I’ve been listening to an audiobook with a friend of mine (hi, Lisa! I’m shouting you out in my blog, I hope you’re ready to become a celebrity with all six people who read it!) called “Love Your Life, Not Theirs” by Rachel Cruze.
It’s an in-depth discussion of handling money in a marriage and it’s a challenging call out in some ways - I thought we’re fairly disciplined and that Christina and I had every “money talk” known to couples, but there are a few tweaks Tina and I were chatting about last night.
There are a few hills Christina and I are willing to die on:
-we have total financial transparency as a couple
-we spend our money on paper (budget) every payday using a shared Google Sheets spreadsheet
-we use cash
-we don’t borrow money
-we keep our housing expenses to 25% or less of our monthly take home pay
Financial transparency - Christina can call me out on banking activity that she flags as problematic and vice versa because there’s no “privacy” wanted or needed in our household finances, whether Christina earns more or not. We’re a team, and teams have accountability.
Budgeting - we tell our money where to go, we don’t wonder where it went. Our spreadsheet is shared between us so Tina can make additions like soap, clothing and haircuts, all of which I’d disregard if I could.
Cash - a friend of mine started a recent text to me with “I know you don’t borrow money” but it’s deeper than that. We do everything using cash (email money transfer, cheque, bank draft, visa debit, prepaid MasterCard called Stack...). We just don’t use any payment methods that cost vendors we deal with extra fees or put us in debt.
Debt - “The borrower is slave to the lender” (Proverbs 22:7 NIV). We got that message loud and clear. Dec 28th, 2019 our Santa Fe was 85% owned by the bank, today it’s 87% ours. I don’t know if you’ve ever sacrificed and budgeted full tilt for a year over a stupid car, but Tina and I have. It’s a thorough teacher. Tina and I would ride bicycles to work before borrowing over a car again.
Housing expenses - hey, we don’t like this one, but we keep our rent, etc. under 25% of our take home income. Heard of being “house poor”? We’ve done that too! It limits your ability to live - your pay is caught up in mortgage or rent and there’s no breathing room. As a result, we insist on keeping our rent, and yes, eventually our mortgage payment, to one week’s pay - and it’ll be on a 15 year fixed rate mortgage. To accomplish this, we’ll have a larger down payment. We’ll just have to be patient and save up longer.
I can’t recommend getting on the same page with your spouse more. The biggest paradigm shift in our financial trajectory was when Christina pulled her head out of the sand (she has the fear of numbers many social workers have) and partnered with me on our budgeting. That’s my challenge to you - sit down with your spouse and get it written down - you may see where your boat is leaking.
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