| Wife doesn't want to budget |
by
Crown Financial Ministries
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In theory, budgeting is straightforward. If you live alone, it can work pretty well in reality, but if you are married you have to negotiate with your spouse. If you are typical of most couples, one of you loves to spend and one of you loves to save. With this in mind, unless husbands and wives learn to work together, no spending plan will work. With two different personalities involved, working together can be difficult even in the best of marriages. If you are married to someone who simply refuses to work with you, it will be impossible to budget properly. Agreeing about financial decisions and goals as a couple requires sacrifice from each partner.
Husbands, if you are not seeking your wife's counsel, you are out of God's will (see 1 Peter 3:7). If you are not listening to your wife, you are closing off an avenue of wisdom that the Lord put in place for your good. Usually neither spouse is completely right or completely wrong. By working together, you will find a better plan of action than either one of you would find alone.
If your wife refuses to budget, try to find out what the underlying problem is. She may see a budget as a weapon, a tool to control her. Resistance in financial matters may indicate a spiritual problem or a marriage problem. A humble spirit, servant leadership, and serious prayer will be far more effective than forcing a rigid budget on your wife.
Ephesians 5:25 applies to everyone who seeks to please God in his or her personal relationships. Both husbands and wives need to be valued and have their opinions respected. God sees spouses as one flesh. If God wants you to consider even strangers as more important than yourself, shouldn't you also treat your spouse with loving respect? If you want your family to live on a budget, be careful to lead with a servant's heart and with a listening ear. Encourage your wife by letting her know that you want her help in setting up a budget that relies as heavily on her input as on yours. Let her know that she will be allowed some leeway in personal expenditures.
In addition, wives often outlive their husbands. Apart from a budget, do you have life insurance and a will? Is your wife an informed partner? Does she know whether you are in debt? God can get you through anything as long as you and your spouse are working together.
If you want to encourage your spouse about the importance of setting up a spending and savings plan, pray about it together and encourage one another to approach it as a stewardship issue. A budget is not a punishment plan. It requires input from both spouses. It should be a freeing thing. Your first budget does not have to be written in concrete. It can be adjusted. Budgeting is based on a simple premise: spend less than you make and save a little each month. If you adjust your standard of living to fit your income, in the long run a budget will work.
To get started, it is a good idea to keep a spending diary for a month or longer before developing a budget. Keep track of everything you spend every day. Record the amounts spent and the budget categories where money is spent—Food, Housing, and so on. Anything spent by check, cash, or credit cards needs to be written down. Your budget should include saving for nonmonthly expenses, such as vacations, Christmas, and car repairs. Look back over the past year's nonmonthly expenses, divide those by 12, and plan to save that amount each month. Stop using credit cards.
Don't try to create the perfect budget the first time. Just be sure that you are not spending more than you earn; then make adjustments as necessary.
Some people start a budget and get frustrated when they have a hard month, so they give up. Typically, it takes a minimum of a year to get a budget working well, but once you understand the process it will continue to work. Even people who manage their money fairly well will benefit from living on a budget. If nothing else, keep a daily record of miscellaneous spending.
If you would like help in creating a sound, written budget, you can visit our Budget Coaching page to ask for the name of one of our volunteer budget counselors. These are volunteers who have been trained through Crown and who offer their services to people who would like free, in-person help with the budgeting process. They can show you how to set reasonable spending and savings goals, prepare a written budget, and become debt free and honor God in your finances. We will be glad to give you the name and telephone number of our nearest volunteer budget counselor in your area.
If you have children, living without a budget is teaching them the wrong things. You might have enough income to be careless with your money and get away with it, but they may not. Even if you have surplus income, your children need to see you exercising financial self-discipline.
Husbands and wives will have to encourage one another and approach budgeting like a team. Pray together before you start. After that, don't overdo it. Don't make the budget too complicated. Start simply and slowly while you are learning the concepts of budgeting. For example, if you haven't balanced your checkbook for the past five years, you won't catch up in one day. If you are spending money with no regard for where it is coming from or where it is going, a budget can look impossible, but it's not. It is possible with God's help.
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