Do you and your dh always agree on financial goals?

[mommyoffive]

Do you and your dh always agree on financial goals?  If not how do you handle different thoughts on your financial goals?

[maize]

Two different people almost always equals some differences in priorities.

We compromise. A little bit my way and a little bit his.

In our case, it's mostly that Dh would put every single penny into paying off the mortgage and I figure we only get to raise our kids once and we can afford to put some of our funds towards activities and experiences for them.

So--we put more into paying off debt than I might on my own, and spend more on activities than he would.

 

Edited July 16, 2020 by maize

[J-rap]

We mostly do, but of course there are times when we don't.  Then, we sit down and and discuss, and that discussion is sometimes difficult!  But we always reach some kind of agreement.  Usually it's a compromise, of sorts, but one where both people feel pretty good (or at least good enough) about it.  Often it's more of a third way of doing something that neither of us had thought of before.   Sometimes it's as simple as having a clearer understanding of the others' reasons.

[Mbelle]

We have been in mostly agreement for the past 10 years.  I am a serious saver and was raised in a very saving conscious family and taught that from a very young age.  Dh was raised in a spending family where the decisions were made solely by one parent.  It did cause some issues but eventually we did a financial peace course and were able to talk through goals.  We now have clear savings and spending goals.  We don't always follow 100%, but we follow pretty closely.

[hjffkj]

Pretty much. In the beginning, he was a spender and I was a saver because of the way we were raised.  But he had to learn pretty fast that if he wanted to stay at the career he chose and also if we wanted me to stay home with the kids then we couldn't spend the way he was used to. We were pretty much in total agreement with our financial goals from the get go but there was certainly a learning curve for dh on how to accomplish them because of the habits he had formed growing up.

 

[Jaybee]

We mostly agree over the goals, but how to reach them is the stickler, and involves compromise. We are working on it, but have a long way to go to actually reach our goals.

[mumto2]

Pretty much,  we had some adjustments at the start of our marriage but things go pretty smoothly now. 

[egao_gakari]

We are sort of in agreement in the sense that we trust each other's spending decisions--but our spending decisions are pretty different from each other! I've felt a lot more confident in choosing how I spend now that I make over 50% of our income. In the past, I would check with him about every little expenditure and it would bug him. "You know what we have in our bank account, so use your best judgment!"

He handles the small-time investments that we do (through Robinhood mostly). I make the homeschool purchases. We both make whatever purchases are necessary for our work (both self-employed). He handles the savings, not that we have much, and I do most of the bill payments.

In terms of where we disagree, I would prefer to be more aggressive with paying off debt and saving up more, Dave Ramsey-style. But DH's parents, who are very successful/wealthy, trained him that "you will always have debt, and you need to learn to manage it well." And he has successfully paid off huge debts in the past--it's mostly that for about a decade he was in and out of family court with his ex, so he was never able to stop accruing more debt in attorney fees. So it's not frivolous debt, and we're on the road towards paying it off. But I've had to learn to trust that he actually knows more about this topic than me, because it's certainly not being paid off as quickly as I'd like. Realistically, though, the only way we'd pay it off quicker/add more to our savings would be to stop homeschooling, and that's a sacrifice I'm not willing to make.

[hs03842]

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Edited December 9, 2020 by JoyKM

[Soror]

I am generally more for saving and going for big goals. But he is more aggressive with investment. He has been saving for retirement since before we married and is militant about that. I have at times thought we should save more and he has thought we should be even more aggressive but we have met in the middle. He was massively opposed to paying off the house at first but came around to my POV and is very glad we did now. He was also too chicken to have the big European vaca until I pushed for it but agrees now that it was well worth it and he is pushing now that we have a overseas trip with all the kiddos in the near future (you know assuming we eventually get CVD under control) and has put that very high on his priority list. He likes the ideas of big goals but is less willing to make big sacrifices to make them happen, although we did when we paid off the house, it was rice and beans time.  For me purposely living very cheaply for a short term goal is fine, he doesn't want to give up standard of living if he doesn't have to (and really we do live fairly frugally).  It is give and take, sometimes he comes my way and sometimes I come his.

Edited July 16, 2020 by soror

[Katy]

We didn't at first.  DH was spending more than I was comfortable with, probably because just after we got married he got a new job paying ten times what he'd made before.  But I had him sit down and do the bills with me a couple of months, he started listening to Dave Ramsey on his commute, and we took the Dave Ramsey class. I don't agree with many things DR says, but I do appreciate that he usually takes the conservative side, and when the wife has some reason she wants to hoard cash instead of pay down debts he encourages it (pregnancy, an ill parent, impending job loss, even at the beginning of this pandemic).  I heard him argue with a doctor once that his wife was right, that his $250k in medical school debt was going to take a long time to pay off and it was okay to pay it more slowly like a mortgage and have some experiences and some spending money for each of them.  It wasn't an extravagant amount, but increasing the grocery budget so their kids eat some fruits and vegetables and not just peanut butter, rice and beans was important, and each of them should have some money they could burn if they wanted and the other one couldn't say a thing about it. If he wanted his blow money to go towards paying debt faster that was fine, but he shouldn't force her to do that.

DH still wants to do riskier investments than I do.  I like low fee index funds.  He's constantly trying to get into managed crap that always makes less money over the long term.  He's coming around.  He's been reading the FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) stuff on reddit, and those threads are filled with data that's been slowly changing his mind.

[Moonhawk]

Pro tip: it's easier to agree what to do with your money when you don't have any!

j/k, it's actually much much harder. 

We agree on goals, usually on routes. When we don't agree on routes, we don't tend to compromise (little funds = little room to do two things effectively or make sense to split the effort) but choose one route for a set period of time, then reevaluate to see if it got where we expected/wanted, and then either try the other person's original or continue on the same path. 

[Carrie12345]

Well... yes and no. Mostly sorta sometimes, lol.

Dh is a mostly reformed spendthrift and I’m a bit less of a penny pincher than I used to be, so our day to day is more in sync than it used to be. Now we’re able to work on goals, where it was nearly impossible to before.

We don’t always start out agreeing, but we pretty much always come to the conversation looking for each others’ input. I’m primarily in charge of actual finances (see past issues), but I don’t make any major changes without making sure he’s cool with how it impacts OUR life, and he sometimes has suggestions for us to discuss.  Sometimes he convinces me to do something different, sometimes I convince him his idea stinks, and sometimes we strike a compromise.

This forever thing that we agreed to do means that we both have to be comfortable with what that forever is going to look like.  And that means we have to be comfortable with giving up the idea of having things our own way and make sure the other person is comfortable, too.

Is my time in therapy showing? Because I paid enough to warrant showing it off.

[lovinmyboys]

I don’t even always agree with myself about financial goals, so no I don’t always agree with another person, lol. We do use YNAB and that seems to help both of us stay on track.

[SereneHome]

Well, I don't think my husband knows "our" goals....But if he did, probably not as I am much much more risk averse than he is.

 

[EmilyGF]

No. We don't always agree on anything. But we do talk, assuming the best of each other (usually), and try to listen each other, until we come to conclusions we can both agree with and live with. And we try not to question the other's decisions in small matters.

One thing we learned in pre-marital counseling that was really helpful was to give full responsibility to someone if you delegate. So, when DH didn't like how I was handling care car, he took over car care instead of micromanaging me. And once we delegate something to the other person, we trust the other person's judgment, if that makes sense.

Emily

[Joker]

I handle all the finances. I don’t think dh even knows how much money he makes at the moment. Neither of us are big spenders though and our big purchases are usually vacations that we definitely agreed on.

Dh does like to hoard cash, though. He grew up really poor and he likes to have cash on hand. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has a few thousand hidden around the house. Interestingly, my grandma was the same way and we found hidden cash for years after she died.

 

[Ottakee]

2 minutes ago, Joker said:

 

Dh does like to hoard cash, though. He grew up really poor and he likes to have cash on hand. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has a few thousand hidden around the house. Interestingly, my grandma was the same way and we found hidden cash for years after she died.

 

My MIL was like that.  She had cash in the pages of he Bible, behind pictures in picture frames, under the table cloth, etc.  It took longer to empty out her house because we had to check everything for hidden cash.

[Joker]

35 minutes ago, happysmileylady said:

This is a situation that would be SO easy to implement in my house.  It's just not a situation I want.  I often feel like it puts me into the role of being the "money mommy."  And I don't wanna be that, so I make sure DH is involved in the financial decisions.  Thought truthfully, that creates more work for me.  

I don’t feel like it adds anything really to my plate. Dh just isn’t a big spender. He’s never had to ask if money is there before buying something so I don’t actually feel like I have to monitor anything for him at all. What we do just works for us and it’s not something I really think about anymore. We did recently have a discussion about it all though because we will have two in college this fall and dh wanted to make sure all was good.

[matrips]

10 hours ago, mommyoffive said:

Do you and your dh always agree on financial goals?  If not how do you handle different thoughts on your financial goals?

No.  But when I suggest reviewing the budget together, he never takes me up on it.  He would rather spend more.  I would rather save for expenses I know are coming up.  He earns the money.  I pay the bills.  I told my kids I’m sending them and any future spouses to a Dave Ramsey program so they get talking about money and on the same page from the start.

[Bootsie]

3 hours ago, Joker said:

Dh does like to hoard cash, though. He grew up really poor and he likes to have cash on hand. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has a few thousand hidden around the house. Interestingly, my grandma was the same way and we found hidden cash for years after she died.

 

My dad hoarded coins.  When he died, my mom found enough in the back of the closet to pay for his headstone (and that is what she used it for). 

[livetoread]

We see eye to eye. We were raised in a similar socioeconomic group by parents with similar money values, and our needs for financial security are similar. Our biggest issue was early in our marriage when we had very little. He didn’t want to spend anything, and I was more comfortable spending some. We agreed on a budget that proved we could meet all our savings goals and still have a little fun, and then he relaxed. Now we quibble a little around the edges of our investments (like should we be this conservative or slightly less conservative) but overall we are very much in agreement. We trust each other’s judgement, and if there is a quibble, I try and defer more often. He defers to me in many other areas, so this is one I can let go of because I do trust him, and the difference between our views is always minor anyways.
 

[katilac]

On 7/16/2020 at 8:13 AM, mommyoffive said:

Do you and your dh always agree on financial goals?  If not how do you handle different thoughts on your financial goals?

Goals, yes. We're very financially compatible for the most part. We are both savers, we are both risk averse, and we both have anxiety if we don't have an emergency fund (a small one when we were starting out, a much bigger one now). So we agreed on big things like paying off the house early, even though we had a good interest rate and the common wisdom would have been to keep the mortgage and invest more. But, for us, what it cost us in actual money was made up for by a sense of peace and relaxation over the years. We were united in our unreasonableness 😄

We've had more money the last few years, even with the kids in college, and I've had some silent panic attacks over a couple of things he bought, like very expensive camera equipment and golf lessons. I kept them silent because the fact is that we can afford it, he works really hard,  and I know he wouldn't blink an eye if I wanted to do something expensive. The camera equipment was bought during a health crisis, and honestly it was probably cheaper than therapy, lol. The golf lessons were much less yet still a boggling cost to me, but golfing is a ridiculously large part of his job now, so it would be hard to argue with.  

16 hours ago, livetoread said:

We see eye to eye. We were raised in a similar socioeconomic group by parents with similar money values, and our needs for financial security are similar. Our biggest issue was early in our marriage when we had very little. He didn’t want to spend anything, and I was more comfortable spending some. We agreed on a budget that proved we could meet all our savings goals and still have a little fun, and then he relaxed. 

We were raised in very different socioeconomic classes (my funniest example of this is that my inlaws spent more on the rehearsal dinner than we did on the entire rest of the wedding, lol), but have very similar needs for financial security. The biggest difference is that I would get anxious over really small amounts of money and dh wouldn't. We did budget spending money for a long time when we were first married, and it helped me relax a lot and not agonize over every dinky purchase. 

My interest in the financial details is pretty non-existent, lol. I'm sure that is easier for dh in some ways and harder in others. 

 

 

Edited July 17, 2020 by katilac

[Arcadia]

For big picture goals like lowering debt, increasing emergency funds, 401k we are more or less on the same page.

For things like grocery and homeschooling expenses, we had our arguments several times over the years. He is the stereotypical penny-pincher type so it’s better for me to do the spending and budgeting. We spent at most 30% of his take home pay per month, no mortgage. If  I don’t do the purchasing, we might end up with rice, eggs and bread as the only food in the house as well as whatever expired food that is sold at Grocery Outlet.

[Janeway]

I handle all our finances and do not ask his opinion. He tells me he is very happy with how I handle things.

[katilac]

2 hours ago, Arcadia said:

For things like grocery and homeschooling expenses, we had our arguments several times over the years.  

dh has never complained about what I spend at the grocery, but sometimes he would ask why we didn't buy more of this or that. Because we have a grocery budget, buddy, lol. It used to be funny when he would make the occasional trip to the market and be shocked by prices on every aisle. "A gallon of milk is four dollars?!" I mean, he didn't go often, but you would think he would eventually remember that milk alone was nearly $20 of our grocery money every week. 

[Arcadia]

37 minutes ago, katilac said:

dh has never complained about what I spend at the grocery, but sometimes he would ask why we didn't buy more of this or that. Because we have a grocery budget, buddy, lol. It used to be funny when he would make the occasional trip to the market and be shocked by prices on every aisle. "A gallon of milk is four dollars?!" I mean, he didn't go often, but you would think he would eventually remember that milk alone was nearly $20 of our grocery money every week. 

He knows how much a gallon of organic milk cost at Safeway, Trader Joe’s, Grocery Outlet, Sprouts and Costco. That’s why we buy milk mostly from Costco. He does a lot of comparison shopping for groceries. He just wants to spend as little as possible and buy certain fruits and vegetables only when they are on sale at very low price.

ETA: He does couponing as well 🤣

Edited July 17, 2020 by Arcadia

[Excelsior! Academy]

Goals yes, implementation of said goals, no.

 

[Ausmumof3]

Hmm kinda.  When we first married I was the super frugal one and he was more into spending.  We’ve kind of gradually shifted and maybe now it’s the other way round.  But he has more of a spend more and earn more approach whereas I have more of a spend less so we can work less approach mostly.  But not with the kids.  I realise there’s some things you only get the chance to do for a little while and I want them to have those chances where possible.

[Tap]

Nope, we aren't exactly night and day with finances but we are absolutely not on the same page. Due to this, we have separate incomes/accounts/responsibilities/savings/investments. LOL We are more like siblings, than spouses. 

I can see his main account and he can see mine. We are both signers on the main accounts, but we have some individual items as well.