[macintologist]

So how do you manage your money and your collective spending. Do you have a joint bank account, or your own. How do you decide who pays for the groceries, who pays for the house repairs and the mortagage, who pays to send the kids to school, etc. Doesn't it make it hard if one spouse earns twice as much as the other, does that you mean you have to divide expenses down 1/3 and 2/3s or what?

[itai195]

We have a joint account for all shared expenses which I manage. Both of our paychecks go straight to that account. We also each have personal checking accounts and we each get some money every month to spend however we want from those accounts. This has worked great for us. I know couples who keep everything completely separate and I just don't see how that could work. Some of the ones I know go so far as to split everything... they each have their own luggage, their own computers, etc... It is weird.

[cjrivera]

All of the money is managed by her. She pays the bills, runs the finances, and manages the accounts. We don't have separate accounts (well, I wouldn't have any idea if she had her own separate account, but then again, it wouldn't matter since she runs all the books anyway...)

I can't imagine dividing expenses or even, how you would try and go about it.

[Cody Dawg]

Same as cjrivera, exactly.

I can't imagine "splitting" expenses. That's kind of weird, to be honest. It seems to set up - immediately - a wall of some type in the marriage. It's as if you don't trust each other from the beginning.

[Stradlater]

If you "love" her, except in extreme psychologically depraved circumstances (in which you truly can't trust her with your money, in which case I'm sorry; it'll be a difficult marriage), why waste the time, etc., involved in dividing financial responsibility in such a sectionalized way.

Joint bank account; large financial decisions should be discussed together beforehand. Not much to it.

P.S. Was it you that just awhile back wrote a post about planning things with your new girlfriend? Was that someone else? You're not already planning marriage, are you?

[macintologist]

The only problem I see with joint accounts is what if you end up getting divorced? Do you split the money up 50/50? What if one spouse works 50hrs/week and contributes to 80% of the money?

[turtle777]

Same account, I do the finances.

-t

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by macintologist 

The only problem I see with joint accounts is what if you end up getting divorced? Do you split the money up 50/50? What if one spouse works 50hrs/week and contributes to 80% of the money?

Or, don't get divorced.








-t

[itai195]

Originally Posted by macintologist 

The only problem I see with joint accounts is what if you end up getting divorced? Do you split the money up 50/50? What if one spouse works 50hrs/week and contributes to 80% of the money?

Well if you live in a community property state it doesn't really matter...

[macintologist]

Originally Posted by what_the_heck 

Or, don't get divorced.








-t

Of course except that divorce happens quite often. I of course hope it never happens to me but I'm just wondering what happens in those circumstances to others.

[Stradlater]

Originally Posted by macintologist 

The only problem I see with joint accounts is what if you end up getting divorced? Do you split the money up 50/50? What if one spouse works 50hrs/week and contributes to 80% of the money?

If one really feels the need to plan for divorce, maybe they should reconsider before marrying that person.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by macintologist 

Of course except that divorce happens quite often.

Really ? Never happens to me... I must be doing something right.

-t

[Stradlater]

Originally Posted by macintologist 

Of course except that divorce happens quite often. I of course hope it never happens to me but I'm just wondering what happens in those circumstances to others.

Unfortunately, yes, divorce is more and more common as society changes; still, it's not a very good attitude to go into a marriage with the possibility of divorce in mind.

To simplify things; just plan on getting a good divorce lawyer if you make more than your spouse.

[villalobos]

Not mixing money. We are both very laid back, but reasonable when it comes to money, so there is no need for mixing. Besides she would not want to I bet since she makes more than I do.

[Spliffdaddy]

I think you'll discover that when you're getting divorced - money is the last thing you're concerned about.

There's nothing you can do to stop your spouse from spending money. Legally, it's as much her money as it is yours. Mine spent tens of thousands during the 3 months it took for the divorce to become final. Most of it was on jointly-held credit cards.

Worse, she left the 2 cats with me while she traveled to Europe. One of them began to have trouble breathing the day after she left. After a couple thousand in vet bills, the cat had to be euthanized. Naturally, she blamed me for killing the cat. As if I'd spend $2,800 to kill a cat. Hey, whatever.

Money can be replaced. The ten years you wasted in a marriage cannot.

edit:

To answer the original question...my wife was the one that handled all the finances. I didn't even know who we owed or when it was due. You can make all the agreements you want about which bills belong to which spouse. You can keep individual bank accounts. You can pretend in any number of ways that marriage isn't a joint endeavour. But the entire basis for marriage is the concept that everything is shared. None of your agreements are legal contracts. If you feel the need to keep your finances seperate from your spouse, I bet both of you keep a lot of other secrets, as well. If you can't trust them with money, you simply can't trust them.

[art_director]

we're both small business owners. to keep things easy we keep all finances separate. she has her designated bill, and i have mine. for us it works nicely.

[BRussell]

We do it the way my parents did it: We have a joint account, and my wife also has a separate account. The theory (I think) is that, since I make a lot more than her, she has her own account she won't feel guilty about spending.

macintologist - I could be wrong, but I don't think separate accounts have any effect on the outcome of a divorce.

[Atheist]

Originally Posted by Spliffdaddy 

To answer the original question...my wife was the one that handled all the finances. I didn't even know who we owed or when it was due. You can make all the agreements you want about which bills belong to which spouse. You can keep individual bank accounts. You can pretend in any number of ways that marriage isn't a joint endeavour. But the entire basis for marriage is the concept that everything is shared. None of your agreements are legal contracts. If you feel the need to keep your finances seperate from your spouse, I bet both of you keep a lot of other secrets, as well. If you can't trust them with money, you simply can't trust them.

I couldn't have said it better myself. I appreciate that many decide to keep all finances seperate but it wouldn't work for me. My spouse is the person I intend on spending the rest of my life with. Why would I spend an ounce of time or energy worrying that things might not work out. I spend every ounce of energy preparing for our future. I have an ex-sister-in-law that constantly made statements that ended in "...just in case things don't work out between me and your brother". She even shared a bank account with her mother that he didn't know about. It's as though she went into the marriage ready for it to fail. And guess what... it did...

What do I recommend. Share your finances, but give yourselves "play money" that is yours to do with whatever you want.

[Mastrap]

We have a joint account, all money that comes in is paid into it, all bills are paid from it.

We talk about all important financial decisions, but we both spend money as we see fit. When my wife sees a dress/shoes/handbag/DVD/stuff for the house she likes she buys it, when I see anything I like I buy it. The 'let's talk about this first' line is reached around $200.00. We never set that mark, but it seems to be the amount when we call each other first to check if the other partner is ok with the purchase.

Right now we're earning about the same, but back when I was employed rather than running my own business I earned considerably more than she did. It still worked out.

[SSharon]

What did you all do with money you had coming into the marriage? I understand that all income comes into the joint account and all bills are paid from it, but does that include whatever you saved when you were younger and student loans?

After 5 years (of dating) I am finally starting to do some serious financial planning. Other than opening an IRA account, which I did just now, what else can I do to prepare.

[andi*pandi]

We have our own accounts, but both names are on each. So technically I could write a check on his account, and vice versa. Never done that however. Like Mas, we both buy what we want whe we want.

We each have responsibility for certain bills, and the big ticket items we discuss. It's not for lack of trust. It's workshare.

My mother told me to keep my own account. She was widowed at 22 and had no credit because everything was in his name--even though she had been the one writing the checks on time. Not having your own accounts, bills, etc, erases you in the eyes of the credit bureau. When she remarried, she kept her own checking account so as not to lose the good credit she had built up.

[ink]

When we first got married, we kept our accounts separate because we were used to it that way. After about 4 years, we opened a joint account, but kept separate credit cards (and we still do for independence). My wife does all the bills and budgets, I have to take care of taxes, car and house related issues. And computers. I take care of those too. :-)

[Railroader]

All of our money goes into one account. I pay the bills from it. We are married. One. Everything we have is ours. Not mine and hers.

Any purchase over $100 is mutually agreed upon. Once in a while this "rule" is broken, but neither one of us has gotten even remotely concerned about it.

Once in a while she'll talk about me spending too much money on toys. At that point I simply point to her jewelry cabinet and grab my wallet and coat and tell her I need to go out and catch up. This usually quiets her down for a few months or so.

And as was stated earlier: NEVER plan for a divorce. Anyone i know who ever did was.

[Spliffdaddy]

Originally Posted by SSharon 

What did you all do with money you had coming into the marriage? I understand that all income comes into the joint account and all bills are paid from it, but does that include whatever you saved when you were younger and student loans?

After 5 years (of dating) I am finally starting to do some serious financial planning. Other than opening an IRA account, which I did just now, what else can I do to prepare.

All the money you have coming into a marriage would then belong to both of you. Surely you don't plan on marrying somebody that you don't trust with mere money. You're trusting that person with your life and your well-being - if trusting them with money is any sort of an issue then, quite honestly, your marriage is destined to be a temporary endeavor.

edit: If you don't feel like you can trust your spouse or potential spouse with "your" money, then you should both seek the guidance of a marriage counselor. I do NOT mean to suggest that the "money trust" issue is a fatal flaw in relationships. It's just a huge flaw. Money issues and infidelity probably account for 90% of divorces.

You should both have an equal input into the monthly budget, regardless of the source of the income. You should have a written budget that spends *every* dollar. That means you'll have a 'savings' category, an 'entertainment' category, a 'food' category, a 'clothing' category, etc. If you've commited your lives to one another then it shouldn't be any problem commiting to your budget. It's unfair to place the burden of the finances on one person. I learned this too late. The stress of bills and budgeting should be a shared burden.

As for your last question, I'd suggest having a longterm retirement account and a more liquid 'emergency fund' that could absorb at least 3 months of living expenses. Do not use or own any credit cards. Instead use a debit card that is funded by your checking account. You do not need a credit score in order to obtain a good mortgage. All you need is a 2 year history of uninterrupted employment, a 2 year history of on-time rental payments, and exceedingly little credit debt or student loan debt. Do that and you will get the lowest interest rate possible. Mortgage companies employ underwriters for a reason - because the world of credit doesn't revolve around the almighty FICO score.

[SSharon]

Originally Posted by Spliffdaddy 

As for your last question, I'd suggest having a longterm retirement account and a more liquid 'emergency fund' that could absorb at least 3 months of living expenses. Do not use or own any credit cards. Instead use a debit card that is funded by your checking account. You do not need a credit score in order to obtain a good mortgage. All you need is a 2 year history of uninterrupted employment, a 2 year history of on-time rental payments, and exceedingly little credit debt or student loan debt. Do that and you will get the lowest interest rate possible. Mortgage companies employ underwriters for a reason - because the world of credit doesn't revolve around the almighty FICO score.

Don't get me wrong, I trust her with everything and have no reservations about bringing everything that I have and laying it on the table.

What type of fund is good as a liquid emergency fund. I assume you don't mean my standard savings or checking account.

I use my credit card all the time, but haven't put on many large purchases other than my ibook. Since the balance is low I end up paying my bill more often than I need to. I also have a debit card linked to my secondary checking account that I use infrequently.

I have been trying to find a time to sit down with my gf to go over monthly expenses, but a) they are changing too much right now and b) I don't even know everything to put on there. Is there an online calculator of sorts to aid in the monthly breakdown?

[Spliffdaddy]

Originally Posted by SSharon 

Don't get me wrong, I trust her with everything and have no reservations about bringing everything that I have and laying it on the table.

What type of fund is good as a liquid emergency fund. I assume you don't mean my standard savings or checking account.

I use my credit card all the time, but haven't put on many large purchases other than my ibook. Since the balance is low I end up paying my bill more often than I need to. I also have a debit card linked to my secondary checking account that I use infrequently.

Yay. I'm glad you have that trust.

For any other folks, please see my "edit" in my previous post. It's important to address all issues of trust prior to marriage. Take it from me, when you wake up in the morning the day after you're married you will be amazed at how much about your relationship hasn't changed. Other than the ring and your commitment, your day will seem much like the days before.

Yes, I mean your standard checking/savings account. That's fine for an emergency fund. Generally, if your debit card is stolen you are not liable for any charges. It's a very safe place to keep money. Another alternative is a certificate of deposit (CD) or money market fund. These are liquid - meaning the access to the funds is fast - but they also have penalties for early withdrawl. These type of accounts are better suited for short-term savings where you *plan* for their use...such as a down payment on a home. If you feel better about not having your emergency fund readily available in your checking account, then dump the cash into a 3 or 6 month CD. The emergency fund, as you'll discover, will save your butt many times. The unexpected $1200 transmission repair, the out-of-town funeral that requires the last minute purchase of airline tickets, the job layoff, or medical bills.

On the topic of credit cards...

You're playing with snakes. And there isn't any compelling reason to play with them. I understand that everyone believes they're a "responsible user" - but this country has a huge problem with credit debt, yet nobody will define themselves as an "irresponsible" credit card user. Your emergency fund will handle your emergencies - and your debit card will handle the requirements of a credit card.

Being debt-free is the best gift you could give to your marriage. The stress reduction is such a liberating feeling that it's difficult to comprehend.

[rickey939]

Originally Posted by what_the_heck 

Same account, I do the finances.

-t

Bingo.

[jebjeb]

My wife and I have a joint account which both our incomes go into (well hers did until she finished her part-time work a couple of weeks ago as she is pregnant!). My wife manages all the money and all bills are on direct debit straight out of the joint account.

We try not to use credit cards but they are paid off from the joint account.

For the past six months we have been trialling an "allowance" for each of us. It is mainly there to help us track how much we spend on non essentials. It also has the other benefit of both of us having "guilt-free" money which we can spend on whatever we want.

If I want a new mac, I save up my allowance a couple of months and get it. We still talk about our bigger purchases because, in my opinion, communication is the key to a successful marraige, partnership or anything like that.

My allowance includes money for things like going out, lunch at work and general spending money. If I want to go and spend lots of money on lunch then it leaves me with less for other things. Keeps me in check and stops me going out and having ten quid lunches every day!

Some luxury items will come out of the joint account rather than either allowance. We bought a couple of LCD TVs recently and because we could both see those being nice for us to have, we decided to get them.

We have two months of living expenses (including the mortgage payments) in savings as cash backup and the rest goes in to the house. We are on a flexible mortgage so it is much better to be not paying 5% interest on the house then it is earning 5% interest in savings and getting half of it taken away in tax.

The only way I can see it when each person in the marriage is not entitled to 50% of everything is when one person is not pulling their weight. Let me take an example of a friend. His wife quit her job about three months ago as she wanted to get into contracting. Since then, she has not sent her CV out to anyone or attended any interviews. She says she is trying but she is really waking up at midday and then spending around twelve hours a day playing World of Warcraft. The house is a mess and nothing gets cooked. My mate gets home after work and the only way that he can interact with his wife is to log onto WoW and skype up with her and her guild from the room beside the one she is in.

Now obviously there is a lot more going on here and they have some big problems but I would see it that if she did her part for the relationship at this time which would be to spend more time activly looking for a job and keeping the house neat and cooking the odd mean then she would be playing an active roll in the relationship. But she is not.

If the situation was reversed, I would expect him to be cleaning and cooking as well. It is not a gender thing.

My wife and I choose for her to be a house wife and we both enjoy her being able to do it. All I have to do every day is go to work and tell some people what to do. She has to clean, bake, grow a baby , look after me (which is a tough job ), do the finances etc. She certainly deserves half of my income. Actually that comes across the wrong way as it is not "your money, my money". She deserves an equal share in deciding what to do with "our" money.

Sorry if this comes over as a rant but I have recently had this discussion with a few guys here at work and I seem to be in the minority with this opinion whereas here in good ol' MacNN it seems to be the normal view!

[ghporter]

Like cjrivera, we have a joint account, our money is pooled and everything is paid jointly by my wife. She not only has more time (she's not in school right now, and I am), but she's more organized and better at creating and managing a budget than I am-WAY better!

Isn't having separate accounts sort of like saying "I love you but I don't trust you enough to let you touch my money"? I can't imagine sharing my life with someone but not my paycheck...

[Dakar²]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

Isn't having separate accounts sort of like saying "I love you but I don't trust you enough to let you touch my money"? I can't imagine sharing my life with someone but not my paycheck...

Isn't there room to do both? Have a joint account and a personal account?

[Cody Dawg]

I pay all the regular bills and my husband pays the mortgage - from the same account.

If one of us wants to buy the other someone we usually say, "I took out $xxx in cash today because I needed to buy something."

[jebjeb]

Originally Posted by Cody Dawg 

I pay all the regular bills and my husband pays the mortgage - from the same account.

Sorry, Cody, I don't understand. Does this mean that both of your incomes go into the one account but your income pays for the regular bills and your husband's income pays the mortgage?

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by rickey939 

Bingo.

What's the price ?

-t

[vexborg]

Same as cjrivera and Cody Dawg.

[mac128k-1984]

At the moment we have seperate checking accounts. I pay the mortgage, my credit card bills and my car payment.
My wife pays the utilities, her CC and car bills.

We're going to have a single account to pay the bills to better manage our finances.

Two things to consider, at time of divorce it really doesn't matter if you have a single or joint account. You'll have to show bankstatements to document the funds

and more importantly is estate planning. If God forbid, something happened to either one if us, the other would have access to the money. That wouldn't be the case if we stayed with seperate accounts (unless we made each other signers on the account but you get my drift)

[Y3a]

we both dump ALL we make into the pot. We pay all the monthly bills. We split whats left into our personal accounts.

[Cody Dawg]

Sorry, Cody, I don't understand. Does this mean that both of your incomes go into the one account but your income pays for the regular bills and your husband's income pays the mortgage?

No, what it means is that I was paying - as in writing out the checks or doing the online bill payment - all by myself for a while. I wanted my husband to be involved with the bill payment process so that he knew what the state of our finances were as much as I did and so he now pays two of the largest bills himself, which he then adds to a ledger that we keep monthly noting which bills were paid and when, so he sees the list of bills paid and how much they are/were.

We pay out of the same account, however, and share the same checkbook (we use a checkbook for the mortgage and a couple of other bills that cannot be paid online).

We have no credit card bills at all. Just utilities, car payment, mortgage payment. About three years ago we paid off all credit cards and pledged not to open any credit cards without explicit discussion with the other partner because credit cards can wreak havoc.

(We had a situation a few years ago where Discover sent us a notice that we could combine all of our credit cards onto their one 2.9% interest rate charge card and lower our payments; we did that and in 90 days we received a notice that our account had been transferred or sold to another company...and that new credit company notified us that our "new" rate with them was going to be 18.99%! which was more than what we were paying on ANY of the previous cards. So we had to pay the entire credit card - Discover - off in full and after that experience we swore never to get another credit card.)

Here is more information about how people are getting reamed by credit card companies: Link

Excerpt

But increasingly, they say, what should be a warm embrace has turned into a painful squeeze as lenders employ new tactics to extract more and bigger penalties for even the slightest financial transgressions. In the last few years, lenders have more frequently raised customers' rates because of slip-ups elsewhere, like late payment of a phone or utility bill, or simply because they felt a customer had taken on too much debt.

The practice, called universal default, started after a rash of bankruptcy filings in the mid-to-late 1990's and has increasingly become standard in the industry.

Anyway, so now we budget all expenses, we ignore all credit card offers, and we pay the bills TOGETHER - ALL OF THEM so that we both understand 100% where ALL of our money has gone to.

See, it doesn't matter if you have joint accounts: If you're married then you're both paying for your existences out of a larger pool of money and whether you separate it or not does not matter because ultimately you are paying for bills together.

Better to just have transparency in your bill paying habits and in your marriage.

[itai195]

Originally Posted by jebjeb 

Sorry if this comes over as a rant but I have recently had this discussion with a few guys here at work and I seem to be in the minority with this opinion whereas here in good ol' MacNN it seems to be the normal view!

Yeah, well there are some financial advisors who do recommend keeping things separate but I think they're wrong. In our situation, my wife is self-employed and I do her bookkeeping. I write her 'paychecks' (just a transfer out of business checking into joint checking) and pay her taxes, so it's much easier to just combine all our personal banking. When she did the bookkeeping and all her personal finances, it was a nightmare because she didn't save enough for taxes. Plus she's just never cared much for paying bills. I don't mind doing it at all, and I give her updates on our situation every month or so. We do use a credit card for most of our spending, it's convenient due to our cashflow, but it's an Amex that's paid off every month and earns us frequent flyer miles.

[jebjeb]

I agree that it is a good idea that both people are aware of the state of their bills and accounts. Whilst my wife manages the transferring of funds to top up the mortgage and monitoring things more closely, we both sit down every two months and take stock of our budget.

A budget has been an extremely valuable tool for us. Just understanding where one's money goes each month is a big step towards using it more effectively. Our budget show all our outgoings on the day of the month they go out. It then has estimates (which we frequently revise to keep current) for going out, holidays, presents, things for the house, groceries etc. We then have our allowance amounts which all adds up to our outgoings for the month. There three totals: one for all that has been mentioned, one which cuts down the allowances a bit and one that takes it back to the bare minimum that will keep things paid and a roof over our heads. If I lost a contract or something, we could roll our outgoing back to the level required.

Our income is then put against each month. We forecast this for six months in advance as well as all the outgoings. This helps us take into account non-monthly outgoings like car insurance, car tax, income tax top ups etc. We then have what is left over. This is starting to go into topping up the mortgage.

We have a few debts left to pay off (car loan, credit cards etc) which we believe we should be able to clear around March next year. From then on we hope to remain debt free (except for the mortgage) which will be a huge achievement for the both of us.

I don't know if we would have managed this if we separated our incomes and debts.

On a side note, I find it interesting how some of you still need to "manually" pay some bills by cheque or similar. Does the US not have a form of widespread Direct Debit? Here in the UK, Direct Debit is strongly pushed by utilities and other companies. Many companies will not give you a loan or a credit card unless you pay by Direct Debit. All of my bills or repayments are made by Direct Debit. The only other thing we have to do is to any top-ups (mortgage, credit card over and above the standard monthly payment we have set) via Internet banking.

[medicineman]

Originally Posted by macintologist 

So how do you manage your money and your collective spending. Do you have a joint bank account, or your own. How do you decide who pays for the groceries, who pays for the house repairs and the mortagage, who pays to send the kids to school, etc. Doesn't it make it hard if one spouse earns twice as much as the other, does that you mean you have to divide expenses down 1/3 and 2/3s or what?

I make it. She spends it.

[Cody Dawg]

jebjeb: Believe it or not, not all of the companies here are "online" and have online payment options.

Like the mortgage company, surprisingly enough. It's a big company and they say, "We are still in the process of going online for bill payment." They have a website, just no way to pay online. It's very odd.

Plus, Americans, believe it or not, seem to have a basic distrust of paying bills online, especially older Americans. There are still a lot of Americans that don't even own computers. So checks must still be written.

We pay all but two bills online. One of the bills we have to write a check out for is our neighborhood's homeowner's association. Smaller organizations and companies don't have websites, let alone online payment receiving options.

[Dork.]

All of our accounts are joint. It's been that way since we were first engaged. I tend to the finances, but only because she's ultra-conservative with investments. (It took a while to explain to her why our daughters' College Savings plan was invested in Stock funds and not in fixed-income investments.)

Even if you want to set up separate accounts so that each person has "fun money", I strongly recommend that they be joint accounts, anyway, and that you trust each other to respect boundaries.

A friend of mine's father passed away suddenly last month. All of his parents finances were in the father's name, not just because they were brought up in an environment where the man should control the money, but because some of their investments and partnerships were a bit complicated, and his mother wanted no part in those decisions. Now, all of their money is tied up in the estate, and although there is plenty of money for his mother to live on once it all gets sorted out, my friend has to lend his mother money for day-to-day expenses (in addition to sorting out whatto do with all these business ventures....) All that could have been avoided if there was even one account they held jointly...

[Zeeb]

Originally Posted by cjrivera 

All of the money is managed by her. She pays the bills, runs the finances, and manages the accounts. We don't have separate accounts (well, I wouldn't have any idea if she had her own separate account, but then again, it wouldn't matter since she runs all the books anyway...)

I can't imagine dividing expenses or even, how you would try and go about it.

Ok, so I'm not married but my brother was for 20 years. He trusted his wife to pay all the bills and manage the money. Mistake! She was having an online affair with a guy she eventually ran off with. He found out later she had run up huge credit card debt and hadn't bothered to pay the mortgage or any utility bills for about 3 months while she saved up to run away. The have two children which she left behind and he nearly lost the house. I'm all for love and trust but reality is reality.

I don't think it matters whether accounts are separate or combined, but in either case you need to be fully aware of the household finances whether you pay the bills or not. Even if you're not worried about a divorce, other things can happen and you don't wanna be in the dark about your bills.

[Sky Captain]

Joint checking and savings.
I pay all the bills with my income.(and the retirement accounts)
She deposits hers into savings.
She manages to save about 10K a year. We've been doing this for 12 years?
She handles all of the finances.
She'll have this house paid off in 8 years now.
And our land is paid off as well as the cars.

[SirCastor]

That's awesome Sky Captain, please tell me that you're putting that 10K into some kind of higher return account than the average 3%/year...

[RAILhead]

Joint account, and it's not my money or her money, it's OUR money. I do all the bills, I watch the spending and let her know when to back off. I setup our savings, retirement, investments, etc. I setup the budget with her assistance and approval, and we make all financial decisions together.

[Sky Captain]

Originally Posted by SirCastor 

That's awesome Sky Captain, please tell me that you're putting that 10K into some kind of higher return account than the average 3%/year...

Some money market we opened 12 years ago.
The last I checked, it was over $140K.

[finboy]

Originally Posted by Sky Captain 

Some money market we opened 12 years ago.
The last I checked, it was over $140K.

Please, please think about putting most of that into something that will pay more than a money market fund over the next 20 years.

BACK ON TOPIC:

My wife and I have our own credit cards (with disappearing balances) from grad school, but all money now goes into one pot and she pays bills out of it. If either of us needs to spend anything over $50 we discuss it first, but we're usually together when it's spent so it's no big deal. She pays bills because we kept our joint account where her old account was. Otherwise, I'd do it. Also, I have no tolerance for the nickel and dime stuff. I cut the grass and do the brake jobs, she pays the bills and washes clothes. Fair trade.

If you can't trust your spouse with money, just give up on raising kids, etc. It won't work for either of you.

[macintologist]

What's the point of a money market account when HSBC offers an online savings account with 5.05 apy with no fees.

[andi*pandi]

it seems like all of you with one account are doing it well... sharing responsibility etc... but someone mentioned allowances.

allowances are fine if both spouses have them as part of a budget, but if one spouse is doling out allowance on a whim, it becomes a control issue. My ex brother in law gave my sister $80 a week to buy groceries for 4, gas for an old guzzler v8, kids clothes, etc. He had plenty of money. He was just being a controlling asshole.

now, my husband is NOT a controlling asshole, but I like knowing I have my own money. I actually earn more than he does, and usually pay the mortgage. The money gets shared, no problem.