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Old 09-25-2013, 08:18 PM   #21
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I can't imagine having to be accountable to someone else for such a small amount of money as $51. I guess that's why I truly enjoy being single!
Ah what you don't know is that we ARE the accounting departments in our households! It is he who must check with me!

Fortunately we both have the same crazy ideas for how to spend our money, for the most part.
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Old 09-25-2013, 08:50 PM   #22
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We have always had one joint account, and no 'rules' about who can spend what. However, we both have frugal natures and probably have discussed any substantial purchases.
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Old 09-25-2013, 09:23 PM   #23
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We pool our income and split it into common and individual budgets. Spending (and saving) from the individual budgets is entirely independent.
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Old 09-25-2013, 09:26 PM   #24
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Like some others here, one account, really no rules--I don't think either of us has vetoed the other. Also like others here, we know when to save money and we know when to spend money, so fortunately those have balanced out.
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Old 09-25-2013, 10:53 PM   #25
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We've always (30 years) had only joint accounts and we've always tracked expenses weekly. No judgments, no recriminations, but if spending in the current month goes over the reference amount, which is spending averaged over the trailing 12 months, by more than inflation, we cut back until things have reverted to "normal". In fact we've trimmed spending in each of the past three years without consciously trying or feeling squeezed.
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Old 09-26-2013, 05:15 AM   #26
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DW has her $, I have mine. She pays some of the bills, I pay some. I save some of mine and she saves less of hers. She never clears her discretionary spending with me. My discretionary spending is usually more $, so I'll let her know when I'm going to spend more than $1000 on something. DW still works FT and I work PT, so its somewhat ok now, but there will be a budget when we pull the plugs.
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Old 09-26-2013, 08:39 AM   #27
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DW has her $, I have mine. She pays some of the bills, I pay some. I save some of mine and she saves less of hers. She never clears her discretionary spending with me. My discretionary spending is usually more $, so I'll let her know when I'm going to spend more than $1000 on something. DW still works FT and I work PT, so its somewhat ok now, but there will be a budget when we pull the plugs.
This is pretty much us except I am FT and she is PT. My hobbies are way more $$ but I pretty much consult at the 1k marker (or at least inform) I also fund her account when it gets to low.

Not sure how we are going to handle things at retirement but I would not say we are necessarily frugal (nor want to be) Having no need to leave a legacy (no kids) will give us some flexibility in that area.
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Old 09-26-2013, 09:01 AM   #28
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DW has her $, I have mine. She pays some of the bills, I pay some. She never clears her discretionary spending with me. .
This would describe us . We are both retired but have at home small businesses . If I had a fifty dollar spending limit I would have to call him every time I entered JJill and if he knew how much even a blouse costs he would be nauseous so I am protecting his health by just shopping & not telling . He does the same for me .
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Old 09-26-2013, 09:13 AM   #29
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Like some others here, one account, really no rules--I don't think either of us has vetoed the other. Also like others here, we know when to save money and we know when to spend money, so fortunately those have balanced out.
Pretty much the same here. We are both LBYM mentality, so it is rarely an issue. It happens occasionally, when I have to ask if a certain expenditure is really a good use of funds. Most recently, she wanted a big screen TV for the family room - I didn't disagree (I'm not a big TV person, and am sports agnostic), but I did encourage her to hold off for a year, as we'd likely get a much better TV for the same money. I think we are both glad we waited, We would have ended up with something quite a bit smaller a year earlier. And if our older TVs are any indication, we will be living with this a long time.

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Old 09-26-2013, 09:14 AM   #30
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I grew up in a separate account household - and thought that's the way we'd go when I go married. I was older when I got married (late 30's) so we did that... until we had a kid and moved across country in short order. Now it's joint and it works.

I pay the bills, run quicken, do the forecasts. I don't ask on the little stuff - but if I see a charge expense for more than $100 that I don't know what it's for - I ask... if only to get the category right. He has a card in his own name that doesn't get pulled into quicken except manually - it gets used before my birthday and Christmas... and he tells me to update it manually after the gift is given... I then pay the bill. LOL.

I guess money is fungible in our house.

We're both frugal and try to live within a set spending/month - so big stuff is discussed and planned for so that money can be moved around to accommodate the extra spending. As long as we stay within our budget - no permissions are asked. If we get to close - I tell him (and myself) to throttle any extra spending (lunches out, starbucks, etc) until the next cycle.

It works for us.
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Old 09-26-2013, 10:34 AM   #31
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We have joint accounts. I'm the one who keeps track of everything. I do categorize all spending in YNAB and there is a spending category for me and one for DH. For those categories we put a set amount of money into that category each month and each person can spend it as he or she wishes. The things that are currently paid from spending:

1. Computers, hardware and software. Personal electronic devices (iPad). The one exception to this is software or hardware that is common to the household (new router, new printer). We each have individual computers.

2. Books, gaming, other discretionary entertainment. DH doesn't get upset when I spend what he thinks is too much money on $X and I don't get upset if he spends too much on his hobby since we are both getting a set amount of money and how we spend it doesn't affect the other person.

3. Each person's share of dining out.

4. Any soft drinks each person wants to buy.

5. Clothing and personal care (hair, makeup, toothbrushes, razors, etc.)

We do vary from time to time what we put in the spending category. Category no. 2 is how it started. But, we found that making spending broader than that was helpful. For example, dining out and soft drinks was something we recently added. We felt we were spending too much on them but since it game out of the general food budget, there wasn't a lot of incentive to cut them. By putting them in the spending money category then each of us knows that if we spend less on these things then we have more to spend on our "fun" categories (mostly 1 and 2).
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Old 09-26-2013, 11:01 AM   #32
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We each get a set amount of pocket cash at the beginning of the month. We are not accountable for it. It's to spend on what you want. DH gets almost double what I get because I just don't need much.

DH prefers to go to thrift stores, flea markets, hamfests, etc. and browse ebay looking to buy other people's used stuff. He does this until his cash is gone. Sometimes he can make it to the end of the month.

I have enough stuff that I already own and would rather know that my cash is in my wallet. I may spend some on an extra eating out (we have money budgeted for that) or something that's a personal want. At the end of the month my unused cash gets saved with previous months unused cash.

Since we are not accountable to each other on how we spend our pocket cash, I try not to judge the stuff he buys and he tries not to drool over my accumulated wad of cash. But he does covet my iPad mini that I bought for cash out of my accumulated excess pocket money.

Yeah, opposites attract.
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Old 09-26-2013, 11:22 AM   #33
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At the end of the month my unused cash gets saved with previous months unused cash.
That is the key to our spending money category. What isn't used, gets accumulated. So, we can each save up for specific things that we might not otherwise have bought.
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Old 09-26-2013, 11:53 AM   #34
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We each have our own private accounts for personal expenditures and a household account used for joint expenditures.

We discuss large joint expenditures and often seek advice from each other about large private expenditures although we don't need "permission".
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Old 09-26-2013, 06:04 PM   #35
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I took some tips from other members here a few months back and created an allowance system with my boyfriend. We work together so all money comes in under both names.

We have a base allowance of $100/mo, plus we each get 25% of any side income that may come in over the month (helping someone move for $50, we each get $12.5, or I do insurance photography for $25 a vehicle, so we each get $6.25, etc).

We just keep track of those purchases on excel rather than opening up separate accounts for the allowance, and we do allow it to carry over month to month to save up for more expensive things
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Old 09-26-2013, 06:50 PM   #36
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Nothing hard and fast, but somewhere around $50 is our cut-off. Clothing is exempted. I use 2 different models of running shoe. both expensive, and when I need a new pair I can just buy it.
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Old 09-28-2013, 05:07 PM   #37
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We solved the "budgeting" issue by not having a budget. Works pretty well. She does virtually all the day to day money management (check book, reconciling the credit cards, etc.). I do the quarterly and yearly Vanguard, etc. statements and any rebalancing. As far as spending money, it only comes up once every couple of years when I buy a "toy" she didn't know about or take several hundred in cash from the checking. Other than that, we are free to spend what we want. We simply don't ever buy anything "big" like a car, appliance, furniture, etc., without consulting. Not so much because we have agreed to that, but because we have learned to do so over the 40+ years. Seems to work for us 99+% of the time. YMMV
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Old 09-28-2013, 05:26 PM   #38
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We have had a $100 cash weekly allowance each as long as I can remember, no matter how much money we've made. Anything over that we just do a minor discussion, like hey I'm going shopping.
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Old 09-28-2013, 06:33 PM   #39
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Nope.
We each spend whatever we want for discretionary expenses. Something over $1K would most likely involve a little discussion, but since we're both pretty frugal in general, the occasional treat is perfectly reasonable.
1+ Works for us too, the normally frugal part helps a lot, although I've begun to realize we are probably getting less so as we approach FIRE with some confidence. I probably have a bit more leeway as I do the routine Quicken finance stuff and can go to [enter favorite sporting goods store here] on a whim, or go on a mini-Amazon shopping spree for gadgets and yeah, I roll my eyes when her theater season ticket charge comes across on the CC. Over $500 or so we know enough to say something to avoid surprises. Current budget, which we expect to pretty much maintain as is when we transition to FIRE has that much monthly discretionary spending built in.
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Old 09-29-2013, 11:23 AM   #40
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We've always had joint accounts with no specific rules, and like many others here are frugal by nature. If anything, we've relaxed a bit now that we have finished with all of our planned major expenditures (both kids through college, bought and remodeled retirement house, bought motorhome, two cars less than 5 years old). I used to stress out when DH would buy something I considered extravagant or unnecessary, now unless it's over $200 or so it doesn't bother me. We do generally discuss anything over about $150 before buying it.
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