Yearly Review...finances

Joined
Dec 16, 2004
DW hates to have anything to do with the money. She just wants to know it's taken care of, so at the end of the year, we sit down and I give her a state of the finances. I also do this periodically during the year, but not in great detail. After going over our situation, I'm retired, she's not, she asked if I was hoarding money. I asked her, is there anything we didn't do or get this year because we couldn't afford it, and she said no.

And I got to thinking, how much money do we spend because we have it rather than because we even need something or want something?

How do other couples handle things? I've spoken to people who keep completely separate accounts and share expenses. We've never done that. She's never wanted to and when we married, she didn't even have a checking account. She would cash her pay check and give her dad the cash and he's write the checks for her.
 
We share accounts. He makes a lot more than I do.

My husband and I are horrible with spending money because we have it rather than because we need something. That’s why we purposely move extra funds to our savings. That extra step of transferring it back into checking in order to spend it gives us that little extra time to second guess whether we really need or want something.
 
I do it all. My dh says he wants to be involved but when it comes down to it I don't think he does. He just says he does. He never asks but knows our bills are paid and we have savings. That sounds really horrible. Every time we sit down to try and be on the same page it lasts a couple weeks and then he stops asking and I stop telling lol. If i died he would be lost... now that sounds really horrible. I think it's time we sit down and try this again.
 
I pay the bills, and my wife hates it when I try and go over finances with her. All money (except IRAs AND 401ks) is in joint accounts. But neither of us will spend more than $100 without telling the other in advance. 35 years of marriage, never been an issue with money. Neither of us understand how married couples can have separate accounts when they have joint bills.
 


DW hates to handle money but she does it all anyway. We've been married for 43 years and we've always had joint checking. I'm not terribly interested in the finances and I trust her implicitly. We don't always agree, but the odds of her making the best decisions are way better than mine.
If i died he would be lost.
Same here. Guys like us will end up in some shelter for clueless men, where we'll be victimized by much younger women who only want to take advantage of us. Hmmmm...:scratchin

:duck:
 
DH and I share our accounts, but he has NO idea about any of our fiances because dealing with money "stresses him out" in his words. I pay EVERYTHING online, I have no idea what he would do if I died. I do keep a very detailed budget to keep track of where our money goes, but he never looks at it.
 
.

And I got to thinking, how much money do we spend because we have it rather than because we even need something or want something?

.

Honestly, but this is how most people live. We do financial education/planning and the majority of people just spend whatever they have. (The more you make; the more you spend.)

We are more financially “comfortable” than most of our friends and family even though some make 4x our income. It’s not that we don’t spend money on “wants” (we enjoy vacations and other non-necessities); it’s that we make intentional choices about how we spend. For many, the money just “disappears” and they’re not even sure how it was spent.
 


And I got to thinking, how much money do we spend because we have it rather than because we even need something or want something?

I forgot to answer this, I believe that we definitely spend a lot of money because we have it and not because we need or want something. It is a bad habit and one that we are actively trying break it!
 
We have separate accounts and through the years have kind of traded off on who made more money. I made more when we first got together, then honey worked his way up through the company, we worked together. Eventually he went out on his own and I have no clue how much he makes. I was the bookkeeper where we worked so wrote his pay check, after he went out on his own he liked the idea of doing it all himself, he is his own bookkeeper. When we bought the house we live in now, I paid the down payment, he paid for all the xtras that had to go into it, things like window treatments, gas fire insert, new furniture, totally rewiring the internet and phones, taking out trees, etc. He makes the house payments, I don't even know how much they are. He pays the utilities and most of the groceries. I just went to semi-retired this year, cutting my pay to about 1/4 of what I used to make and I'm not happy about it. I paid for my own car, my insurance, my cell phone, my clothes, trips, etc. I'm not sure how I'm going to like having to depend on him for everything. I do have an annuity, an IRA, a 401K and some savings so I can take care of myself if necessary. My boss informed me last week he wasn't sure how much longer he wanted to keep the company going, he has projects for the next few months then he will decide. I don't want to get another job, I worked where I work for 30 years and can't imagine at my age starting over and certainly don't want to work full time. We have talked about it and honey knows how I feel about depending on him but I told him I'd try it for a year. He works from home so both of us being at home together 24/7 worries me. We can both deal with paying bills and all the rest so if anything were to happen to either one of us, there wouldn't be problems in that area.
 
We've been married 42 years and have a joint checking account and savings account. He is pretty much the breadwinner of the family. I worked part-time from the time our kids were in elementary school up until maybe 10 years ago or so. The money I made was basically extra money, I cashed my checks and we used it for whatever we wanted/needed at the time. I did buy two vehicles on my own during that time so made monthly payments from my money on them.

Now that I'm retired he brings in the money and I pay the bills (checks). He does have a separate savings account as some of his income is direct deposited. He pays some bills out of that account (transfers from his savings to the checking account) and he uses some of it for his hobbies, mainly gun collecting.

The bills get paid and we have money in savings, we don't NEED for me to work outside the home. Things were different when we first got married, than what they are today in that families generally didn't need two incomes to make a living. I had part time jobs because I WANTED to work, not because I NEEDED to. We enjoyed the extra money for vacations, going out to eat, etc. But retirement has been nice. I was able to babysit often for our two young grandchildren who live just down the road from us, and DH likes it during spring harvest and fall planting seasons on the farm as I am able to help out more than I could when I worked. He is primarily a farmer but is also a part-time crop insurance adjuster, and occasionally I go on runs with him to help him in the field to work on an insurance claim. And I enjoy taking care of our home, and him. It works for us, and that's all that matters.

He does a financial statement every year, so I know what we (and our farm) are worth. And since I'm the one that pays the bills I know what's in our checking account, but he does too. We both know what's in the savings accounts. No money is hidden from each other.
 
I'm now solely in charge of the household finances and planning for the future.
He gets a monthly allowance, doesn't argue or whine about it, and in return I no longer discuss in great minutiae exactly how he came to this lowlyyyyyy state (wuv when Darren McGavin sez that in "A Christmas Story").
The End.
 
I'm the financier in our marriage. DH knows generally the state of things, but not specifically. For most of our marriage, I made far, far more than he did (as in 10-20x as much). Since my retirement, he's the major breadwinner. I'm way better with numbers than he is.
 
DH and I both work, he makes considerably more than me, we have separate credit cards and bank accounts, we each of a subset of the bills that we pay from our own accounts. We each have our own pay checks direct deposited into our individual accounts after retirement contributions are deducted, we then have automatic transfers to savings, once bills are paid we are free to do whatever we would like with the money in our own accounts. We don't discuss most purchases as it really isn't necessary, we both have a good handle on our own finances, as well as where we stand regarding savings and retirement. We definitely spend more than is absolutely necessary, but we are also good at ensuring that retirement and savings is funded before we spend the leftover money.
 
This is a timely post because my husband and I got into a little spat yesterday about this topic. He works and I have been a SAHM for 13 years. All our finances are joint. I manage all of it. We've been married for 17 years. He doesn't understand the nuances of investing and doesn't like having to deal with paying bills on time, etc. He'd rather me do it and I'm glad to.

However, we are currently in a situation where we need to pay off debt and begin socking away large amounts of money for a big life change coming up in a couple of years. We have no liquid savings and have always spent 100% of our income. We have a substantial amount of investment money in 529 plans, a 401k and Roth IRAs. But no available cash savings and moderate credit card debt.

I have tried explaining to my husband that we need to seriously lower our daily spending on food and miscellaneous things we don't NEED. By my estimate, we can cut our spending by about 75% and put that money into savings without really going "without." (Like, I'm not talking about having to eat rice and beans for dinner). He says he understands. Then, he turns around and buys more Star Wars toys on Amazon. And goes out to a $50 steak dinner during a work trip where he will only get reimbursed $54/day, etc. Like, we LITERALLY just had this financial conversation last week and this week he has spent almost $300...when I brought it up to him, he said I was nagging him. Sigh.

I finally told him yesterday that if he keeps this up, I will turn over ALL the financial stuff to him to manage and maybe once he sees how much money he is throwing away every month, he will understand where I'm coming from.

It does become a problem sometimes if one person handles everything because the other may not understand the implications of their spending habits. My husband grew up poor and makes a very good salary now so I know that a lot of his spending habits are a result of wanting to buy all the things he was denied as a child. So there is an emotional component. And that would be fine if we didn't NEED to save money. He has always had a secure job (military) so we have never had to worry about layoffs, etc. But I guess 18 years of that has made him feel invincible.
 
DW hates to handle money but she does it all anyway. We've been married for 43 years and we've always had joint checking. I'm not terribly interested in the finances and I trust her implicitly. We don't always agree, but the odds of her making the best decisions are way better than mine.

Same here. Guys like us will end up in some shelter for clueless men, where we'll be victimized by much younger women who only want to take advantage of us. Hmmmm...:scratchin

:duck:
You do bring up an important point. If one spouse does all the financial stuff, they should sit down and put on paper what the monthly routine is. It should include all the logins and passwords for all your accounts and should be in a secure place. I have done that for my wife, and our kids know where that information is too in case something happens to both of us.
 
DW hates to handle money but she does it all anyway. We've been married for 43 years and we've always had joint checking. I'm not terribly interested in the finances and I trust her implicitly. We don't always agree, but the odds of her making the best decisions are way better than mine.

Same here. Guys like us will end up in some shelter for clueless men, where we'll be victimized by much younger women who only want to take advantage of us. Hmmmm...:scratchin

:duck:

Just a little PSA- even though most relationships have a “money” person, both people really need to have some basic knowledge of the finances/bill paying. My mom let my dad handle everything, and when he died it was a complete disaster. In the middle of her grieving we were trying to figure out passwords, which bills needed to be paid, where all the different accounts were. Luckily we had some very understanding billing people because the mortgage alone was 2 months late.

I hate handling “home maintenance” but my husband makes sure I knew how to shut off the gas, water, furnace in emergencies and I have a basic grasp on what to do when things break. As an adult, understanding your finances is as important as knowing how to shut off the water in my opinion.
 
I do it all. My dh says he wants to be involved but when it comes down to it I don't think he does. He just says he does. He never asks but knows our bills are paid and we have savings. That sounds really horrible. Every time we sit down to try and be on the same page it lasts a couple weeks and then he stops asking and I stop telling lol. If i died he would be lost... now that sounds really horrible. I think it's time we sit down and try this again.
100% how we are. It is insane, when we first got married he handled everything, but since I became a SAHM, I do. I hate that he asks me, "Is there money in the budget for this tool?" More often than not, he asks on a Friday thinking "Hey it's payday" but I already have all the bills paid and savings deposited, etc and have very little wiggle room (especially for his tools for work which are expensive). I've told him, you've got to give me some notice, but it slips his mind.

If something were to happen to me, heck, I don't even know if he could pay the bills because they're all online. He'd have to know usernames and passwords for everything and each stupid place has different password requirements.
 
100% how we are. It is insane, when we first got married he handled everything, but since I became a SAHM, I do. I hate that he asks me, "Is there money in the budget for this tool?" More often than not, he asks on a Friday thinking "Hey it's payday" but I already have all the bills paid and savings deposited, etc and have very little wiggle room (especially for his tools for work which are expensive). I've told him, you've got to give me some notice, but it slips his mind.

If something were to happen to me, heck, I don't even know if he could pay the bills because they're all online. He'd have to know usernames and passwords for everything and each stupid place has different password requirements.

I do have it written down on a piece of paper for him, if something did happen to me, but he can't find the remote some days so I am not sure he would know where to look for this piece of paper hahahahahhaaaa!!!!!
 
DH and I have joint accounts but I handle all of the finances. DH would prefer to have nothing to do with the finances and I like it that way , IME it saves arguments. The only debt we have is our mortgage and van so after I pay the bills each month I transfer most of our money from checking into different savings accounts, make note of the balances and show DH an update. He's happy to see our savings increase each month but for the most part skips over the checking account balance. But, I also don't want him to be lost if something happens to me so he knows what day of the month I pay all of our bills and where the book is with all of our accounts and login information. I also have him pay the bills and handle the savings transfers once every year or so, just frequent enough so he stays up to date on what accounts we have and is familiar with the system I'm using.
 

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