How Do You Handle Your Marital Finances?

[kork13]

I am wondering why no one has yet challenged how our marital finances approach could work if/when one spouse has no income.

I'll wait a day or so to see if anyone weighs in. Then I will put in my two cents' worth.

In my opinion, whether one spouse has an income or not is irrelevant. I said above that my fiancee & I are going to do an "adult allowance" arrangement. Whether she works or not, we would manage our budget accordingly & we both would get the exact same monthly spending allowance, and everything is still run as a joint effort. We're in it together, so it would be dumb to say "Well, since you don't earn an income, you don't get any say in the family finances."

[disneysteve]

I am wondering why no one has yet challenged how our marital finances approach could work if/when one spouse has no income.

Sorry but I missed where you explained what your plan is (if you posted it). Can you either tell us or post a link to this info. I'm happy to weigh in once I read it.

Personally, this is a non-issue for us since everything is joint. We've been married for almost 22 years and my wife has had no income for more than half of that time. Doesn't change a thing because we only have one "pot".

[BuckyBadger]

RTW, I feel like your posts and blogs have a very "teacherly" vibe to them that many (including myself) find off-putting. You might get better responses if you didn't treat your discussions like essay questions that you are assigning to your class and that you are the teacher who knows what the "correct" answer is.

To answer your question, I am 100% in agreement with Steve. This is because in its logical extreme, you get to your other question (which you kindly offered to come back and weigh in on but have not yet done so).

One one hand you have two working spouses who make the same amount of money. On the other hand, a couple with only one person bringing home a paycheck. In between those two extremes you have a sliding scale of inequality.

(All the numbers stated for the rest of this post are for example and have no bearing on the actual numbers in our household.)

It is wrong in my opinion for the person who makes more money to have more say in the running of the household. Should the teacher married to the doctor, or the housewife married to the lawyer, not be an equal partner just because he or she doesn't contribute equally to the household finances?

No.

I see people talk about percentages as a way to somehow equalize discrepancies in income. That makes no sense to me, either. We both save 10% of our income for a nice vacation. My 10% is more than my husbands. Do I fly first class and he in coach? Do I eat prime rib for dinner and he stop off at McDonalds? Do we NOT go to Europe because he can't afford it and instead go camping because that's all he has the money for?

No.

We both save 20% of our income for retirement, but my 20% is 50% more than his. Do I get to have a 50% nicer retirement?

Of course not. We're a couple. We aren't two individuals any more. We are one Unit that makes $100,000, not one person making $25k and one person making $75k.

Case in point: We owed about $5,000 on our taxes a few years ago. The easiest way to fox that going forward was to have $5,000/12 more dollars withheld every month from our paychecks. It was an easy online button click to do that with my company. It was not do easy to do for him, so all that extra money comes out of my paycheck. All our health care premiums and HSA contributions come out of his. It would be practically impossible to figure out how to split this up according to the ratios of our income.

What about the spouse who takes a few years off work to raise a kid, then reenters the workforce at a loss of those years of career growth. That loss in income is a real thing but it's unquantifiable.

Or the person with a 401k plan who only makes a little more than the maximum contribution - should you as a couple give up that tax advantaged space just so that the lower earning spouse can pay his or her "share?" That's insane! If my spouse made $17500 I would ABSOLUTELY have him contribute the max, even though that meant he would be contributing "nothing" to the household.

I personally believe that everything should be combined because I think that anything else is unfair and treats the lowing-paid partner as less than equal in the marriage.

As far as what we do, everything is combined. All our money goes into one account and all our bills are paid from it. All retirement is auto deducted. We both use the same joint rewards credit card. If we want to spend more than, say, $400-$500 we discuss it. If either of us wants to buy a little something for ourselves we do it.

We are equal in everything in the household and have equal say in everything in the household even though we do not make the same amount of money.

And that's my opinion on the subject.

[Eagle]

RTW, I feel like your posts and blogs have a very "teacherly" vibe to them that many (including myself) find off-putting. You might get better responses if you didn't treat your discussions like essay questions that you are assigning to your class and that you are the teacher who knows what the "correct" answer is.

To answer your question, I am 100% in agreement with Steve. This is because in its logical extreme, you get to your other question (which you kindly offered to come back and weigh in on but have not yet done so).

One one hand you have two working spouses who make the same amount of money. On the other hand, a couple with only one person bringing home a paycheck. In between those two extremes you have a sliding scale of inequality.

(All the numbers stated for the rest of this post are for example and have no bearing on the actual numbers in our household.)

It is wrong in my opinion for the person who makes more money to have more say in the running of the household. Should the teacher married to the doctor, or the housewife married to the lawyer, not be an equal partner just because he or she doesn't contribute equally to the household finances?

No.

I see people talk about percentages as a way to somehow equalize discrepancies in income. That makes no sense to me, either. We both save 10% of our income for a nice vacation. My 10% is more than my husbands. Do I fly first class and he in coach? Do I eat prime rib for dinner and he stop off at McDonalds? Do we NOT go to Europe because he can't afford it and instead go camping because that's all he has the money for?

No.

We both save 20% of our income for retirement, but my 20% is 50% more than his. Do I get to have a 50% nicer retirement?

Of course not. We're a couple. We aren't two individuals any more. We are one Unit that makes $100,000, not one person making $25k and one person making $75k.

Case in point: We owed about $5,000 on our taxes a few years ago. The easiest way to fox that going forward was to have $5,000/12 more dollars withheld every month from our paychecks. It was an easy online button click to do that with my company. It was not do easy to do for him, so all that extra money comes out of my paycheck. All our health care premiums and HSA contributions come out of his. It would be practically impossible to figure out how to split this up according to the ratios of our income.

What about the spouse who takes a few years off work to raise a kid, then reenters the workforce at a loss of those years of career growth. That loss in income is a real thing but it's unquantifiable.

Or the person with a 401k plan who only makes a little more than the maximum contribution - should you as a couple give up that tax advantaged space just so that the lower earning spouse can pay his or her "share?" That's insane! If my spouse made $17500 I would ABSOLUTELY have him contribute the max, even though that meant he would be contributing "nothing" to the household.

I personally believe that everything should be combined because I think that anything else is unfair and treats the lowing-paid partner as less than equal in the marriage.

As far as what we do, everything is combined. All our money goes into one account and all our bills are paid from it. All retirement is auto deducted. We both use the same joint rewards credit card. If we want to spend more than, say, $400-$500 we discuss it. If either of us wants to buy a little something for ourselves we do it.

We are equal in everything in the household and have equal say in everything in the household even though we do not make the same amount of money.

And that's my opinion on the subject.

Very well put Bucky.

I think you brought up some good points particularly about spouses who leave the work force to raise kids and then return later...

This about sums it up:

"We are equal in everything in the household and have equal say in everything in the household even though we do not make the same amount of money."

[bigdaddybus]

In our household I manage our agreed upon budget.

To us that means:

• all of our money is deposited into a joint account
• I make sure all our bills are paid
• I pull cash out and pay each of us our biweekly $50 allowance (which we agreed upon)
• once a month I set up a 15 min "meeting" to review where we are (and make sure we are on th same page)

In addition about once a year I write up a financial overview and go over it with my wife to let her now where we are in main areas like.
total debt
total savings (what we save on avg per month)
total retirement savings (are we on track?)
overview of what we have spent in the last 6 months/12 months.
medical expenses for the year compared to previous 2/3
major upcoming purchases (this is a list we maintain and save for) ex. big anniversary trip, new roof fund, vacation fund, college funds)

My wife and I consider managing the family budget like other family "chores". To me it doesnt matter if its cleaning, cooking, running kids to activities, helping with homework, etc. My wife and I "try" to share the workload equally. But I will be the first to admit she does more

[Mathew125]

Fundamentally, we will probably get a little month to month "remittance" sent to our own records, and that cash is our own to use as we like - spare it, spend it, or whatever, with negligible responsibility required between one another.

[tripods68]

This is very interesting.

I don't think having a separate accounts works well in the long run IMO. I agree with DS and others who thinks in ONE is better than having a separate account or pay their own share in a marriage. Having a joint account has more benefits and rewarding.

So what happen if one spouse is sick, in the hospital for months or unable to work for a while. How to you resolve as both of you gets old. I'm sure resentment will start creeping in your mind after a while. Your spouse now cannot work, generate any type of income for his or own share to pay their own shares of bill, while the other work still pay the bills?

If one of you get sick, i mean sick, need chemo for a year. Do you take time off from work, do you have enough EF to carry for a while? Who pays? I would assume, one would be pissed off if one cannot work and or make money to bring the other half for extended of time.

[sj11041990]

this was fun to read hahaha!