Living together & paying bills! HELP! How do you have your accounts set up?

How do you have your bank accounts set up??

FI and I are about to move in to our first house together and Im so worried about paying bills and stuff... my mother was so bad about paying bills that I have turned into a complete control freak about it and I know FI will not deal with that well...

So how does everyone take care of their bills/accounts??

Two separate accounts and split the bills evenly?

One joint account...

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!

Re: Living together & paying bills! HELP! How do you have your accounts set up?

right now we live in a condo together
i have my checking and savings
he has his
we have one joint savings-
i give him money for bills- its not a lot
and he pays everything for the house
i pay my own car and credit card and school loan


BUT- now we are moving into our home in 2 weeks (YAY)
we will have our own savings /checking
JOINT checking and savings
the joint will have our paychecks
we will pay all bills with both checks
then we will split the 'extra' money- put some in joint savings
some in our own savings/joint

Re: Living together & paying bills! HELP! How do you have your accounts set up?

DH and I have a joint account for the household and vacations. We also each have our own checking and savings accounts. Most of our money goes into the joint account, but I do deposit some money each month into my account for personal items.

Re: Living together & paying bills! HELP! How do you have your accounts set up?

we have one joint account for bills. I pay the bills and I talk about it with him / show him stuff just so we both know how much we have/pay, etc ...


We set up a budget for ourselves and we each take out a certain amount of $ each week. If we need more, we usually know what's in the account to take more.

We over communicate with money. It works for us. He never tells me no and I never tell him no. We're both pretty responsible about spending money.

Re: Living together & paying bills! HELP! How do you have your accounts set up?

joint check, joint savings

i still dont understand the concept of seperate stash of money

Re: Living together & paying bills! HELP! How do you have your accounts set up?

Right now we live together and have separate accounts...he pays some bills and I pay some, and it works out pretty even. However, we will soon be setting up a joint account and will use that for bills.

Re: Living together & paying bills! HELP! How do you have your accounts set up?

joint checking, joint savings.

Re: Living together & paying bills! HELP! How do you have your accounts set up?

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Posted by MCDO15

joint check, joint savings

i still dont understand the concept of seperate stash of money

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I know that FI likes spending money on things Im personally not crazy about... it definitely makes me feel better that it is his own money that he is wasting... does that make sense... i think if it was all on one account...i would get totally annoyed...

Re: Living together & paying bills! HELP! How do you have your accounts set up?

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Posted by cjb88

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Posted by MCDO15

joint check, joint savings

i still dont understand the concept of seperate stash of money

---

I know that FI likes spending money on things Im personally not crazy about... it definitely makes me feel better that it is his own money that he is wasting... does that make sense... i think if it was all on one account...i would get totally annoyed...

---

marriage and relationships isnt always 50/50
everything is ours... we work as 1 and not as 1 indivdual each trying to make 2. we dont need security cause the both of us arent going anyway without each other. if she needs an item or whatever, we talk about it and/or she makes her own decision but keeps within reason that we are saving, we have bills to pay etc...

DW makes more then me...that means she gets to spend more? i dont think so. kinda selfish imo.

i understand the point most ppl say about money but then when you throw marrige and trust and love around, money comes along with all that.

Re: Living together & paying bills! HELP! How do you have your accounts set up?

fincanial advisors always say to have 1 joint & 2 seperate accounts.

A pyscholigist that Dh used to work with, on the other hand, insists that if youcan't share a bank account, your marriage is doomed!

So, I gues it jsut depends on your prespecitve.

We share everything , b/c I hate to pay bills & so far it isn't bothering DH that I make less & spend more!l

Re: Living together & paying bills! HELP! How do you have your accounts set up?

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Posted by cjb88

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Posted by MCDO15

joint check, joint savings

i still dont understand the concept of seperate stash of money

---

I know that FI likes spending money on things Im personally not crazy about... it definitely makes me feel better that it is his own money that he is wasting... does that make sense... i think if it was all on one account...i would get totally annoyed...

---

it's also nice to have seperate accounts for when you have to buy gifts for each other.
otherwise, it's like you're buying your own gift

Re: Living together & paying bills! HELP! How do you have your accounts set up?

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Posted by MCDO15

joint check, joint savings

i still dont understand the concept of seperate stash of money

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Because when you have two adults with two very different spending/saving habits, cramming them into one joint account is neither logical nor economically-wise.

It's not a 'separate stash', money isn't hidden, it's simply not all physically pooled.

We have a joint checking and savings at a bank (but really it's mostly his), and I have a separate checking and savings at a credit union.

Re: Living together & paying bills! HELP! How do you have your accounts set up?

im weird with $ so we have our own everything

in addition, we have a joint checking/savings.

every month he gives me $ and i, myself. put $ into the joint. that is used for bills, food etc.

i figured out the $ per person by adding average cost for mortgage, tax, ins, cable, gas, water, electric. and splitting it in half. the leftover we use to dine out.

we have $5,000 overdraw so if at the end of the month we are short, we split the amount and put in extra.

this is working very well for us.

Re: Living together & paying bills! HELP! How do you have your accounts set up?

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Posted by MCDO15

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Posted by cjb88

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Posted by MCDO15

joint check, joint savings

i still dont understand the concept of seperate stash of money

---

I know that FI likes spending money on things Im personally not crazy about... it definitely makes me feel better that it is his own money that he is wasting... does that make sense... i think if it was all on one account...i would get totally annoyed...

---

marriage and relationships isnt always 50/50
everything is ours... we work as 1 and not as 1 indivdual each trying to make 2. we dont need security cause the both of us arent going anyway without each other. if she needs an item or whatever, we talk about it and/or she makes her own decision but keeps within reason that we are saving, we have bills to pay etc...

DW makes more then me...that means she gets to spend more? i dont think so. kinda selfish imo.

i understand the point most ppl say about money but then when you throw marrige and trust and love around, money comes along with all that.

---

wow... I wish it was that easy in my case... I wish i could make it that way... it is so hard because we grew up in two completely different ways... we always had the electricty, phone and cable going out because mom didnt pay bills... so naturally now, im very frugal and excellent at saving... him on hte other hand was basically brought up having everything he wanted... so he isn't so good at the frugal part... did you guys always have it like that, or did it take some time?? I would eventually love to have that... i just think it might take a while...

Re: Living together & paying bills! HELP! How do you have your accounts set up?

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Posted by MCDO15

joint check, joint savings

i still dont understand the concept of seperate stash of money

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heres just an example ... you want to throw a surprise party for dh's/dw's birthday...BUT if you use the money he/she will notice a significant amount of money missing- sooo no surprise that something is coming up

or you plan birthday/anniversary/valentines day trip-

or you want to buy him/her a gift-

if you have your own account you will be able to do things like this

there are other reasons but this is just one example

I dont think everything should be separate BUT theres no harm in having a 'secret' stash when good can come out of it (Also- its not really 'secret' cause everyone knows its there...no one is hiding the money

Re: Living together & paying bills! HELP! How do you have your accounts set up?

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Posted by Jan05Bride

we have one joint account for bills. I pay the bills and I talk about it with him / show him stuff just so we both know how much we have/pay, etc ...


We set up a budget for ourselves and we each take out a certain amount of $ each week. If we need more, we usually know what's in the account to take more.

We over communicate with money. It works for us. He never tells me no and I never tell him no. We're both pretty responsible about spending money.

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yes same here

Re: Living together & paying bills! HELP! How do you have your accounts set up?

Joint checking, joint savings and we each have a smaller checking account, with a few hundred dollars in it. We are both good with money, but I spend a little more, so I give myself an allowance and put that in my checking account once a month. Having the seperate account helps me stick to that budget better.

Also, the smaller accounts are older ones that we just didn't end up closing after we combined everything.

I also have one additional small checking account I use for online selling only.

ETA: We did not combine accounts until just before the wedding, so we could deposit the gifts more easily. Everything was seperate before we got married.

Re: Living together & paying bills! HELP! How do you have your accounts set up?

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Posted by cjb88

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Posted by MCDO15

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Posted by cjb88

---

Posted by MCDO15

joint check, joint savings

i still dont understand the concept of seperate stash of money

---

I know that FI likes spending money on things Im personally not crazy about... it definitely makes me feel better that it is his own money that he is wasting... does that make sense... i think if it was all on one account...i would get totally annoyed...

---

marriage and relationships isnt always 50/50
everything is ours... we work as 1 and not as 1 indivdual each trying to make 2. we dont need security cause the both of us arent going anyway without each other. if she needs an item or whatever, we talk about it and/or she makes her own decision but keeps within reason that we are saving, we have bills to pay etc...

DW makes more then me...that means she gets to spend more? i dont think so. kinda selfish imo.

i understand the point most ppl say about money but then when you throw marrige and trust and love around, money comes along with all that.

---

wow... I wish it was that easy in my case... I wish i could make it that way... it is so hard because we grew up in two completely different ways... we always had the electricty, phone and cable going out because mom didnt pay bills... so naturally now, im very frugal and excellent at saving... him on hte other hand was basically brought up having everything he wanted... so he isn't so good at the frugal part... did you guys always have it like that, or did it take some time?? I would eventually love to have that... i just think it might take a while...

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well for our case, we are saving aggressively for a house ... so it's in both of our interests to have every single red cent available go into that savings account together. Not X amount per month, or him give X and I give Y ... all of our money not related to expenses goes in.

We have a joint play money account that gets money each paycheck. It's for both of us for gifts/vaations/etc ... There isnt a ton in it but enough to cover things like gifts and such.

You have to do what works for you. DH & I feel our money is our money. Not his his, mine mine. It's ours and our life together is shared including money.

Re: Living together & paying bills! HELP! How do you have your accounts set up?

Well, we go by the ENVELOPE method.
It's worked well for 6 years, and we are not about to change this.

Every week, we get our paychecks cashed.
We have an envelope for each bill. Every week we put a designated amount of cash in each envelope.

When the bills come, we deposit the money into checking account.

We have seperate checking accounts and I have a savings account WITHOUT his name on it (we had a problem with a collection agency when we had a joint account, because of something he didn't pay YEARS ago, so we decided to have the savings under just my name.)

I pay some and he pays some.

Re: Living together & paying bills! HELP! How do you have your accounts set up?

We have lived together for 5 years and came up with a solution that works for us. I write the checks for all the bills and DH gives me 1/2 in cash. That was I can deposit my paychecks and live off the the cash DH has given me for bills.