This is the final part of a series on setting financial goals with your spouse. Our first part helped you figure out what’s important to you, our second part talked about the importance of defining goals that are specific and measurable, and our third part discussed planning the your steps to reach your goals.
By now, you and your spouse should have a specific goal in mind, know what’s required to meet your goal, and steps planned that you can take to get to your goal. Assuming you’ve taken steps to start moving toward your goal, the two of you should sit down on a regular basis to examine where you are in your progress toward meeting your goal. And this is exactly what this article will address.
How frequent checkups should be
The two of you will need to decide how often to talk about your progress. I recommend talking with each other on a weekly basis for the first month if your plan requires you to change spending habits. If you simply needed to change where automatic transfers were going in order to fund a college savings account or a retirement plan, there won’t be much to talk about except on a monthly (or perhaps less-frequent) basis.
The caveat to this is that if you’re still in the process of setting things up to meet a long-term goal (e.g. some of the administrative things that need to be done to set up a retirement account), you should probably get together on a weekly basis to talk about how this is going.
Once both of you agree that you’re making progress, you can cut the frequency of your checkups to monthly or even two or three times a year.
What to do if one spouse wants more frequent checkups
I usually advise couples to talk about things on the more frequent schedule. As the two of you make progress toward whatever goals you’ve set the more concerned spouse will probably become less anxious about your progress.
What to do if you aren’t making adequate progress
Questions to ask at this point include, Were your goals too ambitious? Did you specify what the two of you were going to change? Did some outside force affect your progress (such as a drop in your investments’ values)?
If your goals were too ambitious, revisit the section on defining you goals and the section on defining specific goals and think about what you are able to do to move toward your goals.
If you specified what you were going to change but the changes weren’t made, perhaps your goals were too ambitious, or perhaps it was a struggle to make the necessary changes because you’re having a difficult time changing habits. If the difficulty is more in the old-habits-die-hard category, it’s time to do some serious evaluation of what’s important to you.
What to do if one spouse is making progress and the other one isn’t
This is where things can get tricky. The range of reasons of why this might be the case is broad, but here are a few reasons why one spouse might be attacking their savings more aggressively than the other (for simplicity’s sake, Sarah is not making steps toward the goal and John has aggressively cut spending):
Sarah may not have realized how much was being spent on coffee or lunches with friends. If this is the case, perhaps the two of you need to re-think how you track your budget. Looking into an online solution such as Mint.com or Wesabe.com that automatically downloads your financial transactions and sends you reports on spending might be in order.
Perhaps Sarah doesn’t see the family’s financial situation the same way that John does. In this scenario, Sarah may agree on the numbers the account statements show, but she and John disagree on the impact the numbers have on their family and goals. In this case, an objective third-party might be necessary. Finding a fee-only financial planner through NAPFA that can walk them through the realities of their finances could be well worth the expense.
Sarah might not have fully committed to the goal and accompanying plan. This can be for several reasons. First, John may have “told” her the goal and plan rather than going through a process of figuring out what they both want. If this is the problem, John should sit down and listen to his wife and let her share her thoughts and dreams about without judgment.
Second, Sarah may think that the steps to reach the goal are so difficult that she doesn’t even start. This is a case of saying, “Yes, I agree with the goal but not the plan to get there because I don’t think it will work.” This is the equivalent of two people being lost in the forest in the middle of a rain storm and they disagree on how to find civilization. One person may say, “I think we should walk over those mountains to the east of us,” and the other person says, “What about those palm trees off to the south? I think we should head that way.”
Realizing they need each other, Mr. South agrees to try Mr. East’s way and they both head off toward the mountains, but Mr. South grumbles along the way and walks very slowly. Both men have the same desire: to get out of the forest and into the comfort of warm clothes, but their plans for success are different.
Some people who are very goal oriented feel that when the goal isn’t able to be achieved quickly there is no point in starting down a path toward it. In this case, Sarah needs to re-frame her outlook to make mini-goals out of the small steps she is taking toward the family’s larger goal.
Evaluating progress should bring you together, not tear you apart
As the two of you move toward your goal together, realize there will be slip-ups. Each of you will make purchases that are outside of the plan you agreed to. If this goal is requiring a major shift in your habits, accept that there will be challenges along the way, but if you can overcome these challenges, not only will your finances be stronger, but most likely your relationship as well.
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Oh yes, regular check-ins have been so helpful for me and my husband. I do most of the nitty-gritty of the bill-paying and such, and so we really need to communicate about money regularly, or he gets left out in the dark.