Married or not: how to manage your money together

Have you ever gone on a holiday with your partner or friends and found yourself by the end of the holiday with a headache, not knowing who owes what to who anymore? It’s during times like those that you wish you had put more thought into it before leaving. While managing your money on your own is already difficult enough as it is, doing it together with others can take things to another level of difficulty. That’s why you need to think ahead and organize how to best handle any situation in which you need to manage money together. To do this, we wrote down some tips and tricks to turn you into a pro in no time.

How to get started

The first thing you should always do is analyze the situation you find yourself in. You need to ask yourself the right questions in order to best utilize your common budget. One of the most important questions you should ask yourself is what the money will be used for. Once your goal is clear, you can start planning in more detail how much you can spend on what. Setting an overall budget, together with more specific subcategory budgets is key to keep your common money in check and avoid running out of budget. Keep in mind that you should always be realistic when creating these budgets. It is a good idea to add some playing room to your budgets just in case an unexpected event occurs. This way you will avoid being stressed out in case something does happen. Better be safe than sorry, right?

Discuss the budget

As money can be a bit of a delicate subject to discuss, it is always good to talk to one another about how much each person thinks they can contribute according to their means. This discussion needs to be held in a no-judgment zone where everyone can be honest and transparent without being afraid of what others might think. Only then will everyone feel comfortable enough to share what they think is a reasonable budget, and can a consensus be reached. This conversation is a must that will avoid putting anyone in an uncomfortable situation where they feel like they are alone in their thoughts and don’t know how to share their worries with you.

Divide responsibilities

Once the budget has been set, dividing responsibilities is the next crucial step to managing money well together. Start by writing down a list of what needs to be done. Some examples of these tasks could be the following ones:

• Setting up the budgets

• Taking care of the big one-time payments

• Taking care of regular smaller payments

• Keeping track of all expenses

You then divide the tasks according to everyone’s skills. Depending on how many you are, you can assign one person or a group of people to each task. If everyone likes the task they are given and are good at it, it will become a much easier and smoother process.

Keep track of your expenses

When it comes to keeping track of your expenses more specifically, it is important to stress that this needs to be done regularly. If you are managing money together in the long run it might be good to open a common account to keep track of your expenses. However, if you are managing money together for one specific purpose in the short run, like a holiday, there are other ways that are easier and more convenient to manage your expenses. There are many mobile apps out there with their sole purpose of making your life easier in this area. Some great apps for this are Splitwise and Tricount. Through these apps you can easily keep track of group expenses by filling them in on the go and splitting them according to every specific situation, resulting in a life-saving overview of who owes what to who within your group.

We hope our blog will help you out the next time you need to manage money together with others. For those who prefer to first learn how to manage their own money better, make sure to check out our blog 4 ways to save money better than you ever did before.