I already wrote on this blog about How We Manage Money as a Couple. After we defined that system, our financial life became much clearer and less stressful. In this post, I also want to share how we review our finances every month and how this meeting improves not only our financial lives, but our relationship as well. We have been doing this for more than 4 years.
We started doing it because money conversations felt much easier when they were regular, predictable, and written down. Also, we did not want money to be an issue in our relationship, so talking about it every month felt like the right way to help.
One of the main benefits of both having a document that explains how our finances work and a monthly meeting is that it keeps things explicit and recurring. Keeping it in a document outside both our heads helps us see things clearly without assuming what the other person has in mind about the finances.
Having a document is the first step. The second, and most important, is to stay consistent over time. Everything worth doing requires consistency.
The Monthly Wrapping Up meeting
To help with consistency, we have a monthly meeting. We call it “The Monthly Wrapping Up”, which is a jokingly direct translation from the Portuguese “Fechamento do mes”.
A typical meeting is simple: we review the money first, then talk about travel, work, and life, and reflect on the past while planning for the next month.
We have a recurring event in our calendar for the last day of the month, which we are always looking forward to for many reasons.
The first step in this meeting is to open a bottle of wine. Once the wine is served, we talk about money. The wine idea is to make it more fun, relaxed, and informal. Regardless of whether the month was good or bad, we toast to it. If you don’t drink, I would recommend doing something with your drink of choice. Without it, it would just be a boring financial meeting, so the drink brings a lightness to it.
We usually open a bottle of wine before talking about money and life.
Then we sit on the sofa, open the computer, project it on the TV, and get started. How you do this part is up to you. You can do it in the kitchen, in bed, or wherever works best for you.
The financial part
The order varies a bit, but we usually go through our revenue for that month. Most months it does not change, but sometimes there are bonuses or extra cash that affect our revenue.
Then we go through the fixed expenses, which are rent, internet, car expenses, etc. This usually does not change much either. If there is something extra or if we are not happy with it, we discuss changes.
For example, if one of us gets a bonus or some extra cash, we usually decide together whether it should go more toward investments, travel, or just go through our normal funnel.
Now that we know the income and expenses, we move to the part that summarizes everything. Our spreadsheet already has all the calculations done based on the fixed percentage we set once a year.
In this part, we see how much we will invest that month. After that, we check the travel deposit. We check how much we will save for travel, and we also check how much we have in our travel piggy bank. That allows us to know if and when we can take the next trip or how long it will take to pay for the travels we are planning.
The last thing is to look at the amount we each get for our own expenses. That value is then added to our Splitwise group.
We also check our investments and how they are doing. We check what we invested last month and how we are tracking against our goals.
The life part
By the time we finish the money part, we are probably halfway through the wine, and then we move on to the more general life discussion.
There is no script here. It usually depends on that month and our perspective on the future. But we usually discuss our travel plans, our plans for life, whether we are happy with our current setup in general, how each of us is doing at work, and what our future looks like.
I would argue that this is the main part of the meeting, as it has the most impact. After we get money out of the way, deeper subjects come up.
For us, it is like monthly couples therapy.
Summary
We have been doing this for more than 4 years, and this meeting has helped us be more aligned financially and in our relationship as well.
This is how we do it, and we keep adjusting it to fit our changing lives. You can use this as inspiration for your own meeting or not, but I think having a dedicated time and space where you can talk about money and the relationship is important.
If you want to try it, start with one recurring calendar event and one shared document, then adjust from there. The goal is to find whatever works for you, but the recurring nature of the event is important.
I hope this helps your relationship.