. I am recently married and it does bother me because we do not do a lot of these, except budget to some extent. I plan on getting my wife more involved this year, especially so we know what is coming in and going out and what different accounts we have. I do have all our financial records in one place and told her that if something happens to me, that is everything.
My husband is on the road 3-4 weeks at a time and the last thing he wants to do is go over our budget when he’s home for his precious 4-5 days. I’m a total nerd and have the spread sheet and pay online and manage everything on the computer. He, on the other hand, only knows how to use a computer for his trucking GPS and to watch movies. Also, he has no internet access on the road.
If something were to happen to me the only thing I’ve been able to do is make sure his automatic deposit goes into his chequing account and his is joint on all our “envelope” savings accounts. Though he has no idea how, at least he potentially could access them … it does worry me but he shows no interest and I don’t know how to interest him. He definitely would not find it “cool” to do the above steps. I’m at a loss how to involve him more, but at least he’s completely on-board about paying down and not adding to our debt.
Great article, Jason. This is a topic I frequently write about on my site because financial communication is such a fundamental part of having a great marriage.
I had a reader recently comment that his spouse had no interest in their finances, so they don’t talk about it and it’s becoming a problem. My advice to him was to look at their finances a little differently.
My wife doesn’t really care about finances either. However, she does have an interest in our *lifestyle and future*, so we talk in those terms most of the time. She really doesn’t care whether we save $200 per month for our next car or $150 per month. But when I tell her those are the options, and we are deciding between (1) a newer car in 2 years with no significant vacations OR (2) a newer car in 3 years with a vacation, she suddenly *has an interest* in our financial planning and decision making.
That’s just a hypothetical scenario of course, but my point is that we try to relate on issues on a level where we both care.
My wife and I do a monthly review to go over the budget, talk about finances, and talk about where we’re headed.
I think the most important thing we do is we’re always looking ahead to where we want to be in 6 months. Setting goals and talking about the future, puts us on the same page when it comes to spending. We both share the same vision.
Fat Daddy, Great practical tip! Putting your status report and budget on Google docs is a great way to make sure you both have access to this important information.
Dustin, I like your approach. I think you’ve found a good way to communicate with your spouse to make it a meaningful discussion for the both of you. All of the sudden, she’s now involved in making financial decisions! Well done!
I tell my husband all the time that I want to go over all our finances, payment schedules, files, etc sometime so that he will now where we are, in case something happens to me, or I can’t do finances for a while for some reason. He insists that he would be able to figure it out no problem, but I don’t want to chance it. Maybe if he reads this article he will understand why its important to me that he understands our finances as well as I do…
It’s worth a try!