how married couples handle finanaces (funds, pay, taxes, debts)

[Penga25]

I'm looking to see how the majority of people handle their finances with dual income families. My wife and I both make about the same salary and have joint saving, joint checking and joint CC cards along with our personal CC cards. all money goes into checking to pay bills and into savings otherwise. we both contribute to our respective retirement funds. besides that we do not own "personal money" she buys what she wants and i get what i want with the understood idea that large <500ish purchases are talked about.

What does everyone else do?

[CaptainNJ]

i work, wife doesnt. wife has budget of money she can spend on whatever she likes, no questions asked. so she doesnt have to ask me about a $1k purchase as long as she works it into her budget. we dont have any money thats mine or hers, except our IRA's since we dont have a choice (but hopefully that will be ours to share when we are old and wrinkly). i have no budget for me, because i dont spend money on myself. im pretty flexible with what she spends on household items that dont get applied to her budget, i just keep an eye out to make sure it doesnt get out of hand.

[bbnetworking]

Same as CaptainNJ, wife is stay at home mom, she isn't a big spender, so there's no need for me to worry about. She buys stuff for kids and very little on herself, once in a while I had to push her to buy something nice for herself.

We share all the money we have.

[texdav]

We also were two income. All credit cards and other accounts where join accounts. They still are now that we have pension and other income coming in. We also go over the accounts together as well as making purchase plans together. We do have joint credit cards that one or the other is listed as the holder to assure both have good credit just in case something happens to the other.

[hml1976]

I stay at home and my husband works. I have a finance degree and handle the budget, investments etc. All accounts outside of retirement are joint. We discuss purchases over $500 used to be $100 when we were younger. Neither of us are big spenders and it works well.

[Ceece]

We varied from two incomes to me being a SAHM. When we got married one of the first things we did was go shopping for a new bank and joint checking/savings account. It was fun and made us feel more "married" if you know what I mean. I had a knack of handling the finances and liked fiddling with budgets, H hated the word "budget" and didn't ever want to think about paying bills or anything. In fact, he hadn't filed income taxes for 2 years and I told him I wouldn't marry him until he straightened all that out and no, I would not lend him any money! His mom still remembers him coming to them and saying how he wanted to get married but I wouldn't be responsible for his bad debts and so he asked them to help him out. It must have been embarrassing for him but he did it. It was also a sign...

Once married I handled it all and we only really talked about it when I saw a problem or when we were going to make a big decision (buy a house, buy a car, etc.). He didn't really care about anything as long he didn't have to watch his spending, and I worked hard to make that work but THAT snowballed into a huge problem 25 years later and played a big factor in our divorce. He thought I was a money nag you see, while he blew through more $ than some people make in a lifetime. That's what you call "Irreconcilable Differences".

[earlyretirement]

My wife is a stay at home mom now. I handle paying absolutely all of the bills and manage our portfolio and investments myself.

My wife has invested in some joint real estate investments which she gets monthly cash flow from the rentals each month. I just give her that cash to do what she wants but she just saves it.

Although I handle paying all the bills, I make sure she has a keen idea of how it all works and where all the money goes and what we have. I've provided kind of a "road map" in the event something happened to me.

I've seen a lot of couples where one handles everything and then something happens or they pass away and the other has no clue of their finances, what they have, what their obligations are, etc.

[CaptainNJ]

Originally Posted by Ceece

He didn't really care about anything as long he didn't have to watch his spending, and I worked hard to make that work but THAT snowballed into a huge problem 25 years later and played a big factor in our divorce. He thought I was a money nag you see, while he blew through more $ than some people make in a lifetime. That's what you call "Irreconcilable Differences".

so i guess he didnt stick to the budget.

my wife would spend as much as i allow her to spend. there is no limit. i remember when we were in school and she made statements like "no matter how much money i had, id never spend x dollars on y." i knew to never believe it and she doesnt say stuff like that anymore. but setting a budget for her allows me to not have to worry about her spending and keeps us from arguing over it.

earlyretirment mentioned something that concerns me as well. as much as i try to talk to my wife about finances, she just politely listens and pretends like she cares but i know she doesnt and really doesnt learn. ive been meaning to see an estate planning person to work some stuff out to make sure everything goes well if anything bad happens.

[Sunbather]

everything is joint for us that can be joint. We're both on the same page with being thrifty with our money so it works out well.

[CSD610]

We have no debt, nothing joint, 1 credit card that I have which is for my business only. If we want to purchase something we do and no matter what the cost of the item we always discuss it first.