When you make the decision to start budgeting, it is such an exciting time where you are extremely motivated.  You are convinced it will be life-changing, and see it as the best thing to do for your future.  Then you talk to your husband about it, and he is totally against it or thinks it isn’t necessary.  That is so defeating.  It completely takes the wind out of your sails.  How on earth are you supposed to get your husband on board to budget?

If your husband isn’t 100% on board, it can lead to you giving up on your budgeting dreams or even cause fights within your marriage.  All in the name of trying to have healthy finances!  To avoid losing an accountability partner, having your spouse sabotage your budget or growing resentment within your marriage; it is vitally important for you both to be on the same budgeting page.

So you know all of this, but how do get him to see things the way you do?  How do you get your husband on board to budget?  Well, I am fairly positive I went about this completely wrong, and I must be pretty lucky my husband is so tolerant of my annoying persistence.  We were basically trapped together in a hotel room for a month while we were waiting to close on our first home, and I decided that was the perfect time to start budgeting.

My husband was against it from the first time the “b-word” came out of my mouth.  So instead of following the advice I’m about to give you, I went about it in a totally abrasive manner of basically jamming the information down his throat.  You can probably guess how effective that was.  Looking back now, it was pretty comical how I read out loud to him when he couldn’t escape our room, or I would put on finance DVD’s for him to watch in the evenings (I think he slept through the majority of them), and I played podcasts whenever we were in the car together.  Honestly, I think I’m lucky he didn’t murder me.

Instead of trying to force your husband to get on board with budgeting; here are some tips to help him decide he wants to begin budgeting of his own desire.

Find out what his dreams are.

Have a real discussion about what he wants not only for his own future but for your family as well.  Once you know his dreams, talk about what it will take to get there. Turn some of those dreams into tangible goals.  Talk about what steps need to be taken to achieve a specific goal, and make that part of the budget plan. Once he understands what the goals are, it will be much easier for him to find the motivation and inspiration needed to start doing things differently.

If your husband is dying for an ATV, camper or vacation for the family; figure out exactly what he is wanting, and the associated cost for it.  Find out the timeline he would like to achieve it in, and then break down what steps need to be taken to achieve that. If he wants a vacation by next year, have him pick out what he wants to do, and get prices for it (he should at least be motivated to get prices because he is the one picking it all out).  Then divide that into how many months until the vacation to determine how much you should be saving every month. Make it REAL for him. This should be motivation for him to want to work on the budget with you to find the money to put toward vacation every month. The goal of dreaming together is to find the motivation he needs to believe in the budget working for your family.

This method keeps everything on his terms, and he is deciding that he wants to budget to achieve his dreams.  You are not forcing him to do anything. This is the best way because you will have a joyful and enthusiastic partner.

You might be thinking, “okay that may work for some husbands, but not mine.  He doesn’t have anything he wants that badly, and if he does, he will just put it on a credit card.”

These husbands can be a tougher nut to crack.  My husband absolutely fell into this category. If your husband is against budgeting and can’t be motivated by a shiny object, you have to find out what is keeping him from being okay with a budget.

You will need to ask him to be extremely honest with you and list out the reasons he doesn’t like budgets.

It is very common for you to hear:

• They don’t work.
• I won’t get to have any fun.
• I don’t want you in charge of my hard-earned money.
• They take too much time and effort.
• We don’t need one because we are doing just fine.
• It will be restrictive and keep me from doing what I want to do.

I heard all of these things from my husband.  Instead of really listening to him, I dismissed his comments and kept reading out loud to him (I should have just been banging my head against a wall because I would have had the same outcome).

When you hear these comments, you need to pause and really acknowledge what he is saying.  At the core of it, he is afraid he will be restricted, controlled and told what to do by someone else.  This is a really tough thing to change his mind on.  Most likely you won’t be able to change his mind.  Instead what you can do is ask him to give you permission to try a budget for a few months to see how it works for your family.  Give him the control by asking for permission.  Let him know this is on his terms.

As a woman, I crave financial stability.  I had to explain to my husband that I felt truly safe, secure and loved when we had an emergency fund and had knowledge of where every dollar we spent was going.  It seems a bit insane to men because they can be comfortable without those things, but for women, it is just part of who we are.

After having an honest discussion about your husband’s concerns/reasons for not wanting to budget, ask him to love you by allowing you to budget for a few months.  The most important piece of the puzzle at this point is, you have to ask for his input on the budget.

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Be prepared to compromise and share in the designing of your budget.

You need to find out from him what he needs throughout the month to not feel restricted.  The budget you come up with together will be an agreement on what you plan to do with your money for the month.  Try this for a few months and see how it goes. The nice thing is, as you start, if he feels super restricted in the first month, you can adjust things in the second month.

The point of this is not to climb Mount Everest in one day, so don’t stress if you are putting more money toward entertainment than you would like to right now.  The point is to let your husband see that a budget can be done, and he can still have a life.  Once he is fully on board and motivated, you both can decide how much you want to reduce your spending by, and in what areas.

Now, if your husband is super resistant to the idea of budgeting, and won’t even entertain a conversation about it.

Give him space.

If you try to force the issue, you will get nowhere except frustrated.  The last thing you want to do is rush into budgeting with an unwilling partner because it will cause you to resent them when they aren’t abiding by the budget, and this will lead to strife within your marriage.  You can voice opinions on why you want to budget and why you think he should want to do it too but only do this once.

Give your husband time to come around to the idea.

This can take a bit depending on the guy, so if you are impatient like I was, you can resort to trying to give them a tangible example.

If you don’t ever see him agreeing to a budget, you can start doing it on your own.

The caveat to this is, you can not expect him to follow any of your budget guidelines.  You have to have zero expectations that he will stay within budget. Remember, he doesn’t care and thinks it is a bad idea.

Here is what I did:

I have the personality type where if I really want something and believe it to be for the best, I don’t give up.  This doesn’t always work in my favor, but I don’t stop trying.  So, I let my husband off the hook and I decided to start budgeting on my own.

I knew my husband had wanted his own tools for years, and we had just purchased a house that needed some work.  I took a guess at how much he would need for nice tools (I know nothing about this stuff), and decided to make that my first priority for savings within our budget.  Within two months time of me just tracking our expenses and putting our money where it needed to go (I stopped asking to go out to eat and pared down our grocery budget), I saved $2,000.

We had been in our new home for one month and were talking about projects we wanted to start.  So I took my husband to Lowe’s one night and told him to pick out all the tools he would need for our home.  I told him to pick out good quality tools that would last a long time; not what he thought was a good price for the moment.  He looked like a kid at Christmas (it brought me such joy!).  He loaded up two of the flat carts with tools I know nothing about, but man, was he excited.  Then it was time to check out and he stopped dead in his tracks.  I asked what the problem was, and he told me he felt guilty, and couldn’t possibly spend $2,000 on tools.

This is when things shifted in our lives.  I explained what I had done with our budget, we had the money for this and the money was saved specifically for this.  He didn’t have to worry, he didn’t have to feel guilty, and we could pay cash for this purchase today.  It was that moment he realized the freedom; not restriction, that came from budgeting.

He wasn’t 100% on board still at that point, but he was at least convinced enough to let me continue budgeting, and he trusted the process.  After about a year, when I showed him what all we accomplished with our income, he was completely sold on the idea. He now talks to employees, friends, and family about the benefits of budgeting.

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No matter his personality type, there is one thing I know for certain will have to happen if your husband is going to get on board with budgeting:  He has to decide for himself it is something he wants to do.  You can not make him budget.  Start a conversation with him about his dreams, find out his fears about budgeting, give him space if needed or give him a real sampling of what life can be like when he budgets.  Always remember it is your family’s budget; not just your budget.  Always be willing to compromise and share in the design of the budget. What fun is it to be financially successful if you aren’t sharing it with the one you love?

Do you have any awesome tips for getting your husband on board to budget?