Tracking Every Dollar: How a Shared Budget Boosted Our Financial Intimacy
Manage episode 490797632 series 3661541
Ready for a serious nerd alert? Want your marriage / partnership to feel more like a financial team? In this episode, we break down our 3-month experiment using a shared daily budget tracker — and how it radically shifted not just our finances, but our relationship too. You may want to download the "Trying for Fi Budgeting Template" in our resources document and follow along!
We talk about:
- How tracking our income and expenses daily improved our marriage
- The budgeting spreadsheet we adapted (inspired by Mindy Jensen from BiggerPockets Money)
- How we customized it to reflect real family life: self-employment, estimated taxes, kid expenses, Bay Area living, and even line items for coffee and ice cream 🍦
- What surprised us — like realizing we under-spend on date nights and always have at least one large unexpected expense
You’ll also hear how this tool helped us:
- Make decisions as a team
- Understand where our money goes (childcare and mortgage: 44%!)
- Track our savings rate and estimate our “FI number”
- Feel less alone on the financial journey
If you want to feel more in charge of your finances, want to be on the same money page with your partner, or practice tracking expenses without overwhelm, this episode gives you real-life insight into how daily financial visibility can build intimacy and clarity.
Plus, we share tips for actually sticking with it — especially if you’re neurodivergent, busy, or not naturally spreadsheet-inclined.
#budgettracking #financialintimacy #firemovement #sharedfinances #couplesandmoney #networthtracking #dailybudget #financialindependencewithkids #moneyandmarriage #adhdfriendlybudgeting
Check out our Resource Doc:
And our IG account @tryingforfi
10 episodes