UNLOCKED: The Secret To Managing Money As A Couple

💸 Welcome to The Vault Unlocked – a special bonus series of The Vault Podcast, where we deep dive into the big money topics no one wants to talk about.

Money is one of the biggest reasons couples argue—and even break up. But what if it didn’t have to be that way? What if managing money could bring you closer?

In this episode of The Vault Unlocked, we’re diving into:

- The top money challenges couples face—and why so many feel financially incompatible
- How money date nights can transform your finances and your relationship
- A real-life story from a couple who went from clashing over money to finally feeling in control
- Simple steps to start your own money date night routine and tackle financial goals as a team

This is your guide to turning money from a source of stress into a powerful tool for connection. ❤️

💬 Have a topic you’d love us to unlock next? Email us at hello@thevault.com

👉 Subscribe to Financielle for honest conversations about money, and let’s rewrite your money story together.

The Vault is an entertaining yet thought provoking podcast that answers our community’s dilemmas and confessions surrounding women and money.

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Financielle is a female focussed finance app helping women to take back control of their money, ditch debt, increase savings and invest in their future.

Recorded and Produced by Liverpool Podcast Studios
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Transcript

0:03

Welcome to the vault unlocked, where I take a deep dive into money topics that no one wants to talk about. And actually, in lots of households, no one wants to talk about this. No one wants to talk about money. Money can cause so many arguments, so many stresses. Sometimes it's like stress between you both and there’s arguing, if you're in a couple and you arguing about money, and sometimes it's private stresses where you want to raise something or mention something, and this is like an elephant in the room. So we're going to be talking about the concept of money date night. You know, the key to managing money together. Now, this is for everyone. So if you do not have a partner right now, you should be listening. Because money date night can also be with yourself, it can also be with a friend. It could be with a family member. It's about intention, about where your money is going, what your goals are. And the extra issue is when you're in a couple, this is doubly hard because you have two different money personalities. It's hard enough if we know a little bit about our money personality. When you throw someone else's personality into that, you know, we already have different views on, you know, cleaning and food and shopping and taste in sport or not, sport, you know, like we already have lots of variables in personality and throw in we manage money every single day. Throw that in there. You can really see how you know it's a massive cause of breakups between people, the breakdown of marriages. And so if you are in a couple that manages money really well, I hope that you align with what I say. But there’s stuff that you can kind of pick up in and use and will share, like some success stories from the community and from ourselves. If you are not in a great place with your partner when it comes to money or just generally, you know, we I hope this might be the little bit of a lifeline, or the encouragement that you're not going to be in a great place with this person if you're not aligning on what is just such a fundamental issue. And like I said, for those people not in a relationship, enjoy the quiet, enjoy the peace that comes with the idea that one, you can kind of get yourself in an amazing place to manage money. But secondly, you know, when and if you do start a relationship, you can be prepared. And I'm not saying that on the first date you should say, how much do you earn? How do you manage your money? Do you use credit? Would you like to travel and maybe travel? But like, you know what you're into? What are your life goals? What are your career aspirations? I feel like slowly does it, but you definitely early on in the, dating process should get a feel for how, your potential partner manages money because it will just bring a whole lot of heartache later if you can't get on the same page. So that's what we're going to lean into today. Let's dive in. We're going to look at how couples can navigate money challenges together. And the the solution really is simpler than you may think. So firstly, we're going to open with some stats. I know you like the knowledge bombs, that we, we gather and you can kind of use to build your own views on, 62% of couples reported that disagreements about money are their most frequent conflicts. So the majority of couples said that the thing that they argue about the most is money. 33% of couples feel they are financially incompatible. Now, that might be for a number of reasons. It might be, quite a difference in earning. You know, there could be a real high earner and a real low earner or a real no earner and a high earner, you know, depending on the situation in the family. But it could also be spending habits. It could be one's a spender, one's the saver, one's frugal, one's indulgent. Different tastes of things, just different, you know, values when it comes to money. And 70% of millennials report that money is the leading cause of stress in their relationships. We talk about this often, but given the environment that people are in right now, especially millennials like I'm a millenial so I’m going to say ‘we’, when you are navigating, you know, potential parenthood or parenthood, buying homes like the ratio of earnings to home prices is just crazy. The, just the general cost of living, the student loan, the pensions not being as good as they were just like loads of stuff. It's like a it's, what's it called? Like a melting pot. Melting pot? I mean, like a pressure cooker. That's what I mean. I got my, my appliances wrong. It's a pressure cooker of a situation. So you throw relationship dynamics into that. It is no wonder that people have disagreements about money. So I want you to come from the space that if you are that person, and you don't think you and your partner see eye to eye. Please be mindful of the situation that we're in and and how difficult it is. And because if you can come at this with a real, perspective, like an empathetic perspective, like really trying to understand the other person's point of view. Again, I said, this is like therapy. It really is. You’re gonna have the best chance of making this work. Because if this is what you want to do, then, that's what you have to do. Another caveat to this is, if you are new to Financielle or if you are super geeky on your Financielle journey and you're going super intense, please be mindful that your partner may not have read all the blogs you've read, listen to the podcasts you've listened to, been in the community, made the changes so you could be kind of making quite, I don't know, rash decisions financially because I did that definitely. Like, okay, I'm stopping this. Okay. I'm stopping this. Okay. We're not doing, we're not going to go to the football anymore. Oh, sky's going I've cancelled it because we're on a budget and I, I love the enthusiasm, but I think, remember, they haven't been on the journey you've been on. I think especially as women, men and women listen to this. You all my favourites. But women tend to think about things a lot in their head when I. When I speak to couples about this, the woman is typically, this is the same in same sex relationships. Actually, it's just usually a woman that starts this off. Is thinking about it in the head over and over and over again, and then deciding to do something and, to you, the person that's been thinking about it for a long time, like we've been thinking about this for a long time, but to the person that this is new for, it's kind of like hang on when like, where does this come from? You suddenly doing, making these rash decisions. And so I think it's definitely women have thought about things and we've like created them in our mind. And we've had a good plan. And then we deploy the plan and it can shock people. So this is a caveat. We will I am going to do an episode. I think this one, this one would be good to share with the partner. But we might do one which is like send this to your partner because it'll explain why you’re being crazy about money. So these are some of the most common struggles that couples have when it comes to managing money. One of them is often one partner feels like they're doing the financial heavy lifting. This might be, in terms of responsibility for earning for the family and providing for the family, and that provides its own complications and weights. It could be though someone doing like the decision making, which usually flips against the woman. So it's usually scenario one person in relationship will take the role of doing the budgets or doing the spending, making the decisions about, okay, this month are we going to buy the kid's school shoes, are we going to do the holiday or are we going to do this activity? And oh, it's someone's birthday. Oh, it's your mother's birthday. Oh, I'll get your mother's present. Oh should we do that? And like, that is like the mental load of the person that takes on the admin should not be underestimated. And this can kind of build up sometimes a resentment, you know, especially when, we point out to people when we go, you’re doing all this work, unpaid work, managing the money. And so that can be a leading cause of a struggle. Another one is, you know, communication breakdowns about saving or spending or goals. So money is precious to lots of us. And the idea that money will be taken out of savings to go do a particular thing that may not have been discussed, whether it's an impulsive thing or whether it's like, you know, whether it's a sensible thing, just the idea that spending and saving decisions, there's a breakdown of communication. You know, you might think we're on a saving saving streak. And a focus to do something. And then you, you know, your wife in the corner has kind of then suddenly decided we're getting a new dinner set or suddenly decided, that everyone needs new coats and they might need new coats, they might not need new coats. But there was a decision over here. And then it comes over here. So that's another, you know, very typical struggle. And the final one is, you know, a disconnection due to priorities. I feel like it's really hard to meet in the middle and it's really hard to. You can't have everything at the same time. And so having having those debates or even arguments about what's more important must be really difficult because we want what we want. And but it's like anything it's not just money that, you know, this this happens in relationships all the time. We have to think about it. So this is the kind of challenges that couples are facing where they're having to try and manage money. So this is why a money date night or the concept of money date night really can help people to achieve success in life as well as money and financially. But in life they're going to feel better, which means their marriages or their relationships are going to be better. They're going to feel independent enough that they don't rely on the other person, but they're going to feel safe enough that they can build a budget and build finances with another person. And in fact, we saw that couples with shared financial goals report higher satisfaction in their relationships, with 87% of these couples say they're content in their marriage. That is absolutely skewing what you know, how content most people are in marriages. You know, we've seen about the breakdowns and we've talked about that and breakdown of marriages, but the fact that people with shared financial goals doesn't say shared finances, it just says shared financial goals feel more content. And I just every time I've seen this from Financielle users and in the community, I can attest to it. I've seen firsthand how close and happy people are when they're aligned financially, and I've seen when people come through this process and do money date nights how they grow together. If they were kind of a bit far apart on this issue prior. Right. So what the hell is a money date night? We're we're ready. I've convinced you. I've convinced you and your partner to put a time to put aside this time. And take on a money date night. And it it's what I said at the beginning. It's really a time for couples to align on money goals. It's a time for them to reflect on their current situation. Like, I don't think we need to do a performance review. And we could do I mean, be creative, let us know what you do. But, you know, have a little reflect on how you've managed money so far, how your money goals have gone so far, how tough the year has been, how amazing the year's been. Like I said, this end of year and due to money date night between now and the end of the year of you listening to this like fairly live or fairly early the next week, it's it's come out, it's great time to do it. But September is also a great time to do it. June is a great time to do it, but it can really help you reflect on one on what's been. You can also use this as an opportunity to have those conversations that you may have been putting off, you know, building up the courage to say things like, I think I'm contributing too much to financially, like I'm struggling, I've not got a pension over here, and I feel like we've been in this 5050 thing. Can we have to talk about it? Or it might be, I do the food shop and I'm really struggling and you make me feel like I'm overspending, but can you do it with me? Can you see? You know, or I think you’re spending too much money on bikes or triathlons or, football or whatever. The thing is, got I've really, really skewed to the sport angle there. Sorry, but that, you know, and I'm over here trying to make sure that we've we've got the basics and, you know, you're spending all this those kind of conversations, the difficult ones. It's a perfect time to have them at the money date night. I feel like I've seen a trend recently on TikTok, which is we listen and we don't judge. And it's where couples or like mother, daughter or whatever, make confessions to each other. But you're not allowed to shout at the other person. You have to say, we listen and we don't judge. And so maybe that's a tip to use it for money Date night. This is definitely about having that judgement free zone, this open conversation. You know, you worries you, stresses the things that you get excited about. All those things, and you really and building trust around mooning around each other because it's that safe space. It's got to feel like a super safe space to have a conversation and they work, because what happens is you have that alignment on, goals. And when we're going to hit them and, and what we've agreed to work on. Because again, a big thing about Financielle is we want to work on one thing at a time. That's why the playbook works so well. People work through, survive, build and grow. They don't jump They don't skip steps. You kind of nail one thing and it's the same with money goals. Like you can't do too many at once. You just going to get overwhelmed. It's just like any kind of goal. You'll definitely see stress reduction, especially when it comes to money. Because things are planned out. There's less tension because people have put cards on the table. There's less surprises. And you just definitely get a feel for what each other's priorities are. and it really brings you closer together Because I found that when the more money date nights call and I had, I would pre-empt things that I knew would make him stressed. So, I'm going to make it up. But I think at one stage, for example, we used to have £75 each in the fuel budget and, when petrol prices came up, when fuel prices went up, we didn't increase the budget. And like we were just about this is a pathetic example, but it's just showing that I knew it would get him stressed to not have enough in that pot. And we had the money elsewhere, but it was kind of I just never thought to move the pot. I could tell he wasn't filling up our tanks if he'd do both or his. I would foresee that and go, I think we, I think you'd feel better if that was higher. And even though the budget was tight because we didn't like I said there was room for it, but we had to move it from somewhere else. I said to him, I think we're a bit lax on, food and groceries and I do the food and grocery shop so I was like, I will move some money from that section to the fuel section. Even if we have a bit of a buffer because I know it'll make you feel better. And so I felt like that was something that was a caring thing from me. Again, pathetic example. But there will be bigger things like that where, you know, when you decided to put money in different places or set certain goals, you have to be aware of how the other person's thinking and feeling. So, Carl, for example, I know early on when we were managing our money together, investing really, stressed him out. He liked the pension investing. It was the extra stuff that was like he wanted money in cash. He wanted high savings. And so for a period of time, especially prior to starting Financielle and starting a business, when I was in a much more secure role, and a higher paid role actually, we should have, in my view, been diverting more of our excess money into investing in stocks and shares ISAs But at the same time, I had to respect the fact that we were in, you know, maybe 3 to 4 years into our relationship. And, and whilst that my that may seem a long time to some people actually, we also navigated, you know, new babies and weddings and a house renovation. So cash was flying out towards our goals. And so once kind of all that settled, I felt that Carl needed time to build up those reserves. Even though we had some, I still felt it. And so the compromise for me is, okay, let's do that. And by the way, this is when there was no interest being made on any savers. Like it was a nightmare. And I think it because I did that he would have felt I, you know, lean towards and that was more important to him. and put my preference to one side to the point where then when he got kind of comfortable and now he's the ‘shall we put money in investments, should we lean into that? Should we put money into that? But it's because he trusts me, because I slowed stuff down for him. And so if anything, he's like the other way. But I think you'll find that there'll be something in your relationship or in your future relationship where you have to be amenable to the character of the other person, to the background. You know, any previous relationships they've had or in any previous, like, money history they've had that could have impacted how they think and feel about money and just take into consideration. And I think that's true of lots of things, not just money. So maybe preaching to the converted, but I just wanted to show some money examples of how that could be so nice to do for each other. Okay. And then lastly, do you know what? It make you a team like it's a team. It's a team sport. Budgeting is a team sport. It's not one person left to make all the decisions on their own. And the other person for the back, like backseat driving going like, why are we doing that? And why is that? What's in the budget for, eating out like, we need more than that? Well, you weren't part of the decision, so. No, no, you become part of the decision, it’s a team sport. And again, we like our team-mates, were on the same team. So then let's get to planning the money date night. Lots of different variations to this. When I asked people in the community like how they manage money date nights a little while back, there were variations and I think there's people at different stages of their money journey. So if you are at a super frugal part of your journey because you've got high interest debt and you've no emergency savings and basically the shit’s hit the fan, the last thing you need is a big, expensive steak dinner to represent money date night. In fact, Sarah, who has an amazing Instagram called the Copper Beach House. She has she did a money date night and she filmed it and like, kind of we did that little bit with her and, the, you know, it was home aesthetic. It was so beautiful. There was like candles and a table and like a nice ambience. And, you know, we'll sit down and do it together. We'll get a glass of wine. The other extreme is like, physically, you know, investing in a meal, going, getting a babysitter, getting out of the house if you have kids, obviously. But go. I'm pointing this way if you're on YouTube because, it was the restaurants in our village, that’s why I’m pointing that way. We're going to go there and we're going to have a nice, nice drink and a beautiful meal, and we're gonna value this meal. This time is not spent on our phones. or it's not talking about logistics or what we're doing next week, it's like, what are we doing? What's important to us? And, what does our budgets look like? You know, and then you might get your phones out if you want to do a budget, but I would recommend not doing the budget when you are in middle of the meal. But maybe you come out and you read it and you do your budget after that. But think about your location. Think about time again. You need. I feel like there's a regular regularity to this, like a bit of routine. And so we do our budgets, at two different times, which is like weird. the default one is evening.

We will do around 8, 8: 19:17

30. Once we've got the kid, little kids, especially in bed. And we'll get up at the kitchen island behind me here, as you see, we'll get up top. I'll get a phone. He'll get the phone. I'll get the Financielle app up on my phone. He'll get the banking app on his phone. That's when we do the budgeting. But actually what we tend to do is come sit on the couch and chat about where we're up to first, and then we'll move to the table and we'll kind of do the actual budget, because it's usually around budget night. And so, the odd time we've done budgeting, not connected to a money date night, we'll do it in the morning before, like before the kids waking up as a kids waking up, like, kind of like in bed, one person’s getting dressed like we're coming backwards and forwards and it's still a team effort, to it, but it's not often morning because the kid like especially a little one, he is just on it from first thing in the morning. So that was more when he was a bit of a baby, actually. It's changing. So we like the evening one. It needs to be that both of us have space. We're not on our phones doing other things. we’re not working because we work often in evenings, were not doing logistics here and there. We're not too tired like sometimes we've let it slip and it's like nine, nine, 30 and I am, oh my God, I'm so tired. Then I am rubbish, I cannot function, I don't know how Carl has this energy where like he's a morning person and he’s a night person and so sometimes I'll have to say to him, I can't like I want to because you want to be so fully engaged so you’re gonna pick a regular time that works for both of you. It's in sync with both your both your routines. And you make it like a ritual. And again, we have that ritual where we kind of sit here. Maybe that's why I might have a cup of tea. And then we go, go on to the couch. But it might be like a date, a date night out, but it's, you know, you might have a Sunday morning walk where you do it. You might go to a cafe for coffee on a Sunday and go do that. Whatever. Pick a routine, make it a ritual and set the right mood. So I've talked about this just then, but make sure there's no distractions. Try not to do it around children. I don't mind them hearing about you budgeting, that's cool, we'll talk about that separately. But just be all in. Listen to your partner. Let them be able to listen to you. You know, no judgements, no comments like set the scene and say, like, are we going to do it? We’ll both do it properly. And you need like an agenda, but without having like a list that you follow where you can put this in your notes if you want to take them first. But I think you start off a little bit like it's hard if it's your first one, but a little bit about goals first. Like what are we working towards? If you’re doing the Financielle playbook, we help you set those goals out and they will be structured in a way that might be are we saving our mini emergency fund at the moment? Aren't we? Yet we want that because we want peace of mind. we're going to ditch credit card debt together. Do both agree? We both happy? Do we know why we want to ditch debt? We both happy with that right? Okay. That's the goal we're working towards at the moment. It might be our next home. That might be the thing that you're saving towards and working towards. And it may be children. You know, that's a big a big financial and and life goal. But you have to plan for that for lots of different reasons. But it might be I dunno like building up savings because one of you takes that job and you're going to support each other through that. It might be navigating money and maternity leave. It might be you want to buy an investment property. You might want to start a business, loads of different things. Start with the goals and throw goals onto the table. Because what you can do is just get all the goals out there. Just order them. You will have more than one of them. But I think coming to an alignment on where you want to be needs to be at the head of the meeting at the top of the meeting, because all decisions then fall from that. If this is your first money date night, the second thing you need to do is think about how you have been managing money previously. So not pointing fingers, but making sure you both knew what kind of wasn't going well. No, it might be that you just literally followed the end of your nose, you didn't do any planning and kind of, you know, nothing happens. So nothing successful comes out of that. But it might be that you set really strict budgets and they were failing. It might be that you were trying too many goals. So have a little reflect on before if you if it's your second date night or more, or if you are managing and doing Financielle together. Have a little think about how last month went like, did we make progress? And it might be, and Carl and I've done this before, We sat down and gone, okay, so we said we would overpay the mortgage by, £1,000. And did we hell. Like, didn’t we enjoy ourselves last month. Whoa. Didn't we enjoy those meals out? Didn't we bust the budget there? Can you believe we needed four tyres? You know, that's a Sinking Fund gone. You know, we had to put money back in there. Have know we've done that where it's not all, it’s poking fun a little bit, you know, god we had one in July. Was it July. End of July. We, we did a money date night in Portugal because we booked a lot. Last minute holiday to Portugal. So the money date night started off with okay. So we know our goals are to overpay mortgage, finish off the emergency fund and overpay the mortgage and how do we do? Well, we're here in Portugal, so we didn't do that did we? And does the kind of like fun that you can have with each other because again, no judgements because both people made the decision to do the Portugal holiday. Same same for any any other examples. Also we're going to start on reflecting about how it went. And then we then need to celebrate the wins where it went Well you know we joke about stuff that didn't go well. But also the stuff that did go well. So didn't do we do well. We didn't used Deliveroo. How amazing are we, or we got to the end of the month with money left over, we’re ace, like that is hard. Well done guys and so celebrate the wins. It's a good time to think about, your net worths. Now, the net worth depends on when, how regularly you want money date nights and when they fall in line. Ours fall in line with budget night really, So what then happens is I do we do our budgets on around the 25th of the month. So it's not very at the end of the month because that's kind of when payday is. It makes more sense. What that means is, we do our net worths on around the third of the every month. So we do one net worth in the Financielle app, and we do it then because payments go out on the first it may or may not have here is I don't know why I picked a random date like the third, but it means that any money has been moved around into savings, into investments, pension contributions have been made, etc. and so as long as it's the same time every month, It doesn't really matter. It's kind of like if you’re on a fitness journey and you're weighing yourself like try and pick the same day or you know, the same scales or whatever, like you just want a bit of consistency. So, we do that and that's an extra bonus date night for us. Date moment, money moment. Because we do the net worth together again. I might make him do a sneaky video where we record us doing our net worth. I’ll have to decide whether we actually share figures or not, because it is quite a personal thing, isn't it? But but actually showing how we do it. And that's another moment for us to be like, wow, didn't do we do well? So you could possibly incorporate chatting about your net worth together in the money date night? But if not, use it as an extra bonus one. And then lastly, you talk about what we want to achieve with the next budget, even if you're not physically doing the budget there, and then you know that’s you basically closing the loop. So what did we do? We, we we reflected on our goals. And then after goals, we looked at how we'd done, rightly or wrongly, good or bad. We then reflected on our net worth and we're like, where we at? are we moving in the right direction and strategically? So there's like the short term isn't what just happened. Then there was the strategic. And then we think about the next budget and how we're going to apply our excess towards the goals that we mentioned at the beginning. So you've got this lovely circular moment to the money date night. I do think they should be shortish. I think 30 minutes max on the night is stretching it, but on the juicy stuff maybe a little bit longer. But you don’t want this to be like a meeting that drags on and, you know, you kind of looking at the clock and going, how much longer are we talking about this? Like, you need a finite period of time. So then you could both switch off and get that fuzzy feeling about how well it's gone, hopefully. And and you know, you can dream in your head and daydream and think about the next thing that you're going to do, but you don't, like go all intense for all that time. And so that's like in a nutshell. In your notes, you’re gonna do money date night. You're going to set the place, set the time, make it cosy, make it routine, make it judgement free. You are then going to talk about your goals. Reflect on how money management had gone in the past like money cycle or just previously. If you've never done it before. Also thinking about your wins. You're going to reflect on your net worth again. Head to the app for help if you want any help with net worth. I really want you all to track your net worth. We'll talk. We'll cover it again separately. And then talk about your budget and where your excess cash is going to, this month. And I think I wanted to tell you a story about a couple who, I did a customer interview with, with a customer, and she told me about her and, her experience because I think it helps to, I don't know, like, well, I'll just stop talking. I'll read it. She'll. You can make your mind up. So, yeah, for years, this couple struggled with money management. She had a tendency to overspend on clothes and consumer goods. Whilst her husband's scarcity mindset really often led to clashes between them about budgeting, they frequently found themselves in their overdraft. They had very little control over their spending, especially on food. their turning point began with a practical shift meal planning. After using gusto for four years and accumulating a collection of recipe cards, they started grocery shopping at Asda. Reusing these cards for inspiration. This brought their food budget down to an average of £70 per week, which drastically reduced their unnecessary food expenses. The couple also decided to take a deep dive into their finances, so they sat down to do a budget together for the first time and there was resistance between them. The husband initially dismissed the exercise, claiming he knew his spending habits and it was her problem. However, when they reviewed the actual expenses, looking at overspending, he was way more aware of the problem and where the overspending was. And it wasn't all there. she suggested that, her husband tracked their spending. So instead of like, literally offloading the budgeting and the tracking of the actuals to him, to her, sorry. He would help. And they agreed to sit down and do a monthly money date night to review their progress, with her husband taking this shared responsibility for the budget and this completely collaborative approach made a significant difference. They are no longer in their overdraft at all, and they feel way more in control. But that this pivotal moment for them not only improved their money situation, but it brought them closer together. And when I asked about their advice for other couples who’ve kind of been on this journey where they were really arguing about money and pointing fingers, and they said, we really recommend people take the time to plan, communicate really openly, safely but openly, and give each other roles in managing money. And so that shared responsibility means that, you know, you sharing the decisions, you're sharing the mental load, but you share the wins as well. And, they said it's never too late to turn things around. And I just think that is a massive like, light bulb moment for so many, people, if they can get aligned on money. It's amazing how many other things kind of are freed up. I think there's a couple of hurdles that you might come across. So I'm going to go into some of them lightly. Now. One of the things is your money. My money, our money. And what we have found is when instead of talking about your money and my money, it's our plan. So even if you don't actually combine your finances, you don't have to pour all money into the same bank accounts. I personally have a shared bank account and we both have our own bank accounts, but that's just because we’re rinsing the interest rates. Like other than that, all our wages go into one account and all spending goes out. We share children together. We are married, very, very clean relationship where things aren't as clean. It is fine to have like a joint bills account as lots of people have, but do the planning together. And being really mindful of, like budget contributions. We've talked about so much on the vault before, but 5050 is the worst way unless you earn similar. If you truly are in. Now we're talking like a longer term relationship of 1 to 2 years plus, like we're not talking like first week in, shall we look at bill splits? But it's really being mindful that you’re a partnership and you’re a team and at different points different partners struggle financially, struggle emotionally, struggle health wise. And so if you can put all money in a pot mentally, even if you don't physically, you don't really look at my money. and your money, you look at our plan. Also, I think I talk this a little bit at the beginning, but if you're opposites and so being mindful of that. So think about someone's mindset. How are they coming at this. How are they thinking about it. Once sees money as a tool to enjoy life. The other one might see it as a safety net. And you just. If you could meet in the middle, you can come a long way. And sometimes, Financiellers, it means backing down a bit and being a bit more patient and being slower, which we don't like. I know we're all aggressive and quick and want to get going, but just slowing because time is going to pass anyway. So if you make more change, lifestyle change, little and little more often, then all in and then it falls off the wagon, it's better. I think setting clear boundaries as a couple, I’m gonna say it, if someone's an impulse spender, you're going to need a spending pot, you're going to need one, and then you won't end up using it again. Something that we've talked about quite a bit, but you need the other person to be okay with you having a spending pot. And it fits in the budget and it doesn't derail any of the goals. And then that's guilt free spending and so there can't be comments like, oh, she's off again, or oh, here he is again with a coffee. No. Like, let's just not take down our partner for what you might perceive as a weakness might be that little bit of joy, as long as it doesn't derail the plan and it fits in the budget. Respect them and don't point fingers at them. Set boundaries about what we can joke about and what we can't joke about. another tip is to use tools to keep yourselves accountable and keep you both on track. And again, lots of couples, share the Financielle app if they want to do the budget together. But even just that will help you stay on track. But if not, you can get a piece of paper. You can get a book you can do a spreadsheet like anything to just keep you both accountable. And then more importantly, communicating regularly. So if you're running a budget together, you know, keeping a track of your actuals, making sure that you stay on track for a budget, making sure you’re high fiving and saying aren’t we doing really well is super important. Because again, this is a process and you going be rinse and repeating every payday for the rest of the time that you’re together. So you may as well enjoy it and settle into it. I personally have found that money date nights can bring a couple together. I've seen it in my relationship, but I've seen it in countless other relationships throughout Financielle. People have thanked us as a team and they shouldn’t, but thanked us for bringing them and their partner closer together. Also, people that have been through quite a toxic relationships and that are single feel better prepared for If they go into a new relationship, you know they can safely manage money with someone without putting themselves at risk. And there's so much content on the app in that we can help on out further on that. But just this idea that it's okay to love again and to be close to someone, but have your boundaries in place. You can still manage money together and not kind of combine all this money and, and get yourself into a situation where you’re particularly stressed, so this is this time between Christmas and new year that you could put in a money date night. You can set the day, you can set the scene, you can do all the things that we've talked about today and let us know how you get on. I want to see it on Insta or in the app. I want to see pictures of the date night. I want to see what you thought about it, what your partner thought about it, what the outcomes were. Share because you could inspire someone else to also, do the same thing. Now, before I lock the vault, as ever, I would love to hear more topics about what you'd like us to talk about, so please do email in to hello@thevault.com. Feel free to share this episode with other people that you think might find it helpful. It may even be your significant other. Apologies if you're that significant other. And you've got to the end and you're like, okay, right, I've got to do this now. But again, we might do something special for you at some point to explain this whole craziness that is the world of Financielle. And lastly, it's just a disclaimer, but the Vault unlocked is just a chat around life and money. It is not financial advice. I'm.