How to Agree to Disagree

4. Urge to Splurge

The Fight: I want to eat out more; she thinks we need new couches. I want to take more weekend trips; she wants to take international vacations. There are so many miniature versions of this fight that it's hard not to go straight to...

The Fundamental Disagreement: How we spend our money. We have different spending habits and different spending wishes.

How We Deal: This is one where communication really is huge. A fight about ordering in pizza vs. cooking can get really silly really quickly if you don't understand that it's really just about financial priorities. And on the practical side, we've started keeping a detailed budget so we can actually see what we're spending on what.