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Money roles
This is a spin off from the gender roles thread.
How does your family handle finances? We have two joint accounts, but each of us handles a different set of expenses... spouse handles all the big monthly things like mortgage, insurance, utilities and credit cards, where I handle the weekly things like gas, groceries, daycare and all the kid expenses like prescriptions, clothing and activities. We jointly pay off the larger bills (line of credit, credit cards) and communicate regularly to update one another about those larger expenses.
We also each manage our own retirement investments (not a lot there lately) because we have very different risk thresholds. I think it's fair to say that we coordinate, but tend to stay out of the other person's baliwick. My husband also manages some of his business expenses out of his accounts, so it's good that I am not involved... if I saw 5k dropped on airfare to take his team out to another province I would fall over dead, even if the logical part of my brain knew that he was going to be reimbursed for it in a couple of weeks.
It actually works out well for us, although it's not very conventional.
How do you do it? One big bank account? Totally separate accounts? Does one person have control and the other an allowance and if so, is there resentment over it? If your accounts are completely co-mingled, how often do you argue over who's spending too much? If things are joint, do you have trouble keeping track of what is in/coming out of the account much?
How does your family handle finances? We have two joint accounts, but each of us handles a different set of expenses... spouse handles all the big monthly things like mortgage, insurance, utilities and credit cards, where I handle the weekly things like gas, groceries, daycare and all the kid expenses like prescriptions, clothing and activities. We jointly pay off the larger bills (line of credit, credit cards) and communicate regularly to update one another about those larger expenses.
We also each manage our own retirement investments (not a lot there lately) because we have very different risk thresholds. I think it's fair to say that we coordinate, but tend to stay out of the other person's baliwick. My husband also manages some of his business expenses out of his accounts, so it's good that I am not involved... if I saw 5k dropped on airfare to take his team out to another province I would fall over dead, even if the logical part of my brain knew that he was going to be reimbursed for it in a couple of weeks.
It actually works out well for us, although it's not very conventional.
How do you do it? One big bank account? Totally separate accounts? Does one person have control and the other an allowance and if so, is there resentment over it? If your accounts are completely co-mingled, how often do you argue over who's spending too much? If things are joint, do you have trouble keeping track of what is in/coming out of the account much?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by MamatothaMax on -
We have one checking account and two savings accounts. Any money that we save from Sailor's pay goes in one and any money that I make from paintings goes in the other. That way when it's time to order supplies I tap my savings account. Any extraneous online orders comes out of my account. It's a pool of money just divided up.
Our retirement fund is pretty low right now, Sailor has a fund through the Navy where a certain percentage is put aside (and matched) each month. Once I start working we'll put a higher % away.
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Permalink Reply by ks on -
We have almost everything joint. Both of our paychecks get direct deposited into the same checking account and we have one savings account linked to it. We also have all joint credit cards, except that I have one card in my name only (because I was very young when we got married and I wanted to have some credit in just my name), but it all gets paid out of the joint checking account.
I mostly deal with all the bills/finances, but he has complete access to everything if he ever wants it. We discuss big bills/purchases with each other beforehand, but for little things we don't worry too much and so far there haven't been any problems. We're both pretty good about keeping our odds and ends to a reasonable amount and every so often we'll sit down and outline a very general budget and what's left over after the big, mandatory things. And since I'm the one who mainly deals with the bank stuff, I'm the one who knows in way more detail how much we have, so if he wants to buy something for more than $40-$50, he runs it by me to make sure we can cover it.
And we do have separate (pretty traditional, state system) retirement accounts, but I'm listed as the beneficiary on his and he's listed on mine.
But yeah, just about everything we have is community property. Which works well for us, but I can see how people with different personalities toward money than us would find it problematic.
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Permalink Reply by StitchyWench on -
I handle the money. I'm very good at it, and when we first married he proved himself to not be excellent in the ways of remembering to pay his bills. Both of our credit scores are thankful for this. We don't really have any restrictions on who spends what on what. I always have to push him to buy something for himself, and he always has to push me to do the same. If either of us wants something big we usually discuss it first. All of our accounts are shared, all of our cards are shared, and we really never fight about money.
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Permalink Reply by kanachick on -
Since we've been living on one income for 10 years...there is just one account. He makes the money and I pay the bills. He makes sure there's money in the account and I make sure the lights stay on.
Before we moved to the States we had separate accounts and divided things up differently. Before we moved to the States I had an income. Now that I'm working a bit it's just going into the one account. When we moved down here I had to go on everything of his because I didn't really exist - no SSN meant no credit. It was difficult to be dependent but it worked out.
As far as large purchases go, we discuss everything - we discuss too much sometimes. My husband is extremely picky (which I try to take as a compliment) and if he can't have the best then he doesn't buy anything. We pay for stuff (except for houses and cars) in full so when we go to buy a new tv we have to have the cash to pay for it. Otherwise, we limp along with the old one.
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Permalink Reply by TommysMommy on -
We have one joint account that all the money goes into, since I make very little with my side job of wedding/church singer as a SAHM. We have a joint credit card that we do most of our purchases on, which gets paid off each month. (we earn points that way.) We rarely pay cash/debit for anything. We also each have a credit card in our own names for emergencies and using on-line so if it gets stolen, we don't have to change all our pre-authorized payments. We also put some money into a joint savings account each month, himself's RESP and my husband's RRSP. His gets matched by the company so it's in our best interest to put most of the money there.
We deal with all the bills together. And we don't fight about money. This month's going to be bad because of the moving expenses AND my car insurance. Yuck. Could have planned that better.
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Permalink Reply by Annaevilred on -
we have 2 checking and 2 savings accounts - my check and part of his are paid into the main account, a chuck of his goes into each of the savings accounts and then if needed he will transfer into the other checking (supposed to be is "art" account but it's really just his squirrel away for something special account). We also have PayPal for various internet (Ebay) stuff.
I pay all the bill, do about 90% of the shopping. If you were to ask Doug how much money we have he doesn't have a clue. He just asks if we have any money and can he get whatever. If there is a big purchase involved then we set aside money into his checking account and save up.
As for credit cards - we don't have them, they are evil and make me spend money we do not have. About 3 years ago we cut them all up and almost have paid off.
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Permalink Reply by Alan on -
We have a joint checking and savings accounts that the bills get paid from and the income goes into. We also have separate checking accounts that each get xx amount of $$ per month. That varies depending on our income, but is our personal stash for comic books, music and girls and boys nights' out.
I do the day to day bill paying and account management (luv Quicken), and we both do the big picture budgeting and planning. The Oracle manages food and other expenses within the budget, she is great there.
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Permalink Reply by rommie on -
We share joint checking and savings accounts. Everything but the cell phone bill is paid automatically, which is good, because we're both kind of scatterbrained. The stupid cell company refuses to join the 21st century and insists on doing things via paper, so we shake our fists angrily in their general direction once a month.
For non-recurring expenses, we use credit. It's paid off every month, and the points are a nice bonus. At the end of every billing cycle, we copy every. single. dollar spent for that month into a spreadsheet, where it's categorized and sorted into a nifty table that turns red or green based on the budget allotment vs. actual expenditure. It helps us keep track of trends over time and adjust our budgets as necessary. It also keeps us accountable. We're both a lot more likely to blow fifty cents at a time on gum or something if we know we're not going to have to discuss it at the end of the month, and those little amounts add up. Each of our budgets are weighted differently depending on what we're in charge of purchasing, and there are yearly (rather than monthly) boxes for Christmas/birthday gifts and the like that don't count against us individually. We each have small allotments built in for "fun" stuff.
We've gotten into small arguments before over money, but it's a world better than the issues my parents have been dealing with for the last 25 years. Ours mostly involve me glowering at him when I come home to find a new music equipment or a TV or something sitting in a box on the front porch. He doesn't splurge for little things as much as I do (though I don't do it much either), but when he decides to make a purchase, it has the be the best and most expensive thing ever made. We have different theories on how money should be spent and how to save for that, but we're working on it. The main issue for me is that I talk any purchases over about $10 with him before I buy, even if it's just a new pair of jeans, and he tends to "forget" to mention $500 purchases until they show up at the house.
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Permalink Reply by bethany on -
Wow, we do it almost the exact same way, with just a slightly higher threshhold for spending money without talking to one another--nothing set in stone but I wouldn't spend hundreds without talking to Wes. Other than that, we do it just like ks.
ks said:We have almost everything joint. Both of our paychecks get direct deposited into the same checking account and we have one savings account linked to it. We also have all joint credit cards, except that I have one card in my name only (because I was very young when we got married and I wanted to have some credit in just my name), but it all gets paid out of the joint checking account.
I mostly deal with all the bills/finances, but he has complete access to everything if he ever wants it. We discuss big bills/purchases with each other beforehand, but for little things we don't worry too much and so far there haven't been any problems. We're both pretty good about keeping our odds and ends to a reasonable amount and every so often we'll sit down and outline a very general budget and what's left over after the big, mandatory things. And since I'm the one who mainly deals with the bank stuff, I'm the one who knows in way more detail how much we have, so if he wants to buy something for more than $40-$50, he runs it by me to make sure we can cover it.
And we do have separate (pretty traditional, state system) retirement accounts, but I'm listed as the beneficiary on his and he's listed on mine.
But yeah, just about everything we have is community property. Which works well for us, but I can see how people with different personalities toward money than us would find it problematic.
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Permalink Reply by ks on
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We don't have any limits set in stone, either. He just has a lower spend without asking threshold than me because he doesn't usually know the exact amount in the checking account (we try to not touch savings unless absolutely necessary) and he wants to make sure we don't overdraft. Which hasn't been a problem in the last few years, because I've been pulling in a little more and he makes more now and so I can keep a good sized buffer in the account, but it was an issue when we were first married.
bethany said:Wow, we do it almost the exact same way, with just a slightly higher threshhold for spending money without talking to one another--nothing set in stone but I wouldn't spend hundreds without talking to Wes. Other than that, we do it just like ks.
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Permalink Reply by mightyninjamom on -
We used to do things separately until AG's forgetfulness nearly foreclosed our house! He was reluctant to have me in control of everything at first, so we had a joint account that the majority of his paycheck was deposited in, and then he maintained his separate account as an 'allowance' type thing. However, he is an impulse-type buyer and was constantly overdrawn. I knew I would have to present a very compelling reason for not using his allowance account anymore, and after about 8 months, he had racked up a number of overdraft notices that I then presented to him. I had to baldly tell him I didn't want his bad habits to drag my credit into the gutter. Also, I was pissed.
So now we have just the one checking account, and if it involves any type of day to day transaction, I am in charge of it. It is also my job to make sure I have a certain amount of money in the account as a buffer for him to spend on stuff like haircuts, gas, lunches etc. It's worked out pretty well. If I feel like we are too low in our account for him to spend much, I just tell him so and he is very good about not spending again until payday. Mostly at this point I just harangue him about his coffee habit.
The only long term financial thing I am in charge of are the kids' 529 accounts. AlphaGeek understands the language of long term stuff better, so he monitors our retirement accounts.
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Permalink Reply by Boring User Name on -
We used to have two individual allowance accounts and one joint account, but now that I don't have a direct deposit into it, they wanted to charge me $12/month, so I dropped it. But I get the same allowance amount now and just track it in GnuCash (this is an experiment, which might be failing). We can spend any money we want out of the individual accounts--we discuss joint purchases. I do all of the financial planning-401(k)s, 529s, IRAs, insurance purchases, etc. He is a great researcher, so when we bought a car, I figured out how much we could spend, he researched the best car for us, so we balance each other nicely.
We are generally on the same page in terms of overall spending, so it works for us. He does need my long-term planning, though. I've helped him save more and live on less since we've been dating, just by setting up systems that allow for long-term savings. Occasionally, we both have overspending tendencies, but we tend to keep each other in check more often than not.
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