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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Combining monies
Oh the joys of marriage and adulthood.
We have been living together for about a year before we were married and married now almost 5 months. We are just now combining accounts. We have had access to each other's accts and we transfer money between all the time.
Now we are putting our money into one acct with each of us having a play acct. We have pretty much figured out that we will put all the bills out of the major acct and then just pay for lunches/gas/individual entertainment on our own.
Neither of us have done this before. Any advice? Anything to make it run smoothly? Anything to avoid?
Re: Combining monies
DH and I have been together for over 8 1/2 years and still have separate accounts. We have one savings account together that we both contribute to but neither one of us touch. I guess I just don't understand why it's so important to have only one account.
Because we both have student loans that we are paying back from college and they are on auto-debit each month, we decided to keep our own accounts rather than having to switch up everything. We did put each other's names on each account but it was actually just easier to keep them separate.
We each have certain bills that we individually pay and I find it easier to keep track of my own spending and the particular bills that I pay when I have my own account. For example, the mortgage is only in my name (the house is in both names) so I've always kept up with paying that bill but my husband keeps up with all of the utility bills. It works well for us this way so we didn't want to change it.
Because we both have student loans that we are paying back from college and they are on auto-debit each month, we decided to keep our own accounts rather than having to switch up everything. We did put each other's names on each account but it was actually just easier to keep them separate.
We each have certain bills that we individually pay and I find it easier to keep track of my own spending and the particular bills that I pay when I have my own account. For example, the mortgage is only in my name (the house is in both names) so I've always kept up with paying that bill but my husband keeps up with all of the utility bills. It works well for us this way so we didn't want to change it.
March, that's what we have been doing. But its just getting complicated moving money around since I'm paying the mortgage for the rental house and just to better budget our money we want to go this route. This has been our plan for a while. We are just now implementing the plan.
Candi, I didn't really ask for your opinion. I asked for any help.
Its going to be a little frustrating at first making sure everything clears on the seperate accounts before completely moving on to your joint one. For us it was easier to have joint everything. We also have rental properties so it made it easy that each of us could keep track of all the activity.
Excel spreadsheets has really helped us keep track of our property versus the rentals. :-) My hubby is in accounting so he relies on excel for everything and its really organized the accounts great.
Hope this was helpful. :-)
I understand. One thing I think would be especially helpful is using e-bills for everything....if you don't already use them.
We combined our money when we first moved in and I love it. It's so nice to just have on account to worry about. We also liked the separate accounts idea for our separate "lunches/gas/individual entertainment" like you said. But I felt like creating 2 separate bank accounts and shuffling money between them was just as complicated as having separate accounts to begin with.
So we do something a little different. We each have our own separate credit card that we use for "lunches/gas/individual entertainment" expenses. It could be dangerous if you aren't diligent about budgeting and paying it off but when we decided to have our finances work this way we also decided that each month we would budget what we would get to spend, stick to that and then pay off our cc's in full at the end of the month. It works great and there isn't the hassle of handling 3 separate accounts and shuffling money back and forth. Just an idea!
The only other "advice" I can give is to be open and honest with each other about how much you spend and on what. And I would set up a budget for both of you to follow so their aren't any surprises at the end of the month. HTH!
I am BAD with money...I don't write down my spending and I rarely look at my balance. So we have one account for everything. Brian tells me if there is any funny money for me to spend and he lets me know when to cut back.
I have friends who have their system like yours and they are very happy with it. I suggest trying it for a few months and see how you like it.
Star--eventually I want to combine our monies like you guys are doing... I think a "holly-esque" spreadsheet might be a good idea... at least for the first few months while the two of you get acclimated to the joint accounts.
DH always has enough money in the bank to not need to balance his checking account--I on the other hand have to keep a log of EVERYTHING I spend... I would love to get him in that habit, but I know it's not possible. Eventually I hope to get all our finances on one spreadsheet... future project!
Good Luck and I would love to hear some advice from you in a few months once you've gotten into the swing of things.
Sounds like you guys are doing what C and I did. Which seemed like the best plan to us.
For me, I come home every couple days and update my paper registry to be sure it's all accounted for. I feel like I know better what we have that way, as opposed to waiting for checks to clear and the online balance not being current all the time. But C, not so much. Not only does he not do that, he doesn't understand why I do it...I told him it's my way and I don't expect him to do it too, but don't battle me when I want to do it. Esp since it's for our own good essentially. He also isn't one to pay bills on time. I on the other hand open them when they come in, write a date on the outside envelope a few days before it's due and pay a little early - figuring if it's not our money, why hold on to it. So I am def the bill payer in the house. We don't do a lot of e-bills mostly b/c I don't feel I can keep tabs as easy, but maybe I should check that out to make things easier now that the money to pay the bills is in one place.
The prob we are running into now is he isn't paying attention to what should come out of the joint based on our budget, and he's paying for more from his personal than he should and then running a low balance. He likes to point fingers or act like the budget isn't working, but really he's just needs to pay attention. His other issue is that he feels like giving me the receipts to do the balancing is like "getting approval" on his purchases. To which I said "B.S.!" Esp since we made the budget together, so if the purchase should come from the joint, what do I care. That's his deal clearly...but it's something we'll have to work thru either way. We are supposed to go over it again this weekend to see how it's working since it's been 2 full months now.
Which of you is more diligent w/ money and budgets? That will tell you a lot about who's going to have their hands more in the mix and kinda have more control over it all. In the end, as long as you are open to adjusting the system and making changes where needed it will work out. I would say, just don't expect a totally smooth system right off the bat...it def takes some getting used to. I think it's better though, compared to the all separate accounts. Let me know what you find works for you guys, maybe I will need to make some changes on our end too!
Hahahaha. ?Uhm, call me crazy, but I think I pretty much said the same thing March did just in fewer words. ?You a little sensitive??
Katie- Oh we have a huge spreadsheet
Very Holly-esque! My DH is excel obsessed. I introduced me to Quicken last January and he has been using it since forever I think. So he ran reports of our spending last year and what it has been in the last 6 months. So we have a preliminary budget to go by. Which we are using as a guideline for now.
Shana- I will let you know how it goes. I think using Quicken will help us but it will be hard I'm sure. It has already been hard
R is definitely better with budgetting and keeping track of things. We are both pretty good at it tho. I'm just going to have to keep Quicken more up to date than I have been.
What's the deal w/ Quicken? Do you have to pay for that? Is it separate software or online? I think my dad uses it, but I'd never seen a reason before when it was just me. But now maybe it would help. Tell me more pls!
we combined our accounts like 3 months before we got married.
I personally think its a lot easier keeping up with our account rather than my account/his account.
We created an excel spreadsheet listing all of our bills, the due date, then the amount that month. Its made it very easy to keep track of whats being spent where and to remember when things are due.
I've actually taken it a step further now and input our debt into different tabs that total in a final tab...so we can see month to month how much we are paying off (talk about scary looking)
It is a software that is on your computer. I think you have to pay for it but I am not sure how expensive it is. I don't think its that expensive.
The cool thing is that it goes online and downloads your transactions from your credit cards, bank accounts, fidelity accts, 401K, etc. You can also track your mortgage, car payments, and stuff like that to get your net worth. You can catagorize everything so then you can run reports and stuff too which is nice so you can track your spending.
You can set budgets in it too which we have never used that part of it.
Well, I'm late to this, but we combined everything when we got married. Josh made a lot more than I did, but we both looked at our incomes as ours, not mine and his. And now, I'm a sahm, so his income is our income. He feels that way, I feel that way, and it works well for us. We track absolutely everything in Microsoft Money, which is probably the same as Quicken.
I know people who have completely separate accounts and each are responsible for paying certain things (for example, he will pay the mortgage, she pays the utilities, they split the groceries...) and I have friends with his, hers and ours accounts. What I've learned from them and also my own situation is that being honest about your spending and your expectations/goals for saving and spending is key.
You sure told her! Pat yourself on the back.