Before you can figure out how much money you must allot to each of the items on your list of life priorities, you must take a hard look at how you currently spend your money. To do this, get out six months worth of bank and credit card statements, and any other receipts you keep. This is probably something you've done to prepare your taxes in the past year, and so the records should be available either online or in a box or file. That doesn't mean this part of the process will be easy or pleasant.

The hard part is accountability — first to yourself, then to your partner. To look on the positive side, there is a relief that comes with facing the truth. It's also the only way to make a change — by starting with where you are right now. This documentation process will help you refine your discussion of common money values.

For example, what if one of you considers gym membership a necessity, while your partner views it as a luxury? He suggests you can just take a vigorous morning walk in the park instead of spending $50 a month running on the treadmill. You say that going to the gym is the only way you've been able to keep your commitment to exercise; that it allows you fewer excuses to skip it. Who's right?

Well, of course that depends on where exercise fits into your hierarchy of priorities. Not whether exercise is good for you, since that's a given, but what it means for you — your health, your state of mind or body. Only then can you and your partner assess its status as an essential or a luxury, and then only in relationship to where else that $50 a month may need to go.

Beware the Miscellaneous

So, if you have all your bill statements and receipts out on the table, you can either use a computer bookkeeping program or do the same thing on a pad of paper, as long as you make a complete list of where your money goes now. In addition to the groupings that are indisputably essential — housing, food, medical care, and clothing — pay special attention to the all-important category called “miscellaneous,” otherwise known as the black hole of budgeting.

Take a hard look at the number of lattes, lottery tickets, or downloadable tunes each of you may purchase in the course of any given week or month. For most people, this is the category that determines whether you're living within a budget or not. These are likely to become the obvious candidates for budget cutting. By extension, they're where most of your money disagreements and tensions will originate.