Orange County Nesties
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
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.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Who handles the finances?
You or H?
I'm pissed of at H right now because the man got a tattoo last night that went a couple hundred over our/his "budgeted" amount. And it's not even done.
I get so annoyed because I'm the one that pays the bills (ie. sees the money coming in and going right out) and he doesn't. We have a budget but he is constantly going over budget on things-(what's the point of budgeting then ?!?!?) 
meanwhile I'm busting my ass to stay within and under.
I guess I'm just trying to get general feedback on how ya'll do it- maybe we have to go back to the drawing board on our system.
How do you handle $$?
Re: Who handles the finances?
We have our own bank accounts and our own stuff we pay for. Like, I pay for some of the basic bills, most of the groceries ect and he pays for other bills. Then he pays rent and I give him 500 a month for that. And we have our own credit cards we pay off on our own.
I like it alot. I'm not ready to have a joint account. My independant nature I guess.
But it works great for us.
I'm the only one who handles the finances. It is frustrating though. My H is a spender and I'm a saver. However, he only spends his "play" money, so I never worry about him going over budget.
My friend would complain that her H would just swipe his atm card without thinking that there were checks out that hadn't cleared, so they ended up overdrawing on their account all the time. I told her to have her savings and bill-paying money in a separate account so no one would touch it.
H pays the rent and I pay the other bills, including both our credit card bills, which includes all our fun spending.
For the most part though, we always check in with each other if we're going to make any major purchase (say, over $50).
Suze Orman was on Oprah the other day and said that in a marriage, both people should be paying the bills together. If one person isn't involved, he/she won't see the in-and-out of money and therefore will have problems spending responsibly. It was an eye-opener for me.
BFP#1 - 11/13/11, Natural MC - 12/24/11 at 12 weeks
BFP#2 - 10/2/12, Please be our rainbow.
That's a bummer. We actually have our money separate, and then we have a joint account we put money into for bills, rent, fun money, etc. I pay for some things throughout the month, he pays for other things, and then we split the difference at the end of the month. Our system might change over time, but being that we're not in the position to buy a house or anything big right now, it works for us. We have our own spending/saving goals, but if we have a vacation we want to go on, we'll figure out together how to handle that. Plus I like the fact he doesn't see exactly HOW much I spend at Sephora.
I do. All of our accounts are joint. We make financial decisions together. I guess if I celebrated xmas or liked receiving surprise gifts I would be want him to have his own account. For our anniversary we decided to give each other a small allowance for spending.
I'm pretty good with money, I've been saving since I was 16. DH was in a small amount of CC debt when I met him and asked me to get him on better interest rates and get rid of it. Since then he's always trusted me.
Ok I should clarify.. We too have online bill pay. ALL of our bills are paid on line on time. The only check that is written is rent.
We have budgeted a set amount for:
Other big purchases like this tattoo we budget accordingly. Everthing else goes into savings.
The freustrating thing is that H does NOT stay within budget. Which pisses me off, makes me bitter and throw a fit.
Maybe the solution is to move the "fun money" into separate accounts again and leave our joint account and savings as a DO NOT TOUCH account.
:-/
I hate fekking feeling like I have to baby sit his spending and I'm sure it annoys the poop out of him to that I nag and bitchh.
R- that's where I am at amiga.
That's what I would do, having a separate account helps to draw a clear line. It's a sucky situation, but some (well, a lot of) people are just not good with money.
We have separate checking & a joint savings.
H pays the mortgage and his own personal bills, I pay for all of the other household bills. We each pay our own personal credit cards & expenses out of our checking accounts. We also contribute monthly to our savings.
If it's a big financial decision, we make it together. H does move our money around quite a lot in order to invest/get better interest rates, but I trust him with that.
This works out well for us, because I don't particularly want to know how much he spends on things like wine, or gambling and likewise I don't want him to know how much I spend shopping, or getting my hair done, etc.
After 2 rounds of IVF & 2 rounds of FET, we were blessed with identical twin girls!
I feel your pain. Can you maybe go the ATM (or bank) and take out your fun money in cash? Give him his set amount and say when it's gone...it's gone. Maybe if he has cash in hand, he'll see and understand how he over spends?
Ditto Joy - we're both decently good with our money so we keep things all separate.
It's much easier to never have to answer to the other for big purchases.
I pay for mortgage, HOA fees, credit card bills, taxes, other "serious" costs, and whatever I buy for myself.
He pays for food, travel, other fun, gas, car upkeep, and whatever he buys for himself.
We have had separate accounts while living under the same roof for eight years now.
It works for us.
This exactly. He'll spent $6 at alberstons and give me a receipt promptly when he gets home. I love it.
We have a joint account that is funded solely by H's direct deposits and I have a separate account funded by my direct deposits. We were both too lazy to deal with HR and apparently too lazy to add H to my account.
H is in charge of making the payments for cell phones, dining out, travel & entertainment. I'm responsible for making pretty much all of the other household payments. Again, this is a result of laziness; the breakdown was determined by how online payments were already linked up pre-marriage. As for fun money, we just draw from the respective accounts; we don't have a budget for it. We both know that H is pretty frugal and that while I do spend a lot more than him, my spending is not out of control. It works for us.
Yahpee - that IS a kickasss tattoo though.
The breakdown of who pays for what is different, but we operate with a similar system.
Nope Shelly I dont handle the money...but I make the budget...lol It dosent sound like it would make sense but it does. We use microsoft money and I pull it up every Monday to make sure we are staying on track and not going over with groceries/eating out etc.... we keep all fun money in cash and direct deposit a set amount into savings and checking bi-monthly.
I wish I could offer some help/guidance fitty! But I will offer you hugs instead!! <mrs50%> I hope you guys can come to some resolve!!