I only tell you this so you know where I come from. In other words, we’ve never tested or experienced marriage with separate finances. That’s it.Īt no point in our engagement or marriage did we ever consider NOT having combined financial lives. That hasn’t changed over the past year and a half. How Courtney and I Manage Our Finances…Īs you might guess from the original post title, Courtney and I have joint finances. Try as we might to make it black and white, it involves very real and often raw emotions. It combines relationships, love, trust, and money.
What I didn’t fully realize at the time of writing this post (that I do know now) is how insanely passionate of a topic this is for people. A year and a half later the post continues to get a few comments every week or so. However, many people did make it past the first few paragraphs and carried on the conversation into the comments. And if you didn’t make it past the first two paragraphs, I can see why some of that hate mail came in. It was in my early days of blogging and this post was actually the first time I received hate email (and hate comments).Īdmittedly my title, “Married with Separate Finances: I just don’t get it”, and early tone was a little forward.
I say “revisit” because I brought up this topic over a year and a half ago on this very blog. Published as a part of a “Marriage Stories” feature in the April 2020 issue of Philadelphia magazine.Should a long-term couple (married or not) have combined or separate finances? There are millions of partnerships and marriages, and there’s no one way of doing it. Just because you have separate finances, it doesn’t equate to cheating or secrets or anything like that. I’m like, I didn’t know you saved that much. I think he told me like a month ago, and I remember being like, oh, really? It was way more than I thought. And we fully disclose our retirement plans.Īyinde: If Colleen needs something, she can take my card and she has my PIN number, so there are no hidden things in the background of our finances.Ĭolleen: I have no idea how much is in his account. We do have our savings account, and that’s an element of trust, like I trust you’re putting a certain amount in, and we talked about having a bank account for our daughter - she’s 15 months old - where every month we’re expected to put in X amount of our money for her. So some of this is more logistical problem-solving. We even file our taxes separately, and a part of that is just for loan repayment purposes. We assigned bills: I took the electric, and he has the water and the internet.
Literally everything else comes out of our separate accounts. I can’t tell you how many of my girlfriends literally put on delivery instructions something like, ‘Put the box in a bush.’ They don’t want to get in trouble for spending.”Īyinde: I think a good way to restate it is, we have separate accounts, but not separate finances.Ĭolleen: We have a joint account that only our mortgage comes out of, and we split that 50/50. I can understand why people would be like, how are you guys not fighting over this? I think it’s because we communicate so effectively with each other.
There have been plenty of times where we just both put our cards out and say, “Split the bill.” It’s like a bartering system: I paid for day care this week, so you get groceries next week. When we travel, one person will buy the hotel or Airbnb, the other person pays for the plane tickets, and we alternate paying for meals. I paid for it myself, and then he’ll send me half of the money. This takes away that element of guilt and frustration. Love, Money, Sex, Cheating: The Real Stories of 10 Philly MarriagesĬolleen: I can’t tell you how many of my girlfriends literally put on delivery instructions something like, “Put the box in a bush.” They don’t want to get in trouble for spending.
0 kommentar(er)
