June 2012 Weddings
SoSaysTara
member
Dear Community,
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.
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.
How are you and DH handling MONEY?
What are you guys doing about finances? Does one person only pay bills? What are you doing about checking accounts, etc.? Is everything combined, everything separate, somewhere in between?
Did you join finances before the wedding? What's changed financially since you became a Mrs.?
Re: How are you and DH handling MONEY?
H and I are a unique case. We've had joint accounts for years! They way we do it is we have a "house" checking and savings, which we each put the exact same amount of money into every week and that pays all the house bills (I.E. Mortgage, Electric, Cable, Groceries, etc.). Then he has "his" checking and savings (which I am on) and I have "my" checking and savings.
This way just works for us and we won't be changing it, at least any time soon. I am the saver and he is the spender. So when I want to be able to buy something I don't want to have to feel any guilt and neither should he.
I pay all the bills because H doesn't have a clue how. Before I came into the picture over 7 years ago his mom was doing it for him. I also save money for him he only ever asks how much is in his checking so every once in a while I throw money into his savings and never tell him and he never notices. This is what I did when we bought our house. Then one day he randomly asked how much was in there and he almost fell over when I told him
***My Planning Bio***
<a href="http://s6.photobucket.com/albums/y217/xosexikt14ox/?action=view
We have joint checking and savings accounts for all the "group" stuff. We each also have our own checking and savings accounts for things like our car insurance, my car payments, etc.
I pay all the bills out of our joint account. I'm on top of it more than he is so I got "picked" for the job.
We opened a joint account back in November because we were looking for a house and H needed an account there for the mortgage. I needed a new account so we just made it joint. We didn't get a house, so the joint account right now is where my paychecks are deposited and where my student loan and car loan payments are withdrawn from.
H still has a separate account where his paychecks are deposited and where bills are paid from. He's keeping it mostly because he had just gotten new checks so he wants to use those up. For general spending we use a joint Amex account, which is paid off with H's account.
Once my loans are down to the two low-interest ones (next year) we'll just make minimum payments and then we'll be using the money we've been using for my loans towards saving up for a down payment for a house.
Once we actually get a house, then H may finally get rid of his other account and we'll just have the joint one...
ETA: savings account is Amex, too. Nothing's changed since getting married.
When have a joint checking account for all our shared/necessary expenses (ie my health insurance premium comes out of our joint account, because it's a necessary living expense) and we have a joint cc that we charge every we can, and pay it off each month.
We each have our own checking accounts/investments/savings. We will definitely keep our separate checking accounts, but we have to decide how we are going to start a joint savings/investment plan.
Right now H isn't working, but he has pretty substantial savings. So I am paying 2/3 of our monthly expenses and he pays 1/3. Once he starts working we will contribute an equal percentage to the joint checking & savings.
June 2012 Bride!
We have a joint account and we each have separate accounts. My paycheck is split 50/50 into joint & personal, DH's has a set amount that goes into his personal & then the remainder goes into our joint. He isn't able to do 50/50 at his work for some reason, so he just sort of estimated half.
Ideally we should only use the joint account for joint expenses, but I tend to use it for some personal items since my loan payments are about $23 shy of my personal half of my paycheck each month (insane). I hate it so much but I wouldn't be able to get gas, get my hair cut, etc with only my personal 50%. Can't wait to get a raise & have a little more left over for me!
We have separate accounts completely. H pays the mortgage, and bills, his car payment, etc. I pay my phone bill, car insurance, and car payment. If H needs help with bills he knows he can ask me and I will gladly help out.
Otherwise, my money will be going towards stocks, retirement funds, etc. As well as food and whatever I want to spend my own money on.
That being said. We put all the money that we got for the wedding and any money that I had left over in my "wedding account" and kept it in that account under my name. However, we will be using that money together for home improvements and other large payments that we may encounter. And I will continue to put a chunk of my paycheck into that account.
We're both now on each other's accounts. His was with the credit union (SECU) and mine was Wells Fargo. We kept both and are using them both for different things.
We're getting both our paychecks auto-deposited into the SECU account. We'll pay rent and our bills from there. Then we'll move a specific amount for spending a month (groceries, gas, Target, misc) into the Wells Fargo account and use that for those things.
Whatever's left over we'll put into the savings at SECU with part going into the Wells Fargo savings for more immediate purchases.
We both have our own credit card that we'll manage.
My Blog
H and I got joint savings and checking before the wedding. We use that to pay our bills (rent, phone, ect) along with everything else that would come out for the both us to use. We both put the same percent of our checks in those accounts since I bring home a bit more than he does.
We also both have our own savings and checking accounts to use towards what ever we want. Right now it works for us, so I don't see it changing anytime soon.
We joined finances quite a while prior to the wedding and nothing has really changed since then. We have a joint checking/savings account where all of our money is but we still have seperate credit cards that we rarely use.
Either one of us pays the rent depending on who's there when it's due and we each take care of our own student loans and my car payment.
Right now, we have separate accounts. When we move in our apartment, we will then have 1 account for the rent and the other account for food and other bills.
So, we will just have two separate but all our combined accounts.
We're lazy and just haven't gotten around to changing anything yet.
First Look
Before the wedding, we had a credit card together that we used for anything we both needed or did together and we split the bill 50/50. We had our own checking accounts, savings accounts, and credit card. We split all apartment bills 50/50.
Now we combined all our money into one checking account and one savings account. We now put everything on our joint credit card but are keeping our personal credit cards for surprise purchases (even though the money to pay for the purchases is really both of ours).
I think the hardest thing for me to get over mentally is that anything we buy each other is really from both our money. H bought me flowers for our 1 month anniversary and it's like I paid for half of them. It's okay though
We bought our house about a month before the wedding. I didn't want to combine accounts until we were married so we kept our separate accounts. He would pay the mortgage out of his account and I would pay the utilities out of mine.
We planned to combine accounts when we got married, but the way we have been doing it seems to be working out, so we decided to keep it that way. I did add him onto my account and he added me onto his, but we plan to keep using the separate accounts because it's working for us.
This is not at all how I envisioned we'd handle our money, but since it's working we are going to keep doing it. If it stops working, we will re-evaluate.
We have both, a joint checking/savings that we just opened and then we each kept our own checking/savings. H is still dragging his feet on getting his direct deposit and the mortgage auto-withdrawl moved over to the new joint account, but everything else is set up and i've been chosen as the official bill-payer. trying to set up a budget right now, but i'm not feeling too motivated at the moment. feels a little overwhelming to kinda start all over again. I was used to everything separate for the past 9 years, so this will be an adjustment. excited to figure out when we can have the house and student loans all paid off though.