How do you and your mate do the bills -- money management issues?

[Anonymous]

Ever since my dh and I have been married, I have handled all the money. He added me to all his accounts, his entire check goes in the account, I added him to most of my accounts and I've paid all the bills, given him whatever spending money he wanted (plus he has a savings account that I have access to but it is just his money). Now he has decided he wants more control over his money and wants a new system, not sure what though. So what do you and your mate do? Do you each pay certain bills? Does one of you pay most of the bills with a contribution from the other? How do you go about grocery shopping, or the kids clothes? Looking for ideas. Thanks much.

[Anonymous]

We each have our own accounts and then have a joint account.

We each pay certain bills out of our respective accounts and then pay for joint things (groceries/Target runs/vacations) out of the joint account. I have access to his account, but don't do anything with the access.

[Anonymous]

We both work. All money goes into one checking account and one savings account, which contains both of our names. A % of each of our paychecks in sent to the savings via direct deposit, where it is not touched.

My DH pays all of the bills and we can run the checking account down to $0 as long as we never have to take from savings. I cannot be trusted to pay the bills, lees we owuld have horrible credit.

We are truly as combined as possible and have no such separate accounts.

We have said in the case of divorce, we would sell everyting , split it down the middle and then duke it out for custody No need for complications, as we have the same earning potential and make a similar salary. I only bring this point up because i can see no other reason to keep separate finances unless you think you will get divorced one day or have a less than strong, respectful marriage.

[Anonymous]

Everything of ours is joint--no his and hers accounts. (We got married young, so perhaps that's why we;ve always had only joint accounts--it still works for us 19 years later, though!) I pay all the bills and we keep a record of all expenditures. We do allot each other a certain amount of personal money each month for spending however we want just for fun, with no accountability to the spouse needed on that amount.

HTH.

[Anonymous]

We have two accounts. One is supported by my pay check and the other is supported with by my husband’s. His account is much bigger than mine, so that is our primary account. I pay ALL of the bills out of our primary account. The other account "mine" serves mostly as a savings account. If we want more money for a special purchase, etc. we pull money from that account to our primary. It works for us, so far. We both have access to both accounts and can check it at anytime. Oh, and we have some investment accounts, which my husband fools around with - not my cup of tea. If he wants money for those accounts he just takes money from the primary account and uses it as he sees fit. We don’t really discuss it too much and we both tend to do what we please.

[Anonymous]

We both work. All money goes into one checking account and one savings account, which contains both of our names. A % of each of our paychecks in sent to the savings via direct deposit, where it is not touched.

Same for us.

I am in charge of paying the bills. We ask each other about large purchases, but don't question each other about smaller stuff. works for us.

[Anonymous]

We have completely separate accounts. I handle the money. I tell him how much I need for the month, and he writes me a check for it. His portion of the mortgage, utilities, car payments, day care, whatever.

[Anonymous]

Basically same as the PP above. We went completely joint a bit after we got married. The way it works in our house (after almost 8 years of marriage and a kid just on the way) is that I do all of the finances - invoices, bills, investments, rental property management. I also do the yardwork. He does laundry, dishes and trash. We're both much happier doing the things we like, and he has full access to see all financial stuff, though he has little interest. I have found that if you're ever 'hiding' a purchase or something, you either should not have bought it OR you should have had a discussion about it. In the end, it's much easier to talk about it, but it takes some getting used to. But we are both very comfortable this way and don't feel hamstrung by each other. Never seen the need for two accounts. You're in it together, right?

[Anonymous]

PP 16:29 here - oops, took me too long to write, and I was referring to 16:19, not 16:28.

[Anonymous]

separate accounts seem way more complicated than it's worth if you are concerned about cutting spending and maximizing resources.

like some other pp's, we do joint checking and joint savings, with direct depositing a portion into the savings - more like a rainy day fund. i do all the bills, but there was a time he did all the bills, because it's just infinitely easier for one person to handle it instead of constantly having to check with each other on the status of things. some people say they want separate accounts to "surprise" each other with gifts and such, but really, i can still get surprise gifts the way this works too. i'm sure separate accounts work great for other kinds of unwanted surprises too (like paying for a mistress perhaps?)

i could see how a person might want to keep separate accounts to protect their assets in case of a divorce, but if you're in a successful marriage, i really don't see the point. you're supposed to be in it together.

[Anonymous]

It would not occur to me not to have separate checking accounts.

Not because I think we are getting divorced (we are actually happily married!) but it seem like it would be more complicated to balance and keep track, plus I go online and check my account periodically to make sure no one is stealing my money (an internet hacker, I could lose my check card, etc.) and it would be a pain to call him all the time, "did you spend $80? did you buy a plane ticket for work?"

Just seems silly.

We have the mortgage together, and one joint savings account, and each have our own checking. Plus my husband's card was compromised and he had to destroy it and it took the bank a while to refund what was stolen and send him a new card, if we both had to deal with that it would have been a huge pain in the ass.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:separate accounts seem way more complicated than it's worth if you are concerned about cutting spending and maximizing resources.

like some other pp's, we do joint checking and joint savings, with direct depositing a portion into the savings - more like a rainy day fund. i do all the bills, but there was a time he did all the bills, because it's just infinitely easier for one person to handle it instead of constantly having to check with each other on the status of things. some people say they want separate accounts to "surprise" each other with gifts and such, but really, i can still get surprise gifts the way this works too. i'm sure separate accounts work great for other kinds of unwanted surprises too (like paying for a mistress perhaps?)

i could see how a person might want to keep separate accounts to protect their assets in case of a divorce, but if you're in a successful marriage, i really don't see the point. you're supposed to be in it together.

It's just easier. We got married late in life - in our 40s. It's not a reflection on the quality of our marriage, trust me.

[Anonymous]

some of these separate accounts sound more like a business arrangement or roomates rather than a marriage.

[Anonymous]

We have a joint checking account where we each deposit half of our salary. We pay rent, all utilities, child care, food, travel expenses, and baby stuff out of that account.

The other half of our salary we keep in separate savings and checking accounts, we save as much as we want every month and spend what we want within reason. This has worked well for the three years we have been married.

DH pays all the bills, most of them automatically. Like a PP said, I cannot be trusted .

[Anonymous]

Most of our accounts are joint. We have several because it is easier to parse things out that way. We have a bill pay account, and a cash (ATM) account that is supposed to be mostly mine but isn't, and a savings account. He also has a separate account that is supposed to be his mad money/lunch money. His grandfather has some family trust that sends him $1,000 for his birthday every year, so it gets socked away there rather than coming to the family. His normal needs - clothes, drycleaning, car, hair cuts, insurance, etc., comes out of the family pot.

Over the years we have shifted back and forth as to who was in charge. I could not live with his money style. He tends to panick every now and then and would simply announce, OK, you can't spend any money for the next three months. Obviously, when you have kids and need to pay the nanny, keep the kids clothed and fed, etc., this construct does not work. I now do the bills, etc. We have always had this conflict - I have always been the higher wage earner and more comfortable with some debt and he has always been more nervous about parting with money. What we do is a bit unwiedly, but it works. I communicate, big picture, what is going on with our finances, and he has his little pot of money over which he can exercise control.