Financial Abundance Meetings for Couples

Do you desire to feel aligned and empowered around your finances as a couple?

Being able to have positive and constructive conversations about money is an important component to creating a life that you love together, and definitely key to creating financial abundance as a couple.

That’s why Matt and I have bi-weekly Financial Abundance Meetings.

This gives us a dedicated time to check in with our goals, stay clear and aligned around our spending, saving, and investing, and talk about what needs work and what the next steps are.

Talking About Money

It is common for couples to avoid talking about money.

This makes sense, since most of us didn’t hear our parents having constructive conversations about money, or receive any sort of training in school about effectively managing our money (let alone managing our money within the context of a relationship).

In this blog post I’ll give you the 8 steps that we use for every one of our Financial Abundance Meetings.

To some of you, having a structured meeting about money might sound like “work” - like something you’d do at work but not at home. It might not sound like much fun. And if you’ve been avoiding talking about money together, then there will likely be some uncomfortable or difficult conversations at first.

But after you’ve cleaned up house, this bi-weekly financial check-in can actually be a really fun time, and it will help you feel like you are in the driver’s seat of your financial lives.

Make it Fun

I encourage you to put fun and feeling good at the centre of these meetings.

That might feel more challenging at first, but continue to ask yourselves what you can do to make the process of managing your finances as a couple more fun.

In our 8 steps for a financial meeting, you’ll see that half of the steps are there to help you feel good throughout the process. We start the meeting by getting into a great state, and we end the meeting on a positive note too.

This will not only make the process more enjoyable, but it will also help to train your nervous system to associate managing your money with feeling good and having fun.

If you are approaching your money management from a place of feeling frustrated, anxious, or even just indifferent, then those are the feelings that you are reinforcing in your relationship with money.

Re-associating managing your money as a couple with feeling good and having fun will help you to create a more positive relationship with money. I used to dread taking care of money related tasks, but now I actually look forward to our bi-weekly financial meeting, because we always make it a fun time!

Preparing For Your Meeting

Invite your partner to have money meetings. Share why it is important to you, and how you believe it will positively impact your relationship, your finances and your life.

Schedule a recurring time that works for both of you to have your money meetings. You can decide what frequency will be most supportive for you, and it may change over time. When we first started, we did our money meetings weekly, and over time we shifted to bi-weekly. We chose the 14th and 28th of each month, because those dates work well for making sure our cards and other payments are made on time.

Whatever you decide together will be best for you, schedule it in your calendars and honour the appointment time together.

Make sure you give yourself enough time (we give ourselves an hour) without distractions. Put away the phones and emails, and give this meeting and each other your full attention.

I recommend setting up a shared folder for your financial meetings, and inside having the following:

• Your meeting outline (the 8 steps I’ll share below)
• Notes from your meetings
• Financial Checklist Spreadsheet

Open up your meeting outline so that you can follow it during the meeting. We find this important because it is tempting to jump right into talking about the details, but the first few steps of the meeting are extremely important to set you up to have a constructive and fun experience.

Financial Abundance Meeting

Here are the 8 steps that we follow for every one of our money meetings. This what we found works best for us after at least 8 years of having money meetings, so feel free to use our format, and adjust it over time to suit your needs.

Financial Abundance Meeting Outline:

1. Raise Your Vibes
   
   Take some time to get into a good state before you start the meeting. This can look like putting on a fun song and having a dance party, doing some burpees, or whatever else makes you feel great. For us, this is having some intimacy time to get the sizzle going and feel connected before the meeting.
   
   
2. Gratitude
   
   Start your meeting on a positive note. Share 2 or 3 gratitudes each with each other. As you do, don’t just say the words, but really feel the gratitude and appreciation deeply. Listen to your partner and share in their gratitude as well.
   
   
3. Celebrate
   
   Take turns sharing 3 celebrations each. These should be things you are celebrating about yourself, the ways you’ve grown, things you’ve achieved, progress you’ve made, or anything else you are proud of, especially in the area of finance.
   
   
4. Check-In from Previous Meeting
   
   Check in on the goals and action items from the last meeting, which you can keep in the shared folder. Celebrate the ones that you finished, and revisit the ones that are still in progress (you can come back to them in steps 6 + 7).
   
   
5. Financial Checklist
   
   Our folder also has a Financial Checklist Spreadsheet, which has a list of our bank accounts, credit cards, and monthly payments in it. The credit cards have the statement date and due dates listed so that we can easily see when they need to be paid. (Note: we use nicknames for the accounts and credit cards, not the actual account or card numbers - it’s best not to have those all one document in the cloud!).
   
   In this step, open the financial checklist, and tag-team the list, checking in on your accounts, credit cards and payments. Completing any actions that you have for each, and check them off as done in the spreadsheet.
   
   Read more about the financial checklist below.
   
   
6. What Needs Work
   
   Once you’ve taken care of all of those details, turn your focus to what needs work in your finances. Bring a spirit of curiosity to this. As you identify things that need work, remember that these aren’t things that are wrong, in fact - you’re doing something right by talking about it and seeing how to improve!
   
   Things that need work can include specific things that came up as you reviewed your accounts and cards (like canceling a subscription or looking into an unknown charge), big picture things (like deciding to increase the amount you are putting into investments each month, or deciding to open a new savings account to save for something important), or they can be personal (like working on your relationship with money, or how you feel about saving, spending, or investing).
   
   
7. Goals and Next Steps
   
   Now that you’re clear on where you’re at, and you’ve identified what needs work, write down your clear goals and next steps.
   
   Write these in the notes in your folder so that you can easily find them for the next meeting, and also make sure to write them in your planner, calendar, or wherever you will see them and act on them.
   
   Make sure you are clear on who is doing what, and ask each other if there is anything you can do to support the other.
   
   
8. Celebration and Gratitude
   
   Once you feel like you’ve covered everything, close the meeting out with some celebration and gratitude! First and foremost, celebrate what went well during the meeting (and the fact that you did the meeting, that’s huge!). Then end the meeting by each sharing at least 1 gratitude - about the meeting, or each other, your life, or what you are creating together.

Financial Checklist Spreadsheet

The financial checklist spreadsheet was a huge upgrade to our financial meetings and the way we collaborate.

Before we had the spreadsheet, there was a lot that was floating around in our heads. We didn’t have a system, so there was often a feeling in our minds like we were forgetting something, or “oh no, did I miss that payment?”.

Get it out of your head and capture it all in one place! This will put your mind at ease and make it so much more efficient to check in and make sure you’ve taken care of everything.

Then, in between meetings you can forget all about it. Having a system that works for you and captures everything in one place works wonders for peace of mind around your finances.

If you want to learn more about money, money mindset, and communication, check out these blog posts and podcast episodes:

Blog posts:

Is Your Money Blueprint Hurting or Helping Your Relationship?

7 Tips for Co-Creating Your Future as a Couple

Turning Conflict into Growth

Podcast Episodes:

Want to Retire Early?

Designing Your Abundance Portfolio

Financial Empowerment as a Couple

How to Live your Dream Life, Together

If you desire some support in this process and you feel that coaching might be right for you individually or as a couple, learn more here.