Current Events > Married people of CE, do you let your wife control all your money?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I know some people that say yes but others say no and they just divide expenses among each other

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Our finances are merged, but we talk to each other about expenditures.

I can't imagine doing anything less.

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marthsheretoo posted...

Our finances are merged, but we talk to each other about expenditures.

I can't imagine doing anything less.

This, basically. Income all goes into a joint account, and most things are paid out from there. Anything large will always be a joint decision.
We also each get $50 a week of "fun money" that we can spend on ourselves however we want, no questions asked.

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^wow that sounds perfect. $50 personal money a week.

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what if you had a wife but wanted to buy a $4000 gaming desktop for your man cave

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No, I manage the financials.
However we both have a monthly allowance of fun money.
It's a good system.

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@Sonic_Cannon

That is just sad you only have $50 a week of fun money, unless you live in a very cheap area that $50 is practically nothing.

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RiKuToTheMiGhtY posted...

@Sonic_Cannon

That is just sad you only have $50 a week of fun money, unless you live in a very cheap area that $50 is practically nothing.

tbh.... thats how it is when youre married and you have a ton of expenses. when I used to combine money with my wife, there were weeks when I had no fun money at all or very little of it ($10-20)

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Sonic Cannon posted...

This, basically. Income all goes into a joint account, and most things are paid out from there. Anything large will always be a joint decision.

This. Years ago, I added my wife to my bank account so we use that as the joint account. Anything large is brought up to the other in passing. Other than that we just pool our money together and spend it how we want.

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My wife and I keep separate accounts and put equal amount into a joint account to pay for bills, mortgage, groceries, etc


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We each have our own checking/savings/credit cards as well as some joint accounts that we both contribute to

Most shared bills except mortgage go through her CC (better rewards) and paid

Non shared bills (car insurance, subscriptions, etc) go through our individual stuff

Joint savings is for big house things amd vacations

I manage our non retirement investments

Theres no concept of "fun money" but we talk about any big buys in advance.

Idk tbh we make p good money so at a certain point it becomes less about budgeting and more about just staying organized
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No. Made a joint account when we got married. I have always handled 100% of the finances. Wife didn't work for like the first five years but she also didn't buy a lot of stuff and would ask if bigger purchases were ok. Even now she does work and still asks before buying some things and I'm like "I don't care it's your money lol".

We have separate retirement accounts and I manage our regular stock investment account - sometimes she says to put some money in there and wants me to buy specific things but usually I just throw a few hundred bucks in and get what I want.

We don't have a solid set budget but we do save a couple thousand each month in a savings account in addition to the other stuff.

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RiKuToTheMiGhtY posted...

@Sonic_Cannon

That is just sad you only have $50 a week of fun money, unless you live in a very cheap area that $50 is practically nothing.

Really dude? Sorry he's not rich, I guess? Smh...

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Separate accounts. Split the expenses, other than that, you earned it, do what you want with it. She's more into spending it, I'm more into saving as much as possible.

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We have a joint account and share everything

she writes out the bills, we actually still write out paper checks for most

I handle all investment accounts, she wants no part of that

we are both free to spend as we please if its minor , Id say anything over $100 if where we would say something to the other about a purchase

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I manage the finances. My wife is terrible with numbers. So she runs expenses over like $25 by me and I literally always agree, but if she were trying to do too much she would accept it if I said we couldn't afford it.

Our money is shared, I pay the bills, she usually does the shopping and lets me know how much it was, occasionally I have to ask her to start buying less when money is tight or if we end up having more food than we can eat that goes to waste. Every once in a while I show her where our balance is at and remind her how to pay the bills if something were to happen to me.

It works for us, I wish she were a little more involved and independent with the money, but I like being the one to pay the bills.

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RiKuToTheMiGhtY posted...

@Sonic_Cannon

That is just sad you only have $50 a week of fun money, unless you live in a very cheap area that $50 is practically nothing.

That's the personal, no questions asked money. I'm sure if they go out to the bar together or something they use the shared money. But if he wants magic cards or a videogame, it's nice to have a personal bit

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Separate accounts but full access to either. Treat them like joint accounts. Big purchases discussed. Small ones not really as long as its not excessive. I make 75% of the yearly income but not steady work so we tighten our belts during dry spells. Been working well for over 10 years.

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All our income goes into one account but I am the one that generally manages the finances. But we don't really have any particular "rules" or whatever, we obviously aren't going to go out and spend hundreds or thousands on needless stuff for no reason.

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marthsheretoo posted...

Our finances are merged, but we talk to each other about expenditures.

I can't imagine doing anything less.

This is how my wife and I do our finances too

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JustMyOpinion posted...

We have a joint account and I handle the bills because my wife is financially illiterate. And if it's a purchase over $100 it should be discussed jointly beforehand.

Lol this. Im also pretty crap at paying bills so my husband handles them all. I do our yearly budget to make sure were on track for what our financial goals are. We have a joint account and always discuss purchases over $100. He will make the major decisions when it comes to things like when we bought the house, refinancing, when is a good time to buy new furniture weve been wanting, renovations, etc.

When we got married, we turned both of our personal accounts into two joint accounts. So each account is still in our names and that's where our paycheck goes, but we both have access to both of them.

To manage our budget, we use YNAB. It essentially pulls our money into specific budget categories where we can allocate funds into specific areas, from immediate obligations like mortgage and phone bill, to savings categories like travel and new technology fund, to quality of life allowances like dining out, entertainment, and our own personal funds similar to the fun money mentioned above. For every expenditure save for our own "fun money" is discussed prior to every purchase. We stick to a strict categorized budget, so we won't go over a certain amount eating out per month, or spend more than we budgeted for clothes, or hair cuts, or window shopping. If we expect to make a bigger purchase, like plane tickets for vacation, we simply input money into the "travel" category every month in small increments, until it builds enough for the price of the plane tickets.

We do this because we both have a lot of student loan debt and we're trying to pay it off while still giving us some flexible spending money through the process.

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DarkChozoGhost posted...

That's the personal, no questions asked money. I'm sure if they go out to the bar together or something they use the shared money. But if he wants magic cards or a videogame, it's nice to have a personal bit

This is exactly it. Dining out/dates etc come from the couple money, but we do expense tracking every month to make sure it's not getting out of control. Sometimes we'll send some fun money back to the joint account to subsidise things like holidays or if we've been going out a lot recently.

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