Debt

In my first marriage I handled all the finances.  My ex husband didn’t want to have anything to do with it.  It was frustrating to try and move money around to different areas to pay for things that were not expected.  I didn’t have a budget per se and found myself in quite a bit of debt after the divorce. 

After being in charge of the finances in my first marriage, I completely washed my hands of it in my second marriage.  I had no problem letting my husband control the money and if I wanted to buy something I would.  I expected that no matter how much money he or I spent, we would have the money that we needed because our paychecks were larger.  He would talk to me about being more careful with our money and I couldn’t understand why.  We made so much more, how could we be running out of money.  He didn’t have a budget and we again ended up in a lot of debt.

Here is my point to all married people or anyone thinking about getting married.  HAVE A BUDGET!!!  Whether you are savers or spenders, or one of each, make sure that you have a budget.  Not having a budget, whether I was in charge or my husband led us to debt, and a lot more debt than we realized.

I was required to put together a budget for a class.  Just sitting down and looking at the numbers, changing a few things and sticking within a budget completely changed our financial situation.  We went from a crazy about of debt to quite a bit of money in savings. 

The stress that my husband was under as he saw our monthly debt continue to increase and trying to move money from one area to another was something I knew all too well from my first marriage.  Marriage is hard enough without having to dig yourself out of a hole of debt.  Not having the money for something that you need or for something your children need is not a good feeling either.

I may have a love/hate relationship with our budget.  Only having a certain amount of money for different items can be frustrating and can leave you with a sense of feeling like you never have enough money.  But seeing your savings account grow, knowing that in case of an emergency you have money to take care of it, and being able to have money set aside for vacations, holidays, birthdays is priceless.  I hate having to stay on top of our money, but love the sense of peace it brings knowing that if we truly need something – the money is there.