5/22/2009

Couples & Money Management

I often read, on other blogs, about either single people or married folks. I haven’t read too much about people in committed relationships where two people live together and how they manage their finances. There are three options really, keep your money completely separate, combine all of your money, or keep some together and some split (in one form or another).

My household is a little more unique in that I live with my partner Jordan as well as my brother and his girlfriend. We split common bills such as utilities (satellite, TV, & heat/gas/water) as well as rent. All of these are managed by me. As such I have very large influxes in and out of money.

Jordan and I were talking about amalgamating some of our finances and when the best time to do this would be. Due to the unique situations of having many roommates and many bills to split, we though now is not the best time.

That said, we will continue to save for large items together (such as our house fund right now). When you save as a team, it can happen so much quicker then if you were to do it on your own.

Once we are in our own place (probably 2-3 years away) we will start by having one joint account where all of the bills will be withdrawn from (utilities/mortgage ect). Once this works for us and we are comfortable with the change it is likely that we would join our finances in other ways as well. I do like the idea of knowing how much I can spend without having to check with the other person (especially at Christmas). So if we did put all of our money together eventually, I would want to keep one separate account each (above and beyond emerg funds, rrsps ect). This would be our ‘fun’ money. Our ‘personal’ spending funds. It might only be a few hundred dollars a month – but it would be a good way to save for surprises for the other person and what not.

I’m curious to know, how other couples – new to navigating the joint financial world – have combined their finances. What worked? What didn’t?

3 comments:

  1. hi.
    i live in sweden and me and my boy have completely separated ekonomy,we have been together for almost 4years now and it works fine,we newer argue.

    ReplyDelete
  2. That sounds great if it works for you! I'm curious how to decided who pays for what.

    Some couples split things 50-50, right down the middle and some couples split things on a percentage based on their income.

    ReplyDelete
  3. hi jessie.
    i found this blog yesterday and it`s great!
    no we dont split 50-50.
    we have the bills we have when we lived separtely in diffrent cities.
    he paid for his and i paid fore mine,
    even now when we live together.
    by the way,i wrote my blog in English from yesterday,take a look and wrote a note in my guestbook!

    ReplyDelete

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