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combining finances?
We still have not combined finances. At first I was okay wih this, I wasn't sure how it would work, I grew up with my mom who could not manage money and my (divorced) grandparents would pay for everything. My grandmother was remarried and her and her live in boyfriend kept everything seperate, even after tehy got married. My grandmother would hide some of her money. I did the same thing growing up, hid my money so my mom couldnt steal it.
anyway, dh and I have a joint savings account that we both put a bit of money into each month then big house expenses like carpet and paint come from that account. We dont touch the money in it unless agreed upon. I have a small amount of debt that will be paid off by summer, but I make quite a bit less than DH. He has a small amount of debt as well, but significantly more in his savings and checking (although, I am very good at saving money.) When I left my moms house at 17, I had a few hundred dollars to my name. As of now our household expenses are split, I pay comast, HOA, my phone bill, and buy food. Dh has some utilities he pays for the house as well as the house payment.
I would like to combine finances and have everything come out of one account, especially since I will be eventually unemployeed and we will be relying on DHs income. (I work for an individual and planing on starting nursing school in 1.5 years, but we are hoping to be pregnant before then.)
How do you girls do it? Split? combined? What helped make this decision for you? Why..?
Dh just doesnt get it, I think he's afraid I will be upset if he spends any, but realistically I can't dictate the finances if I'm not brining anything in.
Re: combining finances?
We combined finances. For us, it just made sense. I do have a couple of accounts that DH doesn't have access to (I offered, he didn't care) that have my inheritance from my grandparents, but that's only because I'm getting a better interest rate in those accounts than the one at the bank that has our joint accounts.
We both deposit our paychecks into the joint checking and EVERYTHING gets paid out of that. We do have a "rule" that if one of us is going to buy something that's over a certain amount (like $100) we run it by the other person first. Otherwise, neither of us are big spenders, so it just works for us.
We consider it "our" money and just deposit our paychecks into one account and pay the bills from there. Neither of us go crazy spending money (and we aren't living paycheck to paycheck) so we have always been on the same page. We also communciate about money a lot (future goals, savings goals, monthly bills, etc.) We have a $500 transaction limit with each other - meaning, if I was going to buy something for over $500, we talk about it before hand.
I also have to make 1 comment about your post. this comment: but realistically I can't dictate the finances if I'm not brining anything in. Do not think this way. Just because you won't be technically bringing any money in does not mean that you get no comments on the finances or your future financial stability. You guys need to be a team and be on the same page - regardless of who is bringing home the money or how you are handling your finances.
Ditto rori about thinking like a team. Neither of you should be dictating anything; now that you're married, any big money decisions should be joint decisions.
For some people, having a joint account for bills and then separate accounts for a weekly allowance/fun money works. For us, it was much simpler to just combine everything. It does help that we have very similar money philosophies and that neither of us are big spenders. We're very much of the mind that it's all "our" money (despite DH's jokes that what's mine is mine and what's his is mine
), no matter who brings it in.
We have separate accounts, but live like we have combined everything. We pool ALL our money to pay the bills, have some fun and add to our savings. Because I'm better with access to $$ than DH is, the savings account is in my name only.
We consider everything "our" money, but to be honest we live on a tight budget, so we haven't had extra spending money to try it another way!
Ditto on pp. You are a team regardless of who's bring home the money.
We have a joint account where both our paychecks go. We pay almost everything from there (house bills, car stuff, food, etc.). But we have a $500 allowance each month that gets deposited to our own accounts. We can use the allowance however we want .. like for shopping, giving the other person a gift, saving, etc. We feel that this setup gives us a balance of actually having our "own" money to enjoy and not fight over, but at the same time, we help each other out for the expenses that we really "need" to live.
DH and I are usually on the same page with finances. One doesn't spend significantly more than the other. We also do budgeting together, discussing our goals, etc. It has been working for us.
DH and I combined finances before we were married because he is a high spender and I needed to get some control over it haha. He doesn't work but get veterans benefits and a GI bill every which are deposited to his sole account. My pay check is deposited into my sole account. We have a joint checking where DH transfers all his veterans benefits to every few months and I transfer whatever I don't need for the month. DH uses his GI bill to pay our utilities, phone, groceries, and his gas while I use my check to pay for rent and my gas. We are debt free and don't touch the money that goes into our joint account. We use to do everything 50/50 but decided it was easier to dictate who pays what instead of transferring money from one account to another all the time.
EDIT: I should also add that DH pays for everything else such as eating out, movies, whatever.
DH and I had (and still have) separate accounts (both checking and savings) and have a combined one before we got married.
The combined checking @ our credit union is for the car loan payment (which we pay half each). The combined chkng & savings @ Chase. The savings there is our e fund and the checking is just to have an extra one. We go through what we need to pay for our bills
For example, the pge, water & electricity comes out of my account. TV and phone comes out of his. We split groceries bill. If DH happens to make less in a pay check (he is paid base rate + commission), then I will make up the difference and he will do it the next time he gets paid.
I'm glad you asked this because we still haven't combined our finances and we need to, especially since we both want to break up with our banks and go with a local bank or credit union. I like the idea of having one main checking account that both paychecks are transferred into. After that, I'm not sure how to handle the rest. How do you guys do it?
When you say you have your own account, do you mean yours alone, with dh having no access? (Although I doubt dh would ever do anything nasty, you hear those horror stories and those women who tell you to always have savings that he can't touch). Dh tends to spend more than I do because he's restoring a car (and he spends more on eating out), so somehow the same amount "allowance" seems a little off (so far it's been his money from savings he spends on the car). Wdyt?
First: Just as an FYI California is a Community Property state so absent a prenuptual agreement, any money any spouse earns (wages, lottery winnings, gambling winnings, etc.) are community property and belong equally to both spouses. So even though DH makes about 3 times as much as me, I have an absolute right to half his income and vice versa. And should anything happen (i.e. divorce) I would receive 1/2 of all of the combined wages of the two of us made during our marriage.
As soon as we got married DH and I opened a checking/savings and all our paychecks go into those accounts. Since we make different amounts, we put the same percentage (not same amount) into savings and the rest into checking. We pay all bills out of the checking. Our tax refund when we get one goes in to that account.
Any purchase either of us is going to make over about $200 we discuss, but he knows I like getting my hair done and every 12ish weeks I do it, spend about $200ish bucks and it's never an issue. I want to go away for a weekend with my girlfriends, I make sure we've got the money and then it's fine and i use the checking account.
we each came into the marriage with separate property (property that is not part of the community b/c it was earned or received before the marriage or if it was received after the marriage was a gift or inheritance to just one of us - and under the law it is not part of the community and upon divorce would not be divided per community property laws). So we have some separate accounts with some savings and neither of us really uses them. DH gets a cash gift from his grandmother each year to help lower her taxes, I have no rights to that money, but he did "gift" our community about $10k in October when we bought a new car so we would could pay for it in cash. If he had not gifted it to the community, we as a couple would essentially have had to pay him back his separate property.
Not that anyone here is going to get divorced, but if something did happen and any spouse mixes separate property (say an inheritance, earnings from before the marriage, etc.) with community property (earnings/winnings during the marriage) it is considered comingling and is not good b/c a court could say that by comingling separate and community funds was a gift and the spouse with the separate property could lose 1/2 of their separate property.
So sorry this went further into what we do, but I felt I should explain why we do what we do.
Wooh, complicated!!
Since DH is the only one working now, it's easy for us. His money is mine too (not a bad deal, right? :P). Even when I was working, our system was the same. We have one checking account. Everything we ever get (paychecks, gifts, bonuses, etc) is deposited in there. We allocate our savings and pay our bills each month, and check with each other before buying "fun" individual stuff if it's something unusual or expensive. That's pretty much it. I guess we've struck a good balance and are lucky that we're basically on the same page with money (or are just naive about needing to keep things separate "just in case" or sound financial strategies, who knows). In any case, we dropped the "your money/my money" mentality when we moved in together and at this point I couldn't imagine living any other way.
I really appreciate all the comments, it really helps! I guess we are both very broken, dh had an ex-wife that just randomly left. And when my grandparents divorced, it was very ugly. My grandfather was angry and froze the accounts. My grandmother was living in her car until the divorce check came in.
Also, we are so different in our money management styles! Dh likes to carry cash on him, take some out of the atm here and there, and the money isn't accounted for. He gets paid in checks, and lets them store up so he doesnt have to go to the bank. He doesnt have a savings, just one big checking. I on the other hand get paid cash, each week I put my food/toiletries money into my checking account. I take money out for other bills and pay them then the rest goes into my savings. At the end of each week, if there is anything left in my checking...I transfer it to my savings.
I think it would be really beneficial for the both of you to sit down and discuss a budget and financial goals. Possibly even see a financial adviser. I worry that your husband puts all his money into just a checking account. So many things can go wrong with that.
Also, if you are more organized in handling finances, then maybe you need to take charge of your budget. Your husband can still be given an cash "allowance" every few weeks to spend as he likes. It is also fine if you both want to keep individual savings/checking accounts. But even if you are not working, you absolutely have a right to discuss the finances.
We make nearly the same amount of money, our accounts are all joint, we each generally buy what we want but discuss bigger purchases. We make financial goals (for us, saving for a house) and just make sure spending doesn't get in the way of them. DH handles our finances entirely because he's great at it and more of a saver and tends to want less and thus spend less. I like saving but also like spending, however my self-imposed guilt and worry about not saving enough keeps me completely in check.
I am extremely happy to say that money is not something we ever fight about.
Women don't want to hear what men think,
women want to hear what they think, in a deeper voice
We are combine. We have 2 savings accounts (attached to each other) and we have 2 checking accounts (also attached to the same savings accounts) and we have some additional accounts (Charles Shwab, ING, etc) and they are all combo'ed too. We both came into the marriage with substantial savings accounts and no debt (except mortgage and vehicle (that we are on each other's cars so they are "our" cars)). Now we no longer have a mortgage after March since we sold our condo and just have rent..and we paid off DH's car and my new car we will pay off by December...so we are eliminating all debt.
I think that if either of us had walked into the marriage with debt we would have kept things separate until it was paid off with some combo'ed like you are your DH. But since all of our debt has been mutual (cars, mortgage) there was no need to keep anything separate.
Also, now I am not working and we have "one" income...I get disability from my employer (not considered income though) and we have a child...so we need it all joint so we can each access everything.
It might be a good idea to 1. revisit your monthly expenses and see if you can pay them from the joint instead of individual to make it more even, and 2. give yourselves each a time line as to when you wish to have debt paid off so that you can then go to a single income and a joint account status.
Or...you can do whatever feels right for the two of you regardless of what my DH and I did. I think everyone has to work out what works for them. We did. I don't pretend to know what anyone else's financial status is...mine isn't cut and dry either.
Money Matters The other half's blog.
EJ is growing up too fast!