Maat55
Well, I’m not sure where anyone gets off telling me that DH and I are not a couple because we keep our own finances. That was a pretty stupid comment, and you are totally wrong. I guess if someone chooses to live differently than you in a way that doesn’t suit your narrow-minded definitions they are not a “couple”. The number one thing MOST couples fight over is money – that is not an issue for us at all. As I said, we are both extremely happy in our relationship which is more than I can say for lots of the other couples I know. It works for us, and that is what matters. I don’t frankly care what you think of it, but I did find your comment extremely rude.
DisneySteve,
As for the things you mentioned, I am solely responsible for whether I want to buy a car or not (I’ve actually gone green and sold my vehicle), as is he. I really don’t object to whatever he wants to buy as long as he’s pulling his weight with his financial obligations. This may not work for everyone, but he and I are very similar in our thinking about finances, and we are both pretty sensible and like to save. We just see no need to have to ask anyone else to spend our own money.
I have a child (15 years old). We have no joint children (and no plans to – I’m almost 38 and have no desire to do that again, lol). I would never expect him to pay for things for my kid, although he chooses to do so sometimes. I appreciate the fact that he’s good to my kid.
For things like repainting a room or renovating (which we don’t really do because we rent – houses are $600k here), we would both agree on how we wanted to do it and probably would split the costs (or if just one of us wanted to change things, but the other wasn’t opposed to it the person who wanted to do it might just pay). I would approach him and say something like, “ I’ve been thinking about getting some new furniture for the living room. What do you think of me buying a new set?” The funny thing is DH usually says he’s been thinking the exact same thing. We seem to be “in tune” on most things. DH actually just bought a nice new TV for our bedroom (one of those LCD HDTV widescreen ones). I love it – and he paid for it which is just fine with me, lol. The whole “I’m going to paint purple because I paid for it” just doesn’t happen with us. Like I said, our separate finances AVOIDS fights – it has never once been the cause of one.
For vacations it just depends. I’ve paid for trips, he’s paid for trips. We’ve split costs. We never nickel and dime each other (this goes for our day to day life and vacations). I might pay the hotel and he buys the food, or I’ll pick up some meals and he’ll pick up others, etc. I don’t worry about if I paid $200 more or anything like that. We don’t split things down the middle or anything. He was unemployed for a while and I just paid some of the bills he normally covers during that time, so we do help each other out when needed, but generally we keep the money separate. I don’t keep a tally sheet and ask him for his share or something. It just kind of works out.
We don’t worry about keeping things “even” or splitting costs down the middle. When I made more than him, I took on the majority of the expenses. Now that he’s making more, we may decide to switch around the bills so he pays a higher portion. It isn’t a huge issue for us. I figure it all works out in the long run.
It’s funny, because the way we do things seems like the most natural thing in the world to me, I never would have imagined that others would find it so odd. I know other couples who have their finances separate too, so we aren’t really oddballs among my acquaintances.
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