Wedding Blog
I’ve always done an okay job of flying by the seat of my pants when it comes to money. I make a pretty good salary (can’t complain), have increased my income pretty steadily through my 20’s, and got through college on scholarships and tuition reimbursement. I wouldn’t say that I was in control of my finances, though. More than once (okay, pretty often) I paid utility bills when I received a shut-off notice. My retirement account was funded, but I didn’t have much cash in savings. I generally paid my credit cards off every month, but every so often they would get away from me. And I spent entirely too much money on… well, who knows. I just spent it, and *poof* it was gone. I figured that as long as I could pay my bills, have some fun, and get myself out of a jam if I needed to (break a lease to move, handle car repairs, hop a flight home to New Mexico if something happened), I was fine. For those of you who may be wondering how this worked in my first marriage, I’ll just say that he was just like me. We flew by the seat of our pants together. You can imagine the messes we made and cleaned up along the way.
Then I met my fiance.
At the ripe old age of 24 (and single!), he bought a house. He was frustrated at “throwing money away on rent every month” so he looked at many, many houses before choosing the one he lived in when I met him (and he made a great choice, choosing solid “bones” over aesthetics). He paid cash for everything, had one credit card for big purchases, and saved a significant amount of his money to undertake big renovations on his house.
Suddenly, I felt like a financial child. Granted, I had a decent retirement account and he didn’t, but he seemed to have it together, and I didn’t. So, last January I decided that it was time to grow up financially. I started paying bills on schedule, every paycheck. I withdrew cash to carry as spending money — and then had to buy a new wallet because my old one only held cards. I made a list of everything I owed and started paying it off, bit by bit. I can’t say that I’ve been completely successful at everything, but at least I KNOW where I’m screwing up. I’ve also figured out that, in finances, I value freedom while he values stability.
All of this “growing up” was hugely beneficial when we moved in together — in fact, bought a house together — in April because I knew enough about my spending habits and financial situation to avoid too much defensiveness. I figured we’d sit down and come up with a new plan, but it’s actually been more of an evolution of plans. He kept his accounts and payment cycles, I kept mine, and we divided up the bills. I helped out with paying for renovations on the old house, we both chipped in where we could on the new one, and we decided who paid for food, gas, and pet stuff based on who had money at the time. It was okay, but not ideal. He’s used to spending what he has in his wallet, then being broke until he gets paid again. I hate to run out of money, so I put off making big purchases in favor of having the freedom to grab a cup of coffee or lunch with a girlfriend whenever I want. So, he’d spend what he had and then I’d cover until he got paid again. Or, I’d set aside enough money for my own expenses, but because I’d spend it on joint purchases, I’d run out — and use a credit card for incidentals, which added up quickly. Neither of us felt like we could spend any money without checking with the other, but we would anyway (me on a credit card, which I’d justify because I’d pay it off with my next paycheck; he’d spend it and then feel bad… but still spend it).
We’re trying something new now. I pay most of our bills and do most of the saving because I do everything online and it’s easier. He deposits enough to pay his bills and gets the rest in cash. So, I’m spending all of my paycheck except for a small cushion on savings, debt reduction, and bills. We’re dividing up his weekly pocket money into three categories: house improvements (1/3), household (1/3) and free money (1/6 each). He takes the house improvement amount plus his free money because he’s the one going to Lowe’s/ Home Depot. I take the household amount plus my free money because I do the grocery shopping/ toiletry replacement/ pet supply purchasing. We’ll see how it goes.
I’m always interested to hear details about how people handle their finances because it’s so rarely discussed, yet it’s an important part of becoming a couple. I will admit that my view of my financial responsibilities changed once we got engaged. Before that, my primary responsibility was to myself and my own financial health, so while I still chipped in to help out if I needed to, I kept track of it all. After our betrothal,* I stopped keeping track, believing that my decisions should be what’s best for our family, not necessarily myself.
Did you make changes in how you handle your finances because of your fiance or engagement? How DO you handle your money — together, separately, or a blend? Also, are you interested in links to articles and other resources on couples and finances? I have a ton and I can do a follow-up post if you’re interested.
*Don’t you just love breaking out an archaic word every so often?
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Oh my god, this is what my fiance and went through and just (sort of) managed to resolve. I make more so felt like I had to pay for everything at the beginning of the month, but then by the end I would run out of money and run up my credit card bill. We had to sit down and do a lot of math (with a lot of yelling and apologizing in between) and come up with a strict system. It works for us, though I imagine it might not for more financially smart/stable people.
Wow! I am so glad you brought this up. Finances is what I have been dreading the most about the big change of marriage. I have been thinking about it every night. Do I close my personal account and share one with him? I get automatic paycheck deposit but he has his own business so he has control of all of his income. How do we split the bills? Who pays for groceries? Will I have money left to spend on anything for myself? I am 7.5 months away and have been losing sleep over this!!
We have been talking about this a lot this week, we are recently engagesd and want to come up with a savings plan for 1009. Thanks for sharing your advice, I love articles related to this! It is so important, but rarely talked about.
My fiance and I do a budget every month using Excel. It’s really easy once you get it all set up. We automatically put in our paychecks (we both get paid on the first, which makes this a bit easier) and bills we have to pay every month. We have a grocery budget and eat-out (we call it “dating”) budget.
Then we sit down and figure out what each of us wants to spend. Does one of us need a hair-cut? An oil change? A new pair of shoes? We budget for each item. It usually ends up changing through the month, but we always know exactly what we need, and we rarely make purchases that aren’t in our budget.
We have three accounts right now - a joint account that all of our money goes into. A money market savings account. And a wedding account. We have NO credit cards.
We’ve managed to save up $1000 a month this way, which is about 1/4 of our income. We’ve saved up $10,000 for our wedding!
I’m a bit advocate for joint accounts. You’re married, so there shouldn’t be his money and her money. But the biggest thing is to talk about it, talk talk talk until you know exactly what’s going down with the money.
This one is a tough topic. Before we were married, we did he dealt with his own bills and I dealt with mine and divided up household things as best we could (we were living together) so I did the rent but then he coverered cable, electric, food, going out, car and car insurance. I did make more than him and was in less debt than him so it made sense. We are on opposite sides of the spectrum financial wise so it has been hard to make him see that for big purchases we should save up the cash and not put it on a credit card while also saving for a home and our future. After lots of fighting it was decided that the finances would be my job after the wedding since I am much better with keeping track of everything. We are married about a month now and not everything is fully combined yet but I really enjoy taking it on. At some point you will be on the same page just takes some time and adjusting on both people’s parts.
Marriage is about sharing everything– at least that is how I was raised and my fiancé agrees. We’ve opened a joint savings account as of right now and when we take the big plunge, we’ll be closing our personal checking accounts and opening a joint checking account. Right now we generally share in each other’s spending and saving habits, but it’s not for everyone. It takes a lot of discipline and being willing to think of money not as “mine” but “ours.”
By the way, I’m with you. I think my fiancé does an excellent job with his finances- I’m the one that tends to purchase now and pay later—he’s a cash man too!
Thanks for sharing. It is my January goal to work out how we will do our finances after the betrothal ;). I’m wondering how you split up what is for “us” versus “me”. Sometimes the line is gray. I also think that women spend more on upkeep and appearances (makeup, haircuts, clothes etc.) so I’m worried that all my “me” money will go towards that (I’m really not high maintanence at all but some of the little things we do adds up). I’m worried I won’t have much wiggle room for the fun stuff. He, on the other hand, should have a lot more fun money after he picks up his upkeep items, shampoo and a tube of toothpaste.
We are planning on visiting a financial planner when he gets a more permanent job (he’s a student now) … I know a lot of people try to figure this stuff out themselves, but when you’re “money stupid” like I am, I think spending a bit of money for professional help is a good investment.
We have a similar system we’ve been using for about a year. Carrying cash has made a huge difference for us, because we actually realize how much we’re spending each week. I don’t know if we’ll always stick with it, but it helped because it has made us both aware of our spending habits and lifestyle.
We both added each other onto our accounts that we had before marriage. We have a YEARLY budget excel spreadsheet which includes tabs for my income, his income, debts and assets. We have a spreadsheet for 2007, 2008, 2009. I will probably create 2010 in january.
We’re both on the same page so we have no qualms about paying for this or that.
We’ve been living together for 4 years and became engaged 6 months ago…for the last 4 years we have had a joint credit card. All of the utilities, groceries, pet food/vet bills go on there and we split it down the middle at the end of the month. We write two checks for rent each month, straight down the middle. And it works great for us. I ebb and flow with how much I spend on clothes, hair, shoes, etc every month and I want to keep this freedom…but once we’re married part of me does want to share every penny. Its a tough situation. He doesn’t want to have a joint checking account when we’re married. But what happens when we have kids? We definitely need to hammer this out.
I just want to provide a word of advice for the posters who say they will be closing their personal accounts when they open the joint ones: please don’t do this! Even if you only leave one penny in your personal accounts, you should keep them open because they improve your credit rating. The longer you have accounts they more they help your score, so don’t cancel the accounts you’ve had for a long time.
We have talked about our finances before we got engaged. I didn’t have debt and he did so he made sure he paid off his debt before asking me to marry him. It helps a lot having a clean slate.
We will open a joint checking and credit card account for our common expenses; and a savings account for joint savings. The common expenses (mortgage, utility bills, insurance, groceries, etc) plus savings (for emergencies, big expenses, vacations together) are divided between the 2 of us based on our individual income ratios (i.e. 50/50 if we earn the same amount).
We will keep our own checking accounts and our old credit card accounts for other expenses such as individual shopping, daily allowances (for lunch, commute, etc), other individual expenses such as gym memberships, payments to our own credit card accounts, etc.
My husband and I have a joint account as well as our own personal accounts. What we do is have all paychecks deposited straight into our joint which we use to pay all the bills (rent, gas, dog, food….) we then take the leftover and put 1/3 into savings, and 1/3 into each of our joint accounts. That money is for us to use for whatever we want. This way when I buy a pair of $$ shoes or he goes on a trip to vegas with his brothers the other doesn’t feel cheated b/c we saved up our personal money for this! It also works great when you need to buy each other gifts! Family gifts or trips come out of the joint account!
Even if we make different pay rates we feel this is more fair because we BOTH work full-time and hard. Pulling the “but I make X amount more than you ” card isn’t a great way to be in a marriage.
DH also came into the marriage with a large amount of old credit card debt while I had none. We are paying this off with our Joint checking/savings….I knew about it going into the marriage so I feel that it is now “our” debt. BUT we know if either of us gets in debt after everything is paid off then it has to be paid off by that person out of their personal $$!
Shouldn’t happen since we only have 1 credit card that is for family emergencies!
Mint.com! It’s awesome. We’ve combined our finances entirely and Mint allows you to keep track of all your CCs, checking, savings, retirement accounts etc in one place! It’s really nifty. Then you get a list of all your transactions and actually can categorize them. So you see how much you’re spending on food, shopping etc. It’s amazing how useful/productive it is to have everything in one place.
I always love your posts! You really tackle some great issues. We are both going to have our credit cards paid off before we get married (I’ll be done in January), are paying cash for the wedding and have decided to live in my house instead of his after the wedding because the mortgage is lower (by 1/2) so we can create an emergency fund of 1 year’s salary and get our retirement savings together. It’s so fun being a “grown up” 
I’m going to be the working one married to a grad student (for three more years!)
We will combine our money and pay bills first, my students loans and have VERY little spending money at first.
He has quiet a bit saved up from an inheritance from his great-grandparents, so we are buying a little house right away because the mortgage is the same price as rent in southern cali.
I have been building up my credit since the first day I could get a credit card, so I think we are in good shape! FI likes to make the big decisions and I like to organize/pay the bills. we work together on most everything else, but it will be weird to ’share money’ when the time comes!
We have everything separate. I have my credit cards, savings accounts, IRA, 401K etc and so does he. We divide the bills and keep what’s left to distribute as each individual sees fit. We’re married but we would never say we are like one person, so why would we treat our money that way?
My fiance and I are currently working on figuring all that out. Lucky me, he’s studying to be an accountant! Right now our set-up (since we’re living together) is basically dividing up the bills according to who can afford X-amount. It’s working fairly well, but we make about the same (he a little bit more) so more often than not, it all splits down the middle. It’ll get hairier after we’re married because we’re planning on moving to another city and state, he’ll have graduated and hopefully will have a new employer, and I’ll be attempting to pursue a career in the theatre. Fingers crossed everything works out!
First off, I think it’s great that you’ve bought a home together. I think in many cases, people feel when one person has a house first, it’s never really “theirs” since the other person bought it (a la carrie in SATC).
As for the finances in our household, we have a joint account and two savings accounts. We both have retirement funds (managed by me) and the hubs has a seperate profit sharing program (also managed by me). When I met the hubs, he was in a horrible situation. He was a compulsive gambler and even though he made six figures, he didn’t have two cents to his name!! He was consistently over-drawn, had used cash advances on his cc’s, and never paid a single bill on time.
The next part will sound crazy because after two months of just dating, this is when we decided to merge our finances. I asked him to be open and honest about his finances and he was, even though he was quite embarassed by it. I calmly explained to him that the interest he paid was through the roof (esp those cash advances… eep!) so I used my own money to pay off all his credit cards and get him up to date on his bills. A bit scary giving up over ten grand to someone I’ve been dating for a mere two months but here’s the catch… we eloped at two months. We’re doing the big wedding bit now (almost two years later!) and we still have joint accounts and two savings accounts.
The hubs gets $100 of free money a month and I get the same. We pay about $6K in bills a month (can you believe how quickly things add up? mortgage, insurance for cars, home, etc, groceries, entertaining, gas, student loans, etc.) and the rest goes into our wedding fund and our general savings account.
We’ve never split the bill for anything before and we don’t intend to. Splitting the bill for anything has never even been considered for either of us and I don’t know if that is a cultural thing or just an attitude thing. To this day, I can understand why people would want to keep their finances seperate (in case of divorce, to feel like things are paid for “fairly”, etc.), but on the flip side… I just don’t get it. That’s not to say that everyone should run out and start a joint account (that’s just silly if you don’t really know/care for each other), but if you are in a serious, committed relationship, then you shouldn’t make money an issue other than, “do WE have enough to get the bills paid at the end of the month?”
I’ve always believed that marriages are NOT a 50/50 split. It’s two people who give 100%+ and they make what they will of it. Now, if you have a compulsive gambler and you’re joining accounts and he uses the extra money to gamble, then you have an issue. I made the hubs a deal that we marry and join finances, but the gambling had to stop because the marriage had to mean more and he quit cold turkey! It was hard (trust me, I saw him struggle with it), but he did it. There are so many things that can be considered “sticky” in a relationship, but honestly, I don’t feel like finances should be one of them.
If you had a joint account and you both sat down and took responsibility over the “house” money, I think you could realize how good it could be. You’re less likely to splurge on yourself because you think, “wow… I can have these $1400 CL - Babel boots or I can pay an extra $1400 off on the mortgage. hmm…” I sincerely believe that having this joint account has really helped us cut the “silly” purchases out because we always have to think back to “is this how the other would spend money?”
At the end of the day, what works for you is what works for you. I know my situation/solution is not for everyone. Heck, it’s not for most, but it’s what works for the hubs and I and it’s worked for everyone in my family. It has totally helped the hubs gain control over his personal finances.
And for the record… you don’t have to have equal incomes to do a joint account. The hubs makes more than four times what I make, but every penny either of us makes belongs to the other as well.
Hey there. My hubby and I lived together for 3 years before getting married, so we already had a plan in place. It may sound crazy, but we have 3 joint checking accounts and 1 savings account. 1 of the accounts is technically mine (where my check gets deposited) and 1 is technically his (for his check). Once we get paid, we each transfer the same amount of money into the 3rd account for all of our bills, groceries, pet supplies, and extra spending money. The remainder of our money stays in our accounts to take care of personal credit card bills, haircuts, student loans, gas, any extras that we may want. Being that I am a teacher, I have to use a lot of my own money for my kids and classroom, so this seems to be the way that has always worked. I always felt like he shouldn’t have to use his hard earned money to pay for my classroom needs. This set-up has worked well for us. We thought about changing it after we got married, but why fix something that isn’t broken? PS- I’m a free spender too, and my hubby is much tighter about spending. And we are always asking each other if it’s okay we are spending what we are on certain things. That part gets annoying, but all in all the plan works. Hope that your plan works out for you!
[...] by Miss Ballet Flat, Honesty by Miss Cheese, In Tribute to a Beautiful Lady by Mrs. Cookie, About Financial Maturity and Merging by Miss [...]
There are some interesting comments here. I have been struggling with this as I’m on the verge of getting engaged. I am an engineer and tend to be a bit of an analyst. That said, I also love to teach and play music. My girlfriend is a Social Worker, and is incredibly intellegent.
I currently make about twice as much as her and own a house (with roommates helping out), with a total net worth of about 200k (including retirement and semi-liquid items). I have been having a hard time with the idea of how to merge finances. The career decisions I’ve made are based on a solid income, not my passions. The career decisions she has made are based on loving what she does and making a difference. She could easily make what I do in a different career, or I could easily do something I love and make what she does.
The proposal I’ve come up with is to do it by ratios. Using round numbers I cover 65% of our joint expenses (including just about everything we both benefit from including vacations), and she covers 35%. What is left over for discressionary money also ends up in this proportion, if she has $2500 left, I have $5000. The discressionary money covers lunches or nights out without each other, clothing above and beyond the 50/50 budget, gifts, and toys. I’ve always been very generous with her and a good portion of mine will likely go toward things we both enjoy or gifts for her, however it enables me to have the choice. Whereas for the joint expenses we have a 50/50 vote.
These numbers are all dynamic and would change based on what we are each making at any given time (for example I score a bonus, now my percentage goes up which increases both our discressionary bucket).
If at some point she decides to take a job in corporate america, and/or go back to school, or I decide to start working for a non-profit like her, or persuing music full-time (read low income), the propotions would change.
The way it is now, I do a lot of volunteering in my spare time because I feel strongly about making a difference in the world and in peoples lives. I also contribute financially to non-profits. In her spare time (besides hobbies and leisure of course), she housesits and petsits because her current income doesn’t afford her the quality of life she wants, yet in her job she is fullfilled in knowing she makes a huge difference in lives of people in need daily. She doesn’t give financially to any causes, however the way I see it, she is already volunteering part of her potential salary to the non-profit she works for.
I’ve also mocked up scenarios where for example she goes back to school for her PHD, or stays home with babies for a year and has little or no income, in that case she would still have a proportion of the discressionary money I would have, since I would fully support her in it, yet would still be incentivized to bring in as much income as I could and not switch to a more fullfilling, lower paying job.
I see this as a nice compromise that incentivises contributing more income to the family in the form of choice in spending the descressionary money while also having a “lions share” or “sliding scale” type system that works based on percentages.
I share this for two reasons, one in case anyone else could benefit from hearing about it and maybe adopt something similar, and secondly to hear anyones comments on it.
Blessings,
-Jason
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Mrs. Cheese, Knoxville
Age and Occupation: 29, Engineering Manager
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 27, CAD Designer
Engagement Date: July 31, 2008
Wedding Date: May, 2009
Blogging Since: October 16, 2008
Venue: Our home and the two acres it sits on
About Me: I’m an emotional girl who loves sentimental things, parenthetical asides, and trying to do things herself. I can cook, sew, am a whiz at planning, terrible at delegating, and totally in love with my fiancé (who will be my second husband but first love of the rest of my life). For our home/ garden/ DIY wedding, we’ll be moonlighting as interior designers, home improvers, and gardeners with the help of our fabulous friends and neighbors. We can’t wait to be married, and are learning how fun getting married can be.
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