Weddingbee boards

as far as combining finances the best thing to do is for both of you to sit down and make a simple excel spreadsheet - here is what i bring in every month and here is what you bring in every month - figure out what both of you pay in bills and see what you have left over.

I have been married only 3 months and we are still figuring this out but its been pretty easy - i got added to his account (surprisingly with my new name before i had changed it) from there i went ahead and took care of closing my account and switching my direct deposit from work to his account. from there we figured out what bills needed to be paid - rent, water, trash, cable all gets paid as soon as we get paid, phones, insurance, his car all get automatically drafted from our account on a certain day and i take care of paying my car since i havent added him to my Navy Federal account (i use it strictly for my loan, all our finances go into his credit union)

after about 2 months of shuffling things around and creating a budget we were able to look at where we could cut costs and how we can get our savings number where we want it as well as keep the credit card balance to a minnimum.

we both just got raises so we will probably have to go back and rework our budget, but its a working document and should be looked at occassionally - we try and keep track of bills every month so we can figure out general costs, so if a bill is super high we can look and say hmm something must be wrong or it was really hot so our electric bill is probably higher than normal.

both of us are active in checking the account. talking about what is in there and where we want it to be. we talk about big purchases - like we really wanted (i say wanted) a kitchen table so we budgeted that in for our May spending. we pick a month or pay period when we will buy it.

this is just how it works for us - we are not penny pinchers, we spend moderately but we also make sure we talk to each other about our finances - that is the biggest part. for instance - it says we have xxx in cash but i know i paid my car and they havent taken it out yet so really we have this amount... - that where i find it important to talk because just looking at the available balance wont always cut it.

Good Luck!