Who wears the pants? This is a question that most men would like to answer with "ME", but is that always the truth? If you are married, who makes the financial decisions in your household? Let me talk about my experiences. My wife and I have been pulling ourselves out of debt for some time now but when we started it was a battle on who makes the decision on how much money goes where. After reading a lot of books and talking with other financial people we had to deiced. The first thing we talked about was who was the spender and who was the saver? I quickly found that we both were spenders and not much of savers. We both make impulse buys on things that we don't need. So how could 2 spenders start to save? We came up with a plan. A plan is the best thing you can do to for a lot of things. If you are going to start your own business or buy a car. Everyone has something they know about. I happen to be good with cars and before I bought my SUV I spent months researching it and I knew based on millage how much I wanted to pay. Well the same applies for a budget. Who has the time to sit down and create this budget and set goals? That person happened to be me. Not having money or being able to save can make people lose sleep or be so stressed out that the do crazy things, so when I learned that we decided that I was the best candidate for the job. So for me and my family I make the financial decisions for my household. But I don't make all of them alone. I had mentioned that before you start to pay off debt that you need to make an emergencies fund, I came up with $1000 as a good number, but my wife wasn't having that, so we both set down and talked about our worries and why she thought we needed more money in that account, so we agreed on $2000. So for the most part I make the decisions. But i'm here to tell you that your partner is just as involved in this as you are. They will see you doing the budget for the week and ask, how are we doing or should I be worried? As a husband I always reassure my wife we are fine and everything looks good. A happy wife is a happy life!! We have always been able to pay our bills on time and over the course of 4 month payed off more than $5,000 in debt using the snowball effect.
The moral of this story is that No one wears the pants! We both do. I couldn't have paid off our debt, make an emergency account or have invested our money without my wife. To become financially independent it takes a team effort. It is great to bounce ideas off of each other and for you both to keep each other in line. I do research, make our budget for the month (she made the spread sheet), and set goals and plan for the future. My wife's job is to make sure that I keep doing this and to put in her opinion.
Leave a comment and let me know how your family works their budget and who does what, and why?
If you have any questions please Email me at Thetightdollar@gmail.com and follow me on Twitter @Thetightdollar
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