How To Have A Money Date
Wow, just writing that title felt a little reminiscent of Andy Anderson – How To Girl. Anyone else? How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days for anyone who spent the 2000’s living under a rock.
Along with our life-changing budgeting template (available for download HERE), nothing has been more influential in helping us hit our financial goals than our recurring Money Dates. For the first time ever, we’re breaking down what a money date is and how to make it as successful and fun as possible!
What is a Money Date?
A Money Date is our affectionate term for our regularly scheduled financial check-in meetings. During this time, we take a pulse check on our net worth, adherence to budget and financial goals.
How often should I have a Money Date?
This is entirely subjective. Try a few different cadences and see what makes the most sense for you! It should become clear after some practice. If your meetings are taking an excessive amount of time or causing undue stress, more frequent may be better. If you’re finding that not much is changing or you aren’t deriving much action from each meeting, perhaps less frequent makes more sense for you.
We personally have our Money Date once a month. We’ve found this to be a natural cadence to check in – allowing us to reflect on how the past month went and come up with a game plan for the month ahead. It’s frequent enough that we can quickly course correct if we start to get off track, but infrequent enough that we aren’t wasting time or getting too deep in the weeds.
What’s most important is that you determine your cadence and you stick to it! We like to put the date in our calendar and treat it as we would a dinner with a friend or an appointment.
How should I prepare?
It’s no secret that money can be stressful and often an area of life that people want to ignore. In order for Money Dates to be something that you look forward to and stick to, it’s important to get in the right frame of mind and eliminate any other stressors as much as possible.
I always plan my Money Date on an “Off Day” from the gym, so that I don’t have to worry about fitting it in after a workout, making dinner, etc. and risk being too tired to focus. I get outside for a quick walk to separate from the work day and get some fresh air before returning to my computer. Zach and I usually set aside our favorite bottles from our wine club shipments and reserve our Money Date to open one. We light a fancy candle and put on a good, but mellow playlist.
Whatever gets you in a place where you can be relaxed and look forward to sitting down to review your finances, do it!
Should I do a Money Date solo?
Up to you and your situation!! A Money Date is something that we recommend for every individual, regardless of your relationship status. If you’re sharing some or all of your finances with someone else, we’d definitely recommend making it a joint affair and aligning on spending priorities, financial goals and setting an open line of communication.
Personally, I had Money Dates entirely on my own up until Zach and I moved in together. Once we moved in together, we had a quarterly Money Date together and I kept my own monthly cadence separately. In these quarterly dates, we shared the big numbers that were relevant to the other person, discussed goals we had, asked the other person to help us to be accountable, etc. We did not review one another’s credit card statements, account balances, etc.
An example of the kind of conversations we had in our initial Money Dates…
Zach shared with me that he wanted to pay off his car loan by X date and asked that I help him to stick to the action plan that he had laid out to do so. We hadn’t merged any finances at this point, so him paying off his car loan didn’t immediately affect me, but it did directly impact how quickly we could achieve shared long-term goals like buying our home.
After we got married, we merged a significant amount of our finances. We each have our own “Fun Money” accounts, retirement and investment accounts, but we have combined savings accounts, “Essentials” accounts, insurance, etc. We now no longer have separate Money Dates and do it together each month.
You’ll decide what makes the most sense for you and your relationship – if you’re in one! If you’re interested in learning more about ways to manage money as a couple, how to talk about it, prenups and more, check out our Love and Money e-course HERE.
What do you review?
Our Budgeting Template (HERE) streamlines this process and makes it entirely foolproof. We have all of the formulas entered, formatting, monthly tabs and more, but, high level, we suggest reviewing the following in each Money Date.
· Net Worth – Net worth is essentially Assets Minus Debts. We have found this to be one of the best indicators of financial health and one of the most important numbers to track. You’ll want this number to be increasing over time.
o Assets include things like cash, checking/savings accounts, real estate, stocks, HSA accounts, IRAs and more. Anything that you own.
o Debts include things that you owe someone else. Student loans, mortgages, credit card balances, etc.
o We like to list each asset and debt individually and track each month, so that we can clearly see what the drivers in net worth changes were. If it increased dramatically, what asset grew or what debt did you pay down?
· Credit Score – You can check your credit score for free on CreditKarma.com. More information HERE on why credit scores are so important, what goes into them and how you can improve yours. We like to do a quick check at each Money Date and be able to quickly investigate or correct anything that may be wrong.
· Prior Spending – We update our actualized spending by category for the period since our last review. In our case, this means we are always updating the month prior with actualized values.
· Future Plan – We also make a plan (budget) for how we want to allocate our funds in the period until our next Money Date. Again, in our case, this means we create a budget for the month ahead.
· Goal Check In and Action Plan – This will look different for everyone, but examples could include…
o “Wow, I went way over what I wanted to spend on Dining Out. How can I get closer to my plan next month?” It could be that you just aren’t budgeting enough for your lifestyle and habits, but, if you don’t have the funds to support how you’ve been spending, you can use this time to come up with workarounds. Perhaps you’ll commit to going out less frequently, skipping dessert or finding less expensive restaurants if you still want to go out as often.
o “I wanted to pay off my student loans by April, but it doesn’t look like that will be possible at my current rate.” Perhaps your April timeline wasn’t realistic to begin with and you need to come up with a more achievable date. Or maybe it was realistic, but you overspent elsewhere and didn’t have the extra cash to contribute. How can you adjust or change behaviors to make this goal happen? Are there places you could cut back on? Do you have opportunities to make more money that you could use to make these payments?
The entire process is very straight-forward and, as with anything, after some trial and error, you’ll get into a rhythm and style that makes sense for you and your lifestyle. There’s no one size fits all approach. The important thing is that you take the time out to look at your finances and can make it a habit that you – at least somewhat! – look forward to.
For support to make it even easier, consider downloading our Budgeting 101 e-course HERE (template complimentary) or purchasing our Budgeting Template a la carte HERE. We are always here to answer any questions and, of course, tag us when you have a Money Date!! These are our favorite notifications to receive!!
