Managing Needs vs. Wants as a Couple

Janele Hoerner explores how married couples can work together to transform their family’s financial situation by balancing needs and wants.  

Is it a need? 

Since we live in a world that constantly offers many new gadgets to make our lives easier, I have immensely struggled. Balancing needs verses wants for our family, on one income, has been very trying. Being home with the children all day, I am the one who hears about all the wants of our children. I am the one who thinks of all the ways life would be more convenient if we had this tool or that item to simplify life’s tasks.  

For years I was the one who had to manage what would be bought and what should be bought. I did it myself because the expectation from my family was that since I was home, I would manage the finances — but I was terrible at it. Not intentionally, but I struggled immensely because I couldn’t decide what was a need or a want.

It was easy if the children wanted a game system or a toy to say that’s not needed, but hard when it was something like a homeschooling curriculum that could simplify our lives by making school more organized, books that would help guide our family to be a better unit, or a carpet-cleaning machine for helping with stains from little everyday accidents.  

I spent the first decade of our marriage focusing on what I thought was the more important things: quality time at night after the kids were finally asleep to watch something interesting, talking about something we had read throughout the day, rocking newborns, having a stay-up night with one of our older children (to give them one-on-one time), or just going to bed right after the kids because we were exhausted. That season of life felt so long in the moment, and I never intentionally vocalized to my husband about my sub-par decision-making before it was past due.  

What is a want? 

A want is something that we can live without. Yes, but there has to be more of an explanation than that. It seems that if we live like that, we are only surviving through the days and not thriving. The reality is, although the world puts down this fact as boring and no fun, God is calling us to do and think about only one day at a time. We are called to find joy in the sacrifice and the service in the suffering while offering up our pains to our God above. 

We all want to live like we have the extra income that we do not. As mothers, we must be strong and speak our needs out to God and our husbands. It is our husband’s duty to offer help when we are in need, but we have to be strong enough to ask. We will not receive help if we do not ask for it on most occasions, even though we may wish our husbands to notice our subtle cues. We must do this whether we rely on one income or two, because God has designed marriage for couples to be a support to one another as they build each other up. 

Suffering together 

All women and men are unique. Our talents are not all equal; therefore not all women or men should be tasked with managing the same things. When more is asked of us then we can handle, we must acknowledge that we know ourselves enough to see our personal talents as they are. We must use our strength to ask for assistance in the areas where we are weak.

If we do not receive help on the first try, we must persist to our husbands to help us using different words to explain our needs or asking at different times. This way we can together rely on each other, suffering together, as we balance our budget or anything else in our lives for that matter. Using this strategy, the burden of each task does not need to be one person’s shoulders alone. Together, as a couple, you will be stronger as you rely on each other in all areas, not just in the ones that are easy.  

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Copyright 2025 Janele Hoerner
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