Matt and I sat down to have a "financial summit" yesterday. Ack. As money is apparently the number one cause of marriage failures (or something like that), we felt like it was important to tackle it pre-wedding. You know, bring to the table all the cold hard numbers: what we owe, what our personal bills are, what we make (we had rough ideas of one anothers stats, but we'd never actually laid it all out on the table). And dear readers, it was frightening. Few things can break me down into a quivering blob of tears faster than talking about my insane debt and pathetic income. Combine that with a career-ly frustrated Matt who's freelance work has felt the effects of the recession, and you get something of a powder keg. Deciding how to merge our (in my case very messy) finances is proving to be stressful, to say the least. I've been repeating the mantra "we are a team, we are a team, we are a team" and it's helping. I have to admit though, that as the partner with the shabby finances, my difficulty is in believing that marrying me is actually a prudent move on his part. And the old insecurity rises again! Ah well. He's nothing but reassuring on that front. And I know all will be well - it's just the getting there that has me a bit tense today.
Anyone have any words of wisdom about constructing a joint financial system?
just found u through peony love. your comment about being a grown up without the annoying parts made me jealous because my life has way too many annoying parts. anyway, my bf and i have joint credit cards that we use for groceries, trips, dates, house things, etc and then we each pay half of the credit card bill. we don't have joint bank accounts yet, but this works well for us.
ReplyDeleteHiya- thanks for visiting my blog! :)
ReplyDeleteugh- Andrew and I SO have to do this as well... we both have a TON of student debt, and right now I am technically only on contract until January... and it looks like he didn't get into grad school. BOO.
I'm so glad you wrote about this, I think it's great how you are both sorting this out pre-wedding and it will surely help TONS. :)
right now we take turns paying bills (except rent) but I KNOW that if we ever want to own a house this will change. Most likely what will happen will be that we will have a joint account for groceries, rent/house payments, phone/internet bills that we pay into equally each month.
Then for the rest I figure I'll pay off my debt (student loan+car) from my account and his debt from his account. with exceptions if we are strapped for cash.
You and your fiance will most definitely figure out what would work best for you! And, you could always go seek out financial advice from your bank. :)
Can't wait to explore your blog some more!