I’ve stressed again and again the importance of the budget meeting. It needs to happen at least monthly (for those of you completely out of control, up the frequency).

This isn’t a time for you to put on your hard-nosed, negotiating face and see if your spouse has the mettle to withstand your tricks and tactics all toward getting your way. This is a time to talk. As a matter of face, I’ll even say it’s a time to chat. However, there’s still some communication strategy that’s well worth learning.

The other day a good friend of mine (who doesn’t use YNAB fully, but does love and follow Rule One) told me he, “had to have a talk with my wife again about being frugal.”

I didn’t ask what he said exactly. I had a pretty good idea how the conversation went based on how my friend had framed it for me with that one sentence.

First, it may very well be that a “talk” was needed.

However, the way in which that talk — especially a talk about frugality — was given could have been improved to really deliver results.

The key is to communicate like a marketer. Budding marketer that I am, I do know that you always want to talk about the benefits of product X to your customer. You don’t worry that it can do 60 revolutions per second — you simply tell them that its speed will save them time. Bad marketers focus on the product and what it does, instead of focusing on what the product does for the customer.

When discussing frugality, how could we approach the topic differently? We talk about the benefits. Those benefits would be the goals you’ve agreed to during the monthly budget meetings. Those goals have buy-in from both parties and your spouse wants to follow them. So instead of saying, “Hey, we’re (or worse, you’re) spending too much money here, let’s try and cut back,” you’re saying, “I’m so excited that we’ll be able to pay cash for Christmas this year. It’s going to require some sacrifice, but MAN! This will be our first year where we haven’t gone into MORE DEBT to celebrate Christmas!”

Just paint those benefits all day long and my guess is that the frugality will follow.