Mr. and Mr. DMark have a rule. What’s yours is mine.
22 years later, still no problem. Once he earned more, now I do.
We never buy anything major (over $100) unless both agree.
We live in Las Vegas, so even when we go out and play video poker, and one of us should win, we split fifty-fifty.
We might not always have a lot of money, but we always have exactly half the amount.
My wife and I have a joint checking account, joint mortgage, joint credit card, separate SSIAs (savings accounts with government incentives, only separate because it entitles us to more free lolly from the man). It works fine for us and we would only consult one another about particularly large purchases. We certainly don’t bother with allowances. We earn similar amounts but we’d still organise things the same way if we didn’t. The only drawback is when we buy presents for each other - it’s just not the same.
My fiance and I have joint checking and savings and it works out great. Money is one thing that has never been a problem, except for a lack of it sometimes. He makes a little more than I do, but nothing significant. Whoever happens to open the bill or is on the computer usually pays the bills. Any major purchases are researched and then the decision made together. It works great.
I have to agreee with manwithaplan. The presents thing just isn’t the same at all!
Just like manwithaplan said, buying presents isnt’ the same when there’s a joint account, and one person manages it. My wife takes care of all of our finances, mostly because I’m totally inept at it. About the only way we differ from most of the joint methods talked about here is that we don’t really have an allowance. That’s because for right now, every dime that we have that isn’t for a bill, goes towards a credit card. So that means we have less on hand cash available. But we’re just keeping in mind that once we have the two cards paid off, we’ll have so much free cash it’ll be silly. And enjoying the thoughts of what we’ll be able to do then. I think communication is key, as well as flexability. Don’t be so ridgid in things that you snap from frustration. So every once and a while, we’ll spend some extra on something for the house, or a nice dinner out. By indulging in those every once and a while vices, it’s easier to deny ourselves other times.
We pool everything. Going into marriage, my wife had proposed maintaining separate accounts, but that felt artificially divisive to me, and I convinced her. I’d say my wife functions as family CFO, and does most of the strategic planning (subject to discussion with me). I, meanwhile, am the Bookkeeper, paying the bills and managing the cash. We’re both frugal (sorry gatopescado), and both would feel awkward spending more than $100 or so without the other’s approval.
I have a checking account and savings account, we share another checking account. My husband is disabled, so my paycheck goes into my account which then pays all of the bills. I find it much easier to keep track of that account when I know that he won’t be using it. The other account is for discretionary spending.
Julie
Ivylad and I are complete opposities when it comes to money.
He writes a check, and records the amount by rounding up. He would pay late on bills, whereas I would sweat if I only had $90 left for the week.
When we got married, we had a joint account, and it was a mess. He’d forget to record ATM withdrawals, and living on a shoestring wasn’t a lot of fun.
Then I moved to Florida and he followed about six months later. Of course, since I was down here first I had to open my own account. Then he moved down, opened his own, and the finances have kind of separated themselves naturally. We each have our own credit cards, no joint, and he put me on his account but I never got around to put him on mine. (I never access his account, it’s just in case.)
I pay the mortage, the water bill, the garbage pickup, and the newspaper bill. He pays the mortgage on our rental house and the electricity bill, and also buys the groceries. We’re responsible for our own credit card and cell phone bills. It’s made things a lot smoother.
I guess it depends on how you and your SO deal with money…if you’re in sync, then joint should be fine. But if you have different approaches, then separate would be better.
Dr.J makes a little over twice what I do. I give him a little less than half my paycheck, and he pays all of our joint bills, as well as his personal stuff and some of the groceries. I pay my personal stuff (car insurance, medical bills, clothing, etc.), buy some of the groceries, and take care of the pets out of the rest. Since that leaves him with more disposable income than I have, he picks up the tab for most of the stuff we do together, and we talk about major purchases.
When we first co-habitated we kept seperate checkbooks. It was my house and he paid me for rent and utilities.
Later we added a joint checking account. We’d both put enough money into the joint checking account to pay the bills.
Later still - after our marriage - we moved to all the money going into the joint checking account and both of us getting an equal allowance to spend as we saw fit.
Once we had kids and ample income for ourselves and our children, we scrapped the seperate checkbooks. We now have one account, discuss major expenses, and spend for ourselves on minor expenses without discussion from the joint checkbook. This has only been possible because we live below our means - so there is always money left over (and don’t tell my husband how much or he will spend it!)
I am still just engaged, so I don’t have anything to contribute yet to a discussion like this.
However, it never ceases to amaze me in discussions like this one how many people are still balancing checkbooks by hand. Cause, ya know, there’s like this whole internet thing now.
He makes it, I spend it.
I balance my accounts with Quicken, but I still prefer to write out checks by hand for a tactile confirmation that the bill’s been paid. My brother’s been singing the praises of online bill-paying for a while now, though, and I might give that a try sometime.
I almost consider it superstitious thing.
I think your right. People want to feel the check passing through thier hands. Clearly, even if folks using an online message board still write checks there has to be more to it than just not liking technology.
Eh, to each his/her own. I’m not one of them jerks who complains about the check writers in the checkout line. They can bang out a check in 10 seconds most of the time, IME. It takes me several minutes to write a check the couple times a year I actually have to.
When did you start posting here? 
Never kiss an animal that can lick its own butt.
I’m a big fan of keeping the money as separate as possible.
less to fight about that way.
Fifteen years ago when we met, I was the poster child for financial irresponsibility, while my wife was my polar opposite – no debt, always paid everything on time, extremely frugal. Even when I had enough money to pay my bills on time, I somehow always seemed to be late with them, or to not pay them at all until a disconnect notice or other drastic communication arrived. The only reason I didn’t have thousands in credit card debt is that I’d managed to charge more than I could pay on one department store and one gas company card I got in college, and was in default on my student loans, so no one would give me a general credit card. My credit was bad, but at least I was forced to live on a cash basis for the most part.
Once our relationship became relatively serious, she insisted on taking over my finances. Despite my reluctance to give up my independence and control, I agreed, since I obviously didn’t enjoy the tasks involved and it was the only way our relationship was going to work out in the long run. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t already begun making some positive steps – I’d refinanced my student loans by having my parents co-sign, had started an automatic withdrawal CD savings plan with the bulk of the proceeds from a big raise, and had put most of my recurring bills on CheckFree (a very early electronic bill payment program). I managed to save enough on my own to buy a car when I changed jobs and needed transportation, and by the time we got engaged I’d saved enough over the previous year to pay for a small but high quality diamond ring – establishing my bona fides, so to speak.
Almost as soon as I handed my finances off to her, however, the improvement accelerated. I’d always hated balancing the checkbook, paying the bills, etc. (partly because it was always so depressing how little I had left), but she positively enjoys it. I was much happier knowing that things would be taken care of without my having to agonize or stress out over it. She’s extremely careful with money, which has made me think more carefully about how I spend it myself, and the success we’ve had in saving and managing money has changed my attitude about it to a remarkable degree.
By the time we got married, she’d turned my finances around to the point that I was able to get approved for a mortgage on our first house by myself, without including her and without paying any kind of interest rate premium. For a short while, we simply added my name to one of her existing credit card accounts, but I’ve subsequently applied for and received cards in my own right. Indeed, while her FICO score is generally near 800, my own has climbed well above 700, from “I didn’t know they went that low” territory just a decade or so ago.
We maintained separate checking accounts until after the wedding, when we merged them into one (we have a second joint account now with a different bank, mainly because I don’t trust anyone with access to my money, so one is for direct deposit only, with the funds transferred into the other immediately after they arrive). Most of our investment accounts are jointly held, except for IRA/401k accounts and an account she has jointly with her mother (who believes that a woman should have some money independently of her husband).
We pay for almost everything with credit cards for the convenience, and have never paid a cent in credit card interest or late charges. When we’ve taken advantage of “twelve-months-same-as-cash” financing deals on appliances and such, they’ve been paid on or before the due date in accordance with the stated terms and conditions. We use the credit cards in large part because it simplifies balancing the checkbook, and it eliminates any issues of my writing a check that doesn’t get recorded (I haven’t carried a checkbook in years).
What we don’t have, though we’ve talked about it, is some sort of allowance or “mad money” system. She almost never wants to spend any money without discussing it with me first. I do occasionally chafe at the feeling that I have to run every prospective purchase, no matter the size, past her for approval, or that I have to convince her to agree to the occasional indulgence that she doesn’t necessarily approve of (a new bass guitar and amp, to the tune of about $450, for example). Anything more than $25 or so that I’m tempted to buy, I generally wait out for a while (years in some cases) to see if the whim passes, and while it’s a great way to avoid blowing money, it does wear on me at times – particularly since I’ve been the sole breadwinner for seven years now. But it’s that cautious approach that allowed us to weather nine months of unemployment in 2002, and still have a operating deficit for the year of only about $850.
Having said all that, I do think (and it’s borne out by the other responses in this thread) that it matters less how you do it than that you agree on how you’re going to do it.
My wife stays home with the kids, except for a part-time job of 5- 10 hours a week, and I thus make 98% of the family income. It goes into a joint checking account. We have some retirement accounts separately, but all bills get paid from the joint account. We talk about big purchases, usually, although I’ve surprised her a few times with some “big” presents (a tanzanite ring and, uh, a Kitchen Aid mixer - romantic, I know). She, however, manages the check book 95% of the time, and writes most of the checks. I am going to try the online check thing here sometime soon, which would mean I would prolly be responsible for bill-paying from that point going forward.
Agreed! One joint account that pays for all the major stuff and then allowances are the best way to go. And it doesn’t matter to me one bean that I earn double what my wife earns. To me we are a household making X amount of money, rather than one person making Y and the other making Z, who just happen to be sharing expenses. Our allowances are equal amounts. When we have small children, I want my wife to be home with them, and what then? She gets no money? No, we are still equals.
We have a budget for all the regular stuff like clothing, groceries, dining out, bills, etc. but what is great about the allowances is that if she wants to buy clothing above and beyond what is budgeted for the month, she can. It just comes out of her spending money. And if I want to buy a DVD or stereo equipment or something that she doesn’t care about, I use my spending money. We also have a separate gifts category in the budget, but I often use my spending money so I can go over and above what the gift budget would allow. Any spontaneous gifts, like flowers, comes out of my spending money too.
It is definitely the way to go, but I would strongly recommend against making the allowances proportional to your individual incomes. If you are together for the long haul, through thick and thin, its time to stop thinking about “mine” and “yours” and start having an “ours” mentality. The allowances system helps you to feel like everything is shared, but it also helps avoid the little squabbles about one person wasting money on such-and-such.
My SO controls my life, so what’s a little money, eh? j/k
I would love my SO to take care of my finances, not that I am irresponsible fiscally, but I am a slacker when it comes to paying bills. The only dilemma is I would not be able to surprise her with nice gifts now and then.
Well, when we get our wage slips, he covers his eyes and I stick my fingers in my ears and go: “La, la, la, I’m not listening.”
It’s kind of like hear no evil, see no evil. We just need a non-talking monkey.