Married Money

[TurnedTheCorner]

Originally Posted by alltherage

Don't be silly. He married a hooker.

Thanks everyone for your answers. My fiance and I come from different philosophies as far as money is concerned. Her parents both work, and share one account. My dad's always been the breadwinner, and he gives my mom a monthly "paycheck" for herself, house renos, etc, and then handles all the bills mortgage etc.

I think I want a hybrid where we still have our own money, but she sounds like she'd like to share it. Ultimately, our relationship is #1 so I know we'll come up with a compromise that works for us.

My scenario might work for you - almost all the money is pooled, but we still have separate accounts that are ours to use as we see fit. Be it saving for something, blowing it every pay period, whatever.

[4X4]

Originally Posted by albertGQ

I make all the money as my fiancee is currently on maternity leave. Everytime she needs some cash, we have sex. *mod edit*.

Its a pretty good setup. I have sex whenever I want and she gets money to spend on clothes and shoes. Totally kidding. I didn't need to use white text did I?

Uh, I think fotze hacked GQ's account...


As for money sharing, I think the obvious solution is to not get married.

[alltherage]

Originally Posted by albertGQ

I make all the money as my fiancee is currently on maternity leave. Everytime she needs some cash, we have sex. *mod edit*.

Its a pretty good setup. I have sex whenever I want and she gets money to spend on clothes and shoes. Totally kidding. I didn't need to use white text did I?

That's gotta be a slippery slope though... like what about when you're both in the mood? Do you still have to pay? Or what about when only she's in the mood... does she pay you?

[albertGQ]

Originally Posted by alltherage

That's gotta be a slippery slope though... like what about when you're both in the mood? Do you still have to pay? Or what about when only she's in the mood... does she pay you?

If I'm not in the mood and she is, then she just goes next door. Our neighbor is ALWAYS willing. I just stay at home and watch TV. TOTALLY KIDDING IF NO ONE HAS FIGURED THIS OUT YET!!!

[alltherage]

Originally Posted by albertGQ

If I'm not in the mood and she is, then she just goes next door. Our neighbor is ALWAYS willing. I just stay at home and watch TV. TOTALLY KIDDING IF NO ONE HAS FIGURED THIS OUT YET!!!

What the f$#&!??

When I'm not in the mood, she gets me in the mood... rrrrawr!

[Peanut]

Originally Posted by fredr123

That's how my wife and I roll too. Frankly, given her organizational skills with bill payments and expenses, it makes too much sense to just hand over my pay checks to her. She kind of gets on me for some of my spending habits and with only the one account, it's really easy for her to figure out where I spend my money. It would be nice to have even a small amount of scratch that I could blow as I see fit. Or the balls to stand up to her.

Buying gifts is weird now, for sure. "Here's something awesome I bought you with our money that you already knew about since you pay the bills and have access to our account. Happy birthday!" That's where credit cards help.

That's totally us too. Except more often lately it seems to be "Remember how much money we spent on item X/Y/Z? (vacations, splurge purchases, etc.) Want that for your birthday? Good."

[return to the red]

Originally Posted by Table 5

What happens if you have way more money/assets going into a marriage then your partner (or vice versa)?

Or say you own something like a house from a time when you were single? When you enter marriage, is that now considered equal property (ie, if the marriage goes south, do you claim that initial money/house as yours?)

Speaking from experience my lawyer worked it so that the only thing my ex was entitled to was any value gained after she moved into the house so the initial value and any gains up to her moving in were mine and there after any gains were divided 50/50. Now I had a damn good lawyer and caught her at a guilty moment so that's probably not the way that it works and it's different in every case.

[Peanut]

If you have significant assets going into the marriage it might be smart to get a pre-nup. However, we both had nothing so there really was nothing to protect with a pre-nup in our case!

[OilersBaby]

My husband and I combined our funds and created joint accounts. We have been married for 5 years. The first year was tough...he would wonder why Im spending so much at the spa or clothes or hockey tickets (he's not really a fan, being from Kentucky) and I would wonder why he's spending so much on college basketball, golf etc. So what we do now is that every Sunday we each are allowed to take out an X amount of money (we do $100) in cash and we can spend it however you want to. We call it our "fun" money because this does not include groceries, bills, gas, or anything that we both consider a necessity. So if I want to buy expensive lipstick, if it comes out of the 100, he cant spaz, and if he decides he wants to get a magazine subscription to something, I cant complain. It works out well because we each can choose what we want to do..and if you save it, you can hve more for later. For things that can be purchased by credit card only, we can do that, but then you have to depsit the = value of that from your cash into the bank account.

Its a system that works since we each value different things.....so now there are no arguements and no need to "justify" purchases.

And with gifts, we try to just do it in cash (ie we say if one our bdays is coming up, take out the money in cash and then go buy whatever). If its something that a credit card is required (ie an online purchase) then we just tell the other person to not look at the statement until after their birthday (we tend to wait til within a month of the event anyways).....if they look, its ruined for them.

[prarieboy]

Well, being through the whole divorce thing I thought I'd chime in.

Any assets acumulated before the marriage and not joint property but any assets earned by either person during the marriage are.

Do what ever is easiest.

I personally don't like accounting to the n'th degree so we keep an account balance of $4000 in a chequing account and all the bills get paid from there. RRSP's, RESP, mortgage, everything that is payable each month. When a paycheck comes in anything over the $4000 gets moved out to the savings account. We each spend from there or our one credit card. The credit card gets paid each month from the savings account. If I see some charge I am wondering about and ask I might get an answer like "it's OK I know what it is" and I'm old enough to know that I should drop it right there because something good is coming my way!!

At the end of the day we have a simple way of knowing if we have a pile of cash for reno's, new car, new TV, etc. We just have to look at the account and see what has accumulated and go from there.

This set-up works really well for us and afterall if your married it's "US" not "Me Me".

[HOOT]

Originally Posted by alltherage

How did you find sharing for buying gifts, suprises, etc? Doesn't she find out?

Gotta pull out cash for things like gifts, surprises, hookers, drugs and strip clubs.

[Yeah_Baby]

Originally Posted by HOOT

Gotta pull out cash for things like gifts, surprises, hookers, drugs and strip clubs.

Teach your waste Sensei

[PYroMaNiaC]

We have separate account. Always have. The household bills are split by percentage. For example, if our current houshold income is 60% contributed by him and 40% by me, then bills are split 60/40. This gets revisited from time to time as income changes. He works shift, so when it's his two weeks of the month for cooking, he buys groceries. When it's my two weeks, I do.

There have been some ugly, ugly arguments over this system, but we seem to muddle through. It seems simple enough, but it's hard to work together to save for bigger items.

In the end, we shop and/or buy everything completely differently. Our philosophies on spending will never mesh, so maybe it's better this way.

[stang]

Yeah I know this is a month old... but its new to me.

ANyways we have seperate accounts. We dont even have a joint account for bills.

I pay the Mortgage, My truck insurance, and my cell bill, and she pays the rest. (We dont have any loans for our vehicles)

I make more money then her, but our mortgage is pretty high so it pretty much evens out. (actually I think she ends up with more money leftover)

Works fine, never had a fight about money and we split up taking turns to buy the grocerys.

[BuzzardsWife]

Buzzard makes it. I spend it. I make it. I spend it. Simple, and that's the way it should be in every marriage.

[Gugstanley]

I think marriage is a team effort and is easier if everything is combined. My income is over 2/3rds of what we bring in but I don't mind sharing. It all goes toward taking care of the family. Not going to argue over who pays for what kids clothes etc.

[Bigtime]

Originally Posted by Old Yeller

My wife and I have our own separate accounts that our paychecks are deposited into and then we contribute a % of that to our joint account where all the bills are paid from. I make more than her so I put a little more in the joint account each month. We've been doing it this way for a couple of years and works for us.

Just chiming in as another married couple that uses this system. It's been working just fine for over 2 years now.

[Sliver]

I technically make about triple what ny wife makes but I don't really look at it like that. We are a team and there is no "I" in team lol. One account, one credit card And a couple of simple rules that we never break:
1. Logic is the mediator in any disagreement, and
2. It takes two to "yes" and one to "no" any major decision. In other words we both have veto power over anything that really matters.

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by Sliver

I technically make about triple what ny wife makes but I don't really look at it like that. We are a team and there is no "I" in team lol. One account, one credit card And a couple of simple rules that we never break:
1. Logic is the mediator in any disagreement, and
2. It takes two to "yes" and one to "no" any major decision. In other words we both have veto power over anything that really matters.

PS I blame all of the above typos on my iPhone and my big thumbs lol.

[Flames_Gimp]

i would never just combine the accounts