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Home › Articles › Financial Fitness › The Dollars and Cents of Marriage

The Dollars and Cents of Marriage

Are Finances Tearing Your Relationship Apart?

By Teri Brown

Pages:  1  2  3  4  

"I have long claimed that diets don't work and budgets don't either," she says. "This is not simply a couple /marital problem, but relationship and financial issues are huge with single people, as well. Wherever people are struggling with issues of low self-esteem, abandonment issues, fear, guilt, etc., one will often find correlating money problems."

A New Plan
Durling believes that couples who are having financial problems need to establish mutually agreed upon practices going forward for making money decisions, such as setting a dollar amount, a threshold at which they check in with the other before making a purchase.

"Some couples set this at $100," Durling says. "It's a check-in, not an approval stamp. If these issues are truly tearing the couple apart, I would recommend counseling. The couple must agree upon a new plan, a strategy that they both come up with and agree to commit to."

In order to climb out of debt and keep finances from tearing a couple apart, Durling gives the following 3 tips:

1. Get accurate information Without the ability to figure out where you are and where you want to go, there is no point in just rooting around, discussing, arguing, blaming, hoping, making missteps, feeling guilty, spinning their wheels and thinking they should "just do something" sometime soon to solve their problems.

2. Create a plan When you see where you are relative to where you want to be and look at the gap in the middle, you're likely to be motivated to create the necessary change to get there. You can engage in a plan and establish real concrete steps you can both take to reach your goals together. These might include the following: