Financial responsibility

[Arif]

This is my first poll so I hope it comes out OK.
Just curious as to who is tasked with the financial duties in your household. I handle most of the financial affairs within my house and recently realized I may not live forever and gave my wife all the acct #s, pws and log-ins for all our accounts. She totally trusts my decision and I enjoy doing it so there is no problem just wondered how others operate. BTW- its been this way for 7 yrs and we have never had a serious fight about it.
As we start acquiring more assets I really think she needs to be more involved and I try to include her in more decisions.

 

[yelnad]

You forgot "Co-captain." My husband and I share.

 

[Arif]

You forgot "Co-captain." My husband and I share.

I knew I forgot something

 

[Nords]

I get to pay all the bills.

In exchange she agrees to let me know when she thinks I could improve the process... the first one to complain too much about the other's performance gets to pay the bills for a year.

Initially I got the job because I'm a control freak. I've lightened up on that since ER but there's been no renegotiation of duties yet...

 

[REWahoo]

Arif, you should be able to add a co-captain option by clicking on "edit poll".

 

[Arif]

Arif, you should be able to add a co-captain option by clicking on "edit poll".

Cool, I did it.

 

[justin]

I started a "passwords.doc" file a few years back that has all of our vital financial account numbers, login IDs and passwords in it. I pay almost all bills, plan short term budget and long-term net wealth creation. My wife's main job is to spend my money And I have to say, she is quite skilled.

 

[kz]

Hubby wants absolutely nothing to do with finances. Zip, zilch, nada.
I have no problem with that since I love to do it. I do show him a spreadsheet of assets/liabilities every few months. And I show him a monthly budget sometime around the 15th of each and every month. He pretty much just nods and says "Good job". And then he is back to his workshop.

 

[playaman]

Within days of our marriage (35 years ago today by coincidence), my accountant-wife discovered I rounded pennies off in my check book. She was aghast and took control of the finances at that point. I doubt that I have written 100 checks since.

Years later when we actually had an income to do something with, my wife hired a woman who was a financial planner. When it comes to major decisions, however, we tend to reach a consenus before moving on.

By-the-way, the financial planner has been great, and we listen to her and her partner (a CPA) with great interest. (I know most posters to this board think negatively of financial planners, but our experience has been positive).

Beyond that, though, it's co-captains.

 

[farmerEd]

>>my accountant-wife discovered I rounded pennies off in my check book.

Never once in my life have I bothered to balance a checkbook.....and I handle all the finances.

 

[Arif]

farmerEd,
I refuse to balance my check book too. I just round of to the next dollar when I write a check. Between that and logging on to my account online everyday I have pretty good idea of how much money we have in the bill paying account.

 

[yelnad]

I should add that even though I chose "co-captain," my husband and I make both independent and joint decisions. We have separate accounts and pay separate bills in the household, but we're open about our expenses with each other and talk about long term planning.

 

[Michael Moore]

I started a "passwords.doc" file a few years back that has all of our vital financial account numbers, login IDs and passwords in it. 

You'd better make sure you also have a paper copy of that somewhere. I've been through the "hard drive just crashed and everything I need to get back up is on it" syndrome.

Do you know what your dail-up numbers are, or your DSL settings?

Now I have spare drives that are cloned periodically with Norton Ghost so I can plug them in and be back up and running in a couple of minutes. Scheduled tasks copy data files over to a secondary drive every Saturday as an interim backup. And the most recent Ghost image is stored on yet another external drive. None of those spare drives stay plugged in - they sit nice and comfy in their boxes where a power surge can't get to them.

cheers,
Michael

 

[Dreamer]

Happy Anniversary Playaman!  My hubby sounds likes KZ's hubby.  He wants nothing to do with finances.  I caught him in a good frame of mind one day and convinced him to read the information that someone on this board had written for his wife and had her read on a long car trip.  He kept asking me how long is this anyway?  At the end, I asked him what he thought and he said that he could not believe that anybody would ever take the time to write something like that. (Not quite his words, but my way of putting it nicely.)  He now avoids me when I am on the computer, because I think that he is afraid that I will ask him to read something else!  

Dreamer

 

[cons]

i selected 'husband' because unfortunately my wife doesn't know the first thing about finances

i sat down with her and showed her a black folder, told her that what was inside that folder was very important info if something ever happened to me. she quickly got up and went into the kitchen and said in a yelling voice, 'why are you saying that!!! i don't want to talk about that!!!'

that was the end of that conversation and i've yet to bring it up again.

however, this black folder (which has all our bank account info/investment account info/ insurance policies, etc) is right next to my computer and i sometimes go thru it when she's sitting next to me. and she usually kind of glances at it, and stares for a while, so i kind of have a feeling she knows what's in there....hopefully...and will know to go thru it when/if the time comes.

when i first met her she was very spend-thrifty. not anymore. she now likes it when she realizes her balance in her bank account growing everytime she gets her statement.

she wants nothing to do with the finances (paying the bills, budgeting, etc)
and i have no problem with that as i'm used to doing it myself.

 

[Arif]

It is interesting to note that in a marriage most often only one spouse likes/does the finances. I've met so many couples that operate this way.
The ones that are deep in debt are the couples that say neither one of them handles their finances and both spend like it's going out of style. These folks are dangerous when put together because there is no one saying "let's think about our future and LBYM."

 

[Nords]

i selected 'husband' because unfortunately my wife doesn't know the first thing about finances

i sat down with her and showed her a black folder, told her that what was inside that folder was very important info if something ever happened to me. she quickly got up and went into the kitchen and said in a yelling voice, 'why are you saying that!!! i don't want to talk about that!!!'

that was the end of that conversation and i've yet to bring it up again.

Well, the good news is that she thinks you're worth more alive than dead. I'm going to have to figure out a scheme to raise my book value with my spouse...

 

[SteveR]

Cons Said:

i sat down with her and showed her a black folder, told her that what was inside that folder was very important info if something ever happened to me. she quickly got up and went into the kitchen and said in a yelling voice, 'why are you saying that!!! i don't want to talk about that!!!'

Having gone though the death of a spouse a couple of years ago I can say without a doubt that if your wife does not know "what is where" in your finances you need to be gentle but firm in explaning to her the need to do this.  The pain of losing a spouse is beyond anything you can imagine and your brain turns to jello for a long time.  Simple tasks become very difficult and the last thing one wants to do is rummage through drawers and files looking for important papers.  I did all the finances so it was much easier for me but I did find some items I had no idea even exisited after her death.

My new wife does not want to do the financial stuff either.  She did it for a previous freeloading husband and would rather take a vacation from it.  I don't mind doing it and have a pretty good system so it is not really that time consuming.  But, I have also created a document that is sealed in an envelop that only she knows the location of that is to be opened at the time of my death or disability.  It is a letter that gives the location, account number, and contact information for all our accounts including web locations for billpaying etc as well as a list of user names and passwords for these accounts.  I at least feel better about her having this information if and when it is needed.  I plan on updating it as things change to keep it current.  It is also on the computer in a password protected file that she would easily know the password for so it would be available to her that way too.  

You don't want to talk about these things but you really need to.  We have not been married a year yet but have done our wills and trusts.  My late wife and I had wills, trusts, and Healthcare Power of Attorney and Living Wills.  It paid off as I did have the need to use it to discontinue life support due to her condition.  

Sorry to put a damper on the board but it is a topic that needs to be addressed for anyone with assets; for which people here certainly qualify.

 

[REWahoo]

I have also created a document that is sealed in an envelop that only she knows the location of that is to be opened at the time of my death or disability. It is a letter that gives the location, account number, and contact information for all our accounts including web locations for billpaying etc as well as a list of user names and passwords for these accounts. I at least feel better about her having this information if and when it is needed. I plan on updating it as things change to keep it current. It is also on the computer in a password protected file that she would easily know the password for so it would be available to her that way too.

Back in December, bob_smith (where are you bob?) posted a sample letter called "LETTER OF INSTRUCTION IN THE EVENT OF OUR DEATHS OR INCAPACITATION". Though it was a pretty good and worth posting again.

http://early-retirement.org/forums/index.php?topic=1695.msg26570#msg26570

REW

 

[cube_rat]

Wife here. I do all of our financial planning, budgeting and bill paying because my husband doesn't want to "deal with it". It gets to me sometimes, because I shouldn't have to bear full responsibility for major financial decisions.

 

[SteveR]

REW,

Thanks for the link to the past post. I have something pretty close to this but saw some stuff I forgot and will add tonight. While we do have wills and all the rest of the stuff, it is still very helpful to have this kind of information available for the next of kin to save them the headaches of trying to find this stuff on their own. I also bought a fire-resistant gun safe that is large enough for my firearms, personal items, family items, and all the important papers. I just need for the kids to remember where I hid the combination.

Doing the bills can be a pain but the more you have on automatic withdrawl the less you have to remember them.