How involved are you in the finances?

[samssugarmomma]

We make all of the decisions together, but I handle all of the day to day bill paying and what not. I have an excel spreadsheet that I use to keep track of our monthly expenses and update it every week to make sure we aren't overspending in any one area. It takes about 45 minutes or so each week. I also have a seperate spreadsheet to track how much we have in savings for various items.

[diggitydot]

When we first got together DH did most of the bill paying stuff since most of the crap was in his name. It wasn't until I realized that he didn't usually know how much money was in the account because he NEVER writes down a transaction and merely relied on his "memory" that I took it over.

He's a MAJOR unconscious spender. He just doesn't think about little things like sodas and coffees adding up. At one point, he gave up his ATM card because he couldn't stop using it for stupid crap and was happy as a clam to have an allowance.

I still pay all the bills, mainly because I have way more time on my hands than he does. And because we have no overdraft fees when I do it. And for major purchases, we do the same thing as TabulaRasa. One of us does some serious research and the other does the Devil's Advocate shtick. Works pretty well, for us.

Currently DH is in charge of the bills. He's much better at it than I am, but as his schedule starts to pick up I may have to start keeping up with things.

[GrayMatterWife]

I doubt my DH even knows the names of both the banks where we have checking accounts. Almost everything comes to me online only (no paper): our banking statements, our brokerage account statements, all our bills except the gas bill, our mortgage. He doesn't even know what his take-home paycheck amount is. Never sees the statement, never prepares the taxes, never pays a bill.

He used to handle all the financial stuff when we first got married. However, about 2 years into the marriage, I found out that he didn't know the difference between "term" and "whole life" life insurance and had been paying an outrageous annual premiums on a whole life insurance policy on him that his parents had purchased for him when he was a teenager. Cash value: $25,000...so he was desperately, drastically underinsured (which meant I would have been screwed if he'd passed away..!). I cashed out the value of the policy, got him adequately insured on a term policy and lovingly fired him as our accountant.

And we've both been a lot happier ever since! He hated that stuff and didn't have the time to invest in it and I obsess about financial planning and am not too bad at it.

[planet]

I do everything and I hate it. I hate the stress, the responsibility and that it won't change. The only thing I have to look forward to financially is when dh makes enough so that I can actually stop juggling on a tightrope and just juggle. Dh doesn't know what he makes, what we spend, our debt load, our needs, our bank acct # or even what credit cards we have. I'd say I hate handling the finances more than anything...but that classification is actually reserved for MIL.