Put an end to “Doomsday” meetings.
Budgeting with a spouse or partner? Is there anything more fraught? No one likes to face the limits of their money and doing so with someone else is as treacherous as crossing “No Man’s Land” in 1918.
But Weekly can help. In fact, budgeting with a spouse is a core part of Weekly’s origin story. As the story goes, Dan was budgeting with his wife Anna. Like a lot of couples, they tried different apps and spreadsheets or the classic “ignoring-it-all-together” but nothing seemed to make it better. At the end of each month, Dan and Anna would sit down and review their spending and it was painful. They started calling it “Doomsday”.
At the end of another dismal doomsday, Anna said to Dan, “What do you expect me to do with all this information? I still don’t know what I can spend right now.” That’s when he realized he was approaching budgeting all wrong.
That is how the concept behind Weekly was born: focus on a week’s time frame, stop over-categorizing, track a simple Safe-To-Spend, and sync with financial institutions in real-time.
But what are the actual mechanics behind making Weekly work for you and your spouse? This article describes how to set up Weekly to share with a spouse or partner and avoid your own personal Doomsday meetings.
Create Your Account Using a Login You Can Share
With one subscription, you can install and login on multiple devices, but you will need to share a login. An account setup with an email address is probably best to use, but here are the ins-and-out of which login type to use.
This process is most simple when using an email address. The email address is used as a user id so you can set any password for it and share that password with your spouse. The password you set does not have to be the same as your actual email password.
Google works well as a shared login across devices, but of course this requires you logging into Google using your Google password which means sharing your actual Google and Gmail password with your spouse.
The story for Facebook is the same as Google. It works well as a shared login across devices, but of course this requires you logging into Facebook using your Facebook password which means sharing your actual Facebook with your spouse or partner.
Apple
Using your Apple ID to create your account will not work if you want to budget with a spouse. That is because your Apple ID is tied to the iCloud login on your device which is most likely different from the iCloud account on your spouse’s device.
Note: If you have already set up your account using Google, Facebook or Apple and you want to switch it to email, we can help you with that. Just open the left side bar and tap “Contact Support” and request to move to an email login and we will get you set up.
Seeing Your Safe-to-Spend Together
Now when you login to your account from either your or your partner’s device you can see how much is left in your Safe-to-Spend as well as all the other details like how much is in each of the funds you have set up. As your partner reconciles transactions into your account, you will see the Safe-To-Spend or fund balances updated automatically.
Congratulations! You now are in sync with your partner.
This is a huge win for people, you are now on the same page on exactly where you are at with your day-to-day expenses. You can wait for transactions to be imported into the app from your financial institution or if you want more immediacy you can add them in manually; either way your spouse’s view into how much money is left will be updated.
Setting Up Funds to Keep Track of Individual Expenses (Optional)
So now that you have access to the numbers, if you want to, you can set up funds for yourself and your partner for individual spending.
So let’s say for example, there is a couple named Kim and John using Weekly to budget. And let’s say Kim and John allow themselves $250 a month of “fun money” to spend on their own. You can manage this with Weekly by setting up a fund called “Kim’s Fun Money” and a separate one for John called “John’s Fun Money” and set the contribution to be $250 per month into each fund which Weekly will convert to the weekly amount of $58.14.
Then as transactions come in that are spent by Kim and John on their individual fun, instead of being withdrawn from the regular “Safe-to-Spend” both John and Kim can map these expenses to their own fun money fund. This way they can keep track of their individual spending separate from their collective spending.
Conclusion
Weekly was started as a tool to help two people keep in sync with where they were at with their spending and it’s one of its key benefits. And with the Funds, spouses can also track individual spending and keep it separate from the spending they are doing together.
By giving both partners access to the Safe-to-Spend number, Weekly can eliminate the “Doomsday” meetings and keep couples happier with their money.
