How do you handle finances in your marriage?

Question

My husband and I are kind of in a struggle for 'control' of the finances. He makes a lot of big decisions without me yet makes no payments [he works but doesn't physically handle the finances] on bills. While I understand he's trying his best to do what's right it's very frustrating. I would love for us to have one person 'in charge' [particularly me--LOL] who does everything [pays the bills and manages the accounts] but for us to discuss things together. This is the way it normally is but he has his moments when he just has an idea and he’s going to do it--without really knowing what he’s getting us into.

How do you handle finances in your marriage?

Do you have any suggestions on how we can be more successful and have less tension when it comes finances? We aren’t in debt and have excellent credit but it feels like we are constantly having to make our moves around mistakes or misunderstandings that my husband has/makes.

Thanks!

I’d like to be pro-active about this so please answer only if you have a suggestion or explanation. I'd also like to add that this isn't make or break kind of stuff--it's irritating to me and gets us arguing at times. We are in no way on the verge of divorce. I just realize there is room for improvement and am willing to try whatever it takes to relieve this stress from our marriage!

I do not work. I am a stay-at-home-mom. He works. There really isn't a point to have seperate accounts. I feel that you can have financial difficulties but overcome them if you work at it--at least in my own situation!

Answer 1

Sex and Money. The two biggest sources of friction in marriage. You need to communicate better between yourselves. It seems to me that your husband is not confideing his intentions because he feels that you will not support him unconditionally (probably a good thing that you won't by the sounds of things). Compromise seems to be the best solution for the two of you.

Consider doing the bills together so that everything is laid out for each to review. Good luck.

Answer 2

My suggestion would be this, get a budget that accomodates his spending decisions. Prioritize, first the bills, groceries and any other costs of living that are crucial, then leave some for the savings account. Anything else can be split between the two of you. Give him cash to do with whatever he feels is important or to splurge on himself for various things. Approach him with this idea and see what he says.

Finances are always a tough issue in a marriage. I handle the finances in our household and boy does my husband LOVE to spend. It's a constant struggle but we have come to the agreement that I mentioned above a few weeks ago and so far it's working.

Answer 3

Hubby and I have been married for 2 years. And I handle ALL of the finances. He makes the money, I go to school, but he will cash his check, put what I ask him to into saving and the rest go into the checking account. From there I pay all of our bills. If he or I want cash, we take some out, only if we have it and we are fine with it. If he wants to buy something or I do, as long as it isn't huge and expensive, we go for it. But if it is expensive we talk about it first. He gets stressed over bills, never thinks we have money or gets worried that we wont be able to pay bills, which is the reason I deal with the money. That and I am really good with it.

Answer 4

Well....money can be a problem even when you have it...

I handle the finances now, have for the past 15 or more years, only because my hubby decided it wasn't much fun...LOL

The first 10 years or so of our marriage, we would sit down twice a month and pay bills. We had three joint accounts, still do, one for bills, one is our "slush" fund and one is a savings account.

The way we worked it was to sit down with our standard bills, mortgage, utilities, groceries, etc and figured out what we needed to put aside per week. This amount we put in our "bill" account. The rest we put in our "slush" account. Then at the end of the month we'd see what was left in our "slush" fund and move at least 30% into our savings.

We had a list of "wants" that we made together, some things I wanted, some he wanted and some WE wanted.

The slush account was used to pay for impulse items, going out, anything that wasn't strictly necessary. When the balance in the account was big enough we'd get something from our "want" list. Whoever spent the least out of the slush fund got to pick the item off the "want" list.

Since both my husband and I are rather competitive it sort of turned into a contest of who could save the most money.

We still work on basically the same principle now, with the exception of using credit cards to pay for everything, paying the entire balance at the end of each month and Lucky me gets to sit down and write the checks.....LOL

It may not work for you, but it has worked well for us.

That isn't to say there haven't been some financial mistakes made but we've been able to make them together..

Good Luck

Answer 5

Talking it through - maybe with a counsellor? - seems like a good idea.

Do you each have your own separate accounts in addition to the joint account? That can be good - each can have independent control of their own stuff and then management of the joint account can be discussed.

Surely some of your joint outgoings are regular anyway - such rent, insurance, food, bills, etc.

Do you offer up praise for when things work out OK? Rather than just blast out when you get frustrated or annoyed. I found it's worth saying how I FEEL about things which don't work in the marriage...it's incontrovertible!

Maybe your feels daunted by your own successful management style...does he do some financial planning well, in which case you can tell him how well he does them?

Also, these smallish things can often indicate deeper stress, so it's worth paying attention. Finance and money nearly always point to other 'unconscious' attitudes - about worth, value, esteem, power, and so on.

So don't let this fester. Ask him how he'd like to see things improve, and offer your own anxieties up too, and say you want to see all this out in the open for re-organising.

Answer 6

I don't really see what being a Christian has to do with this question at all. I'm non-religious, but I'll answer anyway as I am also married, however my husband and I have never had 1 fight about money in our entire relationship, and we do NOT have a lot of it. My husband and I have a few bank accounts, however all over them are joint accounts. There is no his money/my money, it is ALL our money. Both his checks (he has 2 jobs) get direct deposited into our main joint checking account each week. All my checks (1 job, multiple income sources) I take the the bank each Friday and deposit into the same main joint checking account. At the beginning of every month, I sit down with a notebook and pen and I write down our entire budget for the month, including which weeks I am paying what bills and how much extra we will have left over at the end of the month. I show this to my husband, who really just looks at it and says "yep" (lol, he doesn't care.) I pay the bills according to schedule. My husband and I have a rule: Neither of us are allowed to spend any amount over $20 without speaking to one another first and getting the "okay." We set out limit low because we have a very tight budget, however you can set the limit however high or low you want to. This prevents any "You spent WHAT on WHAT?!" arguments from occuring. To this date, we have come EXTREMELY close to not being able to pay our rent almost every month this year (he raised our rent) and have increased our credit card debt to almost $4,000. :( Yeah, it stinks because we have been really tight this year since my husband lost his job and had to find another one that pays less. My point is, though, that we have NEVER had ONE SINGLE FIGHT about money. Our system works. Good luck.

Answer 7

Suze Orman, the finances guru on television suggests that the husband and wife handle the bills 50/50 with the wife having a secret mad-money account and also her own non-joint account. I'm divorced now, but in my marriage, my husband (now ex) and I had joint accounts with his having 100% of financial control. After a couple months, he wiped out my entire account without my knowledge, and I never knew what he did with all the money. We're divorced now. I left and ended up in a homeless shelter for 35 days with no money or extra clothes. Whether it ends up in divorce or not, financial issues ARE a big deal!

Answer 8

From your question (including the addendums) I can list three things
a) You want full control of your husbands income (with veto power on husband's ability to spend)
b) You have the time and feels you can handle the bills and feels he is sloppy on follow up (endangering the nest egg)
c) You are against separate accounts

It looks like your husband does not believe in saving for future or a rainy day unlike you and also is short on long term thinking

possible solutions
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If relations are good, ask for a right to have a fixed portion of his income transferred to you every month. This could still be a joint account, but wth you as the primary account holder.
You can manage this and show him how well you do. Also please note there is no mention of investment here. (i.e. investing money on CD's/Stock etc to earn extra income). You can convince him that on the long run you can earn extra income with the capital that he gives you. Now this will ensure that atleast some porton of his income is freedup from his spending binge. I would recommend that you keep this as a separate account. This is what I have done with my spouse. However in my case my spouse is on a spending binge (situation is reverse), but by this arrangement she spends only on her account and from our joint accounts.

You can suggest him to use automatic bill pay for most of his bills. Most banks give this free service. This can potentially take care of (b).


Unfortunately he has to realize that he should not indiscriminately spend. You can suggest the values of saving by making him meet up with ameriprise or some other retirement planning consultants (usually the first meeting is free and next ones might involve 200-300 dollars). they are quick to walk you through some "what -if" scenarios, that will put the fear of god into any indiscriminate spender and they will also explain how quickly wealth can erode (due to inflation) and what needs to be done to save

Answer 9

All the money coming in goes into one account, then bills and all other payments come out of that one account. I do the accounting, simply because I have more time. I'm a SAHM as well, and we barely make it paycheque to paycheque, but somehow get through.
Sounds like the two of you need to do some goal setting - both short-term and long term. For example, what things he needs for work (my husband always needs tools), what money you put away for insurance, for kids' education, for pension, etc. Time to do some basic budgeting, and make sure he's involved in the planning. That will help things get down on paper, then he maybe will be more aware of what's up. Your bank can probably provide you with templates and information on budgeting. You HAVE to make him see that the decisions made in your family MUST be made together.
Good luck, girl!

Answer 10

My husband and sit down at least every two weeks and talk about our wants and needs. I'm better at managing money, so I tell him what bills are coming up, what we can expect to pay, and how much money we can expect to have, that way we can set up a budget and determine what wants we're allowed to have at that time.

I also make sure he understands that my estimates include keeping the bank account at a balance of at least $200 so we can avoid having to work around bank fees if we overspend. When his budgeting involves using that buffer I remind him that we don't want to use it unless we really HAVE to.

We keep two bank accounts, checking and savings, and they are linked to each other. Checking is where we keep the bulk of what we earn since it goes to pay for bills, etc. but we also have a set amount each month that we put into savings and it is labeled "DO NOT TOUCH!". The only time we dig into the savings is to transfer just a little bit to help us when we do make a mistake, but when we bounce back we immediately replace what we took in addition to what we normally put away.

We also set up internet banking for our accounts so that we can track day-by-day how much we've spent. We have ready access to ATMs just about everywhere we go so whatever we take out of the bank is almost immediately posted to the online ledger. I also keep track of all of the checks we write (carbon copies are AMAZING for this purpose, especially).

I admit that I'm not the best at finances (I really should keep up with our own separate billing ledger) but we seem to manage just fine with this system at least for now.