Chapter 2
Improving Your Relationship
with Money
In This Chapter
Achieving financial goals with your partner
Staying positive
Dealing with setbacks and seeking help
Getting out of debt and budgeting
J
ust as you have relationships with the people in your life, you also have
a relationship with money -- how you earn it, spend it, lose it, waste it,
save it. It's important to take a good, hard look at how you use and misuse
money. Otherwise, you'll never really get a grip on what happens to it, and
you'll always be left scratching your head, wondering what happened to your
earnings.
In this chapter we help you analyze and improve your own habits and pat-
terns regarding how you handle your love-hate connection to your cash.
Most people are not in the boat alone, and finding financial common ground
can be difficult when one spouse is a spendthrift and the other's a miser.
Being smart about money is a choice that's easiest to live with if both part-
ners share the same general financial goals, even if their money styles are a
bit different. If you both want to save money, get out of debt, live within your
means, and attain mutual long-term goals, it's important to discuss your dif-
ferent approaches to money management and find some common ground.
Otherwise your frugal efforts may be voided by your partner's poor spending
habits.
Children can also be difficult to win over. If you listen carefully, you can prob-
ably still hear the echoes from the latest whine-fest: "But I want it now!"
