Trouble in Paradise
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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.
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.
Shared Money Question
For those of you that combine money with their H or SO, how do you handle having money to buy each other gifts? BF and I were talking about this the other day and neither of us knew how people did it. We don't combine all money yet, just money for bills.
Re: Shared Money Question
All our money goes into one account (I move some into savings afterward). At gift times, we set a limit and we usually put the gift on our credit card so that the other person can't see where it's from.
We buy it from our fun money accounts that we each have access to, but don't necessarily look at regularly. We just stop looking at any separate accounts around birthday, anniversaries, Christmas, etc.
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I don't understand wtf you people are buying that your SO can tell what it is based on the line charge. I mean I suppose you can guess. But if I buy some shiit at Amazon, H will have no clue what it is until I present it to him.
I guess you'd have to have a policy where you don't look at the statement for a specific amount of time before your birthday.
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Dude you know my H has specific hobbies!
Actually, he doesn't know how to access the bank account, so it's more him wanting to hide things from me. I allow him to use his CC to buy me gifts and that's pretty much it. YEAH, allow, that's right.
We have separate savings accts, so I'm not your target audience.
We each have our own credit cards.
We usually set a price limit for Christmas gifts so that we know how much is being spent-- no surprises there. We do something together for our anniversary, like dinner or a trip- so no gifts there.
We are more likely to figure out gifts from bad hiding places or too many dropped hints than we are from statements and such.
Our plan is to each have our own checking account/savings for our fun money and only combine our money for bills and other house related expenses. We haven't figured out what the amount will be, but we are going to designate an amount we each get each paycheck to use for expenses that aren't household related. I suppose you could call it an allowance.
I would think that if a gift exceeds the amount we have in our fun accounts then we should be discussing it before buying it.
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LOL it's really the other way around, where he doesn't want me to know what he bought.
Also, he tells me really specific stuff he wants, so there might be a generic sounding website, but he only wants one thing from there, so if he saw a charge from it, he'd know what I bought. Moot point in his case since he doesn't know how to access the account, lol.
I understand this because if I have one thing that I want from one store, if I see a purchase from that store I know what it is. BF has specific things he wants for his hobbies and it would take the fun out of it if he knew I where I purchased his gift.
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You already know what you are getting him for Christmas?
If you make purchases online though, this doesn't work! I shop mostly online.
You don't need to know the exact gift for it to ruin the surprise.
If SO makes a purchase at Nordstrom Rack, I have a pretty good idea that he got me something related to clothing/apparel v. a purchase from a jeweler, where I will probably not be receiving a new blouse.
SO and I have discussed this question, and we will each keep one separate CC open when we do fully combine finances. We don't want to use cash, because then we miss out on rewards points for large gift purchases.
This is the benefit of being married to a gamer. New shiit comes out in November and they've only known about it since E3 which is in June. So then you get all that time to listen to them yammer about which game they are dying to buy. If you're on a budget, the chances of them going out and buying it themselves is slim to none. If you aren't, you put them on a game buying moratoriam before they all release.
Either way, soooo easy.
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Why not? Is this something that you would like to do?
Yes, I would like to do it. They never want to. They want to be able to spend as much as they want to. Thankfully I don't feel BF went overboard last year. I'm a very practical Christmas person. I'd like to put money toward the house or a trip or something. I have plenty of "stuff."
Ugh. I wish they would release those things closer to Christmas. Half the time the ones that DH wants come out in Sept or Oct and it's impossible to stop him from running out to get it.
And tbh we handle it by saying 'I'm buying you stuff for your birthday so I'll make sure to monitor the statements this month.' We also share an Amazon account and do the same thing. If he wants to spoil his own damn surprise, so be it.
Since it's a shared account we're both aware of how much money we have to work with and use discretion when buying a gift. I don't understand what's hard about it.
It doesn't have to be a stingy limit.
The first year we did it, we had a really tight budget because we had just thrown a wedding reception so we were feeling poor. I think we did $50 that time.
Last year, we did 250 or 300 or something.
Dude, BF's don't need spending limits unless you've been together for a while, live together, and pool finances.
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The new Call of Duty I think comes out in November and my son put money down on it months ago to reserve it. I wish he had just told me about it so that I could have purchased it for him for Christmas (although, I don't think that would go over too big because he has to have it when all of his friends get it). I think the new Assassin's Creed comes out closer to Christmas, so I can get in on that one at least!
Now that I think of it, how in the world does he get away with buying this stuff without me there? I think you have to be 17 or 18 to purchase it because of the MA rating. He looks like he's 20 and has friends that are 18, so I suppose that's how. At least he tells me he's purchasing it and knows that I'm okay with it.
We have always set spending limits and then both of us over spend. So we know they mean nothing! This year though we have to stick to it or not buy anything for eachother at all because we need to start saving more.
We've actually started gravitating to buying things for the house and calling it 'our Christmas gift'.
We do live together and pool some finances. We are starting to talk about some bigger expenditures for the house and he has a LOT of debt in student loans. So, because of all of that, I'd rather set a limit.
You can set a limit for what you can afford. You don't have to match dollar for dollar. If you can afford $100, and he wants to blow $500 on you, who cares? At this point you're not fully combining money, so if he can afford it, let him. Just my .02.