Money management question....debate at home!

Jazzyjules71

Great feed back everyone!

And I'm glad to know there are people out there happily married that don't agree on money all the time. Sometimes I forget that you can still "agree to diseagree" and either separate accounts, or one person do it all.

Elizabeth_C34

Great feed back everyone!

And I'm glad to know there are people out there happily married that don't agree on money all the time. Sometimes I forget that you can still "agree to diseagree" and either separate accounts, or one person do it all.

My husband and I have several accounts including personal accounts. Our joint account is exclusively for the mortgage and household bills. Our personal accounts are for our work-related or personal expenses. This works really well for us. We both like to have our independent purchases. For me, it's my Coach bags when I save up enough for them, and for him, it's his gaming stuff. I think it's healthy to have your own money in a marriage to do with what you want (within reason of course). We also have joint investment and savings accounts. We have our separate retirement accounts as well.

Elizabeth_C34

Thanks everyone for the responses! Looks like I should climb out of my cave and maybe give it up! I like the idea of an excel spreadsheet, but don't know if I could maintain it.

Thanks for the tips, my boyfriend will be glad to hear he won this debate! lol

If you are diligent enough to maintain a check register, you're diligent enough to maintain an excel spreadsheet. Honestly though, I don't know why you'd need to do either. Check with your bank and look into what online resources they have for budgeting and apps. There are some really good ones out there that will make money management much easier.

It's really not as difficult as it sounds. Once it's set up for the year (takes about an hour at most), then, it takes maybe 1-2 minutes a day to maintain, if that. No spending, no maintenance.

I use my debit card constantly, so I doubt it would be a small task for me to maintain a manual spreadsheet of expenses. Plus, everything I charge to my account, I keep track of on my phone app which links directly to my bank account so I can immediate see and review charges without manually entering anything. It even gives me a detailed expense report at the end of the month so I can look ensure that it went as budgeted. I can even dispute them if they come up erroneously right from the app. I've had issues with identity theft like you in the past, but my bank caught it before I did (I was at work at the time and couldn't check it) and resolved it within 24 hours. For my purposes, the idea of manual spreadsheet tracking of expenses seems like a huge waste of time and very inefficient. My husband and I track our investments and trading accounts this way too, and it's great.

There's some great technology out there that makes life easier than doing it all manually these days. It's good to at least know about it.

My situation is just different. I don't even have a debit card. As I mentioned, I only make payments out of my actual bank account 3 or 4 times a month at the most. Sounds like the app works well for you!

Ah okay. I missed the no-debit-card thing. Sounds like your system is good for you then too.

Hellbent_Heidi

Excel spreadsheet here, and I keep it on a USB so I can update it at work or at home.

Separate accounts is great if you have different systems for managing your money (and save you from a lot of arguments).

Another benefit to separate accounts is something I just found out a couple of months ago. It will save the day if your debit card or bank account information gets hacked. My card number was hacked, and at least we weren't BOTH financially paralyzed while waiting for it to be resolved and getting a new card issued.

amymeenieminymo

Excel spreadsheet here, and I keep it on a USB so I can update it at work or at home.

Separate accounts is great if you have different systems for managing your money (and save you from a lot of arguments).

Another benefit to separate accounts is something I just found out a couple of months ago. It will save the day if your debit card or bank account information gets hacked. My card number was hacked, and at least we weren't BOTH financially paralyzed while waiting for it to be resolved and getting a new card issued.

I thought this was my comment at first, I also keeo our finances on a spreadsheet and save it to a flash drive....I mostly do our finances at work since I don't have an adding machine at home, but this way I don't have to save personal financial info on my work computer and if I need the info at home I always have the flashdrive with me.

Krissy366

Now I use YNAB (You Need a Budget), which is the best budgeting software available, IMHO.

Completely agree.