Who Handles the Finances? | Personal Finance & Lifestyle | Yakezie Forums

Suba, I believe you – I didn't know how much I earn two years ago. Now I know it all – how much I earn, how much we spend (my 'God knows what' spend is down to couple of pounds (dollars) a month) etc.

We have divided responsibility – all out bills (the one paid monthly) are authomated; I follow the monthly expenditure (I have grown to love my spreadsheets) and hubby looks after the annual bills (insurance and stuff) and hunts for deals. he is also in charge of all travel booking including some of my business trips .

Maria

My wife manages all the bills and checks all the statements for accuracy. I deal with planning and investments. I always worry about situations where only one spouse is doing most. There are dangers both ways to this kind of over dependence.

My husband is completely disinterested.  He's supportive, but doesn't help at all.  I finally had to ask him what he'd do if I died tomorrow?  How would he pay the bills and keep life going if he doesn't even know the login to the bank?  Still haven't gotten through!

I'm pretty similar to Newlyweds on a Budget, I do most of the online payments and managing money, although we sit down and look at our budget usually every other month (it should be every month).  We also talk a lot about our finances which I think is a big key that's gotten us positive results.  We work together on cutting expenses and making more, but I do all of writing of the checks!

Hi jaicatalano,

Concerning a spreadsheet, what is the spreadsheet to do? Is it only for bill paying or does it have other uses such as budgeting, variance analysis, etc.? I have no experience with mint.com, but I have had experience with not-so-quick Quickbooks, which was so cumbersome that we gave up on it. If you want a budgeting spreadsheet, I have one.

My wife pays the bills, and occasionally we had late payment problems. Furthermore, we had critical bills for healthcare insurance that could not be late because of pre-existing conditions. The solution turned out to be Wells Fargo's online payment system. It costs about $9/month I think and most major banks have a similar system. Once a payment is set up you can set up email reminders, so you can make a payment even if the bill did not arrive that month via snail mail. You can set up automated payment timing and get electronic payment receipts

Our assessment is that each bill is quicker to pay online. We save on stamps and trips to the post office. Bills can be paid closer to the payment due date. Furthermore, if something is late, you can make online payments and not have to deal with rushing payments via Fedex. Financially, it is worth $9/month. Plus, everything is consolidated, so there is one place to look.

Larry

Melissa (Mom's Plans) said:

Do you do the family budget and pay the bills?  Does your spouse or significant other?  Do you sit down and do it together? 

I handle all of ours.  I am trying to get my husband more interested/invested, but it hasn't worked so far. :)

I've handled all things money in our family since our 3rd month dating. It works for us and I like the control! Do what works for your situation. My husband handles many other areas in the family in which I have no interest.

Like several of you, my wife and I share the load.  She pays the day to day stuff using Quicken.  She has used it for years and likes it.  I handle most of the investment stuff but she's involved somewhat in that, too.

I handle the big picture stuff and most general bills though we talk through almost everything anyway. Then bills that are personal or just still in single names we each handle ourselves. I think though the only bill my husband has like that is his phone bill. ;)

I handle our finances. I try and get my husband interested, but he's just not. Funny thing is when we separated for nearly 12 months I still handled all the finances. So I never needed to apply for child support, he let me handle all the money since we still owned a house together. I told him when his bills etc were due and I had full access to his money if I needed. His opinion was that I had the kids, so I was in more need of money for stuff for them than he was. 

I wrote everything out for him like his expenses and things, gave him recipes so he could cook etc, and he did, but finances he has no interest in.

I am actually in the process of redoing everything for him since we have changed a couple of providers, just in case anything ever happened to me.

@sensetosave-I agree.  I handle all the details, payments, scheduling, monitoring, etc.  But my wife and I work together on creating budgets, planning expenses, etc.  I think it's more reasonable to have one person focus on the execution, but make sure the vision is shared.