When you meet your partner-in-crime, with whom you share a lot of common interests, you also get to be with your ENABLER. This may lead to more expensive experiences, especially if both of you love splurging on things you like. So, how exactly can two big spenders survive when they get together? Four years later, my boyfriend and I are still trying to figure it out completely, but here are some ideas that have worked so far:
1. Set up a couple budget, with space for random fun
Being foodies can rack up both the bills and the calories. So apart from blowing our money on dining, we also end up spending a lot on gym memberships. Contributing a reasonable amount every start of the month and living within that budget has been very effective in controlling both our spending and our eating.
2. Mind your monitoring style
For us, it was a mobile app called “Spending”, but monitoring could also be done on paper, excel sheets, and many other ways. The key is to religiously list your couple costs.
3. Prioritize your expenses
Travel is another thing my boyfriend and I are quite passionate about. But since our couple budget is finite, we had to find expenses we can do without. We decided early on to dump the usual blow-outs for our birthdays and invest on trips instead.
Money is a really awkward topic to tackle when you’re still dating. But in reality, we all feel the wallet pains (yes, even the girls do!). So begin with a simple suggestion to try out a couple budget for a month, and discuss changes should it be needed. In our case, we started with P8,000 each but realized it was too tight so we moved up to a whopping P15,000, which turned out to be too high to sustain. After a few months, we settled on a more comfortable budget of P11,000 each. It’s a different kind of teamwork but it really helps, especially in planning for the long-term.
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