How do you and your partner handle finances?

[DisneyBeagle]

Do you and your spouse/significant other deposit all of your money into one checking account and share the money equally or do you each have your own account and pay a certain portion of the bills?

 

[EthansMom]

I'm a former-professional-turned-SAHM and DH is the sole breadwinner in our family.

Prior to my staying at home with our kids, we both put our paychecks into one account and paid all bills and expenses from the one account. Now that I'm home, DH's paychecks go into that one account. I handle pretty much all of our finances (bills, investments, etc...). DH and I both get an "allowance" to spend in whatever manner we want.

 

[Sorsha]

I'm a former-professional-turned-SAHM and DH is the sole breadwinner in our family.

Prior to my staying at home with our kids, we both put our paychecks into one account and paid all bills and expenses from the one account. Now that I'm home, DH's paychecks go into that one account. I handle pretty much all of our finances (bills, investments, etc...). DH and I both get an "allowance" to spend in whatever manner we want.

Ditto. DH really doesn't have the time to handle bills, etc. He leaves for work by 6 AM and isn't home till 5:30 PM most days.

My in-laws (who have a rotten relationship, to put it kindly) do things the other way - sort of. They have two accounts, "household" and "his". Her paychecks go in the household account and get used to pay all the bills, buy the groceries, put gas in the cars, etc. His paychecks go into his account and he uses them all to play with, buy junk for his umpty-dozen broken-down cars/boats/campers etc. Butthead. No thank you.

 

[LJC1861]

We put a set amount in our joint account each paycheck. This covers the shared bills plus some extra for unforseen expenses. As we both have personal expenses and some debt that we are each paying off we do keep our own checking accounts as well. We found that this works best for us, and insures that there is money available for our household expenses.

Linda

 

[Darcy03231]

All the money goes into our joint checking account. From there bills are paid and money is transferred into joint savings, joint investments, etc.

 

[SCHBR'smom]

I'm a SAHM, so all his checks go into our acct. I pay the bills.

 

[jimmalru80]

DW handles ALL the finances and I like it that way. My check is direct deposited and she pays all the bills.

 

[Jeafl]

We've been married a long time, over 20 years, and from day one our money was "our" money. Many years I stayed home with our kids, but even now that I am working both paychecks go into direct deposit and he handles all of the finances and pays all the bills. He has his CPA (although he isn't working as one) so I let him handle all of it. So far he has done pretty well for us, so I have no complaints. It works for us.

I did make sure to establish credit in my own name by getting a couple of credit cards over the years though.

 

[Kathi OD]

His bills are my bills and my bills are his. When we got married, his debt became mine, and mine became his, so there is no need to keep separate accounts for our "own" bills. Therefore, one checking account from which all bills are paid, with remaining funds being distributed among 2 savings accounts, which we can both access for whatever we need.

We each take a set amount of cash each pay for daily expenses, such as lunch or gas money. As for the savings accounts, one savings account is for those things that might come up between pay periods that our "allowances" don't cover. When the funds in that account reach a certain, mutually agreed upon, dollar figure, everything else goes into the other account, which earns a higher rate of interest. Withdrawls from that second account are usually for big ticket items and are discussed and agreed upon before the money is taken out.

 

[NMAmy]

DW handles ALL the finances and I like it that way. My check is direct deposited and she pays all the bills.

I didn't know my husband was posting on here!

All of our accounts are joint accounts to which we both contribute. I pay all the bills. We make joint decisions on big purchases but smaller purchases are fine without joint input.

 

[Chicago526]

All the money goes into one account (well, two if you count savings) and I pay all the bills, DH is horrible with money. We don't have an allowance per say, since we don't use cash. We just each charge whatever we want/need to our Visa card and I pay it off at the end of the month. But if either of us need to make a large purchase, we'll run it by the other first. We've gotten good about keeping our "wants" spending down to next to nothing, so it doesn't cause any problems with our monthly budget.

The only thing, money-wise, that we do seperatly is our retirement saving. We each have our own 401k at work, I fund/invest in mine the way I want and DH funds/invests his they way he wants too. All the retirement money is "ours" but we each do what we want with the accounts. I just have DH update me on how his 401k is doing every quarter (or I open his earnings statements) so I can update his 401k balance in Quicken.

 

[ameraumi]

Prior to Mike's passing, we put all income into one account and paid everything from that. We each had a set amount to "blow" each week and pulled cash out for that.

 

[PatsMom]

We have two checking accounts, both joint accounts. One is his and gets his pension checks (2) and social security. Mine gets my pay check. We have pretty much divided up who pays for what - although if he is short he'll just pay a bill out of my checkbook since I usually have a higher balance than him. I don't pay anything that requires writing a check - I pay my share of the bills on line. And I get all the groceries/household stuff. The way I keep my checkbook drives him crazy so it is best if we keep them separate.

 

[Pakey]

My husband owns his own business but I am the major breadwinner. He pays the bills on his busines but I handle the personal finances. When I need money from him, I have him transfer from his business (he does not draw a salary as my income is sufficient to cover our personal expenses).

I do all of the accounting/financial statements for his business and he has no idea how much money we have, even in his business account. He never opens a bank statement, a stock statement, etc. I could be hiding all of the money and he'd never know it.

I've been happily married for 25 years. He may have an opposing opinion.

 

[ead79]

DH and I have a joint checking account where both of our paychecks are deposited. I then pay all the bills from that account. I'm much more anal-retentive than DH, so it's better that way.

We typically run most of our monthly expenses through our American Express to get reward points, so DH and I both have a card to use on that account. We each have an allowance that we use on stuff for ourselves, but big ticket items like Disney trips that are for both of us just come out of the shared funds.

 

[mickeyboat]

We used to have it all joint until DH went into business for himself. Now he has a business account that I don't manage, except to take a set, agreed-upon amount from every week to put into our joint account. My entire check goes into the joint account. I pay all the bills (except the business ones) and whatever might be life over goes into a joint savings.

 

[HM]

One account for us. I'm in charge of paying the bills. DH just looks at them when they come in to see what we're spending.

One of my sisters and her husband keep separate accounts. She pays certain bills for their household and he pays for the others. Then whatever is left is theirs to spend or save as needed. Seems to work for them....

 

[chicagodisneyfan]

50% of each of our checks goes to joint account - bills, groceries, utilities, etc.


Then we each have our "own" accounts. There is no way in heck am telling Alan I bought a $500 purse or a great pair of boots.

Similarly if Alan buys a new car, he does not have to tell me - it comes out of his money.

If works for us.

 

[eliza61]

We have 1 joint account that we use to take care of the household things, that we each contribute to. We also each have our own checking accounts and credit cards. works for us. We're pretty good at discussing and communicating spending but I have no desire to know about every 20 bucks he spends.

 

[PghLybrt]

Ours is complicated becasue we can't be married so if we have a joint account it can be considered TAXABLE income!!! So we have seperate accounts. However I write out all the checks and we view all our money as ours , not hers and mine. I make sure that I keep her in the loop. She knows where everything is, what investments we have etc, in case something would happen to me.