Today’s post is from our regular Wednesday contributor, Cat.
I always find it interesting to talk to couples to see who wears the (budgeting) pants in the relationship.
I actually have a lot of friends who really see eye to eye with finances. They are usually frugal couples who fight the good fight together to set themselves up for a lifetime of financial freedom.
I have one set of friends in particular who both went to grad school but amassed a huge savings living in one of the most expensive areas of the country. They are finally finished with school, working, and own their first home. I always love seeing couples who work together like that!
In my own little family, somehow along the way, I came to wear the budgeting pants. When we first got married, I remember my husband giving me a budget and us trying to save for those early years of married life. He drew it all up himself and figured it all out, and I stuck to it.
Then, when he got so much busier with medical school and studying, and I got more involved in the personal finance world through my blog, the budget became my job. Then, paying the bills, calling credit card companies, checking receipts, etc. etc. etc. became my job too. Like I said, somewhere along the way, I took control of all of our day to day finances. While he still makes the best suggestions for long term finances, I’m slowly learning more about investing and can take part in those discussions better too.
My husband and I have gone through so many phases when it comes to money and our relationship. We don’t necessarily argue about the budget, at least not with any yelling or intensity, but there are times when I feel like I’m the “bad guy” or the only person responsible for bringing up the budget and checking in on our status. I guess what I’m saying is that when you wear the pants when it comes to the budget, you’re also sort of the unintentional police officer of the money, which isn’t always the most fun job.
Overall, I find that couples who feel exactly the same about money are pretty rare. I know there are a few here in the pf space, but most of the time you’re going to have slightly different views of how money should be spent and/or saved.
Oh and it’s important to note that just because I wear the budgeting pants doesn’t mean I’m the boss lady of anything and everything around here. Mostly we work as a team but my husband has his own areas – like cooking, navigating, and in general planning – that he’s especially good at.
I’m interested to see in the comments who is in charge of the budget at your house. Is it you, your spouse, or do you really feel like you both have an equal say?
Also, what about your friends? Do you have friends where one person is definitely the pants-wearer when it comes to money?
P.S. I didn’t count how many times I wrote the word pants in this post, but I’m guessing it’s a lot. Pants. (Editors note: 8)
Check out some of our favorite personal finance resources:
Are you getting the best credit card rewards? Check out the top cash back credit card offers (updated daily)
Make extra money: 15 ways to make money from your computer
Get the First Chapter Free!
Join our online community and get the first chapter of the book Student Loan Solution absolutely FREE!
I definitely wear the pants (does tha count towards the pants count? Pants). I draw up the budget and hubby ignores it lol. We need to find time to meet over our budget weekly, keeping us both more accountable, because I’m the one paying bills and everything, too. He is blissfully unaware of how tight our finances are.
At first, I very much wore the budgeting pants. However, it very quickly frustrated us both that I would explain something about our finances and my fiancée wouldn’t understand or be aware of it.
Therefore, this quickly changed to the current position where we both work through our monthly budgeting meeting and all subsequent decisions together. Its much better for us both this way!
I think Mr. FW and I are some of the weirdos who do see eye to eye on all aspects of our finances. But, we’ve definitely had to mature into this. We didn’t always agree and it’s just something that has evolved as our marriage has evolved. Over the years we’ve had so many conversations about money and our future that we’ve finally arrived at a place where we’re settled on the same goals & spending structure. But, like I said, it took time and lots of communication, respect, and trust. And love :)!
As someone who works with couples, I can tell you that most are not on the same wavelength financially, this is why money is sited as the number one cause for divorce in America. For us, I used to wear the pants but that led to overspending, now we share the responsibility and common focus on our money, which in turn, has made our marriage better.
I wear the budgeting pants BUT my husband always knows what is going on. We make the plans together- I just execute them.
Hubs is the informal budgeter. I’m the frugal one. I’ve been trying to get it more formalized and shareable so we can work on it together and hopefully amp up our repayment schedule. We agree on everything except how often we should eat out.
I am the CFO of everything money for the family mainly because DH travels more than I do and his attention to detail is less than stellar at times lol. But, we have monthly finance meetings to review our spending and see how we are doing in relation to our budget and net worth. He gives me his input and I often take it to heart because he’s a very smart guy!
I lead the way for sure in my house :) Although my boyfriend and I discuss our budgets and he makes decisions re the budget, too – I am definitely the leader. And we’re both okay with that because it comes naturally to me.
I am the budget pants wearer in our house. Jim would do Ok for about a month and get tired of the whole thing. If you want to pack a trip into the wilderness with all the stuff necessary to survive, he’s your guy, but budgeting is not his strong point.
We must not wear any pants! We don’t have a budget at all, haha. I do know what you mean about who is responsible for what being an ebb and flow kind of thing. I used to pay all of our credit card bills, but then my spouse was responsible for the extra payments on our mortgage, so took over paying them, in order to match up the timing of our cash flows.
I track all of our expenses, set the budget and even started us on the path of ER. But my wife has always had a pretty frugal mindset and amassed way more savings coming out of college. And the flip side, she had some left over student debt and I had none. So we work pretty good and I actually am looser with our spending than she is.
I guess I stress less over hitting our goals knowing that this is a long term thing and we’re in the very first year of changing our spending habits and really tracking our financial progress. Habits are still forming!
She’s a great partner financially and for life! :)
In what I sure shocks you to learn, I wear the budgeting pants in our family, although I do consider us to be equal partners. I don’t typically feel like the bad guy, mostly because Chris actually tends to be a bit more frugal than I am. :) But I definitely believe in money transparency in couples as so many rarely talk about money, and when they do, it’s to argue.
I would say I wear the pants regarding our finances just because I have more interest in it. The wife does have her input when it comes to big purchases and keeping things frugal, but she is the primary watcher of our son so I’ll allow her that. We have some couple friends who seem like neither wear pants!
Haha well that’s definitely true
Haha I’m shocked ;)
Aw that’s so sweet. You sound perfect for each other!
I didn’t realize that! Sounds like y’all have a good system down though.
Haha we must be married to the same guy ;)
Absolutely I think for some it just makes sense!
I’m not surprised you’re the boss lady pants wearer but it makes sense!
That’s interesting! Yeah there’s always something ;)
I feel like we’re similar in how we operate :)
I bet that’s really rewarding to work with couples!
I think that’s amazing and something to aspire to!
I think monthly meetings are awesome!
Oh man but I get it- with little ones it’s so so hard to sit down and budget!
We both share the budgeting load. We devise our fortnightly budget together and then have brief discussions / meetings regarding any spendings in person in the evening or via email in the day, so that we can keep the budget spreadsheet up to date and to check how we are tracking. My husband does all of the actual updates on to the spreadhseet.
The trend with the majority of my friends seems to be that they don’t actually do much budgeting. Their husband will just let them know which credit cards to ‘ease off of’ every now and then. I do have one friend, however, who is great with budgeting and is very frugal, and she definitely wears the pants in that department at home.
Belinda S That’s interesting. I like your way better. :)
I definitely do. My boyfriend lives pretty frugally but when it comes to keeping track of a budget, he’s very unorganized. That kind of stuff is actually interesting and (dare I say) fun to me so I don’t mind one bit!
I would say that I wear the budgeting pants. However, we do have equal say on financial issues. I am just the person who is more interested in investing and stuff of that nature. We are both frugal which makes it a lot easier.
Our situations are very similar! I wear the budgeting pants in the relationship and my husband is in medicine, as well! He has never been into budgets and finance so he happily gave those responsibilities to me. I love being the CFO of the household and I let him take the reigns for all other decision-making.
Lol, pants…
We’ve only been living together for a few months so we’re still navigating our finances together. I think probably a little more focused on our joint expenses than my boyfriend. Last weekend I totally cracked it because our grocery spend had just gotten astronomical. I wrote out a whole meal plan for the week and TOLD my boyfriend he could only buy what was on the grocery list. I think he was a little taken aback, but we’ve spent $60 for a week of groceries so I guess I win that argument ;)
We do the budgeting together. We go over Mint every few days to check in with the spending, and if one of us pays a bill, we tell the other as we do it. It works for us to both be equally involved in the finances.
TheWriteBudget Sounds like a really good setup! I don’t use Mint but I know others who swear by it.