Progress Report...

The wedding is over and now the fun begins! So on working on this month's goal to combine our finances, we have decided to put all of our income into a joint checking account and then transfer a percentage out into our own personal checking accounts. Mainly, the reason we decided on a percentage is because our incomes vary each month.
We have our joint checking account set up and debit cards for each of us. We went through the last two months of statements to track where our money goes and total costs for fixed bills. I did notice we go out a lot(!) but since I am not focusing on cutting our budget, I am going to ignore it for now.
Next step, get all the paperwork for automatic withdrawals. I have the paperwork for my paycheck and car payments but there is a lot more we need. I am thinking we should probably send it in all at the same time to prevent some coming from here and some there. Our goal is to get all the paperwork sent and have the mortgage moved over after the honeymoon, May 2nd.
I have been pretty impressed with my husband’s (ekk..still so new) cooperation in this process. I thought he would be a little territorial over his money or dragging his feet to get the process started, but he has been a prince through it so far. Side note: the other day he called our hotel in Hawaii to make a golf tee time and I heard him say. “I will have my wife with me and I would like her to be able to join me for the day” I almost started crying, I am someone’s wife.

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...

Matrimony and money…

Money! Dinero! Geld! I feel like I have been talking about money a lot lately. With the wedding next weekend (!) Jason and I are proud to be paying for the entire thing in cash! We did get help from our families but also have been saving hard core for almost the last year. Staying out of debt is really important to both of us and a wedding just didn’t seem like a good time to bring some debt into our lives. I am looking forward to not having to save for it anymore though and having some extra cash, for important things, like shoes and highlights.

We have also been talking a lot (like months and months) about how to manage our money after the wedding. This was a really big one for us as we are both pretty independent and been managing our own accounts and expenses for quite awhile. I think we have found a good compromise and system to take care of all of the household expenses within our budget but still free up some money for ourselves, with no questions asked. I am sure there will be a few meltdowns along the way, but overall, I am pretty confident we will get through this ok.

So this month, I will be focusing on balancing our household budget with our new and shiny shared checking and savings accounts. I will try to remain calm and not get all crazy over “my” money, because soon it will all be “ours.” I will keep you all posted over the progress we make in the next month in bringing over the mortgage, bills, automatic withdraws and whatnot into one account, exciting stuff, huh?

For all the ladies that have shared homes, I would be interested to know, how do you manage your money for the household expenses?