Yours, Mine, and Ours – Update

Posted on September 23, 2008
Filed Under Couples | Leave a Comment

Last month I talked about my wife and I dividing our money in to several different accounts (hers, mine, and ours). Since that post, I’ve modified my plan a little. We are keeping one account to pay bills from and one for savings, retirement, etc. Our personal spending money will just be cash, because I don’t see the need to open accounts just for personal spending. The plan now is to put my wife’s entire paycheck into the savings account, my entire paycheck into the checking (bill paying) account, and her tip income is split between our weekly spending allowances and the checking account. This way, we always have enough in the checking account to cover our (planned) expenses, we accumulate money in our savings account every month, and we always have some money to spend any way each of us wants. Some of the benefits so far are that:

OK, so 3 weeks isn’t very long, but it’s kind of a record for us to go that long without having a money fight. It’s not a perfect system – my wife still feels like she should have more “veto power” over my personal spending, but when she raises the issue I point out that I haven’t put anything on the credit card since we implemented the system, and I haven’t had to move money from savings to checking to cover our bills.

There are two things I did regarding our personal spending money that I feel are very important to making this system work. First, I made sure that we both get personal spending money each week. My wife insisted this was unnecessary, that she was happy putting her personal money into our savings account, she didn’t need it, etc. I disagree. I feel it is important for each of us to be treated the same, otherwise in 6 months she’s going to be asking “How come you got $xxx every week and I don’t get anything?” So I just put her money in an envelope in her night stand.

Second, I insist on a fixed amount each week. She didn’t like this either (she still wants that veto power), so this is something we’re still working on. One thing that helped was explaining that it cuts both ways – she can’t cut my personal spending money on a given week because she feels we should be putting more in savings, but I can’t increase my personal spending because I found something expensive I really want to buy.

So far, it is working out much better than our previous system – ahem – lack of system. Yesterday she was looking for something and came across the envelope. She came running downstairs all excited about the money she had found and asked me where it came from. I told her it was her personal spending money from the last 3 weeks. She didn’t ask me to “just put it savings the next time you go to the bank.” Instead I got a smile, a hug, etc. So much nicer than fighting about money.

Cheers,
Ken

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