Money & Relationships

Guess what? I'm not just a fan of Harry Potter, I'm also a fan of Dave Ramsey. Well, maybe not to the degree that I'd drive an hour to buy one of his books at midnight. But I do respect his ideas on money management quite a bit, and I visit his website periodically for inspiration on dealing with money challenges. I enjoyed his book The Total Money Makeover, and to a certain degree I've implemented many of his principles into our household management. Terence and I are not "gazelle intense" as he describes it because there are some points I don't think are workable in our situation. Still, I've learned a lot and if you are struggling with debt or other money concerns, you may want to check out his book or website.

The hardest part of all when it comes to getting on a Dave Ramsey-esque plan is getting both spouses in a marriage on the same page. I was reading one of his articles on your relationship and money this morning and dropped down to read the comments afterwards. What I read made me quite sad. There are a lot of people in miserable, unhappy situations because they are married to someone whose money management style (or lack of it) is the complete opposite and they can't get on the same page.

Just for the record, Terence and I have pretty different money management styles also. My husband doesn't like debt and wants to be prepared for the future, but he is much more willing to just take things as they come and skimp on any planning for the future. I am the number cruncher, the one with spreadsheets and projections and what-not, who worries about whether we are ever going to be able to retire or go on a mission as a couple. (Terence feels this is way too early for me to worry about that, since we have to manage to raise a family first.) When we first got married we used the divide and conquer method-- we still had two separate bank accounts and we divided up paying the bill paying between us. It worked OK, but the result was that we spent every dime we earned, leaving big unexpected expenses as shocks that we had to scramble to cover.

When M was born and I quit my full-time job, we combined bank accounts and Terence became responsible for paying the bills, though I was always aware of how much money we had. Which was never enough, ever. It was facing that reality that led us to leave our beloved San Diego behind. It became obvious to us that we would never be able to get by on one income there, let alone achieve some of our long-range goals like buying a house.

When we made the move to Arizona, we also made a switch-- I took over all the money management altogether. Since I am more inclined to prepare for a rainy day, this also meant that for the first time we started to get ahead and live completely within our income, even when the unexpected stuff cropped up. In fact, I started squirreling money away for different things while keeping it completely secret from Terence. He was more motivated to live within a smaller income when he had no idea that I had an emergency fund or a Christmas fund. It also motivated him to take more overtime jobs because he felt that we were truly in a desperate situation. (I felt like that anyway because I felt that having the emergency fund was a necessary expense, not something I should raid for grocery money.) But gradually, listening to Dave Ramsey's advice on how we needed to be a team, that there should be no money secrets between us, as well as reading comments from people with a spouse who was controlling all the money and treating the other like a child instead of an equal, pricked my conscience. I felt that it was time to come clean with Terence about where we REALLY stood money-wise.

I finally brought it up a couple of weeks ago. By this time, I had "funds" for back-to-school shopping, Christmas, vacation, piano repairs, Terence's uniforms, car repairs, birthdays, and a few other things. All together our savings account totaled more than $6,000 that Terence really didn't know about. And I kept telling Terence that I really needed him to work overtime because his base paycheck doesn't pay for groceries. It doesn't-- I wasn't lying to him-- but I didn't think he would have the same sense of necessity if he knew about all my little funds.

But you know what surprised me? Terence didn't want to know the details. He did want to know the passwords to all our accounts and where to find my money spreadsheets and bill-paying schedule so he could take care of it should I become unable. But basically he told me that he knew that I was planning for all these things, he loved how we'd been able to meet expenses as they cropped up, and that there was no reason for me to feel guilty if I told him we needed overtime money when I had these other backup funds. He pointed out a recent example-- we took the van in for a 150k mile service, which came to a little over $500. And there was no stress about it. I paid for it right out of our car repair fund. I guess living with the benefits converted him to the cause!

We still have some differences-- I would still like to save in earnest for retirement or the missions that hopefully we will have to pay for one day. But we have to work as a team-- since doing these things would require some serious sacrificing on the part of our whole family, and especially on Terence, that's on the back burner. Part of working together as a team. I'm not the money dictator. I'm just glad to find out that my husband doesn't see me that way!