Your Money or Your Life – Which is It?

Love and money can go hand in hand, but sometimes money can cause friction in your relationship.Depending on your money problems, there are some relatively easy to solve while others are extremely difficult.

Addiction to Credit Cards

Having high interest debt can be a big problem especially if one or both of you are impulse spenders.

If you can’t keep your credit card spending in check, consider getting a plasectomy and physically remove the cards from your wallet. Some bloggers have literally put their cards on ice – freezing their credit cards

No Budget Skills

If you two can’t seem to stay on a budget, it can quickly deteriorate into a blame game. Without a plan for your money, it typically disappears without doing anything significant.

Fixing it is as simple as automating your money. Set up bill pay with your bank or credit union to take care of all your important bills. You also want to set aside an automatic transfer into savings. You two don’t have to create a strict budget, you let the deposits and withdrawals handle everything. Less stress, less mess.

Financial Infidelity

This is the most serious money problem if you have a joint budget system. You start hiding money from each other. Perhaps it started off small, such as a small bonus received in your pay check. It could be major, such a huge credit card debt that the other person doesn’t know about. Or maybe one of you regularly lends money to friends and relatives and it hasn’t been paid back. Perhaps one of you has  to borrow money from a relative to keep up appearances.

There is no easy fix for this problem. This is more than a financial dilemma – it’s a deeper issue involving trust, fear, and  a whole can of worms. Besides a financial planner, you may need to get counseling for your relationship to get to the root of the problem.

Your Options with Money Problems and Relationships

We all have make choices when it comes to love and money. While couples are different, your options for what to do basically comes down to these:

• Choose the relationship; ignore the money. Sadly some people may feel that their relationship is so important that they don’t want to rock the boat and don’t work on the money problems. Usually the money problem increase and it spills over to other areas in the relationship.
• Choose the relationship; work on the money issues. When it’s worth it, the two of you will stick it out and create a plan together.It may be hard to work it out with different money styles, but many couples find it brings them closer as they have to communicate regularly.
• Decide it’s best to move on. Unfortunately it doesn’t always work out the way we want. Perhaps the problem is deeper than finances. Maybe you tried to work on the relationship, but you two are not really going anywhere.

What’s best for you? I can’t answer – you have to be honest with yourselves on what is the best option.Don’t rush into making a decision, especially if you two have history.

I hope that you can work out any money problem that comes you way as a team. It can become a strength rather than a weakness.

Do You Need Help with Money and Love?

Are you juggling relationship with money? Don’t forget to check out other posts in the series:

• Would You Date a Cheap Person?
• How Do Financial Differences Affect a Relationship?
• When Should You Have the Money Talk as a Couple?
• When You Two Don’t See Eye to Eye on Money

I hope that helps and I hope that you take a minute or more to share your own stories on how you got on the same financial page in the comments below.

Photo Credit: Aunt Owwee

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