Managing finances jointly
Shortly after my husband and I moved in together we decided that we’d need to figure out a way for us to manage our joint bills. The struggle for us was that we had both always managed our own finances and also were the main ones who handled them in previous relationships. We are both self-proclaimed money experts and dare I say…control freaks. So with money being in the top three areas of conflict between spouses it really was something we were concerned about. So how did we make this work? Here’s how we’ve handled it:

• Maintained individual accounts
We both like maintaining our financial autonomy so we both maintained individual checking and savings accounts. We both have our paychecks deposited into our individual accounts and manage our personal budgets independently. It’s funny because we still find ourselves fighting over the bill at dinner sometimes because our money is still very much our own for these types of expenses. So if I decide to splurge and buy a purse that is way to expense, he can’t say anything because it came out of my personal funds.

We each have an investment property that we rent out so we utilize our personal savings accounts to manage the income and expenses of the rental properties.

• Opened a joint account
We felt the best way to manage the joint housing expenses and saving goals would be to open a joint checking and savings account. We added up all of the housing expenses and then divided up proportionally by the amount of income we bring in. Since we don’t make the same amount it wouldn’t be fair for us to divide the bills in half. We add all of our bills in here including his car and my student loans. We are together so we see these as joint expenses.

After decided on the process the big debate on who was going to manage the joint account? Remember, we are both self-proclaimed money experts and control freaks. Well, though my husband was quite good at managing his finances he was still in the dark ages because he balanced his account with a paper account register. Whereas, I utilized Microsoft money and had all of by transactions categorized and compared to my budget. So it was decided that I got to handle the joint accounts!

So far this process has worked great for us. We only utilize the joint account for joint expenses that we agree on. Neither one of us wants to short the joint account so usually there are many expenses that we would agree to take out of the joint funds but instead we work to pay for them out of our individual budgets. The result has been a very healthy joint account balance at all times, allowing for more money to go into the joint savings or to be spent on fun things like family vacations. Still, on the other end that does mean there are many times where our individual accounts are quite low. Luckily we get paid on different schedules so usually the other can help out when needed.