Budgeting App for Couples: What If My Partner Won’t Budget?

What if my partner won’t budget?

‍

Budgeting with a partner can be challenging. There are a lot of moving parts in modern finances and adding an extra person often means more accounts, more bills and more opinions. Using a budgeting app can help organize all the pieces so you and your partner can focus on the most important challenges like how to even begin to communicate about this stuff. 

‍

One of the most common questions I get as a budget coach and that I see in financial forums is, “how can I get my partner on board?” or “is it even possible to budget if my partner won’t participate?” Sometimes people will have their partner come to a budget coaching session so I can mediate the opening conversation and help them come up with a plan. So I’ve seen many many combinations of personalities and worked through lots of scenarios on how to manage money together when one partner is less involved. 

‍

There are many reasons why one partner might be less involved. Sometimes that partner is just super busy and overwhelmed in other areas of their life and can’t add a new thing right now. Some people have past trauma around finances and find them stressful or triggering. I’ve seen times when the partner doesn’t want to budget because they don’t like math, or don’t want to feel restricted in their spending, or feel like they work hard for their money and just want to be able to spend it. Ultimately all of these experiences are valid and can make it hard for people to engage with budgeting.

The good news is, if a reluctant budgeter is in a partnership with a willing budgeter they can reap the benefits of budgeting with minimal pain and stress. This will require trust, communication, cooperation and willingness to accept some discomfort. It can be hard for the reluctant budgeter to engage with the process. It can also be challenging for the willing or even enthusiastic budgeter to be mindful of their partner’s feelings and keep financial discussions short and to the point. The willing budgeter might also feel some resentment at having to manage this for the team and frustration when things get off track. While it’s important to acknowledge these feelings it’s also important to remember the end goals. 

‍

Using a budgeting app will help both partners to have access to the financial information in one place, allowing you to track spending and generally get on the same page. How hard it is to manage will depend on if you have shared finances and how many accounts you have. If you have checking accounts, student loans, credit cards and savings accounts, maybe even multiple of each it's going to feel overwhelming. So while trying to get on the same page instead of putting every bank account into the app just focus on one or two accounts where the bulk of the spending happens. Add more accounts and details as you get more comfortable.

‍

Where do we start?

‍

The first thing I always do is talk through life goals totally unrelated to finances. Where do you each find joy? What do you want in the future? What does a perfect day look like to you? What do you value? What are your priorities? Hopefully for couples there are at least some shared values and priorities, and there are also likely some different things you each are striving for. I like to have a wide ranging discussion and then each partner can name their top 3 priorities. Hopefully there is some overlap so we can find common ground. Or maybe there’s a theme. Like if one partner wants grocery delivery and one partner wants a cleaning service they really each want to outsource unpleasant tasks so they have more time for things they prefer to spend time on. Or maybe one of them wishes they ate out more and the other wants to travel more but ultimately what they both want is more relaxed, distraction-free time together. So really looking into the why of the desires can help find that common ground even if it’s not immediately obvious.

‍

Often in this conversation the partner who initiated the interest in budgeting will have goals like paying down debt, money management, saving more, retirement and so on. I like to reframe those goals into less financial terms. What will happen when you’ve paid off the debt? Then you’ll have more money available for fixing up the house or sending the kids to college. When you save more, what will you be saving for? Perhaps you want to travel or renovate your kitchen or go to a Broadway show. Or maybe you just want to have a safety net so that bad things that happen are less scary. When we shift away from the financial goals it often helps the reluctant budgeter be more willing to engage in the conversation. 

‍

I also find that this conversation goes the smoothest if both partners are focusing on things they want and not things they don’t want. It can become combative if one partner says they want to travel more and the other says they want to travel less. But if one wants to travel more and the other wants to garden more, they can work together to get both needs met since the needs are not directly opposing. It's called personal finance for a reason, our goals are deeply personal. So respecting our partner means respecting their goals.

‍

How does this look in practice?

‍

Once both partners agree on what the goals are in their shared life the enthusiastic budgeter can take that information and create a budget. As tempting as it is to try to do this as a team, this will go much more smoothly if just one person does it. Find out from the reluctant partner things only they know, like how much their dream board game costs or when that conference they want to go to is. Use that information to create a budget that best meets both people’s needs and also helps save for wants. 

‍

In the budget you’ll want to have just one or two categories that the reluctant partner needs to be aware of. Often this is as simple as giving them a “personal spending money” category in the budget and they just need to do their best to keep their spending under that amount. They might also spend on other things like picking up groceries or filling the car with gas. That’s ok, the enthusiastic budgeter will have already planned for those expenses and will record that spending in the relevant categories. If there’s something  out of the ordinary it’s a good idea to figure out a dollar amount that warrants checking in. So if the reluctant spender needs to pick up a birthday gift for a colleague and it’s under $20 then they just go ahead and get it. But if they need to loan $200 to their brother they double check with the enthusiastic budgeter first.

‍
Communication is key here. The reluctant budgeter will hopefully become increasingly comfortable at least mentioning financial things to their partner so they can plan for them. If they would like to subscribe to MLB TV for the baseball season they will have more success fitting it in the budget if the budgeting partner knows how much it is and when the baseball season starts. The enthusiastic budgeter will also have to be proactive in communicating to their partner about the state of the budget. If you notice their spending money category getting low maybe just make sure they’ve also noticed that. Or if you notice there’s plenty of money in groceries, ask if they want to pick up something more expensive as a treat or if they want to use the money somewhere else. Make sure your budget updates aren’t always bad news. 

‍

When choosing a budgeting app I highly recommend one that uses a zero based budgeting approach. There are several budgeting apps out there, most of them offering a free trial. So test them out, look for features you need and read the reviews. Some will claim to be zero based budgeting but aren't in practice so let me explain briefly what to look for there. A zero based budget takes all of your money that you have (by linking to your accounts or having you enter the current balances) and has you put that money into your spending categories (and saving categories) until there's nothing left to assign. You will also want an app that encourages you to keep the budget zero based by moving money between categories if overspending occurs instead of leaving those categories in the red. 

‍

What if my partner is overspending?

‍

This is such a common challenge and can cause such friction. Figuring out the why of the overspending will certainly help. But there are so many reasons for this and most of them are solved by mutual respect, shared goals and this next strategy I’ll explain. 

‍

Give the reluctant partner two main categories. One is their personal spending money, the other is a savings goal that is important to them, and is also achievable in a reasonable time frame (2-4 months). Let’s use an example of someone who wants to go on a camping trip. They have most of the equipment needed but will need gas, food, campground fees etc. They’ve calculated that they’ll need about $300 in order to make the trip happen. When the enthusiastic budgeting partner creates the overall budget and makes sure needs are covered they find that they have about $200/month that the reluctant budgeter can use. They then split that $100 to spending and $100 to camping and they let their partner know that if they stick to the budget they can go camping in 3 months. 

‍

Month one the reluctant partner is still learning their spending habits and forgetting to check the budget. They spend $175. The enthusiastic budgeter can then easily cover that by taking from the camping money and not impacting the rest of the bills and other needs in the budget. The reluctant budgeter feels the pain of their choice but also still has all their needs met so it’s not too painful. The second month they’ve learned their lesson and manage to spend only $90 of their $100 spending money. So not only have they not dipped into the camping money but now they can even send the remaining $10 of spending money to the camping category if they want. Camping has $135 going into the third month. If the reluctant budgeter wants to go camping at the end of this month they can if they can keep their spending under $65, or if they can figure out a way to go camping a bit cheaper. Or they can simply wait one more month. 

‍

This concept of having just one saving and one spending category can really help people who are less comfortable with budgeting to learn the concepts and be successful without getting overwhelmed. Over time they might want to add a few more categories or they might stick with just two. This process also helps the reluctant partner experience some really concrete benefits from budgeting. They may never get nerdy about it but I’ve seen so many reluctant budgeting partners who then start raving about budgeting to their friends because they can see and feel the benefits of the budget even though they aren’t the one doing the heavy lifting in the budget software.

‍

Over time the reluctant budgeter will probably not become a budget nerd, but they will very likely learn to thrive within the structure of the budget that their more enthusiastic partner maintains.

‍

Did this blog resonate with you? Check out the guide on budgeting for couples.