The Budget

I've learned a lot about myself in terms of money since I've been married. In short, money can be an emotional trigger for me while for my husband, it's a simple math. From age 21-31, I was a completely independent working woman with no financial support from anyone. Besides a small credit card debt issue in my early 20's , I never carried debt, and I never went without anything I wanted, to me this was doing well. I think my biggest money flaw before I got married was I was in denial about retirement. It just seems so far away and I thought contributing to my 401K each month was enough. Well I guess that could be enough if I wanted to retire a certain way, but after analyzing our finances together, we both decided we wanted more financial freedom, and the option to retire younger to pursue other interests someday, whether it be travelling or staring a business. Saving and investing more has been an adjustment but I have no complaints, my life is happy and healthy and my husband handles all the money stuff now. We de-brief once a month about how things are going, goals, etc. My husband has read several money books, but I think the one that really changed his life about money was "The Millionaire next door". Ultimately, we've both concluded that our parents didn't teach us much about money, and this is something we can't change, but we can teach ourselves, and our children someday. It's pretty simple, decide what you want, plan for it, and meanwhile don't spend what you don't have.

To answer Cassie's question, this is how we divide and manage all the funds:

We share a personal checking account

We each have a certain discretionary income each month (after all bills are paid and money is saved for investing)

We each use our own credit card to spend our discretionary money each month (we have different card and get different rewards, I get cash back, about $200 every 4 months.)

At the end of the month the card balance is paid in full and whatever we don't spend of our discretionary goes into our own high interest online savings accounts (or you can take it to buy some Christian Louboutins or whatever is on your wish list, probably won't be getting those unless I'm really disciplined)

This works great for us so far, 2 years and counting!

I'm sure this will all have to change once we win the Texas Lottery...