Q: My husband and I moved overseas for the first time about a year ago. I agreed to put my career on hold temporarily so that we could take advantage of this opportunity. Although our total income has increased, we don't feel like our financial life has improved. It seems like we have been disagreeing about money since we moved here. Now he has decided to give me a certain amount of money each month. I haven't had an "allowance" since I was a child! At least, as a child I had some control over where I spent my allowance. My husband seems to have an unrealistic idea of what it costs for us to live here. We are now arguing over what I spend the money on. Giving up my career was hard enough. Now I'm questioning whether I want to stick out this assignment and maybe even this relationship...What can I do?


A: I am so glad that you asked! First, I would like to ask you to think back to the time that you and your husband were making the decision to accept this assignment. Did you discuss how this assignment would affect your individual goals as well as your goals as a couple? I see that you discussed the fact that your total household income would increase, but my question isn't limited to financial goals. Your individual goals could fall into different categories, such as career, personal development and health, amongst others. Your goals as a couple could include travel and family, amongst others. If you did discuss them, did you agree on priorities? My guess, based on the fact you have been disagreeing about money since you arrived and your feeling that your financial life hasn't improved, is that you focused on the money and didn't really put a lot of time into talking with each other about your individual and joint life goals and priorities, which by default, put money at the top of the priority list. The reality about money is that it will only improve the quality of life when it is used to support your life priorities. When you learn to spend money in concert with your values - the things you most deeply care about- your priorities, is when money can become a tool for creating a more fulfilling life. If you didn't have this discussion, don't feel bad, it seems that most people in your situation don't have this discussion.

The good news is you can make time to have it now. Think about your life right now, all the different aspects of it (except the money part). What is working for you? What isn't? What needs to improve and in what way? Be as specific as you can and also try to put a timeframe to it. Ask your husband to go through the same process and then make time to discuss this with each other. Try to agree on priorities and categorize the priorities by time; for example: one year, three to five years, over 10 years, etc.

Once you agree on one year goals, you can design a spending plan to support those goals. A spending plan is different from the traditional budget that most of us are familiar with. A budget typically takes last years expense figures and adjusts them upward based on an assumed rate of inflation for the year. Typically, one compares "actual" spending to the ‘budgeted" amount. One problem with using the traditional budget in personal finance is if we spend more than the budgeted amount in a given category, feelings of guilt or imprudence often arises. While sometime imprudence is an issue, most of the time, the original number put into the budget for a given category was underestimated. A spending plan asks you to do some homework to come up with realistic figures needed during the time period to fund a given need or goal. If an exotic family vacation is a goal for the year and it is to be paid for in addition to your "usual" annual travel expenses, your total estimate for this category will be larger than last year and will require you to "tighten the purse" in other categories. When you fill in figures for the spending plan, you begin with all of the monthly or annual commitments you must fund, moving on to the discretionary expenses. Discussions can be moved away from pure emotion to rational conversations about funding priorities and making joint decisions about how to go about making the priorities that your spending plan is designed to fund, a reality.

As you have experienced, financial arguments are usually about how money will be spent and who's going to control the purse strings. While talking about money and how the family money can be used to support the needs and aspirations of each of the individual members of the family as well as the family unit does create some tension, this tension tends to disappear over time as you and your family get used to talking about these issues. Avoiding these issues, just like fighting over the cost of bread, only leads to disaster. Good luck and keep me posted!

Jennifer A. Patterson, CFP®(US), CIMC, CIMA® is an American expatriate married to a Bermudian, living in Bermuda.. She combines 15 years of cross-border financial planning and 6 years of life coaching in her new book When Families Cross Borders: A Guide for Internationally Mobile People. For more information, and to subscribe to the Cross Border Living E-zine, visit www.crossborderliving.com