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can any sorabjiites married, divorced, living in sin, or otherwise currently or formerly involved in a relationship with joint financial responsibilities tell me how you and your significant deal/dealt with money, income, debt, etc? what financial agreements were made? how do you handle paying bills? do you have combined or separate bank accounts? any info, anecdotes, advice, jokes... greatly appreciated. |
my parents, which are my model for successful marriage, viewed the relationship as a partnership. shared everything. joint bank accounts, joint tax returns, everything. |
when we seperated and began our divorce process, to deal with our overwhemling credit debt, we filed bankruptcy together. before they changed the laws. my credit score now is well over 600, can you fuckin believe that? within a year or two! At times when my ex was being a cunt, she advocated paying bills seperately because she made a little more money than me, but then I would counter we split the household chores evenly, which meant she would have to do dishes and clean the shitter once in a while and that usually shut her up. |
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that is what i'm asking. thank you both. |
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do you ever argue about money or bills or stuff like that? how did you come to that arrangement in the first place? does it depend on who makes more money? |
It turned out this way because she likes doing that money stuff and I hate it. The joint account was something I asked for, mostly because otherwise she was always trying to pay for half of everything even though she makes a lot less than me. It was an unnecessary source of stress for her. |
my sister is very strict [she makes more] and things are split completely evenly [this is all funny if i told you any of the stories about my sister.] if only one person wants a thing, they are solely responsible for paying for it. my new plan is to be so wealthy that no one cares. |
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It was much more difficult when I had to take over my mother's finances. She was a banker her whole life and had a fairly complicated portfolio so when she got Alzheimer's I had to figure out everything from the paperwork in her files because she couldn't remember most of it and I couldn't trust what she could remember. It took me months to track down everything and even now, 3 years later, it's very time consuming to keep on top of it all. If you're the "responsible one" in your family, do yourself (and your parents) a favor and talk to them about their financial plans sooner rather than later. |
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We decided (about two months ago) to do the joint acount thing - so at the moment we put rent, power, food, vet money in there plus a little extra just in case and the rest of your pay packet is yours to do with what you will. Now if we go out the money comes out of the joint account. It seems a lot fairer this way, and I seem to have more money. Weird. |
For instance, s/o may find a racehorse he wants to purchase, but can't afford immediately, so if I've got the cash, no problem, I buy it. Because I KNOW that next week or next month, I may find a racehorse/car/parrot etc. that I want and he'll hand over the cash. But, when it come to when one of our horses make money, whoever the registered owner is, him, me or one of our kids, thats who gets the purse. But generally, at least a fair portion of the purse goes back into the barn, as it is expensive to maintain a racing stable, and we all [including the kids,cause they each own some horses,too] realize that we have to be fair and pay our fair share to keep the barn going. We seem to like our indulgences, and are all tolerant. We probably spend too much, but we have a happy life, and the kids, now 16 and 18, are right with us and often bring their friends to the races to see our horses race.We all share the physical work [of which there is plenty of] in the barn. With minimal griping. I guess we're not a very good example of how to manage finances. And sometimes, if we can't afford something, we have a family vote, and decide if we should risk it. The majority vote always wins. Oooh, we're our own little democracy. But, it works for us. |
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interesting. i'm not sure there's a right way or a wrong way, there are just different ways, and whatever works. senor and i don't fight about anything really, we're not fighting about finances. but i had a big wake up call when i got my bank statement a week ago, and realized that my emergency fund is the lowest it has ever been in my employed adult life. which is not okay. it's so not okay that this issue for me pretty much trumps every other priority in my life. and i've been watching it go down down down for about a year and half now, since we bought the house. and i've mentioned it to senor every month. the last few months my mentionings have become increasingly anxious. we've always pretty much split everything 50/50, even though he makes a lot more money than me. the only things we didn't split 50/50 were groceries and eating out and entertainment. and he's always very generous when it comes to paying for anything that isn't a joint financial responsibility. it was never an issue until i finally realized that the way things were going, i was never going to be able to build back up my emergency money, and it made me panicky. i'll continue to be anxious about it until i can. senor and i had a good talk about it on saturday. since he makes more money, he's agreed to begin paying more toward those joint obligations, so that i can build back up my emergency money. while my financial priority is my emergency savings, his financial priority is paying off debt. so we figured out a way where we can both concentrate our money on what our individual priorities are, and still pay the bills and have extra. it's silly that i should be so broke every month, especially since i've cut back on just about everything. 99 cent lotion. suave hair products. no clothes, no shoes, no salon hair cuts. i bring my own lunch to work every day. if it was considered an "extra", i cut it out. but still i was in the red. obviously the new car didnt' help matters. never had a car payment before. however, if you add up both our incomes and the fact that it's just the 2 of us and 2 dogs, we should be livng on Easy Street. so i did spreadsheets and calculated how much i earn and how much is being spent on what, and showed him everything. basically 80% of my income is being spent on non-negotiables. so now that we've made adjustments it'll work out better for both of us. it's not that senor was being unfair or selfish before, he just didn't realize - nor did i - how unbalanced our initial financial arrangements had become over time. so now dave is paying for more, and everything will be evened out hopefully over the next year. in fact, he's bearing a little extra burden to make up for the burden i've been carrying. i'm glad we're living together for a long while before getting married though. it's helping me realize that there's a reason for an engagement period. a time to reflect on what marriage means to me and what it means to him and how it's different for both of us. the truth is, for me, getting married only means that some of the decisions we make about our life together are different than if we never got married. it doesn't mean forever, and it doesn't mean that, in the end, i'm willing to depend on him for anything other than love. marriage means that you vow to love the other person to the best of your ability, nothing more, nothing less. but when it comes to my life and my well-being, the only person i can depend on is myself. and i would never sacrifice my independence, financial or otherwise, for marriage, for home ownership, or for anything else. i don't know if this view of marriage is right or wrong. i'm only being realistic about what my values and beliefs are. having this issue arise and having to talk about money and finances and working out a plan before getting married has been a little bit of a mind-fuck, but i mean that in a good way. relationships are so much work and at the same time so much fun and so rewarding. having someone who is so *good* to share my life with is a blessing. but it's a lot of work. mostly it's a lot of work on oneself. learning how to negotiate your needs and fears and desires, taking responsibility for your own shit, while making sure everything is fair. not that everything has to be fair, but making sure both parties are satisfied with everything... luckily we almost always are. we'll see what happens. i'm sure owning a home is a good decision financially, but it remains to be seen if it's worth the money, time, and effort. i love senor, the dogs, i love our house, but at the end of the day, i don't love our house more than i love my dad, or my sister, or my friends and other family. i don't want to have to say, "i can't come visit you" in detroit or in hawaii or wheverever, because i'm broke because of the $1500 landscaping job. that's just retarded. so i'm not sure i'm cut out for the responsibility of it all. i'm discovering i'm not readily willing or happy about making the sacrifices it seems to take. and we bought a house that cost a lot less than we could afford, living under our means. it's a lot to think about. it's love and emotions vs. the hard cold realities of life. |
Seems to smooth things over pretty well. :) |
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