The Money Fight

When my husband and I were just dating, and then engaged, I never imagined we would be the type of couple to ever fight about money. We were both very frugal and practical, and we always tried to communicate honestly about things with each other. Even since we've been married, we've worked on budgeting together: making spreadsheets and bill pay charts to make sure we manage our money well (which isn't hard, since we don't have very much of it!). Despite the well-known-fact that money is one of the most volatile subjects between spouses, I believed that my husband and I were somehow immune to finance-related arguments. And yet, just last week, we got into a fight about money. It wasn't even a fight about how we spend our money, but rather how it is stored across different accounts and banks and how accessible it all is at any given time.

 
Instead of discussing the matter calmly, both of us got really frustrated trying to explain our point of view to the other. I couldn't understand why he thought his ideas made any sense, and he felt the same way about mine. As a result, we both felt like our spouse thought we were stupid, and it's very hard to come to an agreement on something when you're feeling simultaneously frustrated, angry, and looked down upon by the person you love.
 
What were some precautionary measures we could have taken to prevent such an argument? I felt like we had talked about money matters before we got married and had always agreed, but I realize now that we have only talked about short-term budgeting. We've never really talked about long-term finances, only that we want to pay off our loans and have a nice bit of savings for a rainy day or for our future children.
 
What we should have done early on was look at each of our current financial situations and talked about our long-term plans. Should I keep accounts open with my small, home-town bank indefinitely, or should we decide together a point at which to close those? Is it a good idea for us to keep joint accounts with our parents in case of emergencies, or will that just make us feel more dependent? When should we open a joint account as a couple, and with which bank, mine or his? At what point should he apply for a credit card that is solely his, and not co-signed by his dad? How many accounts over how many different banks is wise? How many credit cards? How many store-specific credit cards? Should we set up "don't touch" savings accounts for special things, like vacations, or our childrens' college education? These are all things that might have passed our mind at some point, but we just thought "We'll deal with that when the time comes, it's easier than planning it all out ahead." The reality is that postponing discussions like these might mean that you only talk about them when something bad happens and your emotions are already involved.
 
Instead of waiting for another argument to flare up, I'm going to suggest to my husband that we really hash out all of those long-term questions and figure out what our answers to them are, at a time when we're both feeling neutral and calm and can talk like adults. I'll even suggest we make a list of these questions and what are answers are, so we can go back to them if the issues ever come up again. Our feelings might have changed by then, but at least we can look back and see that there was a time where we came to a civil agreement as friends.