Getting Through Your Money To Do List Without Killing Each Other

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Getting Through Your Money To Do List Without Killing Each Other, what kind of title is that?!

First off, the title is not a cry for help. Taking a working vacation in Denver recharged us quite a bit. 

One of my goals I made at the conference was to be more focused here on Couple Money on discussing issues that many couples deal with when they talk about finances.

I think many will agree that even if you have the best relationship, having different approaches to money can sometimes make communication (and execution) of money plans incredibly frustrating.

Working on Our Money Goals Together

Last week I shared how we created a freedom fund with Ally Bank.  It's one of our long-term goals that we decided to get on top of since things are pretty much settled with our major money goals for 2012.

We chugging along as you can see with our monthly net worth reviews. It's taken us a bit of time, but we have a little system in place to help us with money.

Start Off With Dreams 

For us, it begins with dreams/goals/whatever you want to call them. We look at a year from now, 5 years from now, and beyond. Why?

We do talk about this because it's easier to get on the same page when you're talking about what you want to do and why. Money is mentioned at this point, it's just about what we hope to achieve.

Working Backwards to How

Only after we have an idea of where we want to go, do we come up with some plan on how to get there. This is where we discuss our approaches and work out on a plan to that uses both of our strengths.

Here are a couple of examples:

• Monthly Budget: I manage day to day finances through budget tracking services such as Mint and he works out a spreadsheet that we share online.
• House Hunting: He helped us create a doable housing budget and I search for places within that range.
• Car Replacement Fund: I created automatic transfers for the banks and he checked out the cars.

As you can see it's not a straight 50/50, we simply divvy up responsibilities based on what we want to do and we trust each other to get it done.

Each couple is different so I can't wait to hear how you take care of your money goals.

Thoughts on Working Together on Money

For you all the couples out there, what money goal(s) or you two working on right now? How did you decide what to do and when to do it?