I just read an article about this yesterday and here is what it suggested: How to have a successful budget meeting with your spouse Glblguy is the author of Gather Little By Little , a Christian personal finance blog focused on growing wealth using common sense biblical practices and based on the wisdom found in Proverbs 13:11 - "He who gathers money little by little makes it grow." Prior to getting control of our finances, the main reason my wife and I would fuss (that means fight/argue here in the southern U.S.) was over money and finances. Turns out, we werent alone. The number one reason couples fight is over money. Studies also show that the number one cause of divorce in the U.S. is due to money. Why? Here are just a few reasons: · Communication - Really this is lack of communication. · Control - This involves one person in the relationship having primary responsibility over the finances. · Family - Examples include: Cost of children and how money is spent on them, in-laws or parents having influence over your finances If youÂll note, none of these issues really have anything to do with money. The reason couples fight over money isnÂt due to money itself, but due to the core feelings and emotions they have surrounding money. Money is the symptom, the 3 reasons above are the actual problem. Fortunately, these three problems can be easily resolved, assuming of course you have a strong and healthy marriage. How? Have a weekly or monthly budget meeting. Personally, I prefer weekly, but for some a monthly meeting works as well. What is a budget meeting? A budget meeting is an opportunity for you and you spouse to sit down together and review your finances and your budget together. If you didnÂt quit catch the key point here, let me state it again: together. HereÂs what you need to do: · Decide who will be the accountant - General management of your day to day finances is best handled by one person. Updating your budget and net income statement, and tracking your day to day expenses is logistically difficult if 2 people are doing it. Who should do it? The detail oriented person. In our marriage, I am the detailed person so I do it. If you feel like neither of you are, then just decide which one is more than the other. Typically this isnÂt a hard decision to make. I think we know the answer to this · Formulate a budget and make it the controller - The next step is to formulate a budget together. Pick an evening and a time when both you and your significant other can sit down by yourselves in a quiet setting and spend 1 - 2 hours working up a budget. If you arenÂt sure how to do this, please read my article on creating a budget. I feel this has sort of been done but do you? We have about $500 every pay period to use for gas and food (eating out and groceries) and anything else we need to pay for. ThereÂs not much left to decide where it needs to go. I do believe you do not spend on anything other than food without me. Creating the budget together is important and allows both of you to have equal input into your finances. Each of you has a "vote" regarding where the money goes and how it will get spent. Having a "vote" is important, it gives you ownership in the budget and the process. Once you have the budget in place and have agreed on what is being spent where, agree to follow it together. I would suggest you come up with some physical or verbal way of agreeing. This can be as simple as both of you signing at the bottom of your budget, verbally saying to other "I agree to follow this budget" or just simply handshaking. My wife and I do a pinky shake. This seems a bit silly at first, but has a powerful and lasting effect. For example, when IÂm over at our local electronics or book store and I see something I really want, before I just go and buy it, a mental picture of that pinky shake always appears in my head reminding me of the commitment I made. At that point, unless we budgeted for it, I walk out. By doing all of the above, you solved both the #2 and #3 reasons couples fight over money: Control and Family. By doing the budget together and agreeing to following it, the budget now becomes the controller of your finances. Since you both had input and both agreed, the issue of one person controlling the money and the other person feeling powerless is now gone. The budget, that you both agreed to, now controls the money. All blame for control is the budget. You also solved the family problem since you both had input into the budget and you both agreed to follow it. The budget canÂt be changed unless you both agree. Since you both did it together and current or previous family influence to the budget was factored in as you did the budget together. Call a budget meeting Here is where we solve the #1 reason couple fight over money: Communication. Pick an evening where you and your significant other can meeting for about 15-30 minutes to review the finances. I would suggest doing this weekly, but at the very least it needs to be done monthly. The person that is responsible for tracking the budget should update the budget and current expenses prior to the meeting and come to the meeting with an updated budget report. The report should show the budget, how much money is remaining in each budget category, and any remaining bills or expected payments they are aware of. It seems we never manage to actually do this. The intent is there but we donÂt follow through on it. Both of you should walk through the budget report together. Discuss areas where you have to much money allocated and where you donÂt have enough. Make adjustments as necessary to cover upcoming expenses, but agree to those adjustments together. Reviewing the budget weekly has a profound impact on communication. Communicating weekly lets each spouse know the current status of the finances, provides an opportunity to discuss areas where too much money has been spent and discuss upcoming unplanned expenses. These are expenses you may not have been able to plan for when you initially did the budget. Our meetings take all of about 10 minutes and since we have been doing this I canÂt recall the last time we fought about our money. HereÂs a few things IÂve learned along the way though to help you out: · If one of you overspends the other shouldnÂt get upset. During the budget meeting, just move the amount overspent from another budget category. If there isnÂt enough money, pull it from the emergency fund. With my wife and I, just having to do this is punishment enough for overspending. I feel terrible when I overspend, as I broke the commitment, and feel the impact of overspending when we have to move money around. · Realize this is a journey and you will get better with time. When we first started budgeting, I was too detailed about it. I wanted it to be correct the first time and managed it to the tee. As a result, my wife didnÂt want to follow it anymore as it was causing her too much stress. Realize that each month you do a budget you will get a little better at it. If you overspend or donÂt follow it exactly, itÂs ok. You will get better at it, it just takes some time. · Do the budget for the upcoming month before the month arrives. Spend your income on paper before you even get it. Trying to keep a single budget to cover all months is confusing and difficult. Do a budget for each month a few days before that month arrives. · How you keep your budget doesnÂt really matter. I use a spreadsheet, but paper works just fine and so does extensive software like Quicken or Money. Just use what works for you and makes it easy for you to manage and track. Remember, we are trying to reduce stress not increase it. · Mistakes of the past are forgotten. DonÂt bring up mistakes from the past. What happened happened, and you canÂt change it. Decide to move forward together. Bringing up mistakes from the past just causes stress, tension and breaks the team environment thatÂs being established. Wrapping Up I challenge you to give the above process a try for 3 months. In my experience in will make significant and positive change in your relationship and in your finances. This process changed our lives, hopefully it will change yours as well.

First, you have to address the disrespect. Calmly say, "I feel disrespected when you (description)" you want to make sure you objectively describe the problem. "I feel disrespected when you yell at me," not "I feel disrespected when you are mean to me." Find a time to talk to him about the anger and room issues. If he starts being demeaning, state that and ask to have the conversation at another time, when he can been honest, but not rude. If your husband is going through a difficult period, adjusting your schedule so you are busy elsewhere when he is angry in the mornings or needs to cool off in the afternoon. If this is an endemic problem, I'd consider divorce. This might be a nerdy thing to do, but I find writing an e-mail/note is very effective. My husband doesn't need to apologize or acknowledge he was in the wrong, but he usually takes on board the point and changes his behavior. In addition, I have plenty of time to compose my thoughts and leave out the non-productive or fight-provoking parts. Ideally, it would be nice to get an apology, but extracting one tends to devolve into a long list of each other's faults, which is never fun or productive.

In response to the accountant remark, its not the IRS, its the state and not an income tax audit. I have paid a CPA $11k to do a forensic audit on me and according to them the state owes me $4k. This state is going after anything they can get so they won't have a shortfall. They hired 49 new auditors for this. It was a sales tax audit. I was told 20 years ago not to tax on vehicles by the DMV because I an not a dealer. They were wrong. I have to pay the sales tax on all the cars I have sold through my business. I have 11 people I know going through the same thing. The reason it has taken 3 years is they kept asking for extensions because they are short handed. So thanks but no thanks for your smart a$s comments, you have no clue what you are talking about.

Any advice on how to deal with resentment to husband caused by MIL? This post really resonated with me, although my MIL is a good, kind woman and it sounds like your MIL isn't. As nice as my MIL is, we still have an uneasy relationship. You and your MIL have very different expectations about what your relationship with one another should/will be. She has made it clear she doesn't want the kind of loving family relationship you want. You cannot change that. It doesn't matter how nice you are, how many texts or pictures of the kids you send or anything else you do, you cannot make her like you, love you or want to be around you. Accept that. Your husband can't change that, either. There is absolutely nothing he can say or do to make her love you, like you, or want to be around you. Accept that, too. If your family is abroad and you would like to embrace your husband's family as your own, that is not going to happen. Not because of you, but because they are not that kind of family. They aren't going to help you, call you, keep in touch with you, and your husband cannot make them. Accept that. Develop other close family-like friendships so you will have a network of support, but don't look for a support network from your husband's family. There are probably other people in your area who have no family or a dysfunctional family and would love to have close family-like ties with friends. Stop worrying about what she wants the kids to call her and whether or not she tries to manipulate the kids by sending gifts. Let her send all the gifts she wants. Kids love their moms. Stop worrying about what your MIL tells the rest of the family about you. Your MIL sounds creepy, selfish and mean and the rest of the family probably knows how she is. If she's been that way toward you, she's been that way toward other people, too. Stop making little digging comments to your husband about your MIL. If he comes home and tells you she said hi, just let it roll off your back. That doesn't mean you should never discuss your feelings or concerns with him, just don't make a lot of little digging comments. Save your discussion for when it really matters, then sit down sometime when you aren't angry and have a calm discussion. She is your husband's mom. He loves her very much, regardless of her faults. Trying to get him to include you in their phone calls, emails and texts is a losing battle, I think. If you keep insisting, what you will probably accomplish is that he will talk to her just the two of them anyway and he will stop mentioning it to you. She sounds like a mean and unpleasant person, so really, this works out great for you to not even have to talk to her. This problem is between you, your husband, and your MIL. Don't drag the kids into it, don't encourage them to ignore your MIL or treat her badly. In time your children will notice things for themselves. It sounds like they won't see her often, anyway, and it sounds like she's not really a kid person, anyway. Counseling would help you sort out what expectations are reasonable and what aren't. Having said all that, my husband would never in a million years scream at me, shake me or call me names. Please get some counseling so you can get some perspective on this. Your family is abroad, you sound isolated, make sure you build some ties with friends in the area. Keep your job skills current and make sure you have all the tools you need to become independent if you want to or need to do that. Best of everything to you and your little family.