My SIL is baffled that my husband and I don't keep close tabs on each other's finances. I have maybe a vague idea of what his CC statement is every month, and vice versa. As long as we pay our bills, hit our goals for savings and pay off the CC balance every month, who cares? If one of us wants to go on a trip or buy something expensive we run it by each other as a courtesy. I've never told him no, but I appreciate the head's up. We have separate accounts and a joint savings. Things will change a little once we move into the house, but up until now we basically live on his paycheck; we save the majority of mine. We both have money leftover for random stuff/fun/whatever we want to do with it. When we tried doing everything 50/50 from a joint acct things got screwed up. Keeping things separate works better for us.
Exactly how we live. I've never seen a statement of the wife's CC or bank account. I make significantly more than she does, so the joint savings account Is mostly comprised of my contributions and I pay all utilities, but she kicks in her half the rent and a proportional savings contribution every week. Anything extra I just give to her.
Reminds me what I do with poker winnings. When I win I come home and give my wife a chunk of it (usually about half). Some guys at the poker room make fun of me for it or make a lot of obvious jokes. Of course they're divorced and bitter so I think I'm ok here.
My long term GF and I have separate accounts and just split the bills in half. I pay for half the rent, the internet, car insurance, and oil for heat. She pays half the rent, the phone bill and the electric. I buy most of the groceries, but she'll pay every once in a while. If we are planning on a trip, we'll set money aside, but other than that, her money is hers, mine is mine. We're not really the arguing type of couple, so we've never had problems with this arrangement.
So when Li'l Bandit and I were visiting my dad at the hospice tonight, I overheard a 400-pound nurse say that she was a "full flavored woman." Now, I'm guessing that she meant to say "full figured," but what if she didn't? I shudder to think... In other news, I just bought TEN POUNDS of bacon-wrapped jalapenos for $10. These are wrapped with really good cuts of bacon, too. I'd have bought even more, but I honestly don't think that Li'l Bandit, Jungle Julia, and I can finish them all before they go bad.
This is the way we do it. No joint accounts (we each have our own credit cards), split the living/vacation bills up, and everything else we pay for ourselves. We're extremely financially responsible, so neither one of us ever ends up needing money, but when we need to even up the finances, we just talk about it and transfer some money to the other. We both know that a big priority is traveling, so we both save money towards that goal. We never fight about money. I think how you do it is totally irrelevant - if you communicate about finances and are respectful and thoughtful about your joint goals and needs, you won't fight about money much regardless of whether you have joint accounts.
This week in the garage- beer, pickled eggs, and German beer drinking music on an old turntable. Drei Tag geh'n ma nimmer hoam, which translates to "we haven't been home in three days" is a crowd favorite.
You joke but I did that once, with some hot sauce (I drank it; iron stomach and all). The wife said she wanted to "spice things up" and I just couldn't help myself. When someone lays out a joke like that for you on a platter, you have to finish it. Even if the punishment is dire, you'll get over it.
Exactly this. My wife and I sat down, figured out what our monthly bills were gonna average, and then we each pay half of that plus $400/month into our joint account. That way we are equally covering our living expenses, building savings, and each have our own money left over to do with as we like. Lately she's been making almost twice what I do, so she's sort of been paying for groceries/going out to eat most of them time, but I do it every once in a while. It works for us.
And with that we bring to a close yet another annual Holiday WDT. We are all lucky to have this joint.