S/O--How do you split your finances?

[bananapancakes]

Inspired by Farmer's post...

My H and I have been married for two years but haven't joined finances yet as we didn't really have any shared expenses until now (we were long distance for most of the first year and then he had a job at a boarding school where we lived pretty much expense-free). In September we are moving and want to combine finances in some way as we will then have expenses to share.

Are you 100% joint? 100% separate? Or something in the middle?

Right now we are going back and forth between--combining everything into one account and transferring a set amount back to our individual accounts each month for discretionary spending or just transferring a set amount to our joint account to cover household expenses but keeping everything else separate.

What works for you?

[SJ]

Everything is joint. We budget for fun money but that is just a Quickbooks/mint category- no physical division of assets.

[HoneySpider]

Our finances are joint....we each have some fun money each month, but it's all in the same account, it's just allocated on the budget. Otherwise it's all just "our" money.

[Ashley&Scott]

100% joint

[fuddyduddy]

100% joint.

[GailGoldie]

we both have individual checking accounts, and also have a joint account - they are all at the same bank so we can easily move money around if needed.

basically i use my personal account to pay bills from - so DH can't touch it and there won't be enough, etc.... he puts most of his money into our joint account- but has his indiv also ... mostly i think so he feels like he has some of his own spending money since most of what is in joint goes towards our mortgage, groceries, etc.

but it's all "our" money --- though i have an ING account he has no access to- but he knows about it and it's better that way b/c he's horrible with money and he knows it the ING account is our emerg fund, etc - and money from joint goes into it every 2 weeks.

[KaraOrNot]

100% joint.

[tardyfortheparty]

100% joint

[hamster]

We have a joint account for all of our bills, savings, etc. We do take out a certain amount of money each month and transfer it to our personal accounts (which we had prior to marriage) as our fun money. I love our system.

[pedanticwench]

100% joint and I control our finances. H is aware of what I'm doing and I keep him up to date, but he has no interest in bill paying, saving, investing, etc.

[rosiedozie]

For us, everything is joint and it works perfectly. We each have a set amount that we can spend in personal money/allowance/whatever you want to call it each month, but it's not in a separate account.

[BravoBravo]

100% joint.

[rex]

Aug 3, 2012 16:16:36 GMT -5 pedanticwench said:

100% joint and I control our finances. H is aware of what I'm doing and I keep him up to date, but he has no interest in bill paying, saving, investing, etc.

Me too.

When I try to show everything to H he gets very bored and tries to change the subject. I will keep telling him though no matter how bored he gets because I don't want it to seem like I'm "controlling" anything. He just hates it so I manage it.

[Deleted]

100% joint

[childofhiphop]

100% joint with budget line item for Fun Money that goes to our individual account.

It works very, very well.

[lemonbasil]

100% joint.

[arterr0]

About 95% joint. We maintain personal accounts for fun money, but everything else goes in either joint checking or savings.

[bananapancakes]

Follow-up questions...

For those of you who do mostly joint with fun money, what do you include in your fun money? Do you have a budget line for haircuts? Clothes? Eating out? Or is all this considered part of your fun money?

What percentage of your income is designated as fun money?

[starlily]

We are technically separate, but have joint financial goals and treat our money jointly.

I pay for most household expenses, daycare & my SLs. I'm also aggressively saving for our next downpayment.

H pays for our cell phones, gas, entertainment/travel, and puts away money into a 401k & a 529.

No limit on fun money. We both spend what we want within reason. Our approach has been working well for us.

[SJ]

Aug 3, 2012 16:28:05 GMT -5 bananapancakes said:

Follow-up questions...

For those of you who do mostly joint with fun money, what do you include in your fun money? Do you have a budget line for haircuts? Clothes? Eating out? Or is all this considered part of your fun money?

What percentage of your income is designated as fun money?

To us, fun money is anything that only benefits one person or is superfluous. A want vs a need, maybe.

If we are out eating or drinking together, that is food budget not fun money.

Seasonal wardrobe updates like needing new shoes or jeans are not fun money, but if I buy makeup or a bag I'll call it fun money.

My fun money: nails, magazines, drinks/dinner with friends, coffee,

DH's fun money: cigarettes, drinks with friends, lunches out,

I used to count hair appts as fun money but I don't anymore because mine are so much more than his ($100 vs $15)

[mrs.spunky]

We have joint savings, but everything else is separate.

Out of my account, I pay all the utilities - gas/electric, phone/internet/satellite, water/sewer - car insurance and HOA.

Out of his account, he pays the mortgage, which is about 40% of our total spending. The rest goes to savings, including his Roth IRA.

All of our groceries, gas, clothes, shoes, personal care, dining out are put on a joint CC that we pay off every month. I pay this from my account, but he contributes to about half the expenses.

I also save for my Roth IRA and everything else goes to savings.

[trixie459]

100% joint. The other methods seem WAY too complex, plus what do you do when you have kids?

[rosiedozie]

Aug 3, 2012 16:28:05 GMT -5 bananapancakes said:

Follow-up questions...

For those of you who do mostly joint with fun money, what do you include in your fun money? Do you have a budget line for haircuts? Clothes? Eating out? Or is all this considered part of your fun money?

What percentage of your income is designated as fun money?

We bring home around $8k and each get $100 in fun money.

Things that come out of allowance include haircuts, clothes, makeup, hobby supplies, misc. personal shopping and any entertainment/restaurants where we're not going together.

[noodleoo]

We have individual and joint accounts. When we first moved in together (after getting engaged) we opened joint checking/savings and joint credit cards. We both transferred money into the joint account to pay all our bills and put all joint purchased on our joint credit card. This worked really well for us and we didn't change it after we got married and bought a house.

Just recently we did change because it was becoming too hard for me to track our savings. I joined mint and realized it would be way easier if all the money was coming into our joint account. So now we have our paychecks deposited into the joint and we each transfer our "fun" money to our individual savings accounts. This is way easier to track and I can see how we're doing savings wise a lot better.

I'm glad we did it, but I will admit I would not have been ready to totally combine our finances right when we got married. Even now, I see no reason to combine our individual accounts and I know it would cause stress/drama for us. I just want to put that out there because there is nothing wrong with not totally combining them if you don't want to.

[evynsmama]

We are 100% joint but I think the key is one person needs to be in charge of paying all the bills and balancing the checkbook(if you do that). For us that is me. I update DH weekly on what our checking and savings balance is and any purchase over $100 we consult with each other prior to making. When it comes to gifts for one another we put that on our seperate cc's and then I just make payments/pay those off after the holiday has past

[bananapancakes]

Do you each get an equal amount of fun money? I am thinking most in terms of hair cuts and clothes. My H gets his hair cut at a cheap Magic Cuts type place for about 15 bucks every six weeks or so. It costs me about $100 to get my hair done every 8-10 weeks or so. My H probably spends $50 on clothes for an entire year. I probably spend an average of $100/month. How do you deal with this difference? Both in joint accounts and in fun money?

[honeybee]

1 shared account for 100% of expenses.

Our "fun money" then goes into our own separate accounts.

So we have 3 checking accounts. All our savings are joint.

[mrssavy42112]

We have a joint checking that I make all of our payments from. We each deposit our checks into our personal checking accounts & then transfer our monthly contribution into the joint. The leftover is supposed to be our fun money, but we haven't had a lot of that recently.

[luvmagoldn]

100% joint. H is in charge of bills. I am in charge of tracking discretionary spending.

[Deleted]

we are not married, but we have merged everything. I keep a small personal checking account in the event that he decides to up and leave me. I am an authorized user on his main CC so we both use the same account for all purchases. divisions in our budget (for fun money, groceries, etc.) are tracked through Mint.com

to address your follow up questions, re: fun money - eating out together and hair cuts are not considered fun money for us. we have a similar system as sarajoy.

how I usually spend my fun $: drinking/eating with my friends, clothes shopping, cheap jewelry
SO: lunch almost every day with coworkers, finance books, occasional bar with his friends

neither of us buy coffee, magazines, go to the spa, etc.