I need your advice girls. Do you and your fiance have joint bank accounts to pay your bills?
Renee75
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I need your advice girls. Do you and your fiance have joint bank accounts to pay your bills?
If so, how does this work for you? I am having some issues with this. If you both use a joint checking account to pay bills, what if your fiance has more bills and it seems like your portion of the paycheck goes to a bigger portion of his bills? Is it time to rethink this 'joint' account thing? Should I put my paycheck back into my own account? Or should I start thinking this is 'OUR' money now and not seperate?
Is there an easier way to do this? Please help!
LaurenluvsTJ
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Re: I need your advice girls. Do you and your fiance have joint bank accounts to pay your bills?
we got the joint account when we got our apartment a few months before getting married. I had not moved in yet, but was still paying rent with him and we thought it would be silly for me to give him money for rent so we got a joint account. Now its 'our' money - you are getting married so you are going to have to start thinking more that way - not 'his' bills or 'my' bills, but 'our' bills. But if you don't feel comforatble with that just yet, don't get a joint account until you get married.
Some people keep separate accounts, but we didn't really believe in doing this.
eden
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Re: I need your advice girls. Do you and your fiance have joint bank accounts to pay your bills?
hm, you definitely need to have your own separate accounts on top of the joint one.
my FH and I have a joint and separate bank accounts and joint and separate credit cards that we use to pay for our own expenses. Your FH should NOT use your joint account for his own expenses.
if he makes more or you make more, you can choose to be abit more generous by putting in more towards the joint account.
good luck!
Renee75
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Re: I need your advice girls. Do you and your fiance have joint bank accounts to pay your bills?
Posted by LaurenluvsTJ
we got the joint account when we got our apartment a few months before getting married. I had not moved in yet, but was still paying rent with him and we thought it would be silly for me to give him money for rent so we got a joint account. Now its 'our' money - you are getting married so you are going to have to start thinking more that way - not 'his' bills or 'my' bills, but 'our' bills. But if you don't feel comforatble with that just yet, don't get a joint account until you get married.
Some people keep separate accounts, but we didn't really believe in doing this.
I was okay with this until I started realizing that this month especially I had three bills that were due that were paid. He had like 8 or so. If I had my own account like I used to I would have had an extra 200-300 for myself. I feel like my paycheck is being used to cover what he does not have to pay. PLUS we are supposed to be saving a certain amount into the savings we have and he just transfered 100 over to his checking (we still have our own in addition to our joint) to pay a bill that gets automatically deducted from his checking (debit card). THAT pissed me off b/c here were are trying to put away money and it's like he can't obviously afford to pay his bills. I am VEYR concerned here. Now he does have a second 'job' where he gets cash money and gives me half of what he makes.. could be 60-100 every week or every other week but still.. if he has the extra money from his second 'job' why isn't he making sure he puts that money in the account to pay down his bills? Ugh this is so frustrating.
Chrissywish
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Re: I need your advice girls. Do you and your fiance have joint bank accounts to pay your bills?
i agree with this. We are going to open a joint savings account but that will be to save money for the wedding. We have each agreed on a number we will put in there each week.
As for getting an account together that all of our money goes into, we will not do this until we either move in together (because I agree that its silly for me to give him money for rent) or until we are actually married. And that is b/c at that point my bills become his and his become mine. Now we will both be going in with school loans and what not, so neither of us feel like we would be taking on someones financial burden
Now each persons situation is different and i do have a friend that refuses to pay her husband's bills (but it's becuase he refuses to work full time)
So you just have to decide what is best for the two of you w/o harboring any resentment
ant n tilde
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Re: I need your advice girls. Do you and your fiance have joint bank accounts to pay your bills?
we have such different 'personalities' when it comes to money. . . i pay everything the first day i can - he 'doesnt like to give people money before the last possible moment' - he doesnt pay his bills late - its like he has to make them wait for it or something. . .
anyway because of this we have seperate checking accounts but a joint savings account . . . i like the way it is working out but we may just combine everything after the wedding - IF and ONLY IF he gives me complete control!
Mooshyboo
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Re: I need your advice girls. Do you and your fiance have joint bank accounts to pay your bills?
We both have 'our checking and saving' and we both have our own checking & savings accounts for our own bills!!
Renee75
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Re: I need your advice girls. Do you and your fiance have joint bank accounts to pay your bills?
So what do I do here? I mean here is the scoop, we live together and have for over a year. we made the decision to open a joint checking and savings. We still have our own checking accounts, just in case. The joint checking we have been using to pay our bills, rent and joint bills such as cable, lipa, etc. Our paychecks are deposited into our joint checking and this is what we use to pay our rent, and all bills. After the bills are paid and rent is paid we hardly have anything left until our next pay checks! Mind you together we make over 100k a year. The second job he has is really supplementing for our money to use during the week for gas money, food and etc.
At this point nothing is in our seperate checking accounts simply because nothing is left for either of us..after bills, etc.
I don't know I am really nervous about this..
rachel212
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Re: I need your advice girls. Do you and your fiance have joint bank accounts to pay your bills?
FH and I just joined our accounts together 2 months ago, so I can't really say yet how it's working out. My FH is very responsible and doesn't have a lot of bills - if he did and I felt it wasn't fair, I might not have wanted to join our money together. So far, it's working out. It was just getting too hard with the mortgage and all the other house expenses to keep track of who was paying what, so we figured it was all ours together anyway...
Renee75
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Re: I need your advice girls. Do you and your fiance have joint bank accounts to pay your bills?
bump
jennd311
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Re: I need your advice girls. Do you and your fiance have joint bank accounts to pay your bills?
we have a joint, but he pays his bill and I pay mine out of our own accounts. wedding stuff and house stuff comes out of our joint account. I think its important to still have your own accounts
betani
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Re: I need your advice girls. Do you and your fiance have joint bank accounts to pay your bills?
we have seperate ones right now simply because we're probably going to be closing these accounts when we move (i still have my old one back in ny and like that bank much better, i'm not too crazy about this one). also, we're using our salaries in different ways. since i have so much in student loans and it'll be OUR debt once we get married and we both HATE debt, my salary is going entirely to that. his is going entirely to living expenses and whatever's leftover goes into his savings for us later on. it was just an easier way to split things - two seperate checking accounts. we have two seperate savings b/c his is for us and mine is for loans (they haven't kicked in yet so i'd like to build a little interest until they do and in between payments).
i guess it's not really that one's mine and one's his, they're just for two seperate expenses. it's already 'our' money.
tricia3381
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Re: I need your advice girls. Do you and your fiance have joint bank accounts to pay your bills?
Posted by jennd311
we have a joint, but he pays his bill and I pay mine out of our own accounts. wedding stuff and house stuff comes out of our joint account. I think its important to still have your own accounts
thats pretty much what we do.
Danigrl28
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Re: I need your advice girls. Do you and your fiance have joint bank accounts to pay your bills?
Dh & I each have our own checking, savings and then we have a joint savings. We each pay our own bills such as schools loans, car payments, etc out of our own checking.. our paychecks also go into our own account. Since he makes more he pays the rent.
Ophelia42
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Re: I need your advice girls. Do you and your fiance have joint bank accounts to pay your bills?
We didn't until ... well last weekend we finally set up our joint account.
Honestly, we've been together and living together for so long, though the accounts were separate, it was like they were the same. When we lived in CT, I paid all the bills (because I made more money) and we saved his salary. When we moved here to IL, I was unemployed for a while, so by necessity, he paid the bills - after I got a job, he continued paying them and we banked my salary - all that savings pretty much went to buying our house this summer (and what's left after that is going to pay for the wedding LOL) :) We never got into the paying each other for bills.
I'd honestly be ok with just a joint account, but he wants one of his own for 'play' money - so I kept mine too (he also has a savings account that eventually we need to add me, because it's both of ours) We haven't really discussed how much of our regular paycheck goes into the main account and how much into the personal account yet.
Really, it's all your personal preference - someone told me of a couple they knew who kept EVERYTHING separate, even to the point of giving each other money as gifts... it seemed odd to me, but hey, whatever works for them :)
Chrissywish
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Re: I need your advice girls. Do you and your fiance have joint bank accounts to pay your bills?
Too me after reading again it's sounding like you are panicing more about the budgeting of the money and not necessarily the actual joint account aspect. Have you two sat down and said, this is what we have coming in, this is what we have going out, this is approx what we spend a month on food, gas, spending money? You really seem to be panicing that after it all there is nothing left to save for a rainy day. I'd say sit down and have a budget night. See what's going out that doesn't need to be. Make sure he realizes the importance of the rainy day fund or the save for a house or the save for our future or even the we need to not spend every dime we have and live week to week fund. Some people need to see things in writing. If he were to lose his second job would you still have money for gas and food? If god forbid one of you was to get laid off would you be able to survive on the one salary? I don't mean to scare, but maybe he just needs to see it, and doesn't realize what you are worrying over. Am I on cue here??
kitty1224
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Re: I need your advice girls. Do you and your fiance have joint bank accounts to pay your bills?
No and I think we will keep things the way they are now.
patticakes
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Re: I need your advice girls. Do you and your fiance have joint bank accounts to pay your bills?
We have joint checking but stlll separate savings, sort of...It is still 'our' money though, even though they are separate accounts. Sort of strange.
Meaghan729
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Re: I need your advice girls. Do you and your fiance have joint bank accounts to pay your bills?
no. we do have a joint savings though.
we dont live together though - and the only truly joint bill we have is our phone, and we pay every other month.
I work in a bank, so if i ever overdraw my account i get in major trouble, so id rather keep the checking separate - its so easy to lose track of, considering we put most of our $$ into savings for our house!
i dont think there a 'right' or 'wrong' way of doing it. i would talk to your FH and see what will work best for you.
Suze Orman has a book and it has a great way of dividing bills up by a % of income.
snapp29
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Re: I need your advice girls. Do you and your fiance have joint bank accounts to pay your bills?
Hello. FH and I have a joint account to pay for Wedding Expenses ONLY. We put in two thousand a month between the 2 of us and spend that $$ on wedding related expenses. We pay our bills from our OWN paychecks. I think that if you have a joint account it should be equal...I guess you could say its all coming from the same place if your married, but still that would annoy me too. HTHS~S
