My DH isn’t really involved in our day to day finances. He has no idea what our grocery “budget” is, or what we pay for car insurance. He knows we have a mortgage, but probably couldn’t tell you the amount. He knows it’s with Bank of America, but wouldn’t be able to pay the mortgage. So he’s what I would call “peripherally” involved in our finances.
I assume if you are reading this, you are like me. Completely, totally, obsessively involved in your family’s finances and run the budget. You might have a spouse who works with you, but more likely you have someone like my spouse. They care a little bit. They want to be in good financial standing, would never dream of spending their way into debt, but aren’t really into the “details” of finances.
There are two other types of couples. First couples who are both involved money management and may or may not separate accounts. Or couples where neither is really interested in finances, so they ignore them or take turns doing “financial chores”. I think the bulk of people fall into my category of a person who cares and one who isn’t as interested in finances. But back to what happens when one person cares…
In some ways I’m thrilled, because I get total and utter control over our money. I am the dictator, benevolent and wise. But sometimes I wish DH had more input and interest. It would confirm I’m doing all the “right” financial moves. Of course, if your partner is like mine, he’ll say “but you are doing a great job, and I TRUST you.” This amount of trust of course can be a huge burden as well a big risk.
So what do I do? Well every year in January we sit and have a long dinner. I usually have to promise something fun, because my DH isn’t thrilled by this conversation. During this annual conversation we lay out potential goals financially and personally.
We also road map what our financial year will look like. We roughly calculate our taxes and if we’ll owe money. We talk about potential repairs to our house and guess what it will cost. For instance we budget $5-6k/year on home repairs and discuss what is most important. We discuss where we want to vacation and what it will cost.
This is the easy part. The harder part is discussing our investments for the year. This year we decided to try something different. My DH decided he wanted to try managing the money himself. We’ll see how it goes. At the end of the year we’ll reevaluate and potentially compromise our investment strategies. My DH is super aggressive to the point of insanity investing in individual stocks, while I’m an “passive aggressive” investor who prefers to invest in ETFs or Index funds. But in marriage, it can’t really be a dictatorship.
We wrap up with my explaining to my DH what our budget looks like, he zones outs by this point, and my road map. I leave a printed copy of a bill pay chart, CD of our electronic file cabinet in our fire safe. My DH knows if something happens to me I have left a detailed list of all accounts, where and how to pay bills, and copies of all important documents.
Yet throughout the year my DH could care less. He has no idea if our bills are paid, he just trusts me to do it. He gets a monthly allowance of $40 and is happy. He figures unless I run around screaming “the sky is falling” we’re okay.
So whatever situation you’re in, the most important thing is communication between the partners. Being open and honest even about all financial problems and successes. It might be easier if my DH were involved, but he has other qualities which make keeping him worthwhile.
9 responses so far ↓
1 dogatemyfinances // Oct 27, 2008 at 9:36 am
I totally relate to this! Except my sweetie pays some bills, and after our Alien Abduction kit, he would be able to pay anything.
Our compromise is he reads my blog posts, hehe, and we discuss our monthly updates in net worth. What went wrong, what went right.
2 David // Oct 27, 2008 at 10:56 am
I think in my dating/ spousal life I have come across every scenario and understand yours totally. Where things really get tricky is when circumstances change. My ex-wife and I burbled along quite happily money wise until she went back to school, but didn’t change her spending habits and the financial applecart had to be righted. One amusing side note is that when I was dating I was asked by one woman what my credit score was but then she did work at a bank in mortgages
3 Angie // Oct 27, 2008 at 11:08 am
Your situation sounds exactly like ours. I have the list in our file cabinet, and an extra list in the safe deposit box, just in case. At the end of each month, DH asks me how we’re doing, and I can print out a Quicken report showing where all our money went. He skims it over and says, “Thanks for doing this - I hate having to think about this stuff.”
It’s like clockwork every month. But when we need to re-prioritize our goals, it’s like pulling teeth to get him to really look at the numbers. He always just says, “I trust you to do the right thing.” I gotta say, that drives me nuts! I want him to give me some input. On the whole though, this system works for us.
4 Meg from FruWiki // Oct 27, 2008 at 3:49 pm
I used to leave finances to my husband. Then we got deep in debt. It was definitely a joint “effort”, but it scared me that I didn’t know just how bad it was. We kept saying we’d spend less, but it never happened. We didn’t even know how much “less” was.
Then, we decided to track our accounts balances each Sunday on an online spreadsheet. That was January and we still “do the numbers” every weekend — and every month we’ve both reduced our debt and increased our savings, including retirement.
We tried making a detailed budget and/or tracking individual expenses. Didn’t work for us. However, with our spreadsheet we can see very quickly how much we can afford and if we’re spending too much.
Another thing that helps (especially with our system) is that we have several bank accounts and we automate everything that we can so that our finances take care of themselves, shuffling money automatically between accounts and paying our regular bills. We each get an “allowance” of fun money into individual checking accounts. All our other expenses come out of our joint checking or savings accounts and we don’t spend out of those without talking to each other unless it’s something small. We also keep a “reserve” buffer in the checking account as an emergency fund and so that we don’t overdraw accidentally (for example, one month our bank’s computers decided to send in our mortgage twice in a week).
5 LivingAlmostLarge // Oct 29, 2008 at 11:07 am
We have only one account. Our fun money is $40/month in cash. It’s not necessary for us to open account for minimum amounts of cash.
6 Meg from FruWiki // Oct 29, 2008 at 5:16 pm
LAL,
Our fun money amount is higher, but not by a lot. We like having separate accounts because we prefer to use debit cards. We rarely use cash for anything. With debit cards we can track our money easier, we can use our fun money online, we don’t have to head to an ATM each month to get our money, and we don’t have to worry about carrying around or storing cash.
Also, we both often save up our fun money so that we can make larger purchases. For example, I recently used over a month’s fun money to buy some new clothes for winter. I would have felt really strange paying that much in cash.
But then maybe that’s just me. My mom pays for most things in cash and she never seems to have a problem with it. I worry, though, that someone is going to see how much cash she carries and see her as an easy target.
7 LivingAlmostLarge // Oct 29, 2008 at 7:41 pm
I think that 2 $20 isn’t a huge deal. And why would I go to an ATM more than once a month? It would be ridiculous, and at most I could go twice.
I don’t carry any more cash than that.
8 Meg from FruWiki // Oct 29, 2008 at 7:45 pm
Well, whatever works! I think it’s just that we prefer debit cards, regardless of the amount. But if you prefer cash, then that’s fine, too.
9 Mary@SimplyForties // Nov 3, 2008 at 6:55 pm
A partnership is the only way to go. I think you are wise to make your husband have that conversation! We all have different strengths but neither half of a couple can afford to be completely unaware of the finances of the whole.
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