Marriage finances: 'attack as a team'

Brooke, who blogs at Dollar Frugal, is a newly-married 20-something who got herself out of debt a long time ago. Her excellent post 10 Ways to Use Personal Finance to Strengthen a Marriage offers excellent advice for couples. In particular:

Attack Finances as A Team: This supports your 'one team, one fight' mentality and solidifies your stance against the rest of the world (or at least corporate America!). Agree how much to pay each month and make a budget together.

Other tips from Brooke include:

• Open Lines of Communication: Open lines of communication that are needed with a budget shared between two people also transfer to other parts of your marriage. Should we raise our child(ren) in a certain way? I don’t know, let’s discuss it. It’s the same premise as where to spend budgeted monies.
• Set Financial Goals Together: Setting goals together will cement your relationship and show the other just how much you care about them. You could try brainstorming separately (no peeking!) on what financial goals should be, then come together to discuss each idea.
• Shared Sense of Accomplishment: The sense of accomplishment that came when we paid off our debt (Oct 2002) after a year of scrimping and clawing was an adrenaline rush. This is a shared experience much stronger than any night out on the town with friends or flashy car. It is part of our shared identity that no one can take away from us!

Read Brooke's full list of top 10 tips here.

His, mine, and ours

At Green Panda Treehouse, a blog for college students and recent graduates, author D shares some information about how she and her husband manage their family budget. In summary, D and hubbie divide their income into three piles: hers, his and ours.

I think the key for us is keeping it easy to use and easy to change. We use a Google Spreadsheet for our joint budgeting. It lists our deposits and expenses for the month. We also add a buffer in case we go over. Using Google for our spreadsheet is great as we share the spreadsheet and it notifies the other of changes.

We review this on an as needed basis, if someone gets a raise or works more hours, etc. To determine how much each deposits, we go by monthly income and come up with a percentage and then use that to calculate deposits.

Read the story in full here.