Do You and Your Spouse Manage the Household Finances Together?

Hello D., Good for you, we need couple coaching on finances. It is a leading cause of divorce. I believe that couples should be a team when it comes to money, even if separate accounts are being used. I mean that when spending money both should agree if the amount if over 50 dollars. Power struggles, and passive aggressive behavior can play itself out when it comes to money. So can betrayal. Hiding money, addictive gambling, shopaholics, etc., can ruin a marriage. Team work is the most important element regardless of the method being used. Hope this helps.

In response to Melissas quite unkind remarks about seperate accounts...
My hubby and I have separate accounts. We always have. We started that way when we were single, and both did not want to let the control go. I pay certain bills, he pays certain bills. The rest is ours to do what we want with. It works for us. We have been married 9 years and have NEVER...Once...had a fight over money. We dont overdraw our accounts because one forgot to tell the other they withdrew money. We can buy a gift for each other and the other wont question what was bought at that store, thus giving up the secret. We don't get mad for spending too much money on a gift for each other because we do not know what we spent. It works for us. It may not work for everyone...especially those who are trying to hide something. Neither one of us hides our account information or purchases intentially...in fact, we are on each others accounts just in case...and have access to them if we want to be nosy...but have full trust in each other. I dont spy on him, and, well, if he spies on me i dont know about it!
Now...if one of us needs a little extra money, we let the other know and it is taken care of. We support each other. On big purchases, yes, we discuss it. discuss who is going to buy it, or if we are going to jointly by it. Like i said...works for us. I think the biggest part is that i am not constantly questioned about where I am spending my money. What did you buy here...or there. I was married before my current hubby and we had a joint account. I handled the money, but any time he saw the check book he would question me. Drove me nuts.

In our household, I handle most of the daily finances. My husband takes care of the investments, life insurance, and other funds like the kids' college funds. But, when it comes to the every day checking account and bill paying, that's mostly my job. I do all of the grocery shopping too. My husband makes the money and I spend it:)LOL! I do however keep him informed on our finances regularly. I've tried numerous times to get my husband more involved with the daily finances, but he trusts me and says I do a much better job than he ever could. But, if either of us needs to make a major purchase like an appliance or fixing something like plumbing, we both consult one another. If it's a small purchase like computer parts, we do not ask one another, but likely he will let me know so that I know where the money went. I think some of the reasons our arrangement works well for us is because both of us have similar personalities. For instance, we are not materialistic--we don't like to dress up or buy jewelry, we are both antisocial so we never go out to do things with friends like golf or parties--our social activity involves our computers, so that way we only spend our money on food, bills, and things needed for the kids (which I also buy alot of things for the kids second hand too).

M.

My husband and I have a system we both love.

First off, all our money we earn goes into a joint account. All the bills are paid from here and they are only paid by me so there is no double dipping. Each month we are each given a set "allowanace" for them month that goes into a personal account. This money is for us to do the personal things (going out with friends alone, getting spa stuff, Starbucks and eating out, things that only benefit us and not the house). It also is where we buy presents from.

We each have a debit card on our personal account but not one on the joint account. If something requires cash and not a charge (we charge everything and pay it off at the end of the month) it is usually a personal expense. It has been wonderful dealing with month since we got married because there are never fights!

my husband and I have been married 17 years and I think we have tried it all. I think what works best depends on each couple. I am an accountant so I would never not be involved with money - it is my nature. We have only joint accounts. All money goes into one account and we each get an allotment each week. He smokes so he has to cover his cigerattes out of that plus any meals he chooses to eat out, etc... Mine is for going out to lunch or after work with friends. The rest is family money. Covers all the bills, kids expenses, medical expenses, etc.. I take care of paying all the bills so nothing slips through the cracks. We got rid of ATM cards because that caused too many problems. We do have debit cards and I do on line banking and check my account every morning to see if he made any purchases (gas, grocery's,etc) and forgot to tell me. Beats the days of waiting for a bank statement to come. Our attitude is what's mine is his and what's his is mine and we share. Some couples like each maintaining thier own accounts - we found that complicated things like who had to pay for grocery's or one time expenses like the furance getting fixed or the carpets cleaned. I think personalties of the couple play a huge part in the decision. Money is always a huge part of a relationship so it is important to find what works best for both of you so there is no stress.

I am a 35 yr old SAHM and I manage all of our family finances on a day to day basis. My husband gets paid twice a month and we have a schedule of bills/expenses/savings that come out of each check. We then withdraw the rest in cash and live off of cash only until he gets paid next. We discuss any unforeseen bills and expenses that come up between paychecks but there really are not too many. We start each year off with a budget of things we are saving for or will need in the upcoming year and try to prioritize or allocate for these things.
His actual paycheck gets deposited into his personal checking account. I write the checks for the bills from my personal checking account and transfer each amonunt over to my account via the internet so he has access to see where everything has gone. We have lived like this for almost 4 years and it is has worked out well. Switching to cash made it much easier to manage our finances because we always can instantly see how much we have left until the next paycheck.
Prior to staying at home, my husband and I both worked full time and had our own accounts. Our living expenses at that time were much lower than they are today and he paid most of the bills from his paycheck/account. We only shared a savings account which we agreed to put a certain amount in each month.
Hope this helps!

My husband and I found that paying bills together was not a healthy activity for us. We ALWAYS ended up fighting over very simple things. For example, paying bills electronically or by old fashion mail. What we found worked for us is, creating a budget together and one of us paying all the bills and keeping a ledger as they see fit. This works well as long as there is a significant amount of trust in the relationship. We frequently revisit our budget and adjust it together twice yearly to make sure we can continue to live within our means. Working together on our budget helps us both know how much we can spend on what and having only one of us handle the bills avoids silly and useless arguements. Hope you can find something that works for you.

If it involves money, I handle it, but that's because I seem to have a better knack for it than my husband does. We have a joint account and he spends money as he sees necessary. When it's a major purchase, he discusses it with me first to make sure we can afford it. When he writes a check, he records the info. on a sticky note and attaches it to the check register, but he almost never writes checks. He mainly uses the credit card, though, on which we maintain a $0 balance (I pay it off every month). It's not hard for us to stay on budget anyway because we chose to live in a house at the low end of what we can afford just to make sure we never have to worry about finances. Though we have a joint account, we also each have savings accounts in our own names for credit purposes in case one spouse were to die.

We both work and I handle the finances, investments, etc. We use the credit card for day to day purchases and write one check to remain within our balance. We have direct deposit and that really helps. We have one bank account and that keeps things transparent.

In our house my hubby is the one who does the account balancing and financial planning. I do the shopping and stay in budget. I have the freedom to spend but usually do ask him for an amount.

When we used ATM cards I would give him the receipts daily. But when I write a check I enter it into the register and he doesn't need the reciepts. We only have 1 check book so it cuts down on impulse buys. If you don't have the check book on you you can't write out a check... We also don't use our ATM cards.
At the beginning of the week I pull out our budgeted cash and we keep ourselves in the limits.

If I'm at a store and find a great deal I don't hesitate to take advantage of it... But am careful to not take advantage of EVERY deal possible.lol And then I tell hubby all about how I save him soooo much money by spending his money. :-) We do discuss large purchases (cars etc.) There was a time that he bought a computer while I was out with my mom one night... But then again it broke after I left and we had been talking about getting a new one so it wasn't a suprize...

I am on his account but I also have my own account since I have an inhome business and use it for the business expenses and splurge spending that I don't want to explain (like the trip to BK, mc donalds, etc...) I am incharge of that account and do all the balancing for it.

There is no one way to do it... The balancing act depends on personality and responsibility of those involved. I am perfectly fine with letting the one who earns the bulk of the money be the budget setter... But I am married to a man who is fair to a fault and financially wise. Other people would turn up their noses and say that it HAS to be equal decissions... If its working, go for it... If not, try something else. :-)

I am a 32yr old SAHM of a 3yr old and I handle the day to day finances. I do all the check book stuff and pay all the bills, I also balance the check book. If I have to write a check, I fill it out and he signs it. It makes it so he is involved and knows what is going on. However most of the bills now are paid online so each week I just let him know the balance in the account. He has access to the accounts online, he deposits his check weekly so he sees the balance when he does that. We find that talking about money and keep each informed on the weekly makes this much better.
We do have a credit card that is paid of each month
we are fee to spend during the week but large purchases (over $100) needs to be discussed prior to the purchase (unless it is groceries).
When it comes to life insurance, college funds, annuities, IRA's we do all that together - discussions, decisions.
We have a joint checking and savings and have since we moved in together 9yrs ago - we got married 6yrs ago.
Honesty about money is the only way to go, no secrets! I tell him even when I spend more than I expected at the grocery store. good Luck

We've been married almost 10 years, and we've tried a lot of different ways to manage things, but here's what works best for us:

We have a household account (his paycheck goes here) and a household money market account (my paycheck goes here, and I make considerably more than he does). Mortgage and insurance payments come out of the money market, as does 1 debt reduction payment a month. Utilities and minimum debt payments come out of the household account.

We each have a "personal" account with an "allowance" - most of our eating out, along with little things we get for ourselves comes out of here.

There is one credit card used for gas and groceries for the points; that gets paid off every month. Everything else is off limits for spending because it's getting paid off.

Beyond that....anything more than about $50 that comes out of anything other than a personal account we talk about first. We're not doing any special debt reduction process, other than throwing about a paycheck a month towards the account chosen to be paid off ASAP

My husband and I developed a budget and a plan about how our money is spent using the tools from Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University. We have joing checking and saving accounts. We assign every dollar that comes in to a specific account (grocery, bills, clothing, entertainment/eating out, baby sitting, gifts etc.) We use a cash envelope system to manage each account unless it is a bill. This is the best way we have found to control our spending and manage our money. By doing this we've been able to pay off debt and build a beautiful new house this year.

We worked on the budget together, but it is my responsibility to pay the bills (most are automatically taken out online) and go to the bank and take out our cash for the cash envelopes when my husband gets paid. It can be a lot of work at first but I have it down to a science now. :) Thank you for the work you do - we need responsible people to teach others about finances!!

We take care of things together. We feel that any major money decisions should always be discussed together.

Personally...I never understood the whole idea of having seperate accounts. To me...that just screams distrust in a marriage. I mean, isn't the whole point of being married to spend the rest of your lives TOGETHER? Only reason to have your own account is to prep for a doomed future right? Then why get married in the first place?

As far as check writing goes...we generally do all our balancing on our money program. Whichever of us gets to it first balances the books. It's all right there for both of us to see.

We do have several accounts, checking, IRA, stocks etc. We have set up an account dedicated to our children which will be evenly split when the time is right.

Sorry if I sounded bratty LOL. I get a bit touchy when it comes to this subject...not sure why.

Have a great day!

Hi D.,
My husband and I work out a monthly budget (based on Dave Ramsey's Financial Planning) that gets reviewed whenever we have significant changes, such as him losing his job and now our new baby. When we first got married we paid the bills together just so we were both aware of any issues that came up and expenses on credit cards. Now, I pay the bills and I discuss any irregularities with my husband. We have a joint bank account and it works for us. I do have friends who have separate bank accounts, and a joint account that they each put a certain amount of money in per month for household expenses.
Hope that is helpful.
S.

My husband & I are aparently the minority here...LOL.
Here's how we each handle finances:
- We each have our own checking account.
- Bills get paid out of each account. (I generally pay all the bills out of both accounts, though, since they all just get paid online).
- We discuss the finances together, and decide on the budget. We work together on large purchases, to make them fit into the budget where needed.
- We try to have approx the same amount of spending money in each account when we're done paying the bills - that way you are responsible for your money and don't have to account to the other person as to where you spent it...but, in the same respect, if one is short one week & asks the other for some extra cash, if they have it, it's no big deal...

We tried having a joint checking once, and all it did was cause arguements - because when one would ask for money and the other would ask what it was for, it just didn't work for us. We don't have a lot of credit cards, so our spending money is what we have, and that's it. We don't charge a lot of things if we can help it.
It works very well for us - we have been happily married for 16 years!

We handle the finances together. I would not have it any other way. Now I will pay the bills but communicate to my husband what is paid what needs to be paid and how much we have left to spend. Like the recent wife said sometimes we end up having a challenging conversation over finances but at the end of the day for us to share accounts and financially responsibility creates even more communication between us and it makes us responsible for each other. I also have found that because we operate this way others will not be quick to ask to borrow (we dont loan if we have it we consider it a gift to give) money because they know we will have to check with each other.

My husband pays all the household bills. My pay goes for the note and car insurance. I buy the food and all the boys' clothes. I also buy anything we need for the house as far as decorating is concerned.

I'm not too happy with the arrangement because I'm not that good with money and because I don't have the responsibilty of major monthly bills i don't hold on to my money very long.

I don't necessarily care for the way we do it, but I manage all the finances in our house. If it were left up to my husband, the bills would always be paid late. He just doesn't want to do it. So I pay all the bills & I watch the spending to make sure we don't overdraft or anything like that. We don't have separate accounts, just the 1 joint checking account, and he is supposed to tell me in advance when he is going to make a purchase of $20 or more (unless its like gasoline, which is a regular expected amount).

Well we've tried several things. :) Basically my husband doesn't keep track of much, money included, and especially receipts.

What works best for us is to decide on the initial budget together, and of course discuss any major purchases or straying from the budget, but I pay all the bills and do the major shopping/spending for the household. Recently he got his own checking account and uses it to buy gas with. If he needs other things we transfer money into it. He refuses to reconcile, so usually he just buys his gas with it. This way I know exactly what has been spent and don't go in the hole.

The downside to all of this is that he isn't able to do this himself, so if something happened to me he'd be in trouble. I periodically sit him down and show him what's going on, if we have extra or not enough money, that sort of thing, but he doesn't want to know the details and lets me handle it all. It works, but ideally, he should be able to do this as well.

Some people are very against having separate checking accounts, but I think its more about how the money is spent rather then if it comes from one account or not. He earns all the money and I manage it. Both of our names are on all of our accounts, but I have the only check card to the main account, and don't have one to his. Both of our names are on the checks, so if he needs to use them he can. It just helps because then I know each time he's used the joint account, and can keep track of it. He didn't think it was a worth mentioning if he only spent $10 or $20 here and there, but that all adds up and needs to be accounted for. Merely having an overdraft protection on the account is not enough.

We have one checking account and one savings account that we share. I do EVERYTHING, my husband hasn't a clue! Since having my 2nd baby, this responsibility has become too much for me to handle on my own. My husband keeps telling me he's going to become more involved in bill paying but it hasn't happened yet.

We each have our own checking accounts, but I handle them both. Both of us have our checks auto deposited. I keep 3 notebooks, one for each checking account that is used like a check register (easier for me to note that say, Target was pjs for ds), and one that lists our monthly bills, when they are due and how much. I manage the accounts from our online access and pay most of our bills online. At the end of the day, DH just wants to know how much is left over. We decide on an amount for savings together and then the rest is for us to use or not as we see fit out of our respective accounts. DH doesn't often ask about details, but when he does, I can let him scan through the books and see where the dollars went without having to explain myself, or try to remember what specific amounts were from a month ago. It also is helpful to see when we start spending too much in one area so we can cut back. I can't fathom having a joint situation. I think we'd end up fighting alot over money. This arrangement works for us because we are great partners and still independent. I think if we shared an account we'd fight about money.

C.

Hi D.,

My husband and I have a joint checking and money market account. All of our bills are payed out of the checking account. I generally balance the check book at the bare minimum every 2 weeks when we get paid. However if I am really busy then my husband will do it. We also have a monthly budget (We follow Dave Ramsey's budget guidelines) that we discuss every month. I keep track of the budget every month. We both have our own debt cards and if money is getting tight before the next paycheck I tell my husband and he watches what he spends till the next paycheck. We are both pretty conservative when it comes to spending money so that helps keep things in order a lot.

Hope that helps!
A.

We do an annual budget together at the beginning of every year. Then, my husband does all the "paperwork" (entering receipts, paying the bills, etc.). He enters receipts and pays bills on the 15th and 30th of each month. At the end of each month, we review the "actual spent" with the budget together to make sure we are staying on track. We have 2 bank accounts - one that the paychecks go into and all the money comes out of, and a second one that holds our emergency fund savings that we almost never draw out of. We only use the checkbook for paying bills. If I need to write a check for some reason (i.e., sending money to the kids school), I put a note in the receipt envelope that he will see when he enteres receipts. We always try to keep a $1,000 minimum balance in the checking account so nothing ever bounces because we didn't record something right.

As far as "money in our pocket" goes - we have a cash envelope. We each draw out a set amount each week (happens to be $40 each per week for us right now) that we are free to use how we like, with no receipts. This might be for things like McDonalds, coffee, vending machines, etc...