I always find it fascinating to see how others merge their money. There's this post about who pays for what little expense over at Feminist Finance. Then there's this terrifying mess of micromanaged accounts over at Make Love, Not Debt.
Señor Dog and I have more or less had combined finances for a long time. So, I'll start at the beginning. Two weeks after a big, expensive vacation mostly on credit cards, Señor Dog and I moved in together. I had been listening to Suze Orman, and I had allocated rent as a percentage of income, and I had split the remaining bills accordingly. A month later, I lost my job.
I went to the charts, and tried to make it work, I was really stressed out. Señor Dog cut me off said that all of that was all stupid. He gave me the password to his bank account, and he said "Just pay the bills. We're not roommates." He walked out. I was speechless. I will never forget that moment of trust. He gave me his password for crying out loud! At that moment, I knew our commitment. It was loud and clear.
When I got a new job, I made three times as much as Señor Dog, so it reversed. I paid the bills. Sometimes we moved money between our accounts. We just did it. We talked about our expenses. We saw what we spent. There were no secrets. There were a few issues, like a $200 bar tab, and a $300 salon tab. But we talked about it, it didn't fester, and most importantly, it wasn't a secret.
When Señor Dog quit his day job to start his own business, we were reversed, and I was supporting him. That was an stressful time for me emotionally. I think it was compounded by all of our debt and about the risk of small business.
In the last couple weeks, I have changed all of our accounts to joint, or I have closed them. We have a bank account through Fidelity, and a money market account through Fidelity, all joint. I kept two credit cards in my name, one in his, all with authorized user cards for the other. No secrets.
I know our situation isn't right for everyone, fine. Maybe you've had issues, maybe you really don't trust your partner with your money, maybe you don't want accountability on everything you spend. Fine. As for me, I feel like all that bill divvying and dividing and splitting and adding is for roommates, not partners. I've split bills for a long time, in a lot of roommate situations. But now that we're life partners, the bills are not mine, they are ours. So, the money is ours too.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
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18 comments:
Whatever works for you.
What a sweet man to do that..
I think in your position, I'd do the same for BF and vice versa, but in the mean time, we like splitting the bills 50/50. Just feels fair without being too micro-managey and counting who ate how much of what tub of ice cream.
Fabulously Broke in the City
"Just a girl trying to find a balance between being a Shopaholic and a Saver."
My fiance and I have separate accounts, we pretty much split bills based on income. I make more money, so I will make the extra payments and savings deposits. So I pretty much keep track of everything. The only problem I have is getting him to send the extra money in his account into savings (from the 2 extra biweekly paychecks mainly). He will just keep it in his checking account while I am stressing on how to pay bills (or pay off my 0% credit card). I haven't figured out how to ask for it without being so pushy, especially when I don't know the balance of his account. All in time I guess.
Currently trying to decide how Bird and I will handle our finances when married. Thanks for the timely post. Sounds like your system works great for you...I'm sure we'll find something that works for us too.
Thanks for this. My future husband and I are still coming up with our "system" but I suspect it will change over the years like yours has. Right now he makes more but that won't always be the case.
When I was engaged everything was separate because we didn't live together. Now that we are married we combine everything. It wasn't an issue and it was never really discussed other than to say that is how we were going to do it. I can't imagine doing it any other way. My husband makes a little more than 2x what I make but I work for a family business and get 20% of my salary in a year end bonus that I lend back to the business so cash isn't drained. Its there if I need it but I don't touch it - its sort of a forced E-fund (we don't consider this money when figuring any expenses or spending). The only thing we do that is sort of based on percentage of income is our fun money. My husband gets a little more than 2 times what I get but he loves belgium beer and I refuse to pay for it so he gets more money to pay for that.
We have separate finances still, I'll merge them once Mr M catches up with paying the bills. He has barely worked for the last 6 months and has rung up a lot of debt, I don't feel like taking his on after I worked so hard to pay off my own (without his help). I love him but sometimes I fear he is content to play video games all day while I bust my butt, he needs external motivation and giving him bills to pay seems to help.
Miss M's man reminds me of mine. Mr. K is playing a video game right now! He doesn't worry about debt, just buys (charges) what he wants. He doesn't save, either, and I couldn't handle that if our money was merged. We split household expenses by paying bills out of a joint account that he puts a set amount of money into. I figured out the amount by averaging utility costs over a year. We used to base it on a percentage of our income since we don't make the same amount, but since I bought the house in my name only he still pays the same amount and I pay the rest. It is very disproportionate because the mortgage is so much more than our rent was, but I get to keep all the equity (which is negative right now) and the tax breaks.
BF and I have a joint account, and I have my own separate account as well. He pays for the majority of the rent and food, while I pay for the utilities. He earns three times more than I do, so it's only fair! We share two credit cards, and I have one of my own.
I don't trust him with my money because he has siblings who continue to make poor choices in life and from time to time he gives them money. I don't want any of my cash going towards their stupid decisions.
We merged all of our money about a year after we married. We made an agreement to set a budget for special gifts to each other (ie. birthday, Christmas) so neither of us goes crazy. For anything else we might decide we want to purchase, we discuss it before making any purchase over $250. That's for extra things we want, not for monthly bills, etc. I keep track of everything, but once a month we review the checking, savings and credit card statement (if it has been used) just so we both know where we stand.
Senor Dog sounds lovely.
Unfortunately, I would have been up the proverbial crap creek without a paddle if I had merged my finances with my former husband's. I'm not saying that I would never merge finances in future if I got remarried, but it's not something that would happen overnight. Maybe that's my age talking, though. *sigh*
Best anti-spam word I've seen on blogger: frack!
I noticed that need to be debt free is on your list of blog links. I really enjoyed reading his stuff. Did anyone happen to read why he gave it up? Or did he say? Thanks
@anon, JW emailed me and said someone from his work was reading his blog and making problems for him. Should have posted more anonymously I guess.
We split almost everything equally even though I make almost twice what the husband makes. However, we live very comfortably within just my salary - he is saving right now on his own for an professional eliptical machine and hasn't had to scrimp much. We save - a lot. I have elderly parents in poor health that I believe we will be supporting in a few years with the stock market crash.
We have one joint checking account, and each have separate checking and savings accounts. Balances are shared with each other every month or so. We have two joint credit cards and one separate one each. Why do we have so many cards? They are sitting there with high limits and collecting dust for the most part. No reason to cancel ones helping credit scores that we don't use! The others we trade back and forth on since not everyone takes Visa and MC - sometimes merchants only take one or the other.
We thought about biasing by income, but husband has no problem with my account paying for big stuff like furniture and vacations.
This is a tough call, and when I get to this point in my life, I'm not sure what I'll do. On the one hand, I'd like to think that whomever I marry will truly be a life partner, for better or worse. On the other hand, I've been in banking long enough to know that feelings change, and so do people. I've seen the ugly divorces and cheating spouses, and I've seen what it does to bank accounts and credit reports. While I don't advocate lying to a spouse or hiding money, I do think each person in a relationship needs an "Oh $hit" fund for themselves, separate from the merged finances. Feel free to share the balances, but it does need to be separate. Make your spouse a beneficiary, but not a joint owner. This is an account to stash money away in, just in case.
For as much of a romantic as I am, when it comes to money, I'm not very romantic at all. I'll be getting a pre-nup, and I'll probably have a joint account for household purposes, but you can bet I'll have the side account, too.
you're my hero! it really is possible to share finances without nickel/diming or going 50/50 in marriage and relationship.
I like to call our money management method, "Separate, but not alone." I think it's the best of both worlds.
We each manage all our own money, but we work together towards our mutual goals. We often do our budgets at the same time and talk about our progress and plans. So we have all the advantage of working together and all the advantage of not worrying about the other person's random day to day expenses.
Really, we're both just budget nerds and reluctant to give up our individual systems. :)
Mr. Moderntightwad and I shared all monies right from when we were married (We were only engaged three months). It's nice because it doesn't matter which one of us is "more" employed than the other, income and expenses are shared. The only thing I would not share was my debt. When we got married we got joint credit cards but I wouldn't put him as an AU on my previous cards because I didn't want him to pay for my past mistakes.
I always get confused regarding the way people separate their finances as it seems to leave so many problems. I.e. for richer or poorer should not mean one's richer, one's poorer and any relationship you enter that you want to be permanent you cannot start with an exit strategy. True joint finances mitigate the potential for financial infidelity and show that your eggs are all in the basket. FYI Mr. MT and I have been married for four years in two weeks, my parents were married for 24 years until my father's death and Mr. MT's folks are still married after 25 years. Financial ups and downs? Yes. Joint finances? Yes. But overall successful marriages. How you handle your finances is not the key to a successful relationship, it's how hard you work at the relationship.
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