I do the managerial stuff–make sure the bills get paid, balance the checkbook, etc. I think that just works better if one person handles that and has all the information in hand. We’re both big procrastinators, but I’m just slightly less of a slacker than he is. Occassionally, I badger him to sit through a Qucken session with me so he knows how everything goes–which bills are paid automagically by electronic transfer, which once need to be paid with a check, etc.–in case something were to happen to me.
He’s still responsible for entering all his own purchases (ATM withdrawls and credit card purchases–we don’t bother keeping very close track of how cash is spent) so he sees the account balances and has a general idea of how much discretionary money sloshing around.
When things were tight, we’d confer on purchases over 50 dollars (“I need new clothes for work–can we swing that this week?”) Sometimes I’d nag if the little things started adding up, and try to urge him to put off buying stuff we don’t need, or to choose the cheapest thing available, but we never had to have a strict budget. We’d just tighten the belt together and pare it back to the bare necessities until the savings account started building up again. Now, happily enough, we don’t have to consult one another unless the transaction is a lot larger. I may have trained him a bit too well, because now I have to nag him to buy something of decent quality that will last us a while instead of reflexively getting the cheapest model he can find.
We have a similar level of fiscal responsiblity, and pride ourselves on being considerate of one another by being mindful of our collective finances. To us, an allowance system would seem fussy and contrived, and, more importantly, would imply that somebody’s not capable of restraining himself or herself, so it would probably lead to friction. However, if you and your SO have different ideas of what financial responsiblity means (you want to track every penny while she’s never balanced her checkbook, or you think nothing of racking up a few thou of credit card debt while she pays her balance every month without fail), or if you both like have a very precise budget, then the allowance system might be good for you.
We created a new approach when my wife resigned from her position about 6 years ago to concentrate on raising our growing family.
I’ve always done all the bill paying/financial planning/saving from my paycheck. When my wife was working she just had her own account and did things like buy groceries and household stuff from that. That worked pretty well, but the revenue for that account dried up when she resigned from her job. We tried sharing the joint account that I manage after that, but we struggled with keeping track of our seperate expenditures. I’m anal about keeping good records and she doesn’t share that same world view, so joint account only just wasn’t the ticket.
Our solution was to reopen her own account again. I’ve set up my payroll direct deposit to send a portion of my monthly salary to her account. She has her own money and also has certain responsbilities (groceries, basic household stuff, etc). I pay all the bills and completely control the joint account. If she has unusual expenses, I will provide for that out of the joint account, but only upon request. This satisfies my anal need for complete record-keeping on the main account. This approach gives us the freedom to spend as we wish for the most part, though we would normally talk about buying something if it was more than say $1000.00. Seems to work for us.
Begin of Rant: I know, and unfortunately, I usually have to stand behind these people in supermarket lines and you can read their lips, “three minus two is, uh…” as they balance their checkbook while everyone behind them has to wait. Usually the same people who do not begin to write the damn check until after the total is rung up. Would it kill them to write down the name of the supermarket while they are waiting in line? And these are the same people who don’t even know you actually can use an ATM card for purchases. End of Rant. Back to our topic.
We dump all of our income into one joint account. From that, a weekly allowance goes into another joint account. I pay all the bills, buy the groceries, allocate to savings, and whatever from the main account. He lives off his allowance account. If he has an expense or a special purchase come up, I’ll transfer funds from the main account.
This is how we’ve done things for most of the last 20 years. He just doesn’t think about things like bills whereas I could tell you within a few dollars what our monthly expenses will be. I’m a penny-pincher most of the time. We discuss major purchases and we occasionally look at our budget just to see where we are in the grand scheme of things.
