5 ways to convince your partner to reduce spending

At Super-Advice we are about all things financial, but more importantly, helping people understand so they can get ahead financially.

One of the issues we come across when working with people and trying to help them be better with their money and ultimately achieve financial freedom, which is just a place where you don’t have any financial worries, is helping the wife, the husband, the partner get on board and essentially helping them reduce their spending.

So these are five ways to assist in convincing your partner to reduce their spending.

Understand their spending habits

Before you can convince your partner to reduce their spending. It’s important to understand why they spend money the way they do. Talk to them about their priorities and their motivations when it comes to spending.

This will help you approach the conversation with empathy and understanding, and that is super important because if you go about it the wrong way and I can all see you feel you nodding right now, you are gonna get told off by your partner and it’s not gonna go well. Empathy and understanding without being condescending.

Good luck.

Create a budget together

Get involved together. Work with your partner to create a realistic budget that takes into account both of your incomes, both of your expenses, and your saving goals or just your life goals. You need something to travel towards. This can help both of you see where your money is going, and identify areas together where you can cut back.

Focus on your shared financial goals

If you don’t have any, maybe it’s time to have a conversation of financial goals that you can have together. Therefore, it’s easier for you to work together. So discuss your shared financial goals, such as saving for a down payment on a house, or paying off all your debt using the snowball method.

Find out about the snowball method of debt reduction in previous clips, and remind your partner, reducing spending now can help you achieve those goals faster.

Find alternatives to expensive activities

Look for low cost or free activities that you can do together, such as hiking. Having a picnic where you make the delicious food at home together from food from the supermarket doesn’t cost as much as going out and buying it.

Explore your city on foot. There’s all sorts of things that you can do. You can even just google free fun things to do this can help your partner see that you don’t need to spend a lot of money to have fun and to make memories. And really what you’re trying to do is snap old habits and create new ones.

Be open to compromise

This is super important, and this is just great relationship advice in general, if your partner is resistant to reducing their spending, be willing to compromise.

Maybe you can agree to cut back on certain joint expenses such as dining out.

But allow some wiggle room, otherwise it’s just gonna get too regimented and that’s going to cause resentment.

An example of what you could do is if you are looking to cut expenses, go out for dinner. But agree that you will each have an entree, but share the main.

Thai or Indian restaurants typically have bigger dishes and it’s easier to do this trick with.