How do you handle your home finances if you are married?

Question

I mean in the case you are married. Im not married, im single and I dont have a boyfriend but I want to know how you handle finances when you are married? Together or split bills. Each household Im sure handles their finances differently according to what it fits better to them.

Also what about when yiou go to trips, who handles the accomodations, plane tickets, food So how you do it?

Do you split your house bills or only one pays everything? And only when it comes to personal stuff of each one, each one pays with their own money for their own stuff?

Do you pay your husband or wife back something when you get paid at work, in case your husband pays something that it is your bill to pay but at the moment you dont have the money but you pay him later? I mean this does not happen often though but it could happen.

MrOracle · Accepted Answer

I've never been married but I've lived with girlfriends. The actual split of bills and work were different in all of those relationships, but the concept was the same: both people need to pull an equal (reasonably equal - it's never going to be perfectly identical) amount of weight. How exactly that happens is up to the couple and their situation, but there needs to be a balance.

You need to sit down and figure out your basic incomes, and your mutual bills, and then you need to list your daily, weekly, and monthly household responsibilities, from dishes to vacuuming to mowing the lawn and maintaining the cars. This list will vary significantly depending on whether you live in an apartment in the city, a house in the suburbs, or a piece of property in a rural area. You need to assign these tasks a value.

Then, you need to start dividing those bills and tasks. If one person is paying a larger percentage of the bills, they should be doing a smaller percentage of the household tasks, and a balance needs to be found. Everyone should know what they are responsible for, and they need to take care of their responsibilities before they do what they want, both with their money and with their time.

When something significant changes - someone changes jobs, or someone's responsibilities change in a major way - then you go back and rebalance the situation.

No one should be getting away with not doing their share, and no one should be overburdened. Maybe one person really hates mowing the lawn, and the other person hates cleaning the bathroom, so you negotiate to trade a job you hate for something you're more willing to do that's of equal value (or you find a way to make it equal).

If you do this, it forces you to talk about things and get everything out onto the table, and it also forces you to be reasonable - both in assigning value to the things that YOU do as well as to what THEY do. And, again, things might not always be exactly 50/50, but if they are reasonably close, people will generally be happy and it won't be a big source of conflict in the relationship.

JustinTheGreat · Accepted Answer

We try to go 50/50 as much as we can. We have a joint account that’s for bills and emergencies. Then we have a box that we save cash in for trips or things we need for the house.
Then we each have our own personal saving accounts. If we have to, we’ll each take money from our own savings for certain things.

If we go out to eat or we’re on a trip, we’ll either spilt the bill or he’ll pay this time and I get him next time.
Sometimes one of us doesn’t always have the money to go 50/50 so we dont mind covering each other. I always try to pay him back for when he covers me but he doesn’t always take it

LazerBean · Accepted Answer

All our money goes to the same place. He makes way more than me, I take care of the house and make sure all the financial stuff gets taken care of.

Apple1996 · Accepted Answer

Only my husband works but I manage all the money since he has no idea what the kids need and what kind of bills we have.

Nawlins34 · Answer

We have our own individual accounts

We have two joined accounts (checking and savings) for the household.

I present a yearly budget that we adjust on a quarterly basis. So we only see the money we're required to provide the household. We pay the bills out of that.

We get paid in our personal accounts and the money left in there is ours to do with.

slatyb · Answer

I work, my wife doesn't. Part of our income (my paycheck) goes into her account. She does whatever she wants with that money.

bowenw · Answer

We both work and pool everything. All the money goes into one bank account and all the bills get paid from it. We have our own credit cards that get paid from the one bank account.

Anonymous · Answer

Stuff a reasonable amount into savings, set up a calculated deposit amount in a separate account to cover bills, then regularly show my wife our spending account balance so she stops buying crap.

exitseven · Answer

We have a money market account and both our paychecks get deposited in it. We each get a weekly allowance and the bills get paid out of the account.

sheikalana · Answer

we save my husband’s salary and we spend mine on bills/food/groceries or whatever we feel like buying.

big_ben_007 · Answer

Everyone works it out in their own way. Wanna get together for a week and just practice? 😎

AFretiredTXn · Answer

I handle most of it.

OnTheLevel · Answer

We have joint accts.

How do you handle your home finances if you are married?

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