In this post we cover how to get your spouse onboard with paying off debt!
Couples tend to shy away from the topic of debt, but it’s a topic you need to discuss if you want to live a debt-free life. Paying off your debt alone might seem impossible, but working together with your spouse can make it achievable.
The only trick now is getting your spouse on board with paying off debt. There are many ways to approach the conversation about paying off debt to help them understand the benefits.
We’ve put together a few ideas about starting the process of paying off debt with your spouse and getting them excited about accomplishing it together.
How to Get Your Spouse Onboard With Paying Off Debt
Set Goals and Make a Plan
Having a goal to pay off debt is the bigger picture of what you’re ultimately trying to accomplish. To make the goal more attainable, you and your spouse should begin to specify the goal and make a plan to achieve it.
Set a target date when you want to have all of your debt paid off. Keeping a date in mind in beneficial because it eliminates the thought of debt repayment being a lifelong task. Thinking about debt is already overwhelming, so setting a target date of when it will be paid off will make you look forward to a bit of peace of mind.
You must do this together so that the goal is something you both want to accomplish.
Making a plan is essential to pay off your debt with your spouse successfully. Take some time to sit down and map out your current financials – determine the household income and how much debt you both currently have. Figure out the best schedule for repayment to still allow for maintaining a comfortable lifestyle.
With a target date and a step-by-step plan for achieving a debt-free life, it makes the overall goal appear much more achievable.
Communication
Money is one of the biggest areas of conflict for couples – couples try to avoid the topic as it can cause many disagreements when it comes to differing views of it.
If you’re hoping to get your spouse on board with paying off your debt, you have to put your differences aside and create an open communication about finances in your household.
Marriage is built of trust and communication, so you should add finances to the discussion.
It might be hard to start talking about the reality of the debt situation, ways you might have to change your lifestyle or plans on paying it off. In most cases, if you’re working on getting your spouse to agree with paying off debt, the chances are that they have a vastly different view of how they plan to manage the debt.
Don’t try to force your perspective on a debt-free life onto them, but listen to their views about debt. Most couples will agree that debt isn’t ideal, and you can begin talking about how best to handle it.
Communication about debt and finances is an ongoing task even after it’s paid off. Start the conversation early about debt and ease into making an action plan to pay it off.
Get Visual
We all have that overbearing debt figure floating around in our heads, but it might not even seem real until we see it written down. Most people never plan to get out of debt and maintain some level of debt for their entire lives. That figure in our head just becomes another thought that we hope doesn’t come back to haunt us later in life.
If you’re serious about getting rid of your debt, it’s time to get visual. As you begin to talk with your spouse about debt, share your debt numbers. Write these numbers down so that you can see the real-life picture of the mountain of debt you’re about to conquer.
As you begin the process of paying off the debt, give yourselves more visuals to see your progress. Set up a chart showing your progress level or mark off your calendar every day until your last payment date.
Creating visuals to support your goal can help push you and your spouse to sticking with the target. The last thing you want to see is backward progress.
Think About the Future
Debt shapes a lot of the financial decisions we make – it affects how we spend money, what we qualify for, and what we have left in our pockets at the end of the month. Up until now, you only know of life with debt.
Start to think about the future with your spouse to help get them motivated to start paying off debt.
- What do you want your future to look like?
- What can you do with more discretionary income?
- What are your savings goals?
- What will being debt-free allow you to do?
These are a few questions to start thinking about with your spouse. Answering the questions starts the process of considering your future in your financial decisions.
Many people fall into high amounts of debt because they want everything immediately – and why wait if we can simply charge it. Take a step back and think about if we really need these things, and if yes, don’t plan to pay it back for a lifetime.
Having lots of debt is a sign of bad financial habits. Setting an ideal future financial self gives you a perspective of what your marriage could ultimately look like after you work together to pay off the debt.
Make Lifestyle Changes
Living a debt-free lifestyle means changing aspects of your current lifestyle. Paying off debt is only the start of the journey, but you should also strive to maintain a debt-free lifestyle for long-lasting benefits.
Changing your lifestyle might be one of the hardest steps to getting your spouse on board for paying off debt. They’re most likely rooted in the way that they live and spend – setting a goal to pay off debt can take them out of their comfort zone.
Although you’re a couple, you each have different spending habits, thoughts about money, income, debt levels, etc. You must take all of these aspects into consideration when making practical lifestyle changes.
Some changes you might expect are being more frugal in your spending, not going out to eat as much, sacrificing entertainment, and overall living on a stricter budget. Instead of dining at the newest restaurant that opened up in town, try preparing a new recipe you found online. Instead of buying the latest car model, consider purchasing a used car.
Cutting down on luxuries gives you more money to pay off your debt, and also avoids adding more debt to the pile.
You and your spouse must make sacrifices to make it a joint task of striving towards paying off your debt.
Work Together
Telling your spouse about paying off debt isn’t something that you’re saying they should take on entirely on their own. Even if only one of you has debt, as a couple, you should work together to make life better for both of you.
Working together comes in many forms for paying off debt.
In the beginning stages, you must work together to start thinking about how you will accomplish it and why you both want to achieve a debt-free life. These ideas and plans should be mutual.
You must also work together during the process of paying off your debt. Paying off debt is daunting enough, but if you’re both actively putting forth the effort, it can make it more bearable.
Telling your spouse that you want to pay off debt should have benefits for you both. Communicate the mutual benefits instead of talking negatively to them about their debt situation.
Even when one person’s debt gets eliminated first, you both should continue to work together to pool resources and lifestyle changes to help the other person.
Get Educated
Financial education is something that everyone should be familiar with, yet it isn’t discussed as openly in communities, schools, and relationships. Often, we don’t learn about financial education until we’re getting our first credit card or applying for our college loans.
Taking on debt before you are financially wise isn’t ideal, but it’s the reality for a lot of people. It shapes our perspective of debt in that it’s normal to have lots of debt, and paying off debt isn’t even a consideration for most.
If you’re reading this article, you’re already thinking in the right way when it comes to debt and overall financial education. That’s not to say that your spouse is the same way.
For your spouse to get on board with paying off debt, they must start to increase their financial knowledge to understand the benefits of lowering your debt levels.
In addition to understanding why less debt is beneficial, it’s also important to continue learning how to tackle paying off debt. There are a lot of ways of budgeting your income to make it easier to pay off debt, and perhaps not even have to make such significant sacrifices.
You can’t change what you don’t know, and financial education is one area you should understand.
Rewards and Motivation
Depending on how much debt you’re going to pay off, it can be a long-term task that lasts a couple of years, or achievable in the short-term. In either scenario, you should establish rewards and have constant motivation along the way to help push you towards your goals.
If you’ve been living with debt all your life, telling your spouse that you want to live debt-free might not be enough motivation to get them on board for paying it off.
Think of some tangible rewards and motivations to include in the process to give more incentive for achieving the task. For example, while you’re paying off more debt, you could start a small travel fund and reward yourself with a vacation that you paid for. Or for a simpler idea, treat yourself to a dinner and a movie once a month if you hit your monthly target.
Paying off debt doesn’t mean that you have to take the fun out of life. Your spouse would be more likely to agree with paying it off if they see that there are still ways to add some enjoyment in the process.
Be Honest
Nobody ever likes to talk about their financial situation, let alone how much debt they currently have – even amongst spouses. Being open and honest about your debt is critical to start the process of paying it off.
One reason your spouse might not be thinking about paying off debt is that they’re in denial about how much debt you have together or how it affects your life.
If you’re going to work together in paying off your debt, you need to overcome the shyness about your debt to each other. We all make mistakes in life or have bad habits – financially included.
You should know that you aren’t the only couple struggling with debt. Almost everyone has debt, but you and your spouse can improve your situation by paying it off.
Being honest about your debt involves looking at the facts of reality. Take a look at your financial statements and debt balances together.
You also must ensure honest practices while paying off your debt to ensure that you both will make the necessary actions to accomplish the goals you set together.
Be Patient
We all wish that we can snap our fingers and make our debt go away. If it were that easy, nobody would have debt – in fact, it’s the complete opposite. Most people don’t even think about paying off their debt because it seems nearly impossible based on their current financial status.
Whatever the timeframe it takes to repay your debt, you need to exercise patience. Set your goal, action plan, and make it one step at a time.
Communicate with your spouse that paying off debt is a good habit and lifestyle change to have, one that you’re willing to stick with for the long term.
Patience is key when trying to get them on board with paying off debt, and during the process of paying off debt.
Your spouse might be on a different page when thinking about debt, but you might be able to convince them of the benefits over time. Take some time to lead by example, and they may soon be more interested in working together with you to make it a joint task.
We hope you enjoyed this post on how to get your spouse onboard with paying off debt. Let us know if you have any questions or feedback below!
