Uncommon Freedom

4 Keys to Managing Money Well as a Couple in Business

• Kevin Tinter

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Are you and your spouse struggling to manage your finances while running a business together? You're not alone. Many entrepreneurial couples face challenges like mixing personal and business funds, mismatched money habits, and lack of communication that can strain both the bottom line and the marriage.

But it doesn't have to be this way! In this episode, Kevin & Bekah, successful husband-wife entrepreneurs, share 4 proven tactics to help you master money as partners in business and life.

You'll discover:

  • How implementing the Profit First system can prevent financial fights and audit nightmares by keeping accounts separate
  • The power of assigning money roles based on each partner's strengths and personality (saver vs. spender) to reduce conflict
  • Why using a shared tracking app like YNAB or QuickBooks is crucial to identify cash flow problems and trends early on
  • The game-changing habit of a daily 5-minute "money minute" to ensure you're always on the same financial page

Kevin and Bekah also dive into the importance of trust in a partnership, navigating differing money mindsets, raising financially savvy kids, and creating an electronic envelope system to manage tax, profit, giving and more.

Whether you're just starting out or looking to scale your business, this episode is packed with actionable tips and inspiration to help you communicate better about money, achieve your financial goals faster, and enjoy the journey together. Tune in now to start writing your own success story as a couple in business!

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Speaker 1:

Hey there, Freedom Fighters. If you run a business with your spouse, you know that managing money can get extra complicated.

Speaker 2:

That's right. You're not just juggling your household finances, but your business accounts as well, and if you're not careful, financial friction at work can spill over into your marriage.

Speaker 1:

So today we're sharing four proven keys to managing money well as a couple in business, so you can boost your profit and your partnership at the same time.

Speaker 2:

So number one is so important. Mixing personal and business funds is a recipe for money fights and accounting nightmares and potentially audit nightmares yes.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we definitely do not want to do this. This is probably the number one mistake that especially a green new rookie couplepreneurs business owners will get into is this commingling of funds. So tactic one is implement the profit first system to manage your business finances. Bottom line is you need to figure out how you are going to make some money with your business. You cannot operate the way that the government does, exactly All right, profit first. So an action step for you, very simple, is to read profit first or hire a profit first professional to set up your accounts. All right. An action step for you, very simple, is to read Profit First or hire a Profit First professional to set up your accounts. All right. If you don't have an accountant, a CPA, someone who a professional, is going to do your taxes, you've got to hire someone. We highly recommend that you not try to do TurboTax or something like that yourself. You need someone who has experience that can give you true advice.

Speaker 1:

Yep, let's not be using the person flipping the signs on the streets business, please, for the love of all things sacred. Yes, absolutely Okay. Number two mismatched money personalities can lead to overspending or resentment in your business, and we understand this because we are a little bit different. I don't think we're on two way ends of the spectrum, but some people are far into the spender spectrum and some people are far into the saver spectrum, and so it's really important that you come together. So tactic two is determine each partner's money personality and assign roles accordingly, so spender versus saver. So you naturally handle a lot of our money, and it's because you love spreadsheets, you love to read investment books and you're also the saver, and so there's wisdom in that.

Speaker 2:

And I actually sleep a lot better, knowing kind of just exactly where our finances are.

Speaker 1:

And I sleep great, knowing you know where our finances are.

Speaker 2:

Hey, exactly no, that's the beautiful thing.

Speaker 1:

I mean again, we have a very high trust relationship.

Speaker 2:

We do. For a long time we actually used to do a lot of our budgeting and reconciliation together and what we realized is that actually wasn't healthy for our relationship. It was just like I would get annoyed with you, you would get annoyed with me, I would fall asleep and at some point we finally realized, like wait a minute, we there's a lot of other aspects of the household and the business that we operate separately, like we let each other operate in our strengths. So why am I forcing you into the accounting financial piece? We have conversations still, but it's I operate in my gifts and you operate in your gifts.

Speaker 1:

Now, if you happen to be a couple where both of you are spenders, this is going to be a trouble area.

Speaker 1:

You're going to need to get help, you need to get an outside person, you need to take some classes, you need to build an accountability somehow, so someone's taking charge. And if you're also on the other end of the spectrum and both of you are control freaks and you're more of the saver, then that also can cause a lot of conflict and it's time to figure out either which roles you're going to take or how you're going to come together. We have some ideas for that, but I just want to encourage you. In our case it's easy because we kind of have separate roles and it's not an interest to me and again, we have high trust. If you don't have high trust, then sometimes you just need to work on your marriage before you even can get to this step in the process, because if there's low trust in your marriage relationship, then it's going to carry over to other areas, including finances.

Speaker 2:

And we have seen that in our 13 years that being in business together it's a separating factor, like what we find is that a business makes a good marriage stronger and a weak marriage weaker. So if your marriage is not thriving and a weak marriage weaker, yes. So if your marriage is not thriving, get on that right away, because the business is not. It's like couples who are struggling. Having a kid is not going to automatically bring you together. It's going to create a lot of stress, most likely, right.

Speaker 1:

And so many times you need to work on the marriage as the absolute priority before you get into some of the things we're talking about. But your action step is to take a money personality assessment so maybe you both think you're one way or the other. But take an actual outside assessment and then divide the duties based on your strength and start to build that trust muscle, Trust muscle.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely every time. All right. Number three not tracking business income and expenses can cause you to miss important financial trends. So tactic three is use a shared budgeting app like YNAB, everydollar or GoodBudget to track personal and business expenses. So a couple other resources out there that we use for our personal budget. We use Quicken. Yeah, it's Quicken, it's Intuit is the overarching company and Quicken is the software. We's Quicken, it's Intuit is the overarching company and Quicken is the software we use for our personal budget. Quicken, or Intuit, also owns QuickBooks and we use QuickBooks for our business.

Speaker 2:

Highly recommend that you have separate accounts. Theoretically you could use QuickBooks for both your business and personal, or you might even I wouldn't recommend Quicken for a business, but theoretically you could, but definitely you need to have those separated. The other thing to remember, folks, is that your total gross receipts, everything that you earn, get paid for in your business. That is not profit, that is your top line gross and this is one of the biggest mistakes I see that we see with especially people who are new to like an at-home direct sales type of business. Let's say they make $1,000 a month, so $12,000 over the course of the year. You go ask them how much did you make last year? Oh, I made $12,000.

Speaker 2:

Yes, your gross receipts were $12,000, but that was not $12,000 of profit. You need to pay for your expenses, your internet, your cable, things like that. This is really important for people to understand. And then, of course, it's the T word taxes. If you don't save money for taxes, you are going to most likely regret it. If you make enough money. Now, the good thing is, we want to owe, because if you don't owe, then it means you're not really making any money and this is a conversation I was having with our accountant just a while ago is a lot of people spend so much time trying to figure out how can they not pay taxes? The reality is, if you're making money, if you're paying taxes, it means you're making money and that's a good thing. So don't be afraid of that.

Speaker 1:

Not to say that you shouldn't be tax savvy.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. Yeah, Take every deduction you legally can 100%. But understand that the more you make, the more you're going to pay and it's a good thing because you're making more.

Speaker 1:

That's right. So action step is to research the tools and commit to tracking your spending for 30 days. You really need to see that consistent trend, that consistent pattern, because we've seen people also judge things based on a good month, a good week, a good day, and I mean 30 days is probably the beginning of the tracking. I would not say that's an end point, that's a milestone. But start by tracking your spending for 30 days.

Speaker 2:

This is a leadership principle, right? It's a self-improving principle. If you want something to improve, you've got to track it. We were actually just today having a conversation with one of our kids. They're getting ready. They're already thinking about the next school year and realizing okay, I need to buy some school uniforms because I've grown and a lot of what I have doesn't fit. Our kids get a monthly stipend or allowance or budget. Basically, they have their own checking account that is earmarked and labeled for clothing and they get on the transfer from us every single month on the first of the month, and we've already had this conversation that you're responsible for all of your clothing. You can buy name brands expensive stuff for a pair.

Speaker 1:

or you can buy a pack of Hanes for, you know, 25 bucks for five years or something like that, yeah.

Speaker 2:

But the bottom line is you're expected to have to wear clothing and you're expected to have appropriate you know school uniform clothing. When it comes, and this particular son is like Holy smokes, I don't have enough money, and you know justifying it. And then what we did was we went back and looked at the last several months worth of statements and it was like, oh, there's a transfer, another transfer, another transfer. And many of these were probably frivolous transfers. And the downside to what he was doing is he was transferring it to a spending account where there's we have no idea what it was being spent on. So the bottom line is tracking is so important, it reveals so much and it's really important for you to track if you're going to have a business.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and then a side note, because we just mentioned our kiddos is this is so important. If your kids are little, if your kids are entering the teenage years, if they're adults, it's probably too late. Maybe you can take a run at it with your grandkids, but it's really important to teach kids financial literacy, financial responsibility and financial accountability while they live at home. And so you know, for us, the reason we do this and we've been doing it the last couple years, you know, really starting in the early teenage years is to teach them that every decision has to be defended by another decision and you know, if you divert your funds one direction, you won't have them for something else and you need to buy your needs before you buy your wants, and that you have to.

Speaker 1:

Whatever you put value in and spend money on, um is going to be, is going to how. What am I trying to say? People spend money on what they value. So many of our kids value champagne. Clothes on a water budget is what we say. So basically, they're again buying bougie underwear and then they have two pairs and they're wondering why they have no underwear.

Speaker 2:

And we do have a requirement. You've got to have a fresh pair of underwear for at least one day, and they are only allowed to do their laundry once a week, because we don't want them washing clothes every couple of days and wasting water.

Speaker 1:

So what we're doing is we're teaching them how to become a responsible adult, while they have a lot of years ahead of them, and we can tell you that at least two of our three kids so far have not done this very well, and the one that does it the best is that's just a personality thing. They're much better at saving. But again, we need to train them in time for them to make the mistakes at home as much as possible, so we can teach them the right way and teach them the long-term effects of man. This is a small thing you're learning on. Imagine if this becomes a house payment or a vehicle you're purchasing, or you don't have enough money for food, so on and so forth.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the goal is we want our kids making as many mistakes as they can yes, while they're children, as opposed to learning the hard way when they're adults, when they're ultimately responsible for every mistake that they make yes, and I can just tell you that kids nowadays they need a lot of practice on this.

Speaker 1:

So we probably did too, and I don't know that we had as much as our kids are getting. But let's really do the next generation a service and teach them while they live at home with us.

Speaker 2:

What's mind blowing to me is the average age of a female in the nail salon. Oh, my goodness, like if we go back to when you and I got married, 1998, the average age of a female in the nail salon. And then you go in there today and I mean evie has been a couple of times as a treat around her birthday or a special mommy daughter date, right, but it is mind-blowing to see the age of these girls who that's only half of it, because you're a guy.

Speaker 1:

so I mean there is the, not just the, but the hair extensions and lashes. It's a lot and I can just tell you it doesn't really compute for us because we're like, unless these parents are going to be paying these bills, well, into adulthood, they're training their kids to have a lifestyle that they are not going to be able to afford in most cases.

Speaker 2:

And.

Speaker 1:

I mean some people they do, they make their own money and that's how they spend it. So awesome, you know, if you're out there creating that kind of income. But it's crazy. And on the boy side of it it's more like, you know, wasting money on food and video games are kind of the trade-off.

Speaker 2:

Or ridiculously expensive and overpriced basketball shoes.

Speaker 1:

Sure, yes, that often happens in our household. So okay, number four going too long without money check-ins can allow cashflow problems to sneak up on you. Wow, we have seen this happen, unfortunately, when people just don't talk about it and they don't have honest conversations and they don't track it, and then all of a sudden, slowly and then quickly, basically, they've gotten themselves into financial ruin.

Speaker 2:

So tactic four is to institute a money minute at the start of each workday to review finances together. Now, I would say this is not something that we do anymore. This is a very elementary move right here, but I think it's a good idea. If you don't have good systems in place, if your finances are struggling. Um, it's really good to know your numbers and every morning, to check in, see where we at uh, so that you know is our expenses outweighing our income and our gross receipts or are we doing good?

Speaker 1:

And that close, careful observation every day for just a minute or two can save you so much grief in the longterm. So if you don't have good financial literacy between the two of you or high trust, or you're not operating in a positive budget system situation, then having these conversations early and often will absolutely help you.

Speaker 2:

It triggers awareness, it activates your reticular activating system, which is that you know, like, if you like, I'm a. I love Corvettes, so I see every Corvette that happens to drive by, where Becca or even many men might not notice them. So that's what starting your day with a quick look at your finances will do. It'll make you more aware of oh wait a minute, I was just going to make this business purchase, but do I really need to? Or just thinking twice about things like that?

Speaker 1:

So good.

Speaker 2:

And so action step number five or number four, is to block off five minutes on your calendar each morning to sync up about money. And I just want to close with a quick tip on something that I learned. This is another something that I learned from someone. It was a podcast I listened to and I don't remember who it was or what podcast. It was a podcast I listened to and I don't remember who it was or what podcast it was, but we have implemented this now for well over five years, I believe, and it is an electronic envelope system. So if you're a fan of Dave Ramsey, he talks about an envelope system, which, honestly, it's a great idea, but it's not very practical, especially for a business. So we actually created several business checking accounts and it's super easy to transfer from one to the other, but bottom line is you have a main I call it our operating account. All of our money goes into that operating account and all of our money ultimately flows out of that operating account. So Becca and I, based on our convictions and our values, we actually tithe a percentage off of the gross receipts that come in and we have a separate. This is part of the electronic envelope system. We have a separate business checking account that is for giving. We call it tithe, but bottom line is it's charitable giving and so that amount goes into that. The great thing is is that accumulates. We have monthly commitments. It accumulates over the course of the year and when we we typically have a somewhat of a surplus in there. So when we just felt called to do something or fund a larger project, we're able to pull from that.

Speaker 2:

The other, the other electronic envelopes you might want to set up in the form of separate accounts, would be for taxes. Depending on where you're at in your business, you may already be doing withholdings Beck and I are doing withholdings but we still sometimes end up owing at the end of the year. So we set aside a portion every single month and this way it's not an emergency when we do our taxes at the appropriate time. Another one is for retained earnings. This is something that, if you listen to Dave Ramsey Entrez Leadership, he'll talk about the importance of having business retained earnings, and this will vary depending on your structure of your business, but this would be an account that you put into to save for the future. So if you're in a business where buying equipment expensive equipment is a regular occurrence or you may be needing some type of property or expansion of a building or something like that. If you put even $1,000 a month from your operating account into your retained earnings account, you're earmarking it, you're setting aside so that you're not tempted to dip into it to go spend it on something that maybe isn't necessary. Another potential category is a bonus account, so we like to set money aside as the two 50-50 shareholders of our business. Once we have paid ourselves, paid our employees and met all of our other expenses, paid our taxes, it's always awesome to have some money set aside so that at the end of the year we can give ourselves a bonus.

Speaker 2:

Something else that you might want to do is funding your retirement. Funding retirement is absolutely essential If you're exclusively self-employed. You do not want to rely on the government and social security for your retirement, and there are some unbelievable vehicles out there for you to save a ton of money on taxes and to be in control of your retirement and to talk to your accountant. Obviously there are IRAs and Roth IRAs are solo K's. There are defined contribution plans and defined benefit plans throwing a lot at you, but talk to your accountant about these things and you know you're able. Depending on the size of your business, you might actually be able to fund up to six figures worth of retirement on an annual basis. We do not have that much just sitting around in our account. We have to save for that on a monthly basis. So then, once we have those numbers from our accountant and our third party administrator, we can go into that retirement account to write that check.

Speaker 1:

Wow, when you talked about retained earnings, it really makes me grateful for the low overhead business that we run. We don't have a building, we don't have any operating expenses, and so we actually we don't.

Speaker 2:

we do not keep a retained earnings account. We keep, basically, we keep our bonus and if we needed to do something, we would pull from our bonus account. The flip side is we have a massive emergency fund on the personal side. So if we ever had to do something, we could actually not take shareholder distributions and reduce our salary and live off of our emergency fund if we needed to. So those are just some ideas for people. Creating that electronic envelope is very helpful so that you're not running everything out of a single bank account. That's a recipe for disaster.

Speaker 1:

Yep, it just made me very grateful for our coaching business because, again, we have something in our hands that is inexpensive to run, profitable when done well and also makes a big impact on the world. So if you're looking for something, reach out to us. We're incredibly passionate about what we do and we're very good at it, and we'd love to have a conversation with you, but keep doing what you're doing out there All right.

Speaker 2:

So managing money well is an essential skill for couplepreneurs. At least you have to have a rudimentary knowledge, and then, if you don't, don't have the interest, you got to hire the people that can help you out with it. When you're on the same page financially, you free up so much energy to focus on serving your customers and growing your business.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely so. Your action step for this week is to choose one of the tactics we shared today and put it into practice. Maybe that looks like ordering the profit first book or signing up for a budgeting app with your first 30 day challenge.

Speaker 2:

And don't forget to check out the show notes for some additional money management tools curated just for couples in business together. And if you found this episode helpful, please take a screenshot and share it on Instagram, facebook and tag us at Uncommon Freedom Fighters so we can celebrate your progress.