However, learning how to budget as a couple isn’t just a good thing for your financial health. If you can figure out how to budget effectively together, then you can also improve your chances of a long and happy relationship too!

To help you get started, here’s how you can take the stress out of budgeting as a couple.

1. Determine Your Mutual Needs Together

The first step is figuring out what you both need to dedicate money to each week or month. This means looking at the essential expenses like car payments, groceries, utility payments, and mortgage expenses. Crucially, even if only one of you drives, if you sometimes get places in that person’s car, you should be playing a part in maintaining it.

When you’re first dealing with your finances as a couple, you might need to adjust some of your expectations so you can ensure you’re on the same page. For instance, just because you want to save more doesn’t mean your spouse or partner will want to. You’ll need to find a way to meet in the middle. The initial aim is to prioritize your needs, then come back to your “wants” later.

2. Create Goals You Can Both Get Behind

When you know how much you have to spend each month, the next step is to figure out some long-term goals. These are the targets that will drive your saving decisions. Creating the right plan can help you to figure out when you can next buy a house, or when you can start a family if that’s what you want. It will also help you to plan for retirement or discuss your dream vacation.

It’s up to you what kind of goals you want to set for your family. The key to success is ensuring that you’re both passionate about your long-term target. Some good beginners goals include:

• Paying off your debts as quickly as possible
• Buying a new home or putting a deposit on a property
• Building an emergency savings stash

3. Think About your Individual Needs

When you’re living as a couple, the needs that apply to both of you need to come before individual expectations. However, once you’ve set a goal for the two of you, you can begin to talk about individual wants. For instance, your partner might want to maintain their gym relationship, while you’d like to spend more on clothing and haircuts.

Ultimately, you’ll need to be willing to compromise here. Both of you won’t be able to afford everything that you want each month in most cases. However, you should be able to find the cash for something important to each of you. Don’t give your spouse a hard time when they share what’s important to them. As long as your partner sticks to the amount that they’re allocated for their “wants,” there’s no need to argue about how their cash is spent.

4. Track Your Spending Via Budget Meetings

Budgets are rarely something a couple can set up and then simply forget about. You’ll both need to play a part in tracking the way that you spend cash. This could mean downloading a financial app that watches your cash for you. Alternatively, it could just mean coming together for weekly discussions about how you’re getting along when it comes to achieving your financial goals.

Remember, there’s a chance that you or your spouse may make a spending mistake on the road to success from time to time. Although you need to show your disappointment during these moments, don’t go over the top. We all make mistakes when changing our habits. Look for a way to recover from the issue as quickly as possible and get back on track.

5. Always Make Decisions as a Team

Finally, when you’re living together as a couple, make sure that every decision you make about your finances, is considered as a team. If someone needs to take out a loan, compare your interest rate options together. If your partner needs extra cash to pay for something important, discuss the impact that him or her taking that money is going to make.

Simply discussing your financial habits can go a long way towards improving them.

How to Take the Stress Out of Budgeting as a Couple is a post from: When Life Gives You Lemons. Did you like the post? Follow me on Twitter, like me on Facebook, or hop on over to my blog and leave me your feedback.

However, there are ways to cut costs, save money, and still pay your bills on time. Here are a few tips to help you save money during deployment.

Servicemembers Civil Relief Act

If you aren’t familiar with it yet, the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act gives legal rights to anyone being deployed and also extends some coverage to the spouse and family members of the service member. This is a big deal if you are trying to save money during deployment. Instead of paying bills you aren’t using (like car insurance, phone bills, etc.) you can pause these contracts, or may be able to break them altogether.

Save Deployment Pay

There are many different ways that a service member can receive pay while deployed. Sometimes, you may qualify for additional compensation as well (based on the type of deployment and if the service member has a spouse/dependents).

There are times where deployment pay may be lower than traditional paychecks. However, if you find yourself earning more during deployment, throw the extra money into a savings account that you can’t easily touch unless for an emergency. This will allow you to save money during deployment without losing out on too much income.

Lower Your Bills

Going along with taking advantage of the SCRA, you can find plenty of other ways to lower your bills during deployment. Almost every flexible bill, like utility bills, phone bills, and even car insurance can be lowered. Sometimes you may have to explain your situation (again, that’s where the SCRA comes in), but more often than not you’ll be able to lower your bills with just a simple phone call.

If you can’t lower your bills, try cutting them out altogether. Do you really need cable? Can you do without the second car payment? Try seeing how you can simplify your finances so you can save money during deployment.

Use Military Discounts

Now, this doesn’t mean to look down on small businesses or companies that don’t offer military discounts (even if you think they should), but this does mean to take advantage of the offers when you get them. Military discounts can save you cash on almost everything, from food to getting your car serviced.

If you are a spouse dealing with deployment, military discounts can make a huge difference in your savings. Just don’t forget to have your military ID to prove who you are.

Cut Out Unnecessary Expenses

As much as you may like eating out or getting haircuts, sometimes you have to buckle down and cut out unnecessary expenses. If you are losing money during deployment, cutting out expenses that aren’t necessities can add a few (or a few hundred) dollars into your budget every month, and every little bit counts.

Go through your budget from the last few months, and see where you can make some changes. I guarantee that there will be something that you can cut out, just for the short term. Then, take the money you are saving on the expenses, and throw it into a savings account.

Get a Part-Time Job

If you have exhausted all other options and are still struggling while trying to save money during deployment, it may be time to apply for a part-time job.

While not ideal, especially if you have kids, a part-time job can help you stay afloat and save more money. You don’t have to keep the job forever, but at least having it short-term can help you save more.

There are so many ways to save money during deployment, but these should start you on the right track.

How to Save Money During Deployment is a post from: When Life Gives You Lemons. Did you like the post? Follow me on Twitter, like me on Facebook, or hop on over to my blog and leave me your feedback.

This guest post on budgeting is by Ryan Bonaparte, who last wrote for Add-Vodka in 2012 about common financial mistakes that young adults make. Ryan is a long-time writer and author, delving into topics including personal finance, technology, and career pursuits. He lives in the Boston area with his wife and fiercely independent cat.

Budgeting can be an amazing tool.

From the moment you begin to track where you’re spending your hard-earned money, budgeting can help you begin to understand what your habits are, where your priorities lie, and what goals you want to set in place. That’s a powerful place to be in life, as you can move past surviving paycheck to paycheck, and on to building a security net and further wealth.

I often talk to my friends about the power of moving my money away from the things I don’t care about (a bigger house) to the things I do care about (a nicer car). While you can’t have everything because of a budget, you can put budgeting into an action a plan to have anything with a bit of planning and hard work.

But efficiently earning and spending money is not the meaning of life. There are other factors to consider when deciding how to spend your money, and more importantly what to do with your life outside of budgeting.

The Impact On Your Quality of Life

We all know the stories of cutting out $4 coffees to save for your retirement. And while this might be a good place for most people to save money, if you truly love and look forward to your morning latté, then maybe that $4 is money well-spent.

The same might go for paying for cable. Cutting out true pleasures (when we’re honest with ourselves about what truly falls into that category) is a surefire way to regret the journey.

Impact of Budgeting on Long-Term Goals

Not every goal is a financial one. Sometimes it comes down to what you want to be able to say you’ve accomplished 50 years from now. If traveling is big on your agenda, then a short road trip might make financial sense, but a flight to another continent might fit better with your goal of being a world traveler.

If you want to plan a retreat for your friends, spending a few extra dollars to cover a struggling friend’s expenses might make the experience much better than if you just said tough luck.

The Impact On Your Family

Families are an essential part of our lives as humans, whether it’s our biological families, or those that we’ve come to call family, spending quality time with them enables us to face some of the inevitable challenges that arise. If we are eliminating time with our families to earn more money or to save on travel expenses, then at some point we need to ask ourselves why we’re even working in the first place.

There’s nothing wrong with budgeting, and many who live without a budget are doomed to suffer because of it. But don’t let blindly following that budget remove the experiences that we all really live for.

When Budgeting Goes Wrong and Doesn’t Fit Your View of Life is a post from: When Life Gives You Lemons. Did you like the post? Follow me on Twitter, like me on Facebook, or hop on over to my blog and leave me your feedback.