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Combining finances

blog.mitchjlee.com

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21–30 of 109 posts

Re: Combining finances

#21

Post by kasey_junk »

soperj wrote: post #9

This sounds basically like have one pot of money, but allow both people to blow some of it every month on unnecessary stuff. Which is the opposite of what a saver personality would like to do. I don't see how it would work in a relationship where one person is blowing the "fun money" every month while the other person saves it. There would still be resentment.

An easy hack around this is to not know what the balance is in the other persons fun money account. If you treat the 'fun money' as gone as soon as it is paid out, then there is no resentment.

Re: Combining finances

#22

Post by jschwartzi »

lupire wrote: post #10
soperj wrote: post #9

This sounds basically like have one pot of money, but allow both people to blow some of it every month on unnecessary stuff. Which is the opposite of what a saver personality would like to do. I don't see how it would work in a relationship where one person is blowing the "fun money" every month while the other person saves it. There would still be resentment.

There's no way to create a budget the solves the problem of partners fundamentally disagreeing about the economic model of their shared life.

The best system seems to be to communicate honestly and openly, to be accepting of your partner's differences, to establish and allow personal boundaries, and to negotiate when boundaries seem to interfere with each other. So basically to have a healthy relationship.

Re: Combining finances

#23

Post by Cerium »

blts wrote: post #19
skrebbel wrote: post #2

This is what my SO and me have been doing for 8 ish years now and it's great. We call it "pocket money". I can't complain when she spends it all on shoes and bags, she can't complain when I spend it all on beer and hamburgers. When we were poor, we both only got a little pocket money each month. Now that we're richer, we both get more. I buy hotel breakfasts now sometimes (the buffet ones), on normal work days, in my…

Does it lead to overspending? Since you have your pocket money - then you need to spend it?

My wife and I use the same system, and I would say no. We both tend to save ours and then spend more some months than others.

Re: Combining finances

#24

Post by xondono »

While I’m sure it works for the OP, I’m guessing most other options would work.

My take is that this approach just moves the discussion to what qualifies as “fun money” or should come out of the shared account.

Maybe it’s because we are too young yet, but me and my SO just have a shared account and contribute to it equally (she insisted, I wanted to do proportional). We make sure to put in there enough to cover the bills and some more to have some “emergency money”.

Aside from that we keep separate savings accounts and some investments.

Re: Combining finances

#25

Post by MereInterest »

challenger22 wrote: post #6

I would be very frustrated if I explicity had less fun money than my spouse.

It definitely depends on the couple. Currently, I am working and my spouse is not. During our most recent talk about budgeting a few months ago, we took this into account when figuring out appropriate amounts of fun money for each of us. Specifically, since I am out of the office/house for lunch/dinner less often, and my hobbies (programming/baking) are inexpensive, I neither need nor want as much fun money, and I would rather they have it available instead.

Re: Combining finances

#26

Post by fegu »

The article, and comments so far, focus on income only. This is the easy part. A lot of people have savings or investments going in. Perhaps one is renting and the other owns a house. This is where it gets tricky. Especially considering it would be prudent to lay plans that also work well in the event of a divorce.

Re: Combining finances

#27

Post by deckard1 »

Where there is a social issue, there is an engineer with analysis and a clever system to "fix" it.

Budgeting is one thing. But developing a fairness system... are you sure you should be married to this person in the first place? Might want to go and tweak that algorithm a bit.

In all seriousness, systems like this are brittle and really only work if you're on the same page anyway. In which case, you don't need the system. If your SO likes to spend, he or she may not agree that the "fun money" allocation is enough. You may think it's too much. So you come up with some middle ground. Resentment builds over time because your SO can't always afford the things they want, and you resent having too much allocated to his/her pile of fun money.

tl;dr: if you're not on the same page financially, a fancy system won't save your marriage. Fancy systems and over-analysis can also bring problems, YMMV.

Re: Combining finances

#28

Post by lotsofpulp »

deckard1 wrote: post #27

Where there is a social issue, there is an engineer with analysis and a clever system to "fix" it. Budgeting is one thing. But developing a fairness system... are you sure you should be married to this person in the first place? Might want to go and tweak that algorithm a bit. In all seriousness, systems like this are brittle and really only work if you're on the same page anyway. In which case, you don't need the sy…

I also find all this clerical nonsense funny. If your SO and you are not on the same page regarding goals and what both are willing to prioritize or sacrifice to achieve them, then it’s all moot.

Re: Combining finances

#29

Post by ianferrel »

soperj wrote: post #9

This sounds basically like have one pot of money, but allow both people to blow some of it every month on unnecessary stuff. Which is the opposite of what a saver personality would like to do. I don't see how it would work in a relationship where one person is blowing the "fun money" every month while the other person saves it. There would still be resentment.

My wife and I do this, and while we're both savers by nature, I'm more of a saver, so I end up piling up the fun money while she tends to spend hers (I think. Mostly. I don't actually know how much she has in her personal account because I don't care)

There's no resentment because we already agreed that fun money isn't part of savings or long-term planning. And the fun money is a small enough part of our overall budget that it doesn't impact important goals.

From a "resentment" point of view, it's much better for me to have pre-agreed on $x a month that's going to be spent frivolously than it is to have a conversation about each frivolous purchase as it comes.

And I do still spend my fun money, I just spend it in larger chunks. She's more likely to spend regularly on things like lunch and events with friends, I'm more likely to save up for a while then buy a new power tool, or rent a cabin for a weekend ski trip.

Re: Combining finances

#30

Post by ianferrel »

StavrosK wrote: post #8

What if one spouse makes seven figures and the other is unemployed and takes care of the household? The income disparity then is too high for this, it seems to me, but maybe it's just me.

I don't think there's any income disparity that can't be handled by the last method, where each person gets a monthly allowance for whatever, and other expenses are jointly decided on?
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