Marriage and Money

My topic comes from another thread about marriage. I am not married but planning on getting married here pretty soon. My question is how expenses are split up. Do you split them down the middle? Whats your situation like? I am going to be working full time but not making a whole lot of money and my SO will be working full time as well.

I think about the money thing a lot and who is going to pay for what or do we put all the money in one account and just pay for things together or what? Just wondering what everyones thoughts are on this and what has worked for them.

My husband and I have a joint account, but split bill paying responsibilities.  I make sure rent, electricity and the phone bill get paid.  He pays gas, internet, and insurance.  We both work full time so we also split all the house chores about equal. 

My sister and her husband are completely different.  For whatever reason, they cannot function with joint accounts.  She makes significantly more than her husband so she pays the mortgage and major bills and he pays all the smaller bills.  Then they split things like groceries and going out to eat.  Sometimes one has to borrow money from the other when things get tight.  I think it's nutty but it works for them. 

You may need to experiment with what works for you guys.  It's ok to change if things aren't working out.  Just try not to stress too much but stay organized enough so that bills don't get lost in the mix. 

Currently engaged. When we moved in together, we set up a joint acct that is linked to both of our individual accounts, and a joint credit card.

Our paychecks go into our ind. acct, and we each transfer 50% of the credit card bill into the joint acct each month (round up to cover utilities).

We still have money in our ind. accts, and pay our ind. credit cards through that (only a few things go on ind. cards - car stuff, hair cut, clothes, gifts)

For rent, we decided that the amount we used to pay in rent when we lived apart would stay the same. So I pay our rent (same as my old rent), and he puts the amount he used to pay into another joint acct (this one high yield savings) for our future house.

I think things would change if we stopped having relatively equal paychecks. And I don't know if we'll change it when we get married - it works really well for us. Maybe by the time we have kids.

My husband and I have a joint checking account also. Then I have one for my son's child support that I use for his expenses. I pay all the bills with our joint account. My Husband truthfully doesn't even know how much is in it. We discuss all big purchases together but the little stuff we don't.

I know alot of people who will not even think about joint accounts.

My husband and I have each kept our own bank accounts, on which we are both joint owners.  Then, we opened a third, high-interest account with ING to which all our income goes into. This way, we make more money through interest than with a regular savings account.  Each month, we transfer enough money (according to our budget) from the high interest account to each of our individual accounts to handle our expenses.  The regular bills are all deducted from my husband's account, and grocery purchases, etc (not regular bills) are all deducted from my account.  We have figured out that doing it this way helps expenses stay pretty even - with the exception of our mortgage payment, which is a large chunk of our bills. 

When we got married (a year ago next month) DH & I sat down and came to an agreement on our budget, particularly because things were tight and we needed to figure out what "had to go" and which expenses were important to each of us - and to avoid arguments over how the money would be spent!  While our budget is not set in stone, we started using mint.com to keep track of it and our expenses.  Mint.com is an online-based budget tracker that keeps tabs on your accounts.  You plug in your budget and it notifies you when you have gone over, etc.  It is an excellent resource! We really could not live without it, particularly given how tight our budget is currently.  

Anyway, sorry for the long reply.  I encourage you to discuss money with your fiancee now to avoid issues in the future.  My husband and I discussed finances from the beginning and we knew that we had a similar outlook on how to manage our money.  I am certain we have avoided many an argument because of it!

My boyfriend and I live together but keep our money separate.  We just sort of fly by the seat of our pants with money - each pays for stuff, kind of alternating, and if one of us is broke the other one pays.  Probably would be good to be more organized.

Amethystgirl - I think your system sounds awesome.  I will likely suggest implementing something like that if my boyfriend and I get engaged.

Original Post by cc31:

My husband and I have each kept our own bank accounts, on which we are both joint owners.  Then, we opened a third, high-interest account with ING to which all our income goes into. This way, we make more money through interest than with a regular savings account.  Each month, we transfer enough money (according to our budget) from the high interest account to each of our individual accounts to handle our expenses.  The regular bills are all deducted from my husband's account, and grocery purchases, etc (not regular bills) are all deducted from my account.  We have figured out that doing it this way helps expenses stay pretty even - with the exception of our mortgage payment, which is a large chunk of our bills. 

When we got married (a year ago next month) DH & I sat down and came to an agreement on our budget, particularly because things were tight and we needed to figure out what "had to go" and which expenses were important to each of us - and to avoid arguments over how the money would be spent!  While our budget is not set in stone, we started using mint.com to keep track of it and our expenses.  Mint.com is an online-based budget tracker that keeps tabs on your accounts.  You plug in your budget and it notifies you when you have gone over, etc.  It is an excellent resource! We really could not live without it, particularly given how tight our budget is currently.  

Anyway, sorry for the long reply.  I encourage you to discuss money with your fiancee now to avoid issues in the future.  My husband and I discussed finances from the beginning and we knew that we had a similar outlook on how to manage our money.  I am certain we have avoided many an argument because of it!

 mint.com sounds like a good idea. Is it free? I see my brother and my sister in law and how the money situation is for them and he just barely got laid off from his construction job. He does odd jobs now and makes okay money but definitely not what he was making. She now pays for the entire mortgage and other bills and you can tell she is bitter about it.

I dont want to ever feel like this or make my husband feel this way. I want it to be equal and or at least know that we are both doing our parts in the marriage to make things work (whether that be financially, emotionally, etc.)

Original Post by amethystgirl:

Currently engaged. When we moved in together, we set up a joint acct that is linked to both of our individual accounts, and a joint credit card.

Our paychecks go into our ind. acct, and we each transfer 50% of the credit card bill into the joint acct each month (round up to cover utilities).

We still have money in our ind. accts, and pay our ind. credit cards through that (only a few things go on ind. cards - car stuff, hair cut, clothes, gifts)

For rent, we decided that the amount we used to pay in rent when we lived apart would stay the same. So I pay our rent (same as my old rent), and he puts the amount he used to pay into another joint acct (this one high yield savings) for our future house.

I think things would change if we stopped having relatively equal paychecks. And I don't know if we'll change it when we get married - it works really well for us. Maybe by the time we have kids.

 My scenario is pretty much the same as this, except we pay equally into the rent and we use debit cards, not credit cards. When my fiance and I officially moved in with each other, we set up a joint account (one checking, one savings). We split our house bills (rent, electricity, food, and so on) and they are paid out of our joint checking account. We each put a set amount of money into the joint checking account, each month. We each have two debit cards (one for our joint checking, one for our individual checking). He is in charge of paying our joint bills each month; he does online bill payments from our joint account.

We have our own separate accounts still for individual bills (my store credit cards, when I buy clothes for myself, etc.).

We're not buying a house until we're both out of debt completely besides car payments. We've been completely open about our finances and have agreed to stay in an apt until we acheive our financial goals. We also have a savings account where our extra money from our joint checking account each month goes, toward house down payment. So if there's money left at the end of the month in our checking, he transfers that into our joint savings.

I'm good with this arrangement and agree with the others who have said we'll split the bills unless one of us is making a disproportionately higher amount of money. I make a little bit more now but it's not a huge difference at this point. I think it would be different if my fiance and I were both not working full time, or if one of us stayed home with a baby, whatever... we'll figure that stuff out when we get there :)

I know a lady who expects her boyfriend to pay 100% of her bills. They live together, and they both have kids by other people. I don't understand why it would be his responsibility to cover all her expenses and her kids' too... but that's just me.

My husband and I each have our own accounts and a joint checking/savings account that we call the "household" account.

Each pay period, I have half of my half of the mortgage transferred into the household account (I get paid biweekly), plus a little extra to cover the bills.  The first year we had the house together, I manually transferred my half of each bill to the joint account, but now that I kinda know how much we use in utilities each month, I just have that amount automatically transferred as well.  Our tax return is filed jointly, and any money we get back goes into our joint savings account.

Things like my student loans, credit card, and cell phone bill come out of my own personal account- the joint account is ONLY for things pertaining to our house/property.

I personally think it's a good idea to split everything evenly if possible- it leaves little room for arguments.  I also think it's important to have your own separate account.  Some people can have their entire paychecks deposited into an account they share with their spouse, but that arrangement would never work for me.

I'm not employed right now, but we have a joint bank account with his pay as direct deposit. I then pay all the bills with it. When I'm working it'll be the same thing, except it'll be more money, I'll still probably be the one paying the bills (and I'm ok with that!). We don't see it as "our paychecks" when it goes into the bank. The total in our bank account is "our money" and there is no splitting, we spend if we need to or if we want to buy something.

Original Post by priceless7:

 mint.com sounds like a good idea. Is it free? I see my brother and my sister in law and how the money situation is for them and he just barely got laid off from his construction job. He does odd jobs now and makes okay money but definitely not what he was making. She now pays for the entire mortgage and other bills and you can tell she is bitter about it.

I dont want to ever feel like this or make my husband feel this way. I want it to be equal and or at least know that we are both doing our parts in the marriage to make things work (whether that be financially, emotionally, etc.)

Yes, mint.com is free.  You should definitely check it out, it is a lifesaver for tracking your budget. 

I know about the unemployment/bitterness all too well.  I was laid off myself in March of last year from my job in finance, and since then have established my own freelance translation and interpreting business using my foreign language skills.  I never thought this would be where my career would end up - but you do what you have to. 

I think things can become bitter if one person feels the other isn't doing their part.  In my case, starting up my freelancing business was difficult, and until money started coming in my husband's salary (and savings) was maintaining us.  But we were always VERY open with one another and we knew I was doing all I could to bring money in once again. 

I still look for a job - although my freelancing brings enough that we are able to save now.  I also make sure that, since I am the one who does the shopping for the household, we save wherever possible, as much as possible.  That's how I started our own vegetable garden, which has saved us a bundle!!  

Both of us were pretty stressed about money at times (and still are), but making sure that we both were doing something about it (even if the money wasn't coming in yet) made a big difference in how each of us perceived the other was "contributing" to making things better.  Also, being open about our worries has made a huge difference.  And sticking to our budget has kept us both honest - and sane! 

We split things up proportionately, when we first got married, because I made less than half what my husband did.  I ended up paying 2/5's and he paid 3/5's.  It was a little complicated but it worked for us.

Then as we had kids and bought our house and then became trasepeople apprentices, etc (I guess I could've said life), our incomes are about the same now, so it's worked out that he pays the mortgage and taxes and our one loan payment.

I pay the other household bils and daycare.  We split groceries (he buys one week, I buy the next).  We didn't like joint accounts because of all the troubles our friends/family had when they divorced or were widowed; separate and blameable  just worked for us.

We didn't include credits cards either - it's in your name, your racked it up, it's your responsibility.

 And we review our budget monthly to make sure it's still fair.

We have joint everything, pour both our paychecks into one big pot and pay for everything together.  The only problem with this is when we see each other's birthday presents on the credit card statement.

Original Post by plasmagirl:

We have joint everything, pour both our paychecks into one big pot and pay for everything together.  The only problem with this is when we see each other's birthday presents on the credit card statement.

 Haha! I could see this being a problem but I completely think that doing everything together might make things simpler. Once I get married I want to consider all the money "our" money (that doesnt mean I can go blow his paycheck on a new wardrobe). :)

Thanks for the responses and ideas.