Yours, Mine, and Ours, part 2

Posted on August 27, 2008
Filed Under Couples | Leave a Comment

In my last post, I talked about the problems caused by a lack of agreement between me and my wife about how much we save and whether personal spending by one requires the approval of the other. When we first started arguing about money, my wife’s solution was to have seperate bank accounts – my paycheck would go into an account to be used for paying our bills, while her check would go into an account to be used for savings and investments.
I was tired of fighting about money so I went along with it, but I didn’t like it for several reasons. First, I felt that since it’s all “family” money, it should go into one family account. Separating our money into different accounts seemed to me like splitting it into “my” money and “her” money. Second, since “my” money was used to pay the bills and “her” money was for savings, it meant that I had no control over the money I earned (it was all going for expenses), while she had total control over the money she earned. Finally, my pay didn’t quite cover our expenses, so every month I would have to ask my wife to transfer some money from “her” account to “my” account. Not only was I having to ask for permission for personal purchases, it felt like I was having to ask permission just to have enough money to pay our bills. I really resented this. I’m not trying to excuse what I did, but this was the reason I started buying things on credit and hiding the purchases from my wife.
Having one account hadn’t worked to my wife’s satisfaction, and having separate accounts was a disaster, emotionally (for me) and financially for us. What is the solution then? We have gone back to one account, but that has brought back arguments about how much we should be saving. I don’t want to go back to each having our own account, because I believe it is completely unfair for one spouse to have final say over almost all discretionary spending. Fortunately, I found a book that has a plan I think will work. Instead of two accounts, we will have three. The first will be a household account, which will include money to pay the bills as well as our savings and retirement plans. Then, we will each have our own private accounts for personal spending. The rule is we each get so much per month for our personal accounts, and neither has any say-so whatsoever on how the other person’s personal moeny is spent. I’ve ran this by my wife, and she’s “thinking about it.” I hope she thinks it’s worth trying, because so far the other ways we’ve tried to deal with our differences over money haven’t worked.

Cheers,
Ken

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