PING: Married Folks

[Swaggs]

What is the most money you would spend (or have spent) on one purchase without telling your wife (or husband)?

The reason I ask is because during our engagement, my wife and I met with a "mentor couple" through the church who asked us that, and we came up a $200.00 maximum and both were pretty happy with it. But, we have married couple friends that routinely will go out and buy $1000+ in jewelry or clothes without approval.

I was just wondering about experiences from others.

[rkmsuf]

all dependant on income.

the bonds routinely shell out 10s of thousands at time. barry makes 17 million a year and all.

[albionmoonlight]

Depends on income. Right now--having just married and moved and bought a house and thinking of kids soon and having one spouse in school instead of working, we are not really in a position to spend much of anything without "approval."

I think, though, that $200.00 sounds about right for a normal couple in a normal place in life.

[condors]

my wife and i have

1-spending money
2-savings money
3-bill money

if its from 1 then its no need to talk to the other one, if there is an issue than 2 or 3 comes into play (and i am a cheap bastard who says if we don't have the money we don't need it)

[digamma]

We each take a small "allowance" out of each pay check. We don't care what the other does with that money (I guess hookers might be a problem)...as my wife says, that is my video game money and her clothes money. We don't spend much out of our joint account without the other knowing it (or it being on routine purchases...groceries, bills, etc.).

[JasonC23]

We run every purchase (aside from gifts to each other, of course) by the other. And yes, we're still happily married.

[SplitPersonality1]

Originally Posted by JasonC23

We run every purchase (aside from gifts to each other, of course) by the other. And yes, we're still happily married.

Currently we do too. Not to check up on each other, but just because our checking accunt balance is awfully close to the zero line and we don't want to get a negative balance.

When things are normal financially, I think $50 is reasonable for us. There is no hard and fast rule in our household, it is more of a common sense issue.

[gstelmack]

Originally Posted by JasonC23

We run every purchase (aside from gifts to each other, of course) by the other. And yes, we're still happily married.

So do we. Most I've ever spent without talking to her first was about $900 on a present for her first Mother's Day. This is all part of being a partnership in my mind. I know other couples that have separate accounts and it works well for them, but that's not for my wife and I. We're in this together.

And if I do make an impulse buy (say, a $50 game I wanted or something) I know that it's better to tell her upfront than try to hide it. She WILL find out eventually...

[FrogMan]

Originally Posted by albionmoonlight

Depends on income. Right now--having just married and moved and bought a house and thinking of kids soon and having one spouse in school instead of working, we are not really in a position to spend much of anything without "approval."

I think, though, that $200.00 sounds about right for a normal couple in a normal place in life.

This is very similar to our situation right now, with the wife just going back to work after taking a year off after giving birth. Right now, we're on "everything has to be approved" or just about.

We've been a bit strapped for a while now, so I don't know what the regular "limit" will be when we get back to normal, and it may not happen for a little while, as we'll have plenty of short term debts to pay back, heh. I'd say between 100 and 200...

FM

[Marc Vaughan]

Depends entirely on whats happening in our lives, when we only had one kid we tended to splash out more than now we've got three and a mortgage ....

It isn't the amount that matters imho, but the though that counts ...

[FrogMan]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

And if I do make an impulse buy (say, a $50 game I wanted or something) I know that it's better to tell her upfront than try to hide it. She WILL find out eventually...

so true

FM

[SplitPersonality1]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

She WILL find out eventually...

Yep. Been there, done that. Once.

{shudder}

[MacroGuru]

I run it buy the wife, generally after the purchase, cause if I ask before, she says no....

It's easier to play the game if she is so pissed off she wont talk with me.

[rkmsuf]

It's not mine baby...

[Franklinnoble]

We don't need much in the way of rules... neither of us are big spenders. Generally, we're pretty good at communicating with each other anyway.

[Samdari]

We run everything by each other too, with the exception of me buying the wife a $700 piece of jewelry after she delivered my son. Gift and all you know.

[JeeberD]

This is good stuff to think about...

[Solecismic]

We set a $100 rule when we got married. From time to time it gets broken, especially when it comes to gifts, but just having set it helps keep things in line. We've never had an argument about money.

We're now living in a cardboard box.

[Samdari]

Originally Posted by Solecismic

We set a $100 rule

...


We're now living in a cardboard box.

Perhaps the $100 rule could have been relaxed when it came time to purchase housing?

[JonInMiddleGA]

Depends on the spending category.

She never asks about what I spend on games for example (I think she's seen me wrestle with price points so often that I don't think she worries).

I never want to know what she spent at auctions, antique shops, etc. Several years into the marriage I learned that I'm much happier if there's some stuff I just don't know. Clothes, shoes, and eBay also fall into that category.

Now, other stuff -- vacations, trips, etc. for example -- those we go over in detail with each other before booking anything.

Most of the routine monthly expenses, we pretty much know what those cost w/out discussion.

[Eaglesfan27]

When we first got married, I was still in school so we had very strict rules on this (basically all expenditures had to be necessary.) Now that finances are considerably more comfortable, we each have the same "allowance" each week that we can spend on just about anything we want. The rest of our money goes into savings (for a house among other things) and to pay bills.

[lurker]

I've always wondered how things would work with things like gifts and stuff. I check my bank balance online every morning against an Excel file and have a sheet in there that's just for future projected expenses. I know I'm going to keep doing that after I get married, so if Passacaglia spends something that I didn't anticipate, I'll know it before I get the gift. Do you guys just use cash for gifts and take it out of the "spending money"?

[Eaglesfan27]

I do all of the finances for my family, and I do much the same thing you do with an online bank balance and using a financial management program. This isn't a problem for my gift buying obviously, but Ms. Eaglesfan makes me promise to give up my compulsive checking of the bank balance for all of December so I don't know what she got me or how much she spent on it.

[gstelmack]

Originally Posted by lurker

I've always wondered how things would work with things like gifts and stuff. I check my bank balance online every morning against an Excel file and have a sheet in there that's just for future projected expenses. I know I'm going to keep doing that after I get married, so if Passacaglia spends something that I didn't anticipate, I'll know it before I get the gift. Do you guys just use cash for gifts and take it out of the "spending money"?

Online bank access has definitely made this more difficult.

[Warhammer]

My wife and I run everything by each other. The main reason being, if we set the limit at say $50, my wife would buy a whole lot of stuff that was $45, etc., etc. So our system is set up for everything to be cleared.

That said, when I get a commission check, we normally each get something up to say 25% of the check, and the other half goes into savings.

[lurker]

That's a good idea to get you to not check the balance around gift time. It would be hard to not do it, though.

On another note, I can't believe how junior high-ish my first sentence was. "how things would work with things like gifts and stuff" Ugh, so bad.

[Eaglesfan27]

Originally Posted by lurker

That's a good idea to get you to not check the balance around gift time. It would be hard to not do it, though.

On another note, I can't believe how junior high-ish my first sentence was. "how things would work with things like gifts and stuff" Ugh, so bad.

It was very hard for me our first christmas together as a married couple. I was compulsive about checking the bank balance, especially since it was low... it's gotten easier with time (I did have one slip-up our 2nd christmas together.)

[Radii]

Originally Posted by lurker

I've always wondered how things would work with things like gifts and stuff. I check my bank balance online every morning against an Excel file and have a sheet in there that's just for future projected expenses. I know I'm going to keep doing that after I get married, so if Passacaglia spends something that I didn't anticipate, I'll know it before I get the gift. Do you guys just use cash for gifts and take it out of the "spending money"?

I have a CC I'll use for Oliegirl's gifts and she has one she'll use for mine. I normally check that CC often(b/c it's a bank of america card that shows up on my online banking list) but for the month of December I'm not looking at it. Oliegirl is putting all our Xmas expenses on it(and we have a side savings account that we're putting Xmas savings in, so after Xmas it'll all get paid off right away) so I don't know how much or what is being spent on me at any time


For now we have an excel sheet much like you are talking about. We sit down before each pay period and try to think of any and all known expenses that will come up and at the beginning of each pay period we know how much money is "unbudgeted" ... as long as we don't go over it doesn't matter how it gets spent, but much of it usually goes towards extra nights eating out or something for the whole family(movie rental, etc). If I want a game or if she wants something that would come out of the unbudgeted money we generally ask the other person for the ok. It is rarely a problem.


Once debt has been paid down and there is a house I'd love to not look at every expense like I do now(I'm the anal one about money), but I think that as long as every single extra penny is going towards getting us in a house ASAP, this works best.

[Anthony]

we have several accounts, 4 in total:

1. joint checking
2. joint saving
3. my personal saving
4. her personal saving

no authorization needed for any purchase. no one touches the joint or savings (except in situations where we accidentaly spent over our means towards the end of a pay cycle and need a $20 bill out of the ATM to carry us to the next pay check). i spend whatever i want out of my savings or "allowance" (since i wind up having pennies in my personal savings account and don't actually save anything).

before when we first got married we went with just the joint accounts, but then i would go out drinking and i'd get drunk and have access to all this cash (we use ATM cards)...not a good thing. i'd lose track and take out more than i should. i'm sure she would go on her shopping sprees. this wasn't so bad when we were renting, now we have a co-op and are looking to pruchase a home next summer so that kind of devil-may-care attitude won't fly. it's hard to be disciplined when you first move out and are just used to having only your paycheck then all of a sudden there's 2 incomes and you see all this money and you're like "yes!".

now we're much better. don't ask, don't tell if it comes out of your own account is our philosphy.

[Subby]

$30

[mgadfly]

We don't have a real rule. In the beginning she attempted to make me check with her before every expenditure, but I pretty much refused to go along with that. I told her that when I bankrupted us that I'd gladly begin checking with her before making a purchase. Until then she could treat me like an adult.

I do check with her on a lot of purchases but it depends on the circumstance. For example, I never check with her before buying a video game, and I never disclose that I purchased it. However, I did check with her before buying a cat last year and before buying a truck two years ago. I've spent as much as $500-600 without asking her about it in advance, and I assume she's spent as much without asking me.

As long as we keep more money going into the account than coming out, I think our arrangement works fine. But that doesn't mean that we don't talk about finances and plan for the future, we do, but it is just that we expect the other person to act according to whatever plans we made.

(This also probably works since neither of us are big spenders)