Newlywed Advice: How to Divide Your Moolah.
I have heard on multiple occasions that money is the number one cause of marriage problems. This brings up an obvious question. How do two people divide their income equitably?
Some couples solve this problem by lumping everything they make into one large pool of cash, paying all bills out of that amount, and then using the rest as shared disposable income. The approach makes more sense when you share large monthly bills like a mortgage, car payments, or student loans, but it also has some inherent problems. For one thing, my wife and I don’t share the same hobbies. If we organized our money in this way, I would have to get her approval if I wanted to buy a $200 climbing rope, and she would have to run her Saturday morning plant buying bonanzas by me for my financial blessing.
Flynn and I have a different system. We’re currently very fortunate in that we don’t have any large car, house, or student loan payments. With this in mind, I calculated out how much each of us earns and we pay bills accordingly. For example: I earn 60% of our total income, so I pay 60% of the bills. Then we put a certain amount of money every month into a joint account for groceries (included in the bill money). This system works great because it prevents us from ever getting into arguments over cash, but it makes it really hard to save for things like vacations because we don’t have one large pool of cash to draw from.
In an ideal world, I would suggest pooling your money together, paying all of your bills, and then dividing up your disposable income into 3 portions. 20% for you, 20% for your spouse, and 60% to share. That way, if you go out to eat, you can pay for it from the shared disposable income pool. However, if I wanted to go out and buy something expensive and ridiculous, it could come out of the portion of money that was mine and mine alone to blow. This system also seems to foster conversation and compromise (by agreeing to use the shared portion responsibly) while avoiding the stupid disagreements over more selfish purchases.
My last piece of advice would be to assign one person as the primary bill payer and money handler. This point could be argued, but I find that bills get paid on time every month more frequently if the responsibility falls into one person’s lap. Please don’t misunderstand me. I believe that your spouse should have equal say in all financial decisions. It just seems to be work out better when there’s only one person who is assigned to paying the bills on time.
Tags: dividing income, Money, newlywed money advice
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