Have a blended family? With varying money management styles, individual obligations like child support or alimony, and the desire to treat all children equitably, creating a cohesive financial plan can feel daunting.
In this post I’ll break down several strategies (covering setting financial priorities all the way to investing for the future) you can use to navigate your blended family finances and build a rich, stable financial life together.
Establishing Financial Priorities in Blended Families
Blending two families isn’t just about combining households — it’s also about combining financial goals. Individually, you might focus on debt repayment, retirement savings, or supporting children from previous relationships. As a couple, your goals may include buying a home, funding family vacations, or saving for your children’s education.
Need help aligning with your partner on these priorities? Try setting regular ‘money dates’, during which you and your partner can discuss finances in a neutral, judgment-free space. And remember, communication is key! Practice active listening to truly understand each other’s perspectives and recognize the influence of each partner’s money scripts—the beliefs and attitudes formed from past experiences.
Simply adjusting how you talk about money can make a difference in shaping a positive, long-term approach. It starts by intentionally choosing different language—even if the conversation is only inside your head. For example:
Instead of: “We can’t afford it.”
Use this: “We can’t afford it yet, but we’re building a plan to save for it.”
Instead of: “That’s for rich people, not for people like us.”
Use this: “I didn’t grow up doing that, but if we want to, we can plan for it.” (Unless it’s something outrageously expensive like buying a private jet, in which case try this: “That’s a nice plane, but I’d rather take a family vacation together.”)
Instead of: “I would never pay for this.”
Use this: “In the past, I would never have paid for this, but I’m starting to understand why some people would.”
Imagine the impact of speaking positively about money over the decades spent together with your partner. How would that shape your perception? Why say, “We have to talk about money today [sigh],” when you could say, “We get to talk about money today [high five]!”
Unlike washing the dishes, money cannot be delegated to one person. It affects everything: where you live, what you eat, what you do for fun, even who you are. Think of it more like parenting. You rarely hear of just one of two partners “doing the parenting thing”; similarly, there shouldn’t be one partner handling all the money. It’s about working as a team. This fosters accountability, limits the dread of financials, and prevents common money-related conflicts.
When you internalize the importance of both partners having financial skin in the game, you’ll start to understand why so many couples report the same fights:
- “The minute I walk in the door, he asks how much I spent at Target.”
- “She constantly looks at the credit card bill and says I spent too much going out with my friends.”
- “He tells me to cut our grocery bills, but he has no idea how much I’ve already cut to the bone.”
Sound familiar? Let’s explore some money management strategies next to avoid those conversations.
Money Management Strategies for Blended Families
Creating a joint budget is one of the most critical steps for managing blended family finances. Start by listing all income sources (like salaries, child support, or alimony), then figure out what goes towards shared expenses (housing, groceries, and utilities) and individual expenses (debts, hobbies). When you consciously plan to spend or save, you can easily allocate funds for saving and investing that agree with your individual and shared goals.
Want to stay on top of things with ease? Using tools like budgeting apps or spreadsheets can help track your spending and ensure accountability. Regular financial check-ins can keep your plans on track, allowing you to make adjustments as necessary. Some couples find that having a mix of joint and individual accounts work best, ensuring shared goals are met while keeping a sense of financial independence.
With accounts in mind, it is absolutely vital to establish an emergency fund of 3-6 months‘ worth of living expenses. Decide together how much to contribute and define clear guidelines for when and how the fund can be accessed. Agreeing on this ahead of time will help you avoid stress if an emergency ever arises.
Handling Child-Related Expenses
Navigating child support and alimony is a big part of blended family finances. Make sure you understand any legal obligations and payment terms, and incorporate these into your family’s overall financial plan. Don’t neglect maintaining open lines of communication with ex-partners; this is essential for ensuring that payments are made consistently and transparently.
When it comes to shared expenses (like healthcare, education, or extracurricular activities), determine how costs will be divided between both families. Consider setting up savings accounts for future expenses like college or big milestones – this could be a great segue into talking with your children about finances to help prevent the topic from becoming taboo.
Involving children in age-appropriate financial discussions can also help them learn important lessons about budgeting, saving, and responsible spending. Treat all children equally in these conversations to foster fairness and trust within your blended family.
Create a Fair and Equitable Financial System
One popular approach for managing finances in blended families is the “yours, mine, and ours” system. It’s simple: create three accounts—a joint one for shared expenses and two individual ones for personal spending. To maintain fairness, the joint account should be funded based on each partner’s income. If one earns more, they might contribute 60% while the other adds 40%. It’s also a good idea to agree on which expenses are shared (like the mortgage) and which can be kept separate (like hobbies).
Transparency is key. Use a shared spreadsheet or app to track shared expenses and review regularly to ensure fairness and to immediately address any potential imbalances.
Blended families also face the unique dilemma of balancing “our kids” versus “your kids” when it comes to financial support. It’s important to establish clear guidelines that apply to all children in the family, such as equal allowances or budgets for extracurricular activities. Agree on how to manage differences in financial support from ex-partners to avoid any perceived favoritism.
Estate Planning and Legal Considerations
Estate planning is crucial for blended families. Make sure your wills and beneficiary designations are updated to reflect your current family dynamics, including the needs of children from previous relationships. It’s a good idea to consult with an estate planning attorney to ensure your assets are distributed according to your wishes.
Prenuptial or postnuptial agreements might also be worth considering to clarify financial responsibilities and protect assets, especially if there’s significant wealth involved. Need more ways to ensure fair inheritance? Setting up trusts can also be effective. At the end of the day, communication remains key; hold continuous, open discussions with your partner and adult children to manage expectations and avoid potential conflicts down the road.
Investing for the Future
As a blended family, it’s important to strike a balance between individual and joint investment strategies. Each partner should consider their risk tolerance and time horizon when investing, while also contributing to shared financial goals like retirement or education savings.
Make sure you’re maxing out retirement contributions! Take a look at each partner’s current retirement savings and decide how to prioritize contributions based on factors like age, income, and access to employer-sponsored plans. Regularly review and adjust these plans to stay aligned with your evolving goals as a family.
Speaking of goals, establishing long-term ones should be a dynamic process. Major goals like home buying or education funding can seem a lot easier with timelines or action plans that you and your partner can work together on creating. Just be sure to revisit them, especially as family dynamics and finances change.
Be Open to Seeking Professional Help
Managing blended family finances can be complicated, and sometimes it helps to get a fresh perspective. There’s no shame in seeking the advice of a professional or third-party perspective. A financial advisor can offer objective guidance, especially if you’re dealing with significant debt, multiple properties, or business ownership. If money disagreements are affecting your relationship, consider couples therapy to improve communication and get on the same page.
Sometimes, past experiences and responsibilities can end up weighing heavily on one person if they aren’t open to seeking professional help. This can leave individuals, like Cristina in her relationship with Ron, feeling confused or lost, wondering how to move forward as a team rather than carrying the burden alone.
[00:17:09] Cristina: Okay, so I feel confused about it.
[00:17:14] Ramit: Okay. Tell me more.
[00:17:15] Cristina: Okay. I’m going to get emotional because you’re asking me emotions. I used to be very scared about it because just like Ronnie, my family are immigrants. I’m an immigrant. So we came from absolutely nothing as well. And then having to figure it out on my own. My parents didn’t teach me anything.
[00:17:35] I almost have to learn everything on my own. So it was a very scary process, but I feel proud where we’re at now and how far we’ve come as far as I could take it essentially on my own. So now I’m just confused and maybe a little lost of what do I do at this point? Because I just feel like I don’t know how far I can take this on my own.
[00:18:00] Ramit: And how long have you two been married for?
[00:18:03] Cristina: We’ve been together for 10, married for four.
[00:18:05] Ramit: Okay. All right. So when you say how far you can take it on your own, is the subtext there that you have done the finances in your relationship on your own?
[00:18:18] Cristina: Yeah.
[00:18:19] Ramit: Okay. Ron, is that accurate?
[00:18:22] Ron: Oh, absolutely.
[00:18:25] Ramit: Okay. That’s pretty honest. I appreciate that, Cristina. So how would you two describe the dynamic between the two of you when it comes to money?
[00:18:40] Ron: Babe, you can take this one first.
[00:18:43] Cristina: I think over the years, it was such a hard topic to talk about. It was a fight all the time, and it’s gotten better, but now recently, I feel like I just avoid it a little bit more, so we’re not fighting as much. I bring it up, but if I could tell, oh, he’s overwhelmed by it, or he doesn’t want to have a conversation about it, I just like, okay, fine. We’ll talk about it some other time. I’ll figure it out. And I just don’t ask him any more questions.
[00:19:12] Ramit: You take it on yourself.
[00:19:13] Cristina: Mm-hmm.
Cristina’s story illustrates how taking on financial responsibilities alone can leave one partner feeling overwhelmed and disconnected. It’s a common scenario for blended families, where past experiences shape how each person approaches money.
Silence and unspoken assumptions about finances also create an emotional divide and can prevent real progress, like how it turned out for Andrew and Jennifer.
Jennifer describes how avoiding direct money conversations with Andrew leads to internalized anxiety and assumptions. This lack of communication creates a barrier between them, preventing any meaningful joint financial decisions.
[00:04:30] Jennifer: We avoid talking about money so often, and a lot of the money conversations that we’re having are actually done in my head. Me reading the room and reading body language and being like, oh, okay, I said something about this cost and I saw him react this way, and so I’m just going to back off and maybe not make that purchase or not talk about it again. And so–
[00:04:53] Ramit: You feel exhausted sometimes talking about money or even thinking about money?
[00:04:57] Jennifer: I do. I feel exhausted, and I feel nervous for how he’s going to react. Um, and I’m trying to avoid discomfort because when we talk about money and then things go uncomfortable and weird, I have a really hard time getting us back to a copacetic, just good place. And our conversations around money often are very tense. It’s like we’re speaking different languages.
[00:05:24] Ramit: So because your conversations with money have been tense before, you remember that, and you can even see the signs when you bring it up. He gets a little tense. You get tense, therefore you don’t bring it up at all out loud, but you keep it going in your head. Is that correct?
[00:05:44] Jennifer: Yeah.
[00:05:45] Ramit: Okay. Do you make forward progress with your joint finances using this strategy?
[00:05:51] Jennifer: Not at all. Our general conversations around money are usually me trying to look ahead and look at a big picture of what money is coming in. Andrew likes to look at things, um, in a smaller scale like paycheck to paycheck, and that’s been a big disagreement between us. And it’s been a pattern for long.
It’s also important to consider how communication dynamics can affect financial discussions. Often, one partner may feel the pressure to carry the burden of finding solutions, leading to an imbalance. See how Jennifer instinctively takes the lead in our conversation as Andrew was sharing his point of view when dining out:
00:46:41] Andrew: How are we going to decide what we need to do– when we should eat out?
[00:46:46] Jennifer: Yeah. I think we’ve been trying to think of ways, anyway, to just have more family time together.
[00:46:51] Ramit: Hold on a second. Sorry to interrupt again. What just happened in that conversational dynamic? Who asked the question and who’s now taking on the burden of answering it?
[00:47:02] Jennifer: I think I’m taking on the– I’m like —
[00:47:06] Ramit: You’re just jumping in to solve–
[00:47:07] Jennifer: Coming in with an answer.
[00:47:08] Ramit: Yeah. And, um, don’t you want to have a little bit more equal representation?
[00:47:13] Jennifer: Okay. Um, I guess now I’m just more curious about when do you like to eat– is it for fun for you, or is it just to feed us? Or like what is ordering Grubhub for you?
[00:47:33] Andrew: I think for me ordering Grubhub is a time where we can all just breathe. It’s a time where you can relax because you don’t have to cook. The kitchen doesn’t turn into a mess, and so it’s a time just to get a small reset for everybody. So I think when it comes to eating out, we really need to look at the times where we’re really needing a reset or you’re needing a reset, and saving it for those times.
Jennifer naturally steps in to answer a question, while Andrew shares his thoughts on why dining out matters to him. It highlights how conversations can get a bit one-sided, even when the goal is to work together. Having a third-party professional could help them steer the dialogue back to what really matters—making decisions as a team in their blended family.
Building Financial Resilience as a Blended Family
Want to build financial resilience in your blended family? Consider multiple income streams. This could mean encouraging both partners to pursue career growth or exploring side hustles to boost family earnings. Given the added complexity of blended family finances, it’s a good idea to aim for a larger emergency fund—around 6-12 months of expenses.
Planning for potential setbacks is just as important. Discuss a financial “Plan B” in case of job loss or illness, and keep reviewing and updating your financial plan as your family’s needs evolve.
By approaching blended family finances with empathy, open communication, and a solid plan, you can create a financially secure and fulfilling life together.
