His & Hers

[davemartin88]

I have a chunk of money from a bonus when I was working that I keep in a separate account- it's been recycled through various tools and toys a few times. Most recently, the account balance went way up when I sold my sawmill that I had used for hobby income. Turns out that I could sell it and get about 10 years of hobby income so why let it rust away here! I knew it would hold value but was pleasantly surprised how well I did after using it for nearly 6 years.

We deposit a small amount each month in an account for my DW that is used the same way. Everything else is in joint accounts (except IRA's, etc.)

 

[googily]

DW and I have the same arrangement. We feed the joint account for joint expenses. The rest we keep separate and don't have any obligation to tell the other person how much was spent and what was bought. That said, if it's home decor, appliances, a car or something that could potentially impact the other person, we discuss it beforehand.

Call me selfish, but I never understood needing to get permission to spend money that I've earned. If we were a single income household, I could understand that the money earned is joint money due to the other person's contribution through keeping the house and raising the kids.

+1

I felt my anxiety level rising as I read this thread and imagined having to run purchases above $50 past DH!

We have a joint account that covers all household expenses, eating out, travel, etc. We put the same amount in every month. Everything else, we keep in our own accounts.

In our initial retirement planning, there's been a lot of numbers-running based on our own accounts and our own projected spending, which we acknowledge will probably have to change some and become a bit more of a joint project. He's got more in his 401k (older, makes more), but I have a decent personal savings because I've always said that there is no way I'm working once he retires, so I figured I needed to save a bit more.

However, I have additional monies coming (inheritance) that wouldn't be fair to consider just "mine". Rising tide, etc.

But basically, we happily keep our own accounts once all household bills are dealt with.

 

[Katsmeow]

DW and I have the same arrangement. We feed the joint account for joint expenses. The rest we keep separate and don't have any obligation to tell the other person how much was spent and what was bought. That said, if it's home decor, appliances, a car or something that could potentially impact the other person, we discuss it beforehand.

Call me selfish, but I never understood needing to get permission to spend money that I've earned. If we were a single income household, I could understand that the money earned is joint money due to the other person's contribution through keeping the house and raising the kids.

It is not a matter of permission. Until DH retired 3 years ago both DH and I worked full-time during our marriage. However, we put everything in a joint account and I always kept track of spending in a budgeting program. It wasn't a matter of anyone needing to ask permission to do anything. It was to keep track of what we were doing since we had shared goals. We found that to best achieve our goals we do best by having each having an individual spending category. By putting a cap on the individual spending category we make sure that we are meeting our shared goal (we do periodically change the cap). But having the category also helps us meet our individual goal. That is, if I am getting $500 a month spending money and I want to save up for a new iphone, then I might choose to spend $400 of that spending money and accrue $100 a month for the iphone. This works well for us to structure what we each do. But, no one is asking permission to do anything.

 

[Badger]

Every month each of us receives $300 "personal allowance" to spend on whatever we want. No questions asked. All other expenses are tracked very closely. The personal allowance is considered as a line in the budget whether it actually gets spent or not. DW lives allowance to allowance while I am sitting on about $11,000 accumulated cash. I may go out someday and spluge on that big ticket item for myself....uh, maybe I better rethink doing that.

We are not yet retired but I think we would continue to do the same once retired.

We pretty much did the same thing until retirement. We each enjoyed the freedom of our own accounts to spend as we llike without asking the other. I invested most of mine throughout the years which gave me the opportunity to give her a few nice gifts (one being a midsize motorcycle) that I knew she wanted. That gives me more pleasure than buying for myself.

I stopped my allowance a year ago since I really don't need to add to my account. I didn't see a need to tell her but now we have a little more in the joint account to play with. Her allowance continues to be transfered automatically every 2 weeks so she can buy new tennis stuff (shoes, balls, rackets, etc.).

My first marriage was a nightmare with money. This time it is MUCH better even after 26 years. Never had an argument about money. Ever!

Cheers!

 

[Meadbh]

We pretty much did the same thing until retirement. We each enjoyed the freedom of our own accounts to spend as we llike without asking the other. I invested most of mine throughout the years which gave me the opportunity to give her a few nice gifts (one being a midsize motorcycle) that I knew she wanted. That gives me more pleasure than buying for myself.

I stopped my allowance a year ago since I really don't need to add to my account. I didn't see a need to tell her but now we have a little more in the joint account to play with. Her allowance continues to be transfered automatically every 2 weeks so she can buy new tennis stuff (shoes, balls, rackets, etc.).

My first marriage was a nightmare with money. This time it is MUCH better even after 26 years. Never had an argument about money. Ever!

Cheers!

Badger, I am not surprised you and DW have never had an argument about money if you are such a sweetie about it!

 

[Cat-tirement]

For those of you that use personal allowances, how do you approach mismatched expenses between spouses?

Some examples: DW pays her hairdresser $80 each month, I spend $10 every other month. She spends more on clothes because "women need more clothes, they need to replace them more often, and they cost more to begin with". Then there's her health/fitness "fad of the quarter", for which I have no counterpart at all.

 

[REWahoo]

For those of you that use personal allowances, how do you approach mismatched expenses between spouses?

With mismatched allowance amounts.

Our system is as follows: DW gets an 'allowance' of 25% of our annual income. From this she pays for groceries, household supplies, her clothing and her personal grooming expenses, which leaves her with a tidy sum for discretionary spending.

From my 75% I pay for everything else.

This system, or a variation thereof, has worked for us for the past 45 years.

 

[FIGuy]

It is not a matter of permission. Until DH retired 3 years ago both DH and I worked full-time during our marriage. However, we put everything in a joint account and I always kept track of spending in a budgeting program. It wasn't a matter of anyone needing to ask permission to do anything. It was to keep track of what we were doing since we had shared goals. We found that to best achieve our goals we do best by having each having an individual spending category. By putting a cap on the individual spending category we make sure that we are meeting our shared goal (we do periodically change the cap). But having the category also helps us meet our individual goal. That is, if I am getting $500 a month spending money and I want to save up for a new iphone, then I might choose to spend $400 of that spending money and accrue $100 a month for the iphone. This works well for us to structure what we each do. But, no one is asking permission to do anything.

Exactly. Not about permission, but rather budgeting another account around planned purchases. Just another part of being responsible with money in our book. As for mismatched "needs" (by definition, none of this account is a "need", but a "want"), we simply agree as to how much we both get each month. That's the only decision we ever need to discuss and it can be changed if we agree to. We both get the same no matter what. I tend to save mine while she usually spends hers each month on little things. We both agree at this point that it's more important to us to save a high percentage of our combined income toward our goals.

I believe that unless both people see the majority of combined income as theirs, there's a tendency to overspend what is viewed as "my" money. The financial losses are only viewed as half, while the benefit of spending is seen as whole. It also can lead to jealousy or petty power struggles between spouses if one earns much more than the other. Marriage is about equal ownership in our book and the cons of this approach (less toys?) are smaller than the significant cons of divorce. This works great for us since DW and I are about equally frugal. Not sure what we'd have done if one of us was a spendthrift.

 

[Sue J]

For those of you that use personal allowances, how do you approach mismatched expenses between spouses?

For us clothes and haircuts come out of the household budget. For our pocket money DH gets $75/mo and I get $45/mo. He spends all of his every month, I can't find anything to spend mine on so it just accumulates. One time last year I thought, "This is silly, I should try to spend some of this, that's what it's for", so I bought $5 worth of lottery tickets. Then I just felt DUMB. Won't do that again.

It turns out that DH likes to collect stuff, while I like to collect twenty dollar bills. My collection is so much easier to store.

 

[NW-Bound]

We have always had joint accounts. My wife takes care of monthly bills, charge cards, and balancing the check book and I take care of investments. I only import her data after the fact, when I reconcile everything in my Quicken screen. I need to know in order to move money to refill the checking account for her to pay bills.

There's no limit on what each of us can spend without telling the other in advance, although for big items such as appliances, furniture, autos, I do not see how one of us would bring it home without consulting the other on style, size, etc... Of course we would be shopping together for those. As far as personal items such as clothing, she usually buys for both of us, as I hate shopping.

My wife can go out with her friends or go shopping, and I do not even care to know how much she spends, which is of course never outrageous. I myself would occasionally bring home an electronic toy of a few hundred dollars, and she does not care either.

In terms of big items like the 2nd home, RV and toad, I have been the one who initiates it, and my wife trusts me when I say we can afford it. I am the investment financial guru, remember?

 

[Katsmeow]

For those of you that use personal allowances, how do you approach mismatched expenses between spouses?

Some examples: DW pays her hairdresser $80 each month, I spend $10 every other month. She spends more on clothes because "women need more clothes, they need to replace them more often, and they cost more to begin with". Then there's her health/fitness "fad of the quarter", for which I have no counterpart at all.

After DH retired a few years ago and I was still working (part-time), we set our Personal Care category which includes personal care items, hairdresser, clothes so that mine was $50 more a month since I still had to have work clothes. If either of us had an overage then it would come out of our individual allowances (what we call spending money category) which were equal.


That worked fine as I wasn't spending much during this time on hairdresser as I was coloring my hair at home and going somewhere inexpensive to get cuts.

However, I've been unhappy with that and recently went back to the hairdresser and my costs are much more now and don't match DH's. So the $50 a month difference is nowhere enough to pay for this. Even worse, when I stop working entirely (soonish) I had in mind reducing mine $50 a month since I won't need work clothes.

I'm not sure how we should handle it.

The reality is that the costs for hair care are more for me than DH. For DH to go to the same hairdresser I go to would cost him $20 a cut less than it costs me. And, I have hair color on top of that. Plus, I wear makeup and that is a cost DH doesn't have. Our clothes are not that different in cost, but makeup and hair are significantly different.

On the other hand, me getting my hair colored is discretionary. So that would say it should come out of my personal spending. But if we keep it as is, I will be using up all of my personal care budget each month on my hair and will have nothing left for makeup, clothes or other personal items during the year unless I use my personal allowance (which is what is really used for fun stuff like books) for hair and makeup.

I need to talk to DH about this and see how he feels.....

 

[Gumby]

I need to talk to DH about this and see how he feels.....

A smart man (and I'm sure he is) would say "Of course we need to adjust your personal care category to account for that. Don't give it another thought."

 

[sailor]

For those of you that use personal allowances, how do you approach mismatched expenses between spouses?

It's just another budget item for us. For example DW's haircuts, hair color and her gym are not part of the "allowance". Or depending how do you look at it, they are added to her discretionary spending budget.

 

[Arifriekinel]

For those of you that use personal allowances, how do you approach mismatched expenses between spouses?

For us, anything personal and unnecessary comes out of the $100 + 25% side income allowance. Neither of us gets our hair or nails done, and we mostly share our clothes, but we haven't bought any since we started allowance back in July, so I'm not sure how we'd handle it.

Our medications and my hygiene products are both covered under grocery, but anything else is allowance.

 

[Animorph]

For those of you that use personal allowances, how do you approach mismatched expenses between spouses?

Some examples: DW pays her hairdresser $80 each month, I spend $10 every other month. She spends more on clothes because "women need more clothes, they need to replace them more often, and they cost more to begin with". Then there's her health/fitness "fad of the quarter", for which I have no counterpart at all.

We're fairly low maintenance. However, since it benefitted both of us to have her take a longer commute to work, we do look at how many miles we each traveled and pay an amount scaled to that. That's our only current inequality. It also removes any problems with whose car to use when we travel together. Back before the commutes became unequal everything was 50/50.

 

[Meadbh]

The reality is that the costs for hair care are more for me than DH. For DH to go to the same hairdresser I go to would cost him $20 a cut less than it costs me. And, I have hair color on top of that. Plus, I wear makeup and that is a cost DH doesn't have. Our clothes are not that different in cost, but makeup and hair are significantly different.

On the other hand, me getting my hair colored is discretionary. So that would say it should come out of my personal spending. But if we keep it as is, I will be using up all of my personal care budget each month on my hair and will have nothing left for makeup, clothes or other personal items during the year unless I use my personal allowance (which is what is really used for fun stuff like books) for hair and makeup.

I need to talk to DH about this and see how he feels.....

Kats, it seems to me that being a lawyer requires you to maintain a certain image and that the cosmetics, hairdos, etc, could really be considered business expenses.

Either that or DH should start going to the spa and getting manscaped!

 

[Katsmeow]

Kats, it seems to me that being a lawyer requires you to maintain a certain image and that the cosmetics, hairdos, etc, could really be considered business expenses.

That might work except I solely work from home now...

Anyway, DH and I talked about it and we decided to make the personal care stuff (hair, clothes, makeup) a part of the general household budget and not part of our personal spending money. And my budgeted amount will be more than his to account for hair costs (and makeup but that is a really small overall cost). Neither one of us really buys excessive amounts of clothes and he likes the new way I am doing my hair (albeit it is more expensive) and he thinks the cost is reasonable. We've cut more than that cost from our budget this year by making some other changes (coincidental) so making this change doesn't increase our annual expenditures beyond what would be acceptable to the overall budget.