How to Handle Finances in a Relationship?

Long-term relationships and fights relating to money are known to all. If you are in a relationship, you should learn how to handle finances in a relationship.

I’m sure you’ve had at least one such fight with your partner.

If both of you have been taught different values regarding money, spend differently, have different goals, disagreements are normal.

But what isn’t normal is you giving those fights an upper hand over your love and bond.

Be it a new relationship, a long-term one or one where you two are living together, there are ways in which you can handle your monies together. You can try them to manage money equitably.

But before learning how to handle finances in a relationship, let’s see how does money affect relationships.

How Does Money Affect Relationships?

You and your partner are a couple but both of you are individuals first with different opinions regarding financial matters.

Maybe you were raised in a family where you have expectations and spending habits completely different from that of your partner.

It is natural. You try hard to find a midway but I know, it is tough.

Having different goals and values relating to money causes stress in relationships and surveys suggest that almost 72% of couples felt money being the reason behind the arguments with their partners.

To better know how to handle finances in a relationship, you need to understand how deep these issues go and what the underlying factors are which give rise to the disagreements and stress.

That way, you can deal with your problems in a better way!

• You know your financial understanding depends up on your monetary experiences you lived in your family.
• If your family believed in saving more, you’ll imbibe those qualities and live with them lifelong and expect your partner to do so and vice versa.
• You tie those emotions to financial money and your personal views become the reason for your arguments with your partner.
• Instead of being rigid about your feelings, if you found a logical solution to your and your partner’s monetary views, keeping your emotions aside, you’ll say no to a lot of stress in your love life.
• If you and your partner have different spending habits, first off, accept it.
• Talk about it and be open about each other’s good and bad spending habits. Discuss if this will work out in the long run. Maybe you guys will learn a thing or two from each other.

Don’t let your relationship sink because of stressful financial waters. There’s nothing that you can communicate openly about and not sort out.

Don’t let these issues linger for a long time. Bring up the subject of money and deal with the problems together.

Now, let’s look at the ways which will help you learn how to handle finances in a relationship like a pro!

Tips for Money Management in a Relationships

To manage money better as a couple, you need to communicate and fine-tune your financial goals. Most of your disagreements won’t happen and you’ll say goodbye to stress.

Here are some of the ways in which you can deal with your financial matters.

1.     Discuss your finances, values, and goals.

Be open with each other and do not keep any secrets. If you want to know how to split finances when living together, begin with discussing with each other.

Communication is necessary to keep any relationship going, be it talking about each other to get to know each other well or your financial matters.

Yes, I agree, talking about money can put you in a tough spot but let me tell you, if you neglect it, it will neglect you back.

Do not let go of these important conversations in your relationship thinking they will make you uncomfortable.

You may be willing to spend more while your partner might be looking forward to save more to buy a home.

Discussing future goals, how you like to spend money, how your future looks like monetarily, your current finances, everything.

Talk about buying houses, kids, their education, your travel desires, your guilty spending habits, and see how different your goals and values are.

The more you sit and discuss the more you’ll understand how much effort you’ll need to put in to make this work.

If you love the person dearly, consider their desires as well, and tell them you want them to do the same too. It’s that simple!

These are emotional problems tied to money matters and can be solved with discussing openly with your partner more often.

If you want to know how to handle finances in a relationship in the best way possible, first learn to open up and communicate.

2.     Don’t over complicate your relationship by bringing emotions into the equation.

Money affects relationships. If you let the emotions that you experienced in childhood in your family relating to financial matters work you up, you may open the door to money imbalance in relationships.

To deal with them, you need to teach yourself to not get mad, or hurt if there are differences between you and your partner.

Untangle all the issues by talking to each other and being mature about each other’s goals and values.

Don’t be too critical of your partner’s habits or goals, or don’t feel attacked when your partner tries to talk about yours. Minus the emotions from your financial matters and you’ll be okay.

Take everything as a team challenge and you’ll come out stronger. No more worrying about how to handle finances in a relationship!

3.     Chalk out a budget according to your finances and stick to it.

Find a plan that will help you meet your goals.

The best way of money management is a budget plan – yes the traditional way of handling the monies!

The better you know your income and how much you need to spend each month, the more you will grow as a team in handling your cash.

Sit down and talk about your individual expenditures and incomes and put them down on a paper and make a concrete plan that will decide how you two are going to deal with your financial issues.

It’s better to deal your monies with a budget than being broke, isn’t it?

4.     If the need calls for it, pool funds for your joint expenses.

You can even open a shared account. This will teach you how to manage a joint account.

Saving money for the future is the real deal, right? As a couple, why not do it together?

Pool your funds together for your travel desires, dates, emergencies, and for your common goals.

You can also open a joint bank account for the purpose. A shared account for the emergency funds is the best way to save money for your couplet needs.

However, you can have the shared account as an additional one along with the individual bank accounts. You can manage your individual expenses as well as expenditures as a team.

If you want to know how to handle finances in a relationship, be a team player. Solves most of the problems!  

5.     Be honest to each other and work as a team.

No matter what, never forget that you two are a team who want the best for each other. Both of you desire each other’s happiness.

You gotta be honest to each other about all the individual money matters and remind yourself that you have the same goals in life – kicking financial stress out of your lives!

The best way you can learn how to handle finances in a relationship is by staying positive and being each other’s support system.

Include these ideas in your relationship and see how well-balanced your monetary life becomes with your partner.

You will save more, spend intelligently and together, and learn money management and how to work as a team for life.