I was reading SmoothOperator’s thread about her budgeting concerns and that got me to thinking. Married women, is letting your husband handle all the bills still that prevalent? I recently found out that out of all of my friends, I am the only one who handles the bills, rather than letting my husband do it. I have also come to the conclusion that I’m probably the only women in my whole family (including aunts, grandmothers, etc) that manages the household budget in my own home. Many of these women don’t even have a clue on how to manage a budget. I thought we were living in the 20th Century. Please tell me that there are more women out there in the world that are in charge of their household finances.
I’d be crazy if I let my husband handle the bills. I love the man but he has no sense when it comes to money. The bills would not be paid on time (or maybe at all) if I let him do it.
I do! What gets me is that a lot of people, women my age included, find it odd that I am the one in charge of the money in our house even though I don’t make a regular income. Why is that so strange? It’s our money after all, and I just happen to be the more organised person.
Currently, my SO and I both do some of the bills. I tend to do the house & utility ones, but I think it’s mainly because he moved into the house that I owned, and I just kept doing the bills. He does the stuff that’s purely his (his car, insurance, etc.)
When I was with my ex, I did all the bills because I didn’t trust him to do 'em (hey, we divorced for a reason, and money was part of it!)
My mother, born in the late 1930’s, does all the bills in their house.
Exactly what Tally-Ho said.
It’s my husband’s money that pays the bills (I’m still a student), but I manage the accounts, write the cheques, and generally budget. In fact, all of the women in my immediate family manage the finances. I’m well organised, I enjoy doing it, and I like to know precisely how much is being spent on what. (I’ve also caught several unnecessary direct debits that my husband has been unknowingly paying for years… GRRR!)
I am in charge of all paying all of the bills. My SO gives me a stack of receipts for the week for me to enter into the checkbook. Sometimes he’ll ask, “Honey, can I go buy some pants?” I love it!
Of course, he earns over twice what I earn, but hey, it is OUR money! 
I know I will do the bills, balance the checkbook and figure out our budget if I marry my current boyfriend. I’m much better at it then he is.
My dad is usually the one that sits down and actually writes the checks out for the bills, but my mom is the one who balances the checkbook (because she always finds mistakes when my Dad does it–even though he’s the one with the PhD). The budgetary stuff they work out together.
My boyfriend’s mom is the one that handles the finances in their house too.
So-I don’t think it’s that odd for women to do it.
One factor in this has to do with the bank accounts. If you have seperate bank accounts, then division is likely to occur. If there’s ONE bank account, generally, ONE person would be holding on to the checkbook and probably paying all the bills.
Course, in my own life, I refused to share a bank account with my (now ex) husband. That was one of his claims as to why we broke up (the other was that I nixed him wearing a tux with tails at the wedding :rolleyes: ). So, There were bills he was to pay, ones I was to pay, and for joint bills, he gave me his part in cash and I wrote the check.
Currently, SO and I have seperate accounts, seperate bills to pay (he owns the home free and clear, so there’s only taxes, insurance and utilities).
Well, I actualy handle all the bills. My husband gets very stressed out and frantic because we don’t always havethe money to pay everything. I can’t stand him when he is ike that. I don’t worry like he does so I take care of ALL the bills.
My wife does the bill-paying. She is efficient to the point of galloping neurosis.
We each have a separate bank account, plus a joint account, plus a number of other accounts she swears are absolutely necessary.
She sits down with the bills either once weekly or once every two weeks, calls for absolute quiet, and dissolves into a silent frenzy of triple-entry bookkeeping. I live in fear that she’ll be hit by a bus and I’ll be stuck trying to decode her ferociously complex system.
She enjoys saying “But I DO THE BILLS!!!” every time I point out that I do ninety-five percent of the shopping, cooking, dishwashing, gardening, cleaning, laundry, etc.
Ditto!
I handle the bills in our house. Not that my husband won’t or is not capable of doing it - I won’t let him. My system works very well, thank you.
Also, both of my sisters and my mom handle the finances in their homes.
I always thought it WAS the women’s thing.
I make the money, Mrs D spends it.
:: Giggle ::
This is the way it is in my house. Of course, I have to pester him on a daily basis to hand over the credit card receipts. He always forgets to give them to me. About once a week, I clean out his car and I usually find a half dozen or so credit card receipts that he forgot to give to me. He also usually asks me before making purchases. He also makes almost three times what I do, but I’m still the one who writes out all the checks every month. He is a very smart man, so I know he could do it if he had to. He simply doesn’t want to.
I handle the checkbook, and have for many many years. I have offered to let my husband do it, mainly because he thinks it is so easy and no stress, so I ask him to do it just to scare him ! He has no interest in doing it.
We do, however discuss what will be paid, how much, ect. I love it when he wants to pay everyone a large amount, thinking the money is there to do that. ( ok, so we won’t eat this month!! )
I am lucky in that my husband makes a very good income, and that has allowed me to stay home with the kids all these years, that was important for us.
I would like my husband to do the checkbook from time to time, just so he knows what it entails, and if God forbid, something would happen to me, he would know how to handle it all.
What athena and wring said.
We have separate accounts. If we had to share a checking account – I will track down a 2-cent error, he’s happy if he’s within $10 – I’d have to kill him. He pays the house payment (which is pretty small, actually) and insurance, the phone bill, his car payment and insurance, the satellite bill, and his credit card bills. I think that’s everything. Also most of the medical/dental bills. (Medical bills are few and far between, but we’re both on heavy rotation for dental cleanings.)
I pay for the satellite guide, the paper, the fax/computer line, the cell phone bill, my car payment and insurance, my student loans, my credit cards. If I have a chunk of cash when “his” bills come in, I pay those occasionally. I also pay for most of our recreation – concert tickets, hotels, etc., as well as other big-ticket items like appliances when I have the cash. (I get paid in large, irregular chunks; he’s a wage slave and gets his every two weeks.)
I do all the bills, too. My husband has the mortgage automatically drafted out of his account. I take care of everything else. We have separate checking accounts, mostly because we’ve never gotten around to getting a joint one. He has never balanced his checkbook, which drives me insane, so I’m very comfortable taking charge of the budget. He is more proactive on the investment and long term planning side of things.
I also come from a family of females in charge of the finances. My mother made (and makes) all of the financial decisions in my parents household, including investment and purchasing decisions. She very successfully set them up for an extremely comfortable retirement. Her mother served as her example. Her mother-in-law gave her an example of what not to do - when my grandfather died, she was completely clueless about the finances and found herself in serious trouble with creditors. She hadn’t even been aware of the debts that my grandfather had been wracking up.
My sister-in-law is a stay-at-home mom who is solely in charge of the finances. My brother asks her about every purchase more than about $50.
It was an easy choice for us - I’m and accountant and he’s an artist. I handle all the finances, and he enjoys the benefits of a good credit rating, a savings account (often containing actual money), and no surprise utiliy cancellations or vehicle repos.
Of course, he has to change the catboxes. It’s a fair division of labor.
According to my Family Law professor, the prevailing system is for whichever spouse is more financially savvy to take over paying the bills. If this is not set up in advance, it happens after the first couple of times that the other spouse misses a payment or something similar to annoy the more “responsible” spouse.
This is borne out by my experience. My husband pays our bills, but my mother pays my parents’. It seems to have been true even going quite a few years back - my grandmother did all the billpaying and accounting for the family, including keeping all records and doing all paperwork for the orchard, until she went blind a year or so ago. My grandfather didn’t even know how to write a check. Now she sits with him and explains to him where he should look on each bill to find the amount due, and coaches him through paying it.