We're now 100 percent joint but had both shared and separate checking accounts the first three years we were married, as well as a shared savings account. Almost all of our expenses were covered from the shared account; fun money covered very few things (mainly clothes and shoes for me, craft beer and surf gear for DH). We eventually decided that there was no real need to maintain separate accounts, since our "fun" expenses were pretty much on par with one another's.
Post by bananapancakes on Aug 3, 2012 18:08:21 GMT -5
How would you view a car payment for a 2nd car? My H bought his car before we were married and paid it off by himself. We've been getting by with just the one car so far but in the fall we will need to get a second car. Since he paid for his car by himself years ago, do you think that the car payment for "my car" should be a joint or personal expense?
We only have individual accounts, although DH "gives" me most of his money to put into my main checking account to pay bills from and put in savings. He'll keep a couple hundred bucks from each paycheck as his spending money, which sits in his individual account. We pay most of our monthly expenditures with a joint credit card, which is paid off each month.
Our savings accounts are all in my name only. I'm not a big fan of this set up, but he hasn't shown much inclination to get his name put on them so whatever. I consider it all "our" money, but if something were to happen to me (or us, for that matter) he might be out of luck.
Honestly, DH doesn't pay that much attention to our finances. I handle pretty much all the bill paying, moving money into savings, etc. As long as he has enough fun money to buy video games, lunches out, and other little things he's happy.
How would you view a car payment for a 2nd car? My H bought his car before we were married and paid it off by himself. We've been getting by with just the one car so far but in the fall we will need to get a second car. Since he paid for his car by himself years ago, do you think that the car payment for "my car" should be a joint or personal expense?
I would consider a car a joint expense. We just bought a new car for me, and it is a line item in our budget.
As per my post above, we are kind of different than the norm, though.
How would you view a car payment for a 2nd car? My H bought his car before we were married and paid it off by himself. We've been getting by with just the one car so far but in the fall we will need to get a second car. Since he paid for his car by himself years ago, do you think that the car payment for "my car" should be a joint or personal expense?
if it was more of a "toy" car that you don't actually need, I would say that's your expense. but it sounds like your household is at the point where you just need another vehicle, and that makes it a joint expense.
Everything is joint. We each have a designated amount of fun money in the budget that we are able to do whatever we want with. TBH we have trouble sticking with it, though. We've talked a lot about getting separate fun money accounts and keeping joint checking, but we've never moved forward on that and it hasn't come up in a while.
How would you view a car payment for a 2nd car? My H bought his car before we were married and paid it off by himself. We've been getting by with just the one car so far but in the fall we will need to get a second car. Since he paid for his car by himself years ago, do you think that the car payment for "my car" should be a joint or personal expense?
if it was more of a "toy" car that you don't actually need, I would say that's your expense. but it sounds like your household is at the point where you just need another vehicle, and that makes it a joint expense.
The second car is definitely a need and not a want. We've only been able to survive with the one car because for the last few years we have lived where my husband worked. He didn't need the car so I was able to use it to get to and from work. He is changing jobs and we will both need to drive to work, hence the need for the second car.
We are probably 80% joint (super confusing the ways some things are separate).... but 100% joint mentality. We have mostly joint accounts, separate accounts are by nature of me moving across the country and sometimes needing to use a local bank when I visit home or, in the case of an online savings account, not allowing a joint holder - only a POD option. All $$ in all accounts is treated as joint. Credit cards and mortgage are in different names/separate by nature of our credit history and debt levels but treated as joint debt. Paychecks/refunds/what have you go to joint account, pay all bills, then leftover money goes to joint efund.
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 do a cash budget for our variable expenses like food, gas, clothing, toiletries, car maintenance, house stuff, and fun money. All of it is joint and we use it as necessary or make joint decisions on the fun stuff. Usually fun money goes towards date night type stuff, sometimes to event tickets, nights out (joint or separate). We share interests/his friends like trying to drag the yankee (me) out to do redneck things they like to do - so we usually do fun money stuff together. Sometimes it goes to shopping, but usually what I or he shops for falls under another budget item so the money rarely gets used separately.
Fun money is three-ish percent of income(?) It's only $80/month total. Haircuts/clothes/shoes would be clothing budget and eating out would be food budget or fun money budget depending on what is available and if it's a want or a need (cheap eat out food normally qualifies as food money, nice dinner out usually fun money).
Everything (other than 401(k)s/IRAs, obviously) is joint. We both buy what we need/want. We don't have a set amount of "fun money" or anything like that.
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 have budget lines for: eating out (that is our fun/hobby/love to do splurge thing), food (groceries) and alcohol, gifts, haircuts (yes, mine are more), clothes, vacation savings, etc. None of that is fun money, even though some of those activities are "fun." Fun money for us is for the individual to spend however they want. It's $25-50/person/month, depending on the month. (which is about 1- 1.5 % of our take-home pay.) I always spend all mine. DH usually only spends a bit of his and often uses some/all of his to treat us to drinks/dinner or something.
I think miso's comment about "joint mentality" is really key. When you ask about a whether a car is a joint expense or "fun money" it sounds like you haven't gotten that mentality, which I think is very understandable given that you haven't been married that long and that you've lived separately for a large part of that time. I would suggest working on the joint mentality first and ironing out the details (do haircuts count? etc.) as you go along. You'll find a system that works for you.
We do a combination. Each month we both put a set amount into a joint account and that money is used for most of the joint expenses (bills mostly). The big exception to that is groceries, but that expense tends to be fairly consistent so we just alternate weeks. Since the joint account gets "paid" first, any remaining funds go to our individual accounts, and are considered free for discretionary spending. (Savings gets pulled from the joint account at the end of the month).
For major household purchases, we discuss how we want to handle it for each instance, but we almost always end up splitting the cost down the middle.
We're something in the middle. We each put a set amount of money into our joint chequing account on each pay. I put in a little more since I make more than DH. From this account we pay our joint expenses - rent, insurance and utilities. We also transfer money from this account each month into a joint savings account.
From what we keep in our own savings accounts, we each have bills we are responsible - I pay for all groceries and he pays for internet/phone and cable. Whatever we have left in our personal account is our fun money that we can do whatever we want with.
Definately not traditional but this is how we first combined our money 10 years ago and it works for us.
Post by sillygoosegirl on Aug 3, 2012 19:31:10 GMT -5
All joint. I don't think we'd ever be able to agree on what purchases should come out of an individual account and what should come out of a joint account if we did a mix.
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.
This is the same for us--DH's fun money goes into his checking account every Friday, I use cash from my 2nd job for mine but all else is in the main checking account/savings account and I'm in charge of it all--he'll look at it from time to time but he doesn't care as long as we are doing well
Post by elizabethann on Aug 3, 2012 20:25:02 GMT -5
100% joint, I personally keep track of everything. DH loves being updated about how much goes into savings each month, knows that every bill is being paid on time and that I will be sure to let him know if we need to cut back on spending in a given month. We don't have personal fun money each month, because one month I'll get my hair done for $150 and he won't do anything out of the ordinary and the next month he'll need $200 worth of new work clothing while I won't spend anything special. We keep a good balance in individual spending, if one of us was constantly spending a lot more than the other then I could see fun money allowances coming in handy. We have a lot of goals for the near future and both of us realize how important saving money is to reach those goals.
The only thing that's a pain is forgetting to use my personal credit card for his gifts (same for him): out of habit, we've each used our shared household card for gifts for each other and ruined each other's surprises more than once. D'oh.
hahaah, this is us exactly...we each have our own accounts for various reasons (my account is attached to my dad's, he transfers money for our Christmas and Birthday gifts without a charge (he lives in another city), it's just been this way since I was in college, and there is no service charge on the account since it is linked to him and he has enough $$ in there to get away with no service charges), we have a joint account where our mortgage and savings go, and he has his own account.
DH does absolutely none of the banking...he pretty much has no idea how much money we have at any given time. I pay all our bills, both our credit cards and whatnot.
We don't have 'fun' money set aside...if we need something, we buy it, unless it seems like its either a) a big ticket item (and yes, this is fairly subjective) or b) seems like we probably don't need it but really want it. If something is a purchase that fits into this category then we talk about it. But its all 'our money', regardless of the fact that I make considerably more and he came into the relationship with a sizeable amount left on his student loan (by Canadian standards, not American).
Mortgage, bills, medical expenses, vacations, anything household related or family related comes out of joint.
Personal fun spending comes out of personal accounts.
We both deposit different percentages of our pay (roughly based on income) into joint. All bonus money goes into joint.
Honestly, I don't know if the split is fair, because it's not down to the penny and isn't adjusted. I do know it feels fair. We have fairly similar spending habits.
I figure now that I'm pregnant we may need to change our monthly contributions to joint, though.
So joint savings, joint checking, personal savings, personal checking, joint CC, personal CC.
Though neither of us are huge spenders, and always talk through sizable purchases, it's nice knowing I can spend $45 on an eyeshadow palette without being questioned.
If I ever become a SAHM our system will obviously have to change.
ETA: We see it all as ours, but seem to function well with managing/tracking our own small spending.
Post by peachdragon on Aug 3, 2012 21:47:54 GMT -5
We mostly use joint money for joint expenses, but we also have a Fun Money allowance. It has worked wonders in our relationship. We started it about 3 our years ago, and arguments about money are non-existent.
We each get a certain amount of cash each month to buy whatever we want!
Post by bananapancakes on Aug 3, 2012 22:01:25 GMT -5
Thanks for all the responses. You are all giving me a lot to think about. For everyone who does fun money, do each of you get exactly the same amount each month? My H spends very, very little money. For him, a great day is a day where he doesn't spend a penny. He doesn't drink coffee, smoke, or drink alcohol, he never grabs lunch out, never buys a magazine or a book, spends around $50 a year on clothes, buys one pair of shoes a year, gets his hair cut at the cheapest place possible, etc. The man has zero vices.
I figure I would be most comfortable with about $250/month for discretionary spending (clothes, shoes, waxing/pedicures/hair cuts, lunches out, etc.) There is no way that he would spend $250/month. He would be more than fine with $50. Do any of you have fun money set up this way? Is there any resentment? I suppose if we did $250/month he could just save what he didn't spend. I want to be fair but I know that he does not and will not spend even close to what I spend every month.
100% joint. We don't do his money, her money, or fun money. If we want it, we buy it, but neither of us really splurge much on indulgences so it's no big deal for us.
Big things like cars, we talk and shop for together. We take turns with who gets the next car but we pay for it all together and ultimately they are all "our" cars.
I figure I would be most comfortable with about $250/month for discretionary spending (clothes, shoes, waxing/pedicures/hair cuts, lunches out, etc.) There is no way that he would spend $250/month. He would be more than fine with $50. Do any of you have fun money set up this way? Is there any resentment? I suppose if we did $250/month he could just save what he didn't spend. I want to be fair but I know that he does not and will not spend even close to what I spend every month.
Truth: Our fun money is easy to have joint because the few times I want something that only benefits me, hubby tells me to get it (even when it is almost against my better judgement when I rethink based on how much money something costs). We don't have any friction because when he wants something bad enough, he speaks up and we get it, or save up a couple paychecks of the fun money to get it in the future. He's super laid back and doesn't really like spending money on things 'just for him'... almost to a fault. So if we did have separate fun money budgets it'd probably fall to me using more than him just like yours.
Everything is joint and we have a 5% that is used for fun/etc/slush. Our agreement was if its over a certain amount we discuss, some months DH uses more, some months I do. Its really never equal on a monthly basis, but really I could care less since the hobbies I have are expensive and are budgeted into another category. Clothes, hair cuts, food, stuff like that, are like needs so everything else that we tend to pick up, would come out of that money. We rarely go out to eat, just comes out of the food budget. I try to keep the # reasonable and realistic, since I know 100 bucks in the long run won't get us no where then we will be short.. Dh loves his coffees and used to smoke- so we would adjust the number.
I probably spend more 'fun money' than DH, in fact, I am fairly certain I do. I buy more clothes (and more expensive clothes), I love buying decor stuff for the house...but nobody is keeping tabs about who spends what...the same way I make more $ than him but he doesn't expect me to put more money into the pot - because all the money is in the pot and to us, its just money. As long as we don't own anything on our credit cards we don't worry to much.