Financial peace is important for more than just building and maintaining a fat bank account. It can also spell disaster (or peace!) for your marriage.

Financial issues are one of the leading causes of marital disputes and divorce. And while that is a sad statistic to share, it is not all that surprising. Anyone who has fought about money, talked about money, or disagreed about money can certainly understand why it would cause a problem between two married people.

To avoid these kinds of fights, many couples decide to not join finances. But it is not clear that that means you’ll avoid every money fight — just a lot of them.

Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be that way. There are three things you can do to talk about money with your spouse without fighting:

1. Choose a neutral time to talk about finances. If you’re a morning person and your spouse is a night owl, it’s not fair to schedule budget meetings at 7AM. You might be bright and bushy tailed, but your spouse will already be on edge from losing valued morning sleep. Pick a time that works for both of you — that you’re both relaxed, well-rested, and interested in talking money.
2. Put a lid on the time for each meeting. Dave Ramsey sets a budget meeting limit at 17 minutes. For me, that’s way too short! I’d love to talk for a solid 90 minutes. But that’s something my husband really needed — a limit on the meeting time — to feel more interested in the conversation. Whether you’re the spouse who prefers a short meeting or a long one, keep it short and have meetings more frequently rather than long meetings every once in a while that try your spouse’s patience.
3. Understand where your spouse is coming from. Both spouses need to take time to share their relationship with money in the past and how their parents talked about money. Because you never know what influences your spouse is bringing into your relationship! If your spouses parent’s constantly argued about finances and never had enough money to go around, it’s no wonder he is reluctant to have those meetings once a week! It’s only by understanding each other’s background that you and your spouse will be able to set new expectations (new, peaceful expectations) for how your family unit will deal with money.

There’s no one right way to deal with finances within your family, but there are guiding principles that can make the conversation less painful. Stick to a time limit, talk about your past, and choose a neutral time to talk about finances to keep the fight out of your finances.

For more on how to deal with a spouse who yells at you, consider reading the article by the same name over at dinksfinance.com.

A friend of ours recently approached me about helping her establish a budget. While I was glad to help, a funny thing happened:

I had a really hard time actually helping her.

I created the budget for her in the spreadsheet my husband made for us, set her numbers, called her on the phone to explain how it works and how I have my formulas set but I couldn’t answer some of her questions about actually budgeting.

I’ve been really budgeting for three years now and I’m forever learning about it.

My budget is always changing but I am very much in tune with our spending. We’re sort of on a well-controlled auto-pilot. I totally forgot what it was like to be in those initial panic-ridden days when you have this burning desire to set the budget up and just make it work.

For instance, in our budget I input all of our fixed bills like mortgage, cell phone, debt but I do not have individual lines for stuff like groceries, gas, clothes.

When I first started budgeting I did, but we’re like a well-oiled machine now. I have become so proficient at knowing our spending on stuff like groceries and gas that I transfer the same amount of money every payday to our ‘’spending’’ account. I don’t bother inputting the individual amount, rather I budget a ‘’variable/personal’’ amount which I pay to ourselves in the form of the transfer.

Once the money is in the other (spending) account I do not track every penny like I do out fixed expenses but I do monitor it closely.

This system works for us but until I had to answer questions about it I didn’t realize how personalized it was.

It has taken us years of spreadsheet making and re-making to get good. We made many mistakes and learned from them. Eventually though we got the hang of things.

To an outsider, like my friend, we look like budgeting geniuses but it was a long road to get where we are.

It’s only been the last year that we’ve become really good. Like anything, budgeting takes a lot of practice. You can download as many Excel templates and make as many chicken-scratch budgets as you want- and I fully encourage you to- but only time and intimacy with your personal spending will make you a ‘’good budgeter’’.

I am all to glad to help my friend but at the end of the day I know if she wants to get real about her spending there are a lot of stressful days in her future, spending hours in front of her computer as she stares at Excel and her online banking. I just hope she sticks it out though because the personal satisfaction, and stress relief, that comes with living on a budget is life changing.

How long did it take you to get really good at budgeting?