Who handles the money?

[Ima saver]

Who handles the money in your family? You? Your spouse? Both?

[disneysteve]

I make it. She spends it.

Just kidding. I manage the financial stuff mainly for 2 reasons:

1. I enjoy doing it.

2. I'm rather good at it.

My wife is perfectly capable but is perfectly happy to leave me in charge. I keep her up to date. We have periodic "financial dates" when we sit down and review our accounts and where things stand. And I make sure she knows where everything is in case anything happens to me.

All of our money is jointly held. No His and Hers accounts.

[LuxLiving]

Mrs.LLFrugalis here, and I do the bookkeeping, forecasting, investing and budgeting. THE Hubster is very happy with the arrangement as it is something I enjoy doing and he hates doing, so it's better this way.

I do have a separate business account, but he's POD (payable on death) on it. Otherwise all are jointly held or we are the designated beneficiary on each other's accounts.

I do let him know the checkbook and budget have balanced and that the monthly bills have been paid. I run the investment balances by him once a month. Like I've said before, as long as he has his snackcakes, ciggie money and the occasional computer upgrade he's a happy camper w/the way things are working.

Now, let him run out of snack cakes and things go ugly FAST!!

[FrugalIII]

I handle the family money and mine for two reasons. First, my wife has no desire to and two, if she did we'd be broke because she lacks the interest/skills of money management and refuses to learn. We each have a separate checking/savings for personal use and both contribute an equal percentage of our net income to the family bills. My wife doesn't care about saving money, I insist on it. She doesn't care if the bills are paid on time, I insist on it. She doesn't care about investing for retirement, I make it a priority. There is no doubt in my mind that if we pooled all our money and she had access to it, we'd be broke in no time flat.

[anonymous_saver]

I am currently living with my partner and we are not married. We keep things completely seperate. We pay 50/50 on rent, electricity, and our phone bill and that's it. We even pay seperately for our food since I grocery shop more and buy a few more specialty items (I'm a pretty strict Vegetarian), however, we share meals sometimes (for example, my partner will supply stuff for a salad, and I'll make a pasta dish and we will share the dinner). This is easy for us to do now because for a while he was making less than me, but now we both have jobs where we are making $35,000 a year.

If we were to get married, we would keep it the same way. We both like the idea of keeping money seperate. It works well for us. For example, I have no debt and my partner will have somewhere around $35,000 in school loan debt after grad school that he will take care of himself. On the other hand, I like to put more money towards retirement than he does, and that is ok because we do (and will) always keep our money seperate.

Once we buy a house we will also keep things seperate. If I have extra money that I want to prepay on the mortgage but he doesn't, then I will use the money towards something else instead. If there is a repair that needs to be done, we will pay 50/50.

Now that being said, if either of us were in an emergency we would help eachother. For example, last year my cat needed a $1,700 surgery and I was about $325 short of being able to afford it. He easily gave me it in cash (we both worked at restaurants at the time) and about 2 months later I gave him a check for $325. So the deal is, we help out eachother, but have to pay eachother back.

Sorry about all the detail!

[Ima saver]

Good thing, she has you!! My first husband was like that. As long as he was married to me, everything was ok. Once we divorced, he became poor pretty quickly and stayed that way the rest of his life.

[TBH]

I manage the money because he doesn't enjoy it. He's more frugal than I am, and a more conservative (and uninterested) investor. I handle the budget, pay the bills, and do most of the long-term planning.

[DayByDay]

I keep track of our finances and pay the bills. I occasionally give DH status reports, but most of the time he is not interested in hearing it.

[Lori63]

Originally Posted by disneysteve

I make it. She spends it.

Just kidding. I manage the financial stuff mainly for 2 reasons:

1. I enjoy doing it.

2. I'm rather good at it.

My wife is perfectly capable but is perfectly happy to leave me in charge. I keep her up to date. We have periodic "financial dates" when we sit down and review our accounts and where things stand. And I make sure she knows where everything is in case anything happens to me.

All of our money is jointly held. No His and Hers accounts.

Same here pretty much. Hubby tries to stay informed but numbers make his eyes roll to the back of his head.
I love numbers and manage our money fairly well. If there are any big decisions we both make them, and all of our $$ is put together (even tho he makes 5/6ths of it)

[gackle]

The wife takes care of it. She enjoys it, I enjoy her enjoying it, and I don't think she would trust me to enjoy it. I trust her with the money.

[poundwise]

Originally Posted by disneysteve

My wife is perfectly capable but is perfectly happy to leave me in charge.

I think its cute how she you lets you think you're in charge.

[disneysteve]

Originally Posted by poundwise

I think its cute how she you lets you think you're in charge.

Thanks for that.

[ktmarvels]

I handle the finances. Not only because I like and enjoy doing it, but because it is more practical. DH is in the Navy and when he's deployed somewhere he won't be (or at least shouldn't be) thinking about paying the bills. Having me doing full time just makes things go more smoothly. This is also why we've elected to have joint accounts.

[robex]

I handle all the money issues in our house. Dh is welcome to join me but is not interested in doing so, which works fine for us. He gives his opinion every once in a while and I pretend to consider it.

He often says that if it wasn't for me, he would be living in a rented basement suite somewhere with beer mirrors and stained carpets. Sounds like a teenage boy's dream!

[LivingAlmostLarge]

Me, just because DH isn't very interested in budgets. He's the one going to business school no less and doing a speciality in finance. Hmm..strange.

[Broken Arrow]

Originally Posted by poundwise

I think its cute how she you lets you think you're in charge.

Reminds me of an amusing quote I once heard, "A good woman is one that makes you feel like you're Chairman of the Board when you're only the head of the entertainment committee."

Oh, and I handled the money.

[rduell]

I do all the financial tasks. I really enjoy doing it. If DH did it I'm afraid things wouldn't get done!

[Money Saving Army Wife]

Since my husband is active duty Army, I handle all of the finances. That way, if he's gone for training, or deployed, I can keep everything running smoothly. That, and I'm one of those people who lives for Excel spreadsheets and makes Quicken a hobby. It's amazing to me though, that there are military wives out there who are clueless about their finances and then have to take a crash course after their husband deploys.

[kv968]

Originally Posted by LivingAlmostLarge

Me, just because DH isn't very interested in budgets. He's the one going to business school no less and doing a speciality in finance. Hmm..strange.

That's not that strange really. When I was married, my wife did all the day-to-day budgets and paying of the bills; whereas I was the "financial guru" (yeah right) and did all the investing. She wasn't interested and really didn't understand investing and I didn't have any interest in the balancing of the checkbooks and paying bills. Of course now that I'm divorced, I've learned to "take an interest" in such things

[jodi]

I handle all the day to day finances and DH usually handles the investing. I am taking a more active role in the that lately, mostly in determining where my IRA money goes. He does whatever he wants with his IRA money.
DH doesn't have any interest in keeping track of bills, etc. and I prefer it that way. Of the many things he is, an on-time payer he is not