How a Budget Coach Can Align Your Spending as a Couple
Have you and your partner been fighting about money? Maybe you wish someone could just tell you how to manage your money.
What if I told you that your wish could come true? A Budget Coach is just what you need - someone to help you make better money decisions and work with your partner, rather than against them, regarding saving and spending habits.
What Is a Budget Coach?
Have you and your spouse ever fought about money? Probably more times than you can count, right? It happens to even the happiest couples — they see eye to eye on everything except money. Whether one partner is a spender and another a saver, or you just don't have the same financial goals, it can wreak havoc in your relationship. Even in otherwise-great relationships, somehow money often mystifies us.
A Budget Coach can help you both see eye-to-eye. No matter your financial situation, the right coach can help you go from financially overwhelmed and/or fighting to making financial decisions together that you both feel good about. Financial counseling isn't about pointing fingers and who is doing what wrong. Instead, it's about learning to align your goals and honor one another's thoughts and feelings so that you achieve financial peace and financial intimacy.
Budget Coach vs Financial Advisor
A budget coach isn't a financial advisor and vice versa. Sure, both can help you with your personal finances, but in different ways.
Think of a Budget Coach/Personal Finance Coach like a baseball coach. I sit down with you; get to know your goals, priorities, and habits; and help you align them with your partner so that you two can make financial decisions together. You'll create a game plan, and together as a team, we'll make it work.
A financial planner might help with budgeting or talk about your money habits but focuses primarily on your financial plan for the future. They may provide investment advice, estate planning, or even insurance planning. Financial advisors typically work on a commission and make money based on the investments you make and financial products you purchase.
How Much Does a Budget Coach Cost?
Since we're talking about money, it makes sense that you'd want to know how much a Budget Coach costs,. First, let’s focus on what I can offer:
You get what you pay for, and when you hire a reputable coach to help with budgeting and your finances, you'll see the results you want. I am a licensed attorney, Certified Mediator, former financial advisor, and of course own a Couples Financial Coaching business. My passions are helping couples not only gain confidence and achieve financial peace but helping couples get on the same page.
How would those outcomes affect your relationship, quality of life, and finances? In my clients’ experiences, it affects them in many significant ways, yet my programs start at 3 payments of just $499.
Schedule a free consultation to discuss the right package for your needs as a couple and see if I am a good fit for you.
Signs You and Your Partner Need a Budget Coach
Everyone needs a Financial Coach for different reasons, but it may be time to get a good Budget/Financial/Money Coach if any of these resonate with you:
You can't talk about money without fighting
You can't agree on how to handle your finances or make any financial changes, such as changing careers or having children
You aren't on the same page when it comes to spending or savings
You wish you had better money habits, and you believe your financial situation should be better than it is given how much you earn and how hard you work
You argue about your spouse's spending habits (or your own)
You can't figure out how to manage or have joint or separate bank accounts
You want to be debt-free but don't know how
Benefits You and Your Partner Will Experience With Budget Coaching
Budget Coaching offers clients many benefits, but the most important include:
Gaining confidence in your financial decisions
Learning to choose and execute financial strategies that work
Learning how to communicate and how to listen to one another with an open mind
Learning how to set joint goals, create a couples financial coach, and achieve your goals together, with each other’s support
Establishing a sound financial foundation together
What to Expect When Working With a Couples Budget Coach
When you work with a reputable Couples Budgeting Coach, you can expect many things, including the following:
Discuss the Emotional Aspects of Managing Finances With Your Partner
You'll learn to discuss your emotions regarding your finances. Everyone comes to a relationship with a money story, and sometimes they don't align. Even in the strongest and happiest relationships, couples can still fight about money or otherwise have anxiety or tension around the topic.
When you work with me, I help you listen to one another and make decisions that will help you reach your financial goals. This includes achieving financial freedom, becoming debt-free, or just being on the same page with spending and saving habits.
Practice Healthy Ways of Communicating With Each Other About Money
There's are good and bad ways to talk to each other about money, and unfortunately, most people only know the bad ways. It’s not our fault — money is still treated as taboo, and we have few if any role models for healthy financial communication.
When you work with a budgeting coach, you'll learn effective communication techniques that help you listen to one another and encourage real change. It's not enough to say 'we both want financial freedom,' for example. Instead, you have to communicate to one another what that looks like and how you want to get there. And then you also have to hold yourselves and hold each other accountable for taking care of your money as a couple.
It's just like working with a personal trainer: you don't get strong enough to lift heavier weights overnight; it takes time. The same is true of learning to communicate. When you work with a Budget Coach who can help you reframe your thoughts and words, then you can make better decisions about saving, spending, and overall financial accountability.
Help You Understand Each Partner's Spending and Saving Habits
Working with a Budget Coach can help you to understand your partner's habits. As I said earlier, everyone has a money story that they bring to the relationship. It may or may not match your money story in important ways, which can hinder your progress in reaching your financial goals.
In my Couples Financial Coaching programs, you won't just talk about bills and how to pay them, but instead, talk about saving, spending, and expenses; financial goals for retirement; your children's college education, and getting out of debt. Together you'll learn to listen, talk, and value one another's opinions about money. Once you do, those different money stories go from contentious to complementary, and you can play to each person’s strengths to improve your couples finances.
Discuss Your Combined Values to Create a Joint Budget and Goals
Financial Coaches help you combine your values to create a budget and shared goals so that you can see eye-to-eye. It's not fun when you and your partner fight about money all the time. It causes resentment and may even make you do things you wouldn't usually do just to spite one another.
Let’s be real! And by the way, avoiding the topic, holding onto frustrations and resentments and the like, is no fun either.
That's not what a marriage is all about, and the right Budget Coach can help you both to see that and also learn how to improve your money talks and financial habits.
Plan Loving Ways That You Will Keep Each Other Accountable
Dealing with money can leave a lot of room for resentment, especially if one person takes the reins and acts like the boss. Working with a budgeting professional can help you learn loving ways to keep one another accountable without making anyone feel less than or like they can't live up to their end of the bargain, regardless of whether one person earns or spends much more (or less) than the other.
Dealing with money is a fragile topic. If you aren’t careful and thoughtful, you could end up acting like you know everything, even if you didn't mean for it to come out that way. Let me help you learn to talk to one another so that your words help rather than hurt.
Budgeting Doesn't Have to Hurt With Teamwork
Working with a Budget Coach is the best way to get your relationship or marriage on the right track. A Couples Financial Coach helps you set and stick to a budget while addressing any underlying financial behaviors, habits, and dynamics in your relationship. Money plays an essential role in every marriage, but it doesn't come easy for everyone.
If you’re interested in learning how we can work together as a team and create better money habits, please schedule a free consultation.
Want to level up your game around money in your relationship? My free quiz will help you learn your Couple’s Money Personality Type AND how you can grow from there!
Adam Kol is The Couples Financial Coach. He helps couples go from financial overwhelm or fighting to clarity, teamwork, and peace of mind.
Adam is a Certified Financial Therapist-I™, Certified Mediator, and Tax Attorney with a Duke Law degree and a Master's in Tax Law from NYU. He is a husband, dad, and musician, as well.
Adam's wisdom has been shared with The Wall Street Journal, the Baltimore Ravens, CNBC, NewsNation, and more.
