How to Create Your First Couple’s Budget for 2026

Ah, sweet marital bliss! The king size bed. The shared household responsibilities. The… joint checking account?

When we were dating, Thomas and I waffled about the financial system that would make the most sense for us. Were we a totally separate, totally together, or “yours, mine, and ours” kind of couple?

Eventually, we settled on more-or-less combining finances (mostly because it seemed like the easiest choice).

But that was only the first of a series of decisions that had to be made, and it left us with a big question mark:

What’s our “couple’s budget” look like?

We were both fairly comfortable with our independent budgets (and probably went individually over-budget plenty of times), but in establishing a budget that would work for the both of us, we had to get a little creative.

Some expenses were easy (if we’re splitting rent now, the new couple’s budget rent line item is obvious), but others forced us to ask bigger questions about how we want to spend (and save) our money.

This post is a financially naked examination of our first couple’s budget in 2022, which we built in our Wealth Planner.

Spending Category 1: Housing – $3,492

• Rent: $3,000

• Water: $75

• Electric: $75

• Gas: $30

• Lawncare: $50

• Cleaning: $200

• Trash: $12

• Internet: $50

That means – every month! – we spend $3,492 on the roof over our head and the ‘maintenance’ required (when I say maintenance, I’m mostly referring to cleaning and lawncare, two expenses we agreed to keep in the budget because it gives us back our free time).

This is the beauty of being a renter – we could always trim our housing budget by $250 by doing our housework and lawncare ourselves, but it’s pretty impossible that our housing expenses would be higher than this for the duration of our lease, since any surprises are our landlord’s responsibility. In the time that we’ve lived here, there’s been:

• A new dryer

• Sprinkler system maintenance

• Gutter cleaning

• Fence painting

• Tree removal

…and more. These unexpected expenses add up, and fortunately, we aren’t responsible for them. Check that one off the list. If you are a homeowner, the rule of thumb is to budget 1% of your total property value in maintenance costs each year (that way, you won’t be surprised or caught flat-footed when the dishwasher decides to crap out on you).

This category was relatively easy to set up, because most of these costs are split equally down the middle right now.

Spending Category 2: Cars & Transportation – $380

• Car Insurance: $50

• Gas: $300

• Uber/Lyft: $30

My husband owns his car outright, and at the time, I didn’t own a car at all – so the bulk of our transportation expenses are his gas costs for driving 45 minutes to work every day.

Realistically, this category is higher than it needs to be given a paid-off car, but our decision to live in Fort Collins (and not Cheyenne, Wyoming, where his Air Force base is) makes gas a necessity, and we haven’t yet run the numbers on whether or not it’d be cheaper to get a different car (with a car payment) but better mileage.

Spending Category 3: Living Expenses – $765

Now we’re venturing into the no-man’s-land of discretionary spending where things get a little bit trickier. Here’s where we netted out:

• Gym/Exercise: $14.99 (my Equinox+ membership, after the American Express reimbursement kicks in)

• HBO Max: $10

• Spotify: $15

• Phone: $30

• Personal Care (Haircuts, etc.): $200

• Shopping/Clothes: $100

• Entertainment: $150

• Pet Care: $275

My husband is still mercifully on his dad’s phone plan (bless that #FamilyPlan inertia), and I use Mint Mobile, which is a “$360/year” cost for unlimited data, and it’s been great.

We decided on $200 for Personal Care mostly because it was just double my own Personal Care budget, and the Shopping/Clothes category was a late addition. Obviously, $100/mo. for two people isn’t a ton – it’s mostly intended to be there in the event one of us needs a stray item of replacement clothing. Now that my capsule wardrobe (bless up) is complete, I don’t anticipate needing to make major clothing purchases in 2022.

(Remember, you can revisit and revamp a budget every single year, if you want.)

Entertainment is a bit of a catch-all budget, but we figured it was smart to include for the rogue 5k (truth be told, we’ve never done a 5k) or gym day pass that comes our way.

Lastly, Pet Care is a category in which we’re both chronically over-budget. Sam Cat is a pretty low-maintenance pet, but any time we go out of town, it costs us $50/day to have someone stay in the house with Georgia, our dog. Add food, medicine, and an endless supply of Lambchop toys, and you’ve got an expensive best friend.

Spending Category 4: Food – $1,500

Yikes. This one hurts.

I went from being very proud of my ability to keep myself alive cheaply to – frankly – burnt out on trying to save money on this category.

• Groceries: $175 (almost definitely way too low, considering we spent $500 in January)

• Restaurants & Bars: $150 (also almost definitely way too low; we spent $600 in January)

• Chef Service: $1,000 (OPE)

• Date Night: $175

Let’s break this down, shall we? The star of the show here is clearly the $1,000/mo. chef service, but it provides our lunches & dinners for the entire work week and (usually) into the weekend.

We pay a local chef around $250/week to make and deliver our meals, and it’s worth every penny.

That means things like snacks, produce, iced coffee, and alcohol have to fit in the grocery budget, and I have my doubts – but we have to impose limits somewhere, right?

The “Restaurants & Bars” budget is intentionally separate from the “Date Night” budget, but doing this exercise made us (read: my husband) realize that his idea of a ‘fun date’ isn’t going to a nice restaurant. He likes activities (whereas I just like ordering three different appetizers), so we’re going to treat that one like a “try it and revisit later” item.

My gut instinct is that the entirety of the “Restaurants & Bars” budget will get consumed by Thai takeout and brewery trips, so we’ll see how that goes.

The point, for us, is to try to realistically prepare our budget for the lives we want to live in 2022, though January’s spending indicates that we may need to revisit this category.

Spending Category 5: Travel – $575

This one probably seems a little low to some, but we’re big #MilesAndPoints people, so our cash travel budget is usually reserved for stuff like rental cars and airport parking (and other things that you can’t typically pay for with points).

We earned Companion Pass for 2022 again and I have around 110,000 Southwest points, so I’m hopeful that should cover most of our air travel.

Spending Category 6: Other – $550

Ah, our catch-all bucket. The best!

• Miscellaneous: $100 (I fear this is too low, but am hopeful that our other categories will provide slack in the system)

• Gifts & Donations: $150

• Katie “No Questions Asked”: $150

• Thomas “No Questions Asked”: $150

Those last two felt crucial: We both needed money each month that we were free to spend without checking with one another. Since we plan to reroute our work direct deposits into a joint checking account, we won’t be supplying our individual checking accounts with fresh funds.

Total spent monthly: $7,262

Honestly, this is a lot higher than I expected. I thought we’d definitely have our total monthly expenses under $6,000, but there are two key culprits that make things pricey for us:

1. Our home. We rent a home that costs $3,000/mo., as noted above, which accounts for nearly half of our total monthly spent.

2. Our chef service. The $1,000/mo. food cost could easily be cut in half.

That’s the thing about budgeting, though: It doesn’t have to be about whittling things down to the slimmest potential expenses and kissing all convenience and fun goodbye. It’s just about understanding how much it costs to live the life you want to live, and planning accordingly.

Switching gears: Saving & investing

After filling out our net worth tab, we realized that we have roughly $50,000 in cash (about half of it is sitting in my business checking account waiting for the tax ax in April).

This is an important number to calculate when planning a joint budget, because it lets you know whether or not you’re prepared to prioritize investing on a monthly basis. $50,000 is plenty of cash exposure for us, so our Investing plan every month looks like this:

• My pre-tax 401(k): $1,708/mo. (to contribute the maximum of $20,500 in 2022)

• My husband’s pre-tax TSP: $1,708/mo. (to contribute the maximum of $20,500 in 2022; the TSP is the military version of an employer-sponsored retirement account)

• We’re above the limit for Roth IRA contributions and have Rollover IRAs, so we can’t do the Backdoor Roth IRA

• Our joint taxable brokerage account: What’s leftover after contributing the maximum to our tax-advantaged accounts and spending according to the plan above – we set up our allocations together so that our new cash added would be automatically invested that way

Total invested monthly: $22,416

This is, of course, aspirational – in order to spend and save accordingly, we’d need about $30,000 of after-tax income per month.

The majority of the extra money for investing will come from Money with Katie, so most of our plan hinges on Money with Katie’s success in 2022. No pressure, honey.

Major takeaways

Honestly, my first takeaway is that life is f*cking expensive.

We don’t even have children or live in an especially high cost of living area and our monthly expenses are still over $7,000. Sure, we could absolutely cut back in some areas, but I also don’t think we’re living extremely high on the hog – just, like, halfway up the hog.

The other major takeaway I had from building this budget with my husband is that we’re planning to save 75% of our income. Our “together” FI goal is $2M, and according to the Wealth Planner’s projected returns section, we’re on track to hit $2M in 4 years. That gives me a sense of comfort in the fact that we can afford to spend in the way that we’re spending, as long as our earning goals hit the benchmarks we’re expecting.

It’s also helpful to understand areas in which we could cut back if we needed to, though that’s obviously never a fun discussion—regardless, we know Housing & Food are two major areas of opportunity in the event that our income(s) go down instead of up.