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We are footing the bill ourselves. Our parents are in no position to help. We have already created a joint account, which is used primarily for wedding purposes and transition into our primary account. We are also keeping individual accounts for personal use. I am right now the bread winner in the relationship and will continue to be as FI is planning to go back to school after our wedding. He's in the military currently.
currently, we both have individual accounts. FI keeps track of the finances and we each have certain regular bills we're responsible for (he's got cable/DSL and i've got electricity, etc.). to balance it out, we trade off on other purchases such as groceries or who pays for dinner.
we still need to figure out what we'll do once we're married. i was reading a related thread on the nwr board and a poster shared how they handle finances - a combo of joint and personal accounts. each paycheck is split 60/20 (or something like that). 60% into the joint and 20% into personal. the joint account takes care of all the bills, with the personal accounts as discretionary spending. in their case, their paychecks varied from month to month, so the percentage was a way for each person to contribute a proportional amount and smooth it out over time (sometimes she had the bigger check, sometimes it was him).
in our case, i technically make more, but have much higher bills (pesky college!). we'll need to combine at some point and i think i'll propose the above or a similar plan. in the mean time, we came up with a plan that makes sense for the wedding budget. each of our families are contributing, but we're footing the majority of the bill. after discussing what money we had and what made sense financially for the both of us together and each of us individually, we split it up and it seems to be working well.
in my opinion, a wedding is a partnership and income is one of the joint resources, but everyone needs a little money of their own. it can be $5 or $5000 - each couple needs to sort out a system that works best for them and is confortable to all involved.
We have decided to open a shared account for our paychecks. We will keep separate accounts for any money we earn outside of our paychecks. I guess I should explain. We are both teachers, so our money will be direct deposited into a shared account (I make more money than him because I've been teaching twice as long). We also coach and tutor, that money will go into separate accounts as "play money". We've decided that keeping track of who makes more and who spends more is an open invitation to fighting. We've also decided that major purchases (over $200) should be discussed first. The majority of our bills will be on autopay through the shared account. The only bill that isn't is the house payment, which he will "pay" but the money will come from the shared account. Since we've been living together for over a year (with separate accounts), we've had time to learn eachothers spending habits and we've learned to talk about major purchases even though we aren't technically sharing money yet.
Sorry so long. Good luck.
Who's going to be in charge of the bills? I am in charge of the bills and have been since we joined accounts (about 1 1/2 years after we started dating-we have been together for about 4 years)
Would you have a shared account? Yes
Any individual accounts? No
Who makes more money? He does-lots and lots more. He is software engineer who is about to make the jump to management and I am a poor student doing an unpaid internship at a nonprofit and I am about to graduate and move on to graduate school.
Should they get to spend more? Not sure about the right answer to this, but I spend waaaay more than he does. He appears to get no pleasure out of spending money and buys himself few things outside of our joint entertainment activities and eating out.
we have a joint account, where most of our money goes. a small amount ($150 or so) a month goes into our personal checking accounts, and we each have a personal credit card as well as a joint card through our joint account's bank. our personal accounts are for gifts, fun stuff, shopping, etc. purchases over $100 (we're poor students, so we have a lower limit) should be checked out first. all bills/rent/groceries come out of our joint account. we also have a joint savings.
he does the budgeting, makes sure we're on track, adjusts as necessary, because he is the finance minded one, but i do the physical paying of the bills because i'm better about remembering due dates. :)
Every month we do our bills together even though still have some individual bills. But, it just keeps the communication open and it's our routine to sit down at the beginning of every month and handle all the bills for the whole month and do our monthly budgeting. We have a shared account now as well as individual accounts. The plan is for us to have our individual accounts and the one shared account and when we get paid we will contribute equal percentages to the shared account to pay all the shared bills like the mortgage, for example. Whatever is left in our individual accounts is ours to do as we please with, but we've agreed that any major purchases will be discussed first.
We're going to have a shared account and my FH keeping close track of finances. I think the most important thing is that it is not "my money" or "your money" but our money. So as long as you are together within budget, it'll be okay. :)
Well I'm going to be a bit different.
We have completely seperate accounts. When we bought our house, the bills ended up split 50/50 in our names, meaning he has half of the bills in his name and half are in mine. So, we just pay the bills that are in our own name. As far as the house payment, he makes more than I do, so he pays it. But groceries and other things like that are my responsibility.
We never, ever throw money in the other person's face though! I'm sure we could try, but the argument would go something like:
Him: "Well I pay for the house.."
Me: "And I bought the groceries, looks like you won't eat.."
Seems to work for us!
We are debating this, and we are sort of going to ease into sharing our money. We currently have seperate accounts, but plan on opening a joint account soon,. I want to keep our individual accounts too. He currently makes more money than I do, but it is probable that in the next few years I will catch up to him since we are in the same field (Unfortunatley I will probably never surpass him because he has a head start, and we plan on having kids, and each kid a woman has tends to decrease her salary, but not for men! That is another issue.) I think for many couples in which one person (usually the man) makes more money, that can lead to problems if you don't have a financial plan that both can agree on.
My FI is all for just putting the money together, what's mine is yours and all. I feel like I need my own money that I am free to spend anyway I like. He says that he fully realizes that I am woman and that I will spend money on things that he doesn't (I also buy him most of his clothes because he hates to shop), and that i will spend more than he does and his fine with that. He is very generous, and I believe him, but I am the one who needs time to adjust to the idea of sharing or money (which to me sort of feels like taking money from him). I do my best to contribute my share of our living expenses, and so far I am bankrolling 50% of our wedding, and to me it is meaningful to contribute like this. He doesn't really care, and would be happy to pay more of the bills, but I care. I think once I finish my post-doc and get a "real" job with real money, I will feel things are more equal and not worry about this too much.
My MOH and her husband combined their finances at first (and he is the guy who saves all reciepts and tracks things in a spreadsheet, but his wife is not like that.), and they found that it was better for their marriage to each have their own accounts and have a joint account for the big bills. They give themselves an equal allowance of money that they keep in their own accounts and are allowed to spend however they wish. That way, my MOH can go shopping, and go buy a fancy coffee drink (with me!) without him thinking she is wasting money, and he can blow his money on CDs and whatever else he buys, they don't end up in the grocery store figthing over whether or not to buy the expensive cheese (which actually happened).
We pool all of our money. I moved for work, and he moved to join me shortly after, and spent about 2 months finding work, so we started pooling money then. I make significantly more than him at this point, but my pay will not go up in the future while his will, so I can see a point at which he may make more money (although he'll likely trade it off for more vacation time - my position is 9-months a year, he gets two weeks of vacation). It's less stressful when we come to a joint constraint (i.e. run out of spending money for the month together) than if just one of us did.
Money stresses me out a lot, so he does the books, and I help him out when he gets stuck. At the beginning we allocated $200 each for completely discretionary purchases, but now we just try to stay within a joint budget and it seems to work so far.
Regarding bills, i'll probably be the head over that bc i'm the finance major. i build spreadsheets. i plan for the future and create budgets.....
we currently earn the same amount but in the future his salary will increase substantially. we're going with the 'whats mine is yours' philosophy. so no one gets to spend more simply bc they make more.
we will be opening a shared account soon where we will pool all of our money. our plan is to keep our individual accounts and each of us will get the same amount in monthly allowance for our "fun money". we won't have to justify expenditures to each other from this account.
all household bills, entertainment, and fun will be paid out of the joint account. there will be a low thresh hold (probably $100) on the joint account. any amount over that will need to be discussed with the other.
I'm going to pay the bills. I'm just way better at getting them paid on time - he is actually pretty bad at that, so it just makes sense.
We are keeping our individual accounts, although I will have access to them all, since I get to be responsible for paying the bills. We have talked about setting up a joint account for joint expenses, but just don't have time to figure it out right now. We have agreed as to what bills will be paid out of whose account, for the time being.
He makes a little more money than I do. As far as spending, we have agreed that we'll discuss any major purchases. We actually already talk about most purchases, and what is okay to spend, and we're lucky in that we basically have enough money that we don't have to worry about buying what we need - but for something that costs a couple hundred dollars we already talkabout whether we need it this minute, whether it would be better to wait until the end of the month or later this summer, etc. I would guess that although we haven't organized it this way, our spending on ourselves will be about the equal, as it seems to be that way now. We're both pretty up front about money, and I think we have about the same attitudes about spending and credit, so I don't think there are going to be any big issues.
like suzanno, i'm better at getting the bills paid on time, so i do them. prior to getting married, we had our individual accounts but created a joint account to deposit wedding funds into. now that the wedding's over, we've gotten rid of the individual accounts and operate out of the joint account. he currently makes twice what i make, but my work field will produce an increase in my salary faster than his, so we figure that since it'll all even out eventually, why nitpick the little stuff? every month i update our budget spreadsheets and go over them with him to keep him in the loop. we also get a monthly "allowance" that we're each free to spend (or save) however we want. we're both in the same place with our school loan debt and thoughts on savings so it makes things pretty easy when it comes to those "big ticket" items. we both like it because this system eliminates any guilt or resentment that could possibly arise over who makes more and how the money is spent. fewer fights makes for a happy us. :)
@emplye1: it sounds like you got things all figured out in a way that works for you. But, be careful because depending on what state you live in the fact hat he pays the mortgage on your house may be trouble for you one day if you don't have some sort of agreement drawn up. In the event of a divorce he may be able to show that he was the only one who ever paid for the house so you may not be entitled to any money from it. I would just double check to protect yourself.
I'm having difficulty with the money issue as well.
Before my FI and I got together, I had a boyfriend with whom I lived for three years. I knew that the relationship was never going to be a life-long thing, so right off the bat we agreed to pay everything - bills, entertainment, dinners out- 50/50..although sometimes I ended up paying for most...
Anyway, when I was single and living with some roommates, I got used to spending all of my money the way I wanted. I wasn't making much, fresh out of college, so all I ever bought was cereal, milk and water, as far as food went for me in the house, and i paid my personal bills and the bills my roommates and I were splitting three ways.
After my FI and I got engaged, he wanted us to get a place of our own. He knew that he would probably pay the bulk of things, as he makes way more than I ever will in my profession. And I wasn't very comfortable with that. We've been living together for nearly 5 months now, and I'm still not comfortable with how much he spends on us-- he pays the rent, buys the groceries and takes care of all of entertainment needs. I pay the utilities and my personal bills, which takes up nearly all of my monthly pay.
I feel like I should be contributing more but not sure how I can factor that in to my personal budget. On top of that, I put money into "our" special wedding account each month and he doesn't.
I want to eventually open a joint account and maybe do the 60/20 percentage thing where we allocate a certain amount of play money for each other during the month. But he would still be putting more into that joint account...
It's a tough siutation for me. I don't know if I'll ever get the hang of this "what's mine is ours" thing... Right now it seems more like, what's his is ours and what's mine is...mine? Doesn't settle well with me... Don't know how to make it work.
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who's going to be in charge of the bills?
would you have a shared account? any individual accounts?
who makes more money? should they get to spend more?