Brides Helping Brides ™ - How are you planning on handling money after the wedding?

nov04LIbride Posted: Sep 28, 2004 01:25 PM

How are you planning on handling money after the wedding?

How are you planning on handling money after the wedding? FH is in debt, and I saved quite a bit but am using my savings for my doctoral program (and the downpayment for our condo and the wedding), so we were thinking separate accounts, and one joint account for shared expenses. What is everyone else doing?

anjerandunder Posted: Sep 28, 2004 01:27 PM

Re: How are you planning on handling money after the wedding?

we are going to keep separate accounts but majority of the money will be going into a joint account for household items..i'm assuming that i'm going to win the lottery one of these days so that money will be in my separate account

CubanBride Posted: Sep 28, 2004 01:28 PM

Re: How are you planning on handling money after the wedding?

We are going to keep our separate accounts but will add one joint account. We don't have any joint bills (no mortgage, no rent, no heat or electricity) so this account will be for when we want to take a trip. And that is usually once every 2 months.

ddb336 Posted: Sep 28, 2004 01:30 PM

Re: How are you planning on handling money after the wedding?

We are going to have seperate accounts, but a joint checking account.

btrflygrl Posted: Sep 28, 2004 01:31 PM

Re: How are you planning on handling money after the wedding?

we combined everything right away....we were both in the same amount of debt. We have worked to consolidate it, improve our ratings, and pay things off.

But we are also awaiting coming into a HUGE amount of money and hopefully that will be used to pay EVERYTHING off

Laura1976 Posted: Sep 28, 2004 01:35 PM

Re: How are you planning on handling money after the wedding?

right now we have seperate accounts, but we kind of pay for things as we go. My FH has bailed me out of credit card debt once or twice (nothing major) but he hates have debts hanging around for no reason.
We're pretty nonchalant about it, his money is my money, and I for some reason never have any money.

DjPiLL Posted: Sep 28, 2004 01:37 PM

Re: How are you planning on handling money after the wedding?

I make significantly more than FW. The way it works now is... I pay the majority of the bills... and she just gives me some cash every month to help out.

I don't see this changing after the wedding cause the system works. We just opened up one joint account that she primarily uses just because she needed an ATM that was close to us to pull money out of.

We will probably just split the wedding cash between the two of us. She wants money for a down payment on a new car. I will probably just save my half and replenish my savings.

marc_rai Posted: Sep 28, 2004 01:38 PM

Re: How are you planning on handling money after the wedding?

We recently combined all our $$. Neither one of us have any large debt. FH have some student loans, but hey they will get paid off in time.

So we have one joint checking account that we use to pay all our bills (gas for car, rent, groceries, my nails and my hair, eating out, life insurance,renters insurance etc). We also have a joint saving account (right now we are using that to save for the wedding but after it will go towards the house) and a separate saving accounts (before putting any $ into the joint checking account we each have an 'allowance'. We can spend this $$ on whatever we want, save it, spend it, etc)

We just started doing this program during tha last 4 months and it is working okay. At the beginning it was hard adjusting to having an allowance for the month, but now I'm used to it so I just budget everything. Once we both get real jobs (we're grad students) we decided that we will save one salary and live off the other in order to save $$ for the house.

Oh, any wedding $$ will go into our joint saving account (most likely to start our nest egg).

snowprincess805 Posted: Sep 28, 2004 01:50 PM

Re: How are you planning on handling money after the wedding?

i read alot of financial books- and the way i am doing and heard is the best- is you each have your own accounts and then a joint account - from driect deposit - you both put the same percentage amount into the joint account - and then the rest into your own account - it makes both more parties equal for household expenses - when they earn different amounts

goingtobemrs Posted: Sep 28, 2004 02:04 PM

Re: How are you planning on handling money after the wedding?

We each have our own account right now, and a joint savings account. We each put as much as we can a month into the savings account and split our bills (we live together) from our seperate accounts. Once we get married, we'll have just one account and my whole check is going into savings and his will go towards our bills until we can afford a house.

DebMaher Posted: Sep 28, 2004 02:07 PM

Re: How are you planning on handling money after the wedding?

With both hands.

Blu-ize Posted: Sep 28, 2004 02:26 PM

Re: How are you planning on handling money after the wedding?

Posted by DebMaher

With both hands.

Funny, that's how I do it too!

SeptemberBride03 Posted: Sep 28, 2004 02:29 PM

Re: How are you planning on handling money after the wedding?

We are jt everything. I have student loan debt that I pay each month and he is currently getting into student loan debt with his grad school. but we feel jt on it all.

bellepoque Posted: Sep 28, 2004 02:49 PM

Re: How are you planning on handling money after the wedding?

We are setting up a joint checking account and meeting with a financial manager. DH has debt from grad school and we both have credit debt and want to get our finances in check. We are thinking of looking into a Money Market Fund instead of our savings account.

Oh and we are going through the oh so fun project of BUDGETING!

Bunnymonkey Posted: Sep 28, 2004 02:51 PM

Re: How are you planning on handling money after the wedding?

what money?

We have a joint for everything - bills, expenses, etc... and we both direct deposit our work money into that. We are so poor there is no more 'yours' and 'mine' - we are in paying for everything together - including each others debt. We decide jointly if there are funds for things like a dinner out.

I have friends who balk at this - but we are happy with the system. If one of us is struggling, the other picks up the slack. We both have ****** jobs and make about the same. I think it would be different if we made money, either individually or together.

Of course, when I babysit on occasion, that is my fun money.

barb04 Posted: Sep 28, 2004 04:11 PM

Re: How are you planning on handling money after the wedding?

FH and I were just talking about this the other day!!
Right now we each have separate checking and savings accounts and a joint savings and checking (the joint acct isn't really used for much now - most bills we just split and pay out of our individual accounts). When we get married we are going to keep our separate accounts, but the joint one will become our main account used to pay bills, rent, etc. and the separate accounts will be used primarily for savings.

akaMrsT Posted: Sep 28, 2004 04:20 PM

Re: How are you planning on handling money after the wedding?

We do not yet live together but the plan is to keep separate accounts and open one new account (joint) for household bills and trips. We may also get a joint credit card for household stuff too.

ETA: I have no credit card debt and FI is paying his credit card debt off this month (and has been working toward that for a few months).

I have student loans and do not want FI to help me pay those off. Just in case we divorce (which I hope wold NEVER happen) he could claim a percentage of my earnings based on my graduate degree although he and I were not together when I attended grad school. Based on how it was explained to me, alimony would be based not only on our income at the time of the divorce but also how much FI contributed to me earning my degree (which includes paying off my student loans).

We likely will not have a prenup or anything like since we are not rolling in $$$$ at all but it is something to think about.

nov04LIbride Posted: Sep 28, 2004 04:25 PM

Re: How are you planning on handling money after the wedding?

Posted by kdrainey

We do not yet live together but the plan is to keep separate accounts and open one new account (joint) for household bills and trips. We may also get a joint credit card for household stuff too.

ETA: I have no credit card debt and FI is paying his credit card debt off this month (and has been working toward that for a few months).

I have student loans and do not want FI to help me pay those off. Just in case we divorce (which I hope wold NEVER happen) he could claim a percentage of my earnings based on my graduate degree although he and I were not together when I attended grad school. Based on how it was explained to me, alimony would be based not only on our income at the time of the divorce but also how much FI contributed to me earning my degree (which includes paying off my student loans).

We likely will not have a prenup or anything like since we are not rolling in $$$$ at all but it is something to think about.

If you do divorce though, would one spouse also be held partly responsible for the debt of the other, even if it was debt from that spouse's own account or credit cards (not in both names?)?

heidla Posted: Sep 28, 2004 04:28 PM

Re: How are you planning on handling money after the wedding?

We kept our seperate accounts and then have a joint account for the household.

ckgmwedding Posted: Sep 28, 2004 04:29 PM

Re: How are you planning on handling money after the wedding?

I want to still maintain an account of my own that I can use without consulting anyone but my FH thinks we should just pool it all together. We'll see how this works since we wil be living together next month and setting up a joint account. So we will be doing it my way for 8 months until the wedding.