Early in our marriage, Andy was the only one working. My health was in a very bad way, which meant that firstly I was not able to work and secondly that I was going to inevitably be a drain on our resources in different ways--yes, insurance can help cover prescriptions, but there are still a great number of over-the-counter elements that were required to keep me going that were not covered in our deductible. Eventually, I was able to start working part-time again, but this was not an amount we could necessarily depend on, since hours vary and in a couple periods I was just biding time until the next surgery. We racked up a good chunk of debt, not to mention the debt still from our wedding (truly, not as bad as they could have been--we had a lot of generous help and weren't keen to drop an enormous amount in the first place) and all of our combined student debt. We were getting by on minimum payments and a fair share of anxiety.
At some point, when I was slowly coming back in to helping out in some ways or another in the household, I eventually became the person in charge of the budget--mostly because I tend to have a better memory for dates. Eventually, I had all of the bank/credit card usernames and passwords memorized, and Andy was checking in with me to see if we had enough money to pay for something this week or wait until the next payday. We really like using a program called Mint which we have all of our bank accounts, credit cards, loans, and even our 401Ks tied to. This gives us one place where we can see EVERYTHING. We can set up when bill are scheduled to go up, create a budget which automatically updates where we've spent parts of it as our purchases refresh, see trends in our spending, and also set goals for whatever you're paying off or saving money for. I check it daily, at the least, which makes buying surprises for me very difficult for Andy.
And we've slowly but surely made a LOT of progress, even saving enough to fund our Norway trip that still came in under budget.
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Not shown are paying off a $6,500 credit card and paying off our car loan
because when I tried to change something I made them go away. :(
A few other smaller debts were also eliminated prior to us starting Mint.
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All this progress aside, of COURSE we still argue about money. There is one reoccurring argument that Andy and I have had about money, though, that I want to share our solution to. Particularly when Andy was the only one bringing in money, he would occasionally buy a new game or something as a "I've been working hard; I deserve a treat." I agree on the whole that retail therapy is a viable thing and that it's good to feel the reward of your labor. Simultaneously, I had been denying myself a coffee or a new top because it wasn't really in the budget. When I saw Andy's new purchase hit our accounts or when he came home excited about the new whatever, I was already running the math and annoyed that we weren't going to be making as much of a dent in our debt that month as we could have. But it was Andy's money, too. But I was the one watching the numbers. He was bringing in the money. I profoundly wanted to be contributing and it wasn't my fault my health didn't allow it. And round and round we'd go.
Our first solution was asking Andy to check in with me if a purchase was over X amount. But a few $20 purchases affect the budget, too, and going out to eat when we didn't really have the money for it soured the experience for me. I cannot say exactly which iteration of the same argument we were on--I was feeling guilty for saying no and being a financial burden, and Andy was feeling unappreciated for his work and guilty for making me feel guilty--but we stumbled upon an idea that has saved us a lot of grief.
I present the idea of the Fun Money Ledger (naturally, abbreviated FML). It follows these rules:
- Purchases that are designated as Fun Money purchases are purchases that one party can buy without judgement, no matter how frivolous/stupid the other party privately thinks the purchase is
- Both parties, regardless of how much income they are making individually, get the same amount of Fun Money per paycheck, as they are both contributing to the best of the household in whatever way possible they can at the time
- Fun Money is kept on a shared spreadsheet that both have access to
- Fun Money can be stored up for one large purchase or used in smaller doses
- Purchases larger than X should still be cleared for timing with the budget as a courtesy but also to keep communication with the other party
- One can only go negative in their Fun Money at the agreement of the other--an understood leeway of negative the per paycheck amount is usually acceptable for week-to-week operations, but anything further (e.g. taking advantage of a Black Friday deal that goes more toward -$100 or more) should be discussed with the other party
- Severe negative amounts must be resolved before adding more purchases, unless the other party grants an exception
- Some purchases can be part budget and part Fun Money, per agreement of the parties (e.g. buying a new top can be part clothing budget but the expense/type of top could lend part of it toward Fun Money if it either exceeds the budget line or seems clearly on the less "necessary" side of the spectrum than the budget line was designed for)
- Money received for birthdays and other holidays is considered Fun Money; bonus money allows a certain, agreed-upon percentage as Fun Money while the rest goes to furthering goals or another agreed-upon designation
So as for how this plays out in our lives, all of our purchases that subtract out of Fun Money are listed in the Fun Money Ledger, transparency as an important factor in the whole thing. That in and of itself has been interesting to see where we choose to spend our personal purchases, as a microcosm of preferences. Right now, Andy and I get $20 per paycheck, which means $10 a week. One of us will see this added every pay period and otherwise go in to the spreadsheet to record a purchase. The amount per paycheck has fluctuated from time to time, depending on circumstances. For example, it used to be $30, but then we agreed to both put half of our paycheck allotment toward our Norway Fund, which is now just the "What's Next" Fund, where we can agree to have a nice date or shared experience (concert, mini-vacation, larger vacation) that would normally be outside of the budget. So we were at $15 per paycheck for a while, with $30 per paycheck going to the shared fund. Once we paid off Andy's loans, we went to $20 per paycheck individually but also bumped up the amount into this other fund to $40 per week, planning for more adventures together in the future and in the meanwhile helping to offset some of those larger Fun Money purchases more cleanly (as far as how they were actually paid for). But all of these changes were a conversation between us, an agreement to see that our resources were used wisely and that we were meeting all of the emotional needs we could be.
This has lead to a significant decrease of the degree of our money discussions. There are shared and clearly defined expectations for where we spend money on ourselves, and we've agreed on the rules as we've developed them, making minor changes as we went on. Even storing them on a shared spreadsheet location was a breakthrough that was added later, originally just agreeing that we could spend Fun Money per month and then trying to parse out who did what later. The development and practice of this system has meant that Andy can reward himself intermittedly or plan for a larger purchase to feel rewarded for his hard work as he emotionally needs to, since he has access to his own money. This means that I don't have to feel like I am always telling Andy no and absolves me of the guilt whenever I was buying something for myself. We'll still have some disagreements on how much can be eaten by the budget vs how much is Fun Money or how much of a percent should we get from bonus money, but a lot of the hurt and guilt and deeper frustrations are, in my opinion, much better than they were.
In all arguments around money, though, it's important to remember that it's not you against the other--it's both of you against the problem. Tackling tough problems is an opportunity to grow together, if you can approach the problem as a shared concern rather than the other person as the problem. I could see this strategy successfully applied in larger situations, too, anywhere finances and resources are pooled, but more importantly anywhere the varying sides choose to work together and talk about it. If either Andy or I ignored the rules, that's breaking the verbal contract and violating the other's trust--these are components that we agreed upon together to preempt hurt feelings and resentment, bettering our relationship. For Andy and I, there were unmet needs, partially because they were not being verbalized and partially because they weren't being listened to, weirdly enough. We started developing a working system, tweaking it as necessary, to better help "I," "you," and the sometimes forgotten "we." Whether you've had the same argument in your household or are working with your individual budget, this system has been an immense help to us, and I hope it might be of use elsewhere, too.
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