Money Matters
vlagrl29
member
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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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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
who pays the bills in your house?
Currently I do and I'm thinking of having DH do it now. I currently am a SAHM but also work part time. So, I stay at home with DD during the day and 2 nights a week I teach and on the weekends I play gigs. That's not every weekend though. DH is the main provider. We are both self employed, so when we are getting low on money I remind him that we need him to transfer some money into our account from his business account. I told him about this on Monday and it is now Wed and I had to remind him yet again. I'm getting to the point where I"m tired of it being an extra stress on me. I think I just need a break from it. It's hard for me to let go because I'm use to doing the bills and budgets and savings this whole time we have been married and all the years I was single. BUT now its more of a headache to me. I guess I'm wondering if there are any ladies on this board who have been in this situation and how it went. My main fear is DH not paying the bills on time, but I thought if I laid it out for him on a calendar that would help and if he sees we are low on $$ its now 100% his responsibility to make sure its in there when we need it.
Re: who pays the bills in your house?
We ran into a little bit of this problem right away after we got married. So here's what we did that is working out so far.
Put together a spreadsheet online that you both can see your finances. We use the Skydrive through MSN. I keep tabs of every expenditure, and it gives us a daily balance (after everything has cleared). This way he doesn't just go to our online banking and see money in there and think he can spend it. We also sit down every Thursday (the day he gets paid), and go through what is due before he gets paid next and what all purchases will happen in the next week. This takes us about 10 minutes total, and we do it every week at the same time so we both know it's coming and it is a routine. Then we sit down once a month to discuss where savings, E-fund, investments, extra money, etc are at and what we want to do with them. This is also the same time we discuss if there are any weekend trips or larger expenses coming up that we will need to factor in for the next month.
Somehow, this helped us a lot. I used to solely handle the finances, and it would stress me out because he didn't understand why I was worried about having enough in the account. Now he is aware and can see exactly why. But I still pay for all of the bills, so it still gives me the control I feel comfortable with.
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Most of our bill s are set up to auto deduct from an account
I do the financial oversight
You might want to try doing the bill paying together at a set time - it would help relieve your stress and gradually get DH more into the picture so he can take over as needed.
This best describes me. First we sat down and looked at what we make, what we spend, etc. Then we set up an autodeduct from our paychecks into a joint checking account that I use to pay most of our house bills. I do the oversight. I make sure things go out on time, but most of it is automatic these days and I just check in ever few weeks to make sure there aren't any surprises. He still has his own account that he spends 'his money' from. I have mine.
we each pay some bills, but I pay most of them - he pays "his" - his student loans, his credit card, and I pay "mine" and "ours."
Can you set up automatic transfers from his account for the bills? I know they may not be quite the same every month, but if they don't vary much you can probably set it up for just above average; or, set it up to transfer the highest each bill is, and then you have the power/control to send back to him whatever was extra.
"You know you're in love when you don't want to fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams." - Dr. SeussDH has all the monthly bills set up electronically through his log-in on our banking website, but everything is completely transparent. We have a mint account set up through my email address, so I can see all of our accounts in a single glance. So while he physically pays the bills, we communicate pretty frequently about finances so we both always know what's going on.
I know you say you want your DH to pay the bills so there's less stress on you, but it seems like you'll still be pretty stressed even if he is the one responsible (because you're not sure if he'll pay them on time). It sounds like maybe you need to set up a better system for him putting money in your joint account- could he set up an automatic transfer?
I do play viola but half the time I feel I play violin:) I have 10 students but all play violin except 1.
His being artistic is not an excuse. You are also artistic- you make your living playing music- and you manage to pay the bills. Yes, some people are more organized than others, but paying bills on time is a very basic task that any adult should be able to handle, barring a legitimate physical or cognitive disability.
My husband and I sit down together and pay the bills. That way we both know how much money is in our accounts and where it's going. We both also check our balance online almost daily to see what checks cleared and whether we need to transfer money between savings and checking, and can use that time as an opportunity to talk about how things are going with our finances.
Yeah, I know. I even told him that when he paid the bill and printed the receipt just leave it there on my desk and I will file it. I'm very organized and when tax season comes every year it makes it easier. I think I may start out by having him pay the bills with me and not throw it on him all at once with no help
I pay the bills in my household.
To be honest it sounds like it would be a bad idea to switch to having your DH pay the bills. If he isn't organized and misses payments that's not a good thing. Like you, I don't like auto-deducting payments - I like checking them off as I pay them each month and ensuring there is enough money in the account a bill is being paid from.
There's no right or wrong way to do it so long as the bills get paid every month. Something you may want to consider automatically setting up though is a transfer of funds every other week or once a month from your DH's account you get money from that pays bills.
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Deep down this is how I feel it would go. Sometimes he has to wait for a check to clear from a client until he can transfer the funds, so that's why we don't have that automatically transferred. This winter was really slow for him, but I think we are thru the roughest part right now. We have had lots of talks. what bothers me most is during his slow time (dec-feb) i feel we are so dang broke. I'm in hopes that this summer we can save extra money that would get us thru his slow times. He is also going to see if he can get another photographer to rent out his studio for some extra $$ until he can go to the bank to see if he can apply for a loan to build his own studio. we are both sick of him having to pay his land lord $1,000/month for studio rent. It seems like everyone and their mom are wedding photographers these days and it's hurt him booking weddings. In april he is going to update his commercial portfolio and then use all his time towards that. So this may take a few months, but we feel pretty hopeful that it's time for this redirection in his career. Commercial jobs sometimes pay way more than weddings so in the long run it will be better.
viagrl29 -- when I 1st read your Q 2 interpretations came to mind:
1. Who earns the money that goes into your household account from which the bills are paid?
2. Who sits down & writes the checks / authorizes the electronic transfers?
Your problem & your stress aren't so much from having to do the latter -- physically pay the bills -- it's from not having enough money in the account on which to draw because your self-employed husband didn't put the money into the account.
When I was single & self employed, I would remember to transfer the money to pay the bills because I was the one writing them, usually from my desk in the office so it was no big deal. When I got married & DH took over the bill writing he'd have to remind me to transfer money because the household expenses weren't always on my mind: I had mentally transfered them to be "his responsibility" without thinking about how they would get funded. It took a while but eventually he learned to tell me in advance when we need more money & I learned to make a transfer within 1 day of him telling me. It also helped that DH got a better job with a salary & his salary alone can carry the basic household expenses so my inability to be consistent isn't as big of a deal. It doesn't really matter if I transfer money into our retirement / savings on the 2nd or the 19th.
If your DH's business is solvent or if you can squeeze in some more time, get him a bookkeeper so that person can "pay" him too so there will be regular deposits into the household account which should reduce your stress about trying to pay bills without funds.
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