How Wayne and I Learned to Stop Fighting About Money

For 18 Years, We Avoided the Money Conversation

Wayne and I have been married since 2003 and for a long time, money was the one subject that we just didn't talk about properly. Not because we didn't care. Not because we didn't love each other. But because every time we tried, it went wrong — and eventually, it felt safer not to talk about money.

We'd get to the end of the month and one of us would mention a bill, or a purchase, or something we needed to sort — and immediately the air would change. You probably know that feeling. The slight tightening. The careful words. The way you can feel a conversation going sideways before it's even really started.

So we'd table it. Again. And again. And again.

For 18 years.

I'm a pastor's wife. I believe with everything in me that God is faithful, that He provides, that we are called to steward what He gives us well. And yet — there we were. Two people who loved God and loved each other, completely unable to have a straightforward conversation about money without it becoming a source of distance between us.

If that sounds familiar, I want you to keep reading. Because the way things are right now is not the way they have to stay.

We Weren't Fighting. We Were Avoiding. (Which Was Worse.)

Here's something people don't talk about enough: it's not just the couples who argue loudly about money who are struggling. Sometimes the quietest marriages have the deepest financial tension.

Wayne and I weren't screaming at each other over credit card statements. We were doing something subtler — and in some ways, more damaging. We were just not talking about it at all.

We had developed what I now recognise as financial silence — an unspoken agreement to sidestep the topic because the discomfort of the conversation felt worse than the discomfort of the unknown.

The problem with financial silence is that it doesn't stay quiet. It seeps into everything. Into decisions made alone that should have been made together. Into a creeping sense that you're not really a team. Into a low-level anxiety that sits underneath the surface of an otherwise good marriage.

We were fine. But we weren't thriving. And God didn't design our marriage to be just fine.

Where It Came From

When I look back now, with the tools and understanding I've built over years of coaching other couples, I can see exactly where our pattern came from.

I grew up in a home where you saved before you spent. Money was something you were careful with, something you earned and kept. The idea of debt made me deeply uncomfortable. Security was everything.

Wayne grew up differently. In his family, spending was more fluid. Credit wasn't frightening — it was just part of how life worked. He was comfortable with a level of financial risk that made me want to hold my breath.

Neither of us was wrong. We were just shaped differently.

But we'd never talked about that. We walked into our marriage carrying completely different money stories — different beliefs, different fears, different definitions of 'responsible' — and assumed the other person saw the world the way we did.

They didn't. Of course they didn't. They never do.

If you've never had that conversation with your husband — about where your money beliefs actually come from — I wrote a whole post about why that's usually where the real argument is hiding: Why Every Money Conversation Ends in an Argument.

The Moment Something Had to Change

I don't remember a single dramatic moment. There was no big blow-up, no crisis point that forced our hand.

What I remember is a quieter kind of reckoning. A growing awareness that the way we were managing — or rather, not managing — our money conversations was costing us something. Not just financially, but relationally. The distance that financial avoidance creates is real. It's subtle. But it's real.

I started studying. I read everything I could find about money and marriage, about how couples communicate about finances, about what the Bible says about stewardship and unity. I got trained as a financial coach. And in the process of learning how to help other couples, I also learned how to help us.

What changed for Wayne and me wasn't a new budgeting system. It wasn't a spreadsheet or a debt payoff plan, though those things came later.

What changed was how we talked to each other.

We learned to come to the table as teammates instead of opponents. We learned to ask what was underneath the numbers — what the money actually meant to each of us — before we tried to solve anything. We learned that the goal of a money conversation isn't to win. It's to understand, and then to decide together.

And slowly, something that had felt like a closed door for nearly two decades began to open.

What I Learned That I Now Teach Every Couple

There were a few things that shifted everything for us. I teach all of these inside my coaching programmes now, because I've seen them work — not just in our marriage, but in the marriages of every couple I've worked with.

1. Your money story matters more than your money situation.

Before you can sort the finances, you need to understand the feelings. Where did your beliefs about money come from? What does financial security mean to you, and why? What does your husband's spending — or saving — trigger in you, and where does that reaction live? Until you've had that conversation, you'll keep arguing about the surface and missing the root.

2. The goal is unity, not uniformity.

You don't have to think about money in exactly the same way as your husband. You're different people. But you do need a shared vision — a picture of the future you're both building toward — and a shared set of values that guides how you make decisions together. When you have that, the small disagreements stop feeling like threats.

3. You need a structure for the conversation, not just goodwill.

Wanting to talk about money better isn't enough. You need a framework — a time, a format, an agreed set of topics — so the conversation has a container. That's what our money dates became for Wayne and me. Not a financial planning session. A regular, structured, intentional conversation that felt safe enough to be honest in.

If your husband shuts down the moment budgets come up — or impulse purchases keep appearing without discussion — it's worth asking whether ADHD is part of the picture. I wrote about what we learned in managing finances with your ADHD spouse.

Want to try this with your husband? My guide 5 Money Dates Every Christian Couple Needs gives you five of these conversations fully mapped out — with scripture, conversation prompts, and a worksheet for each one. It's the simplest place to start.

4. Faith is not a substitute for financial communication — it's the foundation of it.

One of the things I had to unlearn was the idea that trusting God meant not worrying about money. Of course we trust Him. But trust and wisdom aren't opposites. God calls us to be good stewards — and stewardship requires conversation. It requires planning. It requires both of you, together, bringing your finances before Him and asking: what are we building, and are we building it well?

Where We Are Now

Wayne and I talk about money regularly now. Not perfectly — we're human. But openly. Without the tightening, without the careful words, without the conversation going sideways before it's started.

We have a plan we're both part of. We make decisions together. And when one of us has a concern, we've built enough trust and enough practice that we can bring it to the table without it becoming a crisis.

It took time. It took humility — from both of us. And it took someone showing us how to have the conversation differently.

That's what I want to give you.

You Don't Have to Keep Navigating This Alone

If you read this and felt something — recognised something in your own marriage — I want you to know that recognition is the beginning of change.

You don't have to have another year of financial silence. You don't have to keep having the same argument. You don't have to keep putting off the conversation because it feels too hard.

There is a way through. I know because I've walked it.

Here's where you can start:

• If you want to understand what's driving the tension: Why Every Money Conversation Ends in an Argument →
• If you want to start better conversations now: 5 Money Dates Every Christian Couple Needs →
• If you're ready to go further: Book a free 15-minute discovery call →

The conversation you've been avoiding? It's the one that could change everything.