L.O.V.E. was Made for Me and You and Budgeting

Tracking your income and spending with your spouse will likely evoke a wide range of responses — most likely not delight and joy, but what if it could? 

Some people who do love budgeting and have been using Mint for a long time are now trying to figure out which budgeting software to use. The parent company Intuit recently decided to sunset the popular budget-tracking web application. We have been Mint users through different seasons of life. I wanted to get current on my family’s income and spending, so I decided to give Monarch Money a try. 

“WOW!” was my first and continued response to this incredible online and app experience of tracking income and spending. 

Monarch has an incredible user interface with intuitive, easy-to-use features that allow us to easily track and organize our income and expenses. My favorite feature is the ability to mark a transaction for review. I can assign that to myself, my wife, or both of us. 

Now, I know what you are thinking: “My spouse wouldn’t dare look at this information with me. I will get to this later.” But stick with me for a minute. 

Stop and reflect for a minute about why you and your partner play the financial role that you do.

Being a financial therapist, I have learned through science and experience that there is a lot more than meets the eye to reviewing our income and spending. 

Below the Iceberg of the Budget

We all have a range of money scripts that animate the way that we think, feel, and behave related to money. These scripts live subconsciously in our minds and bodies and are based on past experiences related to money. 

Every single one of us has a vast, dynamic relationship with money based primarily on our particular constellation of experiences with relationships, money, and society. While there are patterns, we each have our own money fingerprint. 

This is a large part of why you and your spouse do not see eye to eye. Your money fingerprints guide you on how to interact with each other on money differently at times. 

If you are getting stuck budgeting with your spouse, you may need to pull back and do some deeper psychological work before you can create a meaningful budget that works for the two of you. 

Willpower is Only Part of the Solution — Your Nervous System Matters

By now, you are probably familiar with using your willpower to muscle through the hard stuff to just get to the other side of it. This might look like working extra hours in graduate school to get good grades or pulling a long weekend to finish a work project. 

But it can also look like doubling down and holding yourself more accountable for income and spending, or snapping in anger when your kids ask to buy something that is not in the budget. You “encourage” your spouse to control their spending and accuse them of being lazy or careless, inferring they lack willpower, unlike you. 

Here’s the problem with willpower: it may not actually be willpower that you are using to endure long nights, work hard, or scrimp on every dollar you spend. It could be that your nervous system is hyper-activated and driving you to control your money. 

Even just the mention of money or your finances will set off a cascade of responses, starting with your nervous system, moving up through your limbic emotional system, then finally into your prefrontal cortex thinking system. 

This bottom-up response can be what sets your willpower into play or overrides it as you are logging into your favorite budgeting software. 

Now think about you, your spouse, and your budgeting software. What is happening in each of your nervous systems as you suggest looking at your income and spending together? Are you able to turn to each other for a sense of safety, which comes from a calm and regulated nervous system? (Thank you to Deb Dana and Polyvagal Theory for teaching me this one.)

Overcoming People-Pleasing, Codependency, and Anxious Attachment

In many couples that struggle to coordinate their finances, one or both partners struggle with the psychological patterns of people-pleasing, codependence, or anxious attachment. Each of these problems comes from slightly different backgrounds yet points to very similar patterns of relationships. 

Behind these patterns are physiological activation and deactivation that drive the way you and your partner show up to your budgeting conversations. 

Just like stepping on the scale can set off a cascade of self-judgements, so can looking at the budget. There is a desire to please and a fear of rejection if bad news is shared. It can also evoke a pattern of blaming others that sours our ability to talk about money. 

The fear of being rejected (or rejecting others) in the process of looking at your family income and spending is the number one reason why couples avoid talking about money. They don’t describe it this way, but I see this happen often. 

Here are a few examples of what this avoidance can sound like:

• He/She/They just won’t talk with me about money
• I don’t know what they earn, save, invest
• I can’t be honest about the trip I want to go on
• It’s like they don’t care about our retirement

So is it about the money? Yes.

Is it more about talking about money? Yes!

Is it the relationship between talking about the subject of money and our reactions to it? Absolutely! 

Ultimately, the fear around money is tied to being connected and cared for as a couple.

LOVE is the way to Fostering Financial Intimacy and Doing Your Budget

As a couple, finding your way out of these painful, uncomfortable reactions to reviewing your household budget will take intention, practice, and yes, hurt feelings. This is not because we are trying to hurt each other, but rather we are working towards gaining proficiency at working on money together. 

Think about it like learning to dance together. You both want to be coordinated and enjoy the experience of dancing together. When you are first learning to dance, you have to learn the basic steps to one style of music before you can add additional steps or another variety of music. 

That’s why I created the LOVE Money Conversations Cheat Sheet as a beautiful one-page reminder of what you are working towards together when it comes to talking about money. Each letter of LOVE represents a basic step in fostering financial intimacy in your relationship:

• Learn
• Open
• Vulnerable
• Emotions

As you bring each of these dance steps to your budgeting process, it will become an enjoyable experience. It will take practice, self-reflection, and feedback from your loved one. In a dance studio, the mirrors allow you to see yourself from different angles. The same is true of fostering financial intimacy — you need to see yourself from different perspectives.

Connecting Your Budget to Your Balance Sheet As A Couple

Reaching mastery of the flow of money is harder than it seems on the surface. As a novice, it’s easy to look at budgeting and think it should be simple. When it’s just you and you have a stable income, it can be relatively easy. As soon as you add in a spouse, kids, and variable income, the complexity skyrockets. You are taking in the needs and wants of multiple people. 

By and large, couples want to have a financial life that works for everyone involved. They are, however, having trouble balancing the many competing interests. This includes the people involved, the pace of living for today, and saving for tomorrow. 

Moving from talking about your household budget to your household balance sheet of debts and assets can add new levels of complexity. This requires you to move deeper into curiosity about growth and change. This is a journey into mastery. 

I have yet to meet the couple that was fully prepared for marriage and money. It is a lifetime journey of learning, healing, and growing. 

Empowering couples to work on their budget, balance sheet, and the meaning of their marriage is why I created Therapy-Informed Financial Planning. I know that the journey from novice to expert in any area of life takes many different elements. One of those essential elements is having an environment that balances supportive and challenging experiences to help the novice grow into an expert. 

Let’s talk about how Therapy-Informed Financial Planning can take the two of you from money novices to money masters together. Schedule a free 30-minute consultation here. 

Wishing You Healthy Love and Money,

Ed Coambs

MBA, MA, MS, CFP®, CFT-I™, LMFT

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