This article was written by Sierra Black<\/b>, a long-time GRS reader and the author of ChildWild, a blog where she writes about frugality, sustainable living, and getting her kids to eat kale.<\/i><\/p>\n
Talking about money is one of the great taboos of our culture. I know more about my friends’ sex lives than I do about their bank statements. Many of us find it hard to discuss finances under the best circumstances. When we’re stressed about money, we tend to clam up even more.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/iStock_argument.jpg\" "\\"Money")
If you’re married (or living with a partner), you don’t have that luxury. Financial success is not a private affair. You need to talk to your spouse or partner about your money. This is vital for both the health of your relationship and the health of your bank balance.<\/p>\n
You don’t have to take my word for this. This week, I had the pleasure of interviewing Lou Scatigna, a.k.a.<\/i> The Financial Physician<\/a>. An entire chapter of his new book is devoted to \u201clack of spousal communication\u201d.<\/p>\n How big a problem is failing to talk to your spouse about money? “If you have money conflict, your marriage is doomed,\u201d Scatigna says.<\/p>\n OUCH!<\/i> My husband and I have our share of differences when it comes to handling our dollars, and I’d like to stay married. In addition to genuinely liking the guy I married, divorce is expensive.<\/p>\n Scatigna’s prescription for this ailment? Have a monthly family finance meeting.<\/b> Scatigna says its vital for both partners to sit down together once a month and pay all their bills together. Even if you’ve automated many of your monthly bills with an electronic bill pay system, you need to be looking at them each month. Doing this together has a lot of advantages:<\/p>\n I’m a long-standing believer in the theory of a monthly household finance meeting, but I also know it’s a lot harder to practice than it is to theorize about. Scatigna says it’s the rare couple that actually sits down and talks about finances every month.<\/p>\n Managing finances together sounds simple, but there are a lot of stumbling blocks. People are busy. You’ve got a career, a family, maybe kids of your own, plus friends and hobbies. Spending an evening a month on a boring chore can seem like a lot to ask.<\/p>\n Plus, money pushes a lot of buttons for people. It brings up fear, anxiety, guilt, anger. A lot of negative emotions most of us like to avoid. So we avoid talking about money with our spouses until it explodes in a financial disaster or a relationship meltdown.<\/p>\n Even when we do sit down to talk, it can be hard to make good use of the time. Should you discuss long-term goals or just go over this month’s bills? How can you avoid spiraling into a fight?<\/p>\n My husband and I have been in a groove with this lately. To get started, we sat down and worked out a master list of financial goals. We also made a huge spreadsheet of our fixed and flexible expenses<\/a>. We use these as guides when we’re looking at how cash flowed in and out during the month.<\/p>\n Here’s a list of do’s and don’ts that are working for us:<\/p>\n While cooking dinner or getting ready for work is not the time to have this conversation.<\/p>\n Talking about money really has eased tensions between us. It’s also helped with our cash flow. We’re on the same page a lot more often. We’re both paying more attention to the kinds of details that used to cost us a lot in mistakes or careless spending. We feel like a real team, and we’re actually saving money.<\/b><\/p>\n Previously at Get Rich Slowly, Sierra told us about sweating the big stuff<\/a>, described the pitfalls of buying in bulk<\/a>, and made an argument for a secular tithe<\/a>. As you might guess, I like her writing.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This article was written by Sierra Black<\/b>, a long-time GRS reader and the author of ChildWild, a blog where she writes about frugality, sustainable living, and getting her kids to eat kale.<\/i><\/p>\n Talking about money is one of the great taboos of our culture. I know more about my friends’ sex lives than I do about their bank statements. Many of us find it hard to discuss finances under the best circumstances. When we’re stressed about money, we tend to clam up even more.<\/p>\nThe Monthly Family Finance Meeting<\/h2>\n
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Making the Time to Talk<\/h2>\n
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If you’re married (or living with a partner), you don’t have that luxury. Financial success is not a private affair. You need to talk to your spouse or partner about your money. This is vital for both the health of your relationship and the health of your bank balance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[497],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8375"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8375\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}