Household/personal budgets

[Cloudbringer]

Hello everyone! As most of you know, I'm a newlywed and in the course of discussing our finances, and how to manage them, with my hubby I started wondering how other people do things.

So if you feel like answering a few questions, here goes!

How do you keep track of your money, or do you? I mean do you just pay what comes in as it comes and not keep records other than your checkbook and bills or do you use a ledger, computer budgeting program etc?

Do you pay your bills online? Does it help? What are the good/bad points about it?

Married or co-habitating folk: How do you deal with your two incomes? Do you mix all and have one account/budget or do you have his, hers and ours accounts? Some variation on this? Who keeps the checkbook for household bills?

How do you split up your money..in other words do you have different accounts for different uses (bills/fun/savings etc) and what sort of categories do you have? IE: things like 'entertainment' money for games/movies/dinner out, 'future purchases', 'everyday bills' etc


Hubby and I are leaning toward the his, hers and ours method of keeping track. We each have our own accounts for 'personal' use and a joint account for shared bills and such.

[ 08-07-2004, 12:46 AM: Message edited by: Cloudbringer ]

[Megabot]

Here we pay our bills wery fast i pay them as soon as i get them but we have 14 days to pay them but we like to get rid of them asap! no plans or anything here and i know what kinda bills we get every mont so it is an easy task !
So we pay them asap then use the rest of the money on our self easy as that! [img]smile.gif[/img]

Edit and Cloudy i think you should have seperate accounts i and Tone have it then it will be no probs with anything if we need more money for the bills we transfer money to one of our account's who pay the bills. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[ 08-07-2004, 01:02 AM: Message edited by: Megabot ]

[Cloudbringer]

That's what we were thinking of doing, Mega. Nacht and I each have our own for spending but we have a joint account that we're putting the money in for bills and I can transfer funds to it if needed. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Megabot]

Yep wery good i have an "bill acount" too free of charge from the bank with a about 1000$ in back hand if i we get more bills than we have waited and that is wery cool i have never used it but good to have in case of any nasty bills acoure hehe! [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Cloudbringer]

LOL! Nacht and I call that the 'uh oh' account! For unexpected bills like car repairs or things like that.

[Chewbacca]

Hi Cloudy,

My wife and I have joint accounts and both have direct deposit into primary checking. She handles the bills and pays some online and some via snail mail. We have a budget and withdraw weekly a weekly allotment for things like gas, ect.

Right now we have one regular savings account with the purpose of saving for short term goals like moving in two months. We plan to open a higher yield savings account as a gateway to investment and for long term goals like the down payment for buying a home in the near future.

We also have an emergency fund savings account with three months of living expenses with the goal to increase that to six-months of expenses after we move. I cannot express just how vital such an emergency fund is after becoming unemployed for 6+ months last year, and just recently, when some unforeseen medical and car repair bills came out of nowhere. It has literally saved our financial butts and gets top priority for replenishment if circumstances have dicated it's use.

[Cloudbringer]

Thanks for answering, Chewie! The saving for short term goals is one of the things my husband and I are working on now. It's always good to have a plan!

[Arvon]

We've been married more years than you've been alive. We let one person handle the money and bills so there's no confusion on when or if a bill was paid. Bills first, disposable monies and fun stuff later. Works for us.

[Bungleau]

Here's my suggestion... hie thee to a library or bookstore and get a copy of Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace. It's about money management, but from what I consider to be a practical point of view. It also happens to be a Christian point of view, but it's not a religious text, by any means.

Dave covers seven baby steps for financial freedom. They are...

1. Get $1000 in the bank for your initial emergency fund
2. Pay off all debts except the house. Use the debt snowball to make it happen.
3. Build that emergency fund up to 3-6 months of living expenses.
4. Fully fund all pretax retirement savings options.
5. Start college funds
6. Pay off that house!
7. Get rich! Let your money work for you, earning interest and taking advantage of opportunities.

Now, there's a lot more to the process than just those seven steps. Figuring out what you need to live on, avoiding debt, and so on are the building bricks.

Read the book, and you'll have a good starting point. Dave also does something called Financial Peace University, where he goes through a full day session on this stuff. They're offered all over the country (some live, some via videotape), and they're good basics for you both.

Bottom line: if you're not both in agreement on how to get there, you'll never get there.

[RevRuby]

i usually budget, since nathan works two jobs he doesn't really have time. right now he has the handle on it because of a huge mess up from him throwing us into a bad no money type place.

i pay bills first then i do diapers, gas, groceries, then fun money (usually none!) i would like to save but it's really not happening.