Adventures in Joint Checking
Hi! Welcome to Twenty Set. Here you will find 4-5 new articles every week about personal and professional development written specifically for the young professional. If you like what you read, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Image Source: srid via FlickR
My husband and I fight a lot about our finances. Namely that I spend too much.
Which is not true. A typical week of spending consists of me buying lunch and sometimes dinner for myself. What is does not consist of are expensive shopping trips (binges, really), manicures/pedicures, eyebrow waxes, or elaborate skin treatments. All of which I would love but that I don’t partake in because I also love being able to pay my mortgage on time.
“Why don’t you pack your lunch?” he asks. Because I don’t want to make the time. And please don’t leave me a comment about how you make all your food on the weekends and organize it into little containers labeled by day so you can just grab and go in the mornings. I don’t care. I don’t want to use this method and I have a good job and I work hard to earn my paycheck and I deserve to spend $75 on lunches every week if that’s what I want. Damn it. Besides, I’ve already sacrificed a high-maintenance lifestyle and I should not sacrifice networking opportunities also.
My husband hates this attitude towards money. He thinks that I’m the one in control of our money because I make it and don’t feel I need to ask to spend it. I’m not sure how this works, because my husband and I have a joint account and joint credit cards, and his name comes first on everything we own together, including our condo, simply because he’s a male. By the way, there is plenty of advice from smart women who advise against this setup because it can leave a high-earning woman powerless in a divorce, but out of respect for my husband and his ego I have agreed to it anyway.
Yet he still feels the need to ask before spending money, for whatever reason. This is why I received a call from him on the train last weekend asking if he could buy a cable package that shows every national baseball game on Chicago stations. (My husband is a die-hard St. Louis Cardinals fan.)
I told him I didn’t care either way and his friends started cheering in the background. Kind of like the evil wife had lifted the chains, unlocked the basement door, and let her husband spend one hour in the sunlight. Exasperated, I followed with “You know, you don’t have to ask me about these things.”
In truth, the train I was on cost more than the cable package he was asking for. This is because I bought the tickets two days in advance even though I’ve known about this trip since February, and the prices for train tickets skyrocket as the date nears. He doesn’t know I did that yet, and when (if) he reads this he will promptly scan our credit cards to see exactly how much more I had to spend because I procrastinated, and I will probably get a lecture about how irresponsible I am even though the only reason I procrastinated is I wasn’t sure if I was actually going or not. It was worth it to pay more so I could have extra time to get over the anxiety of revisiting my past.
Two days after this incident, my husband called me about finances again. This time he was buying a plane ticket to Kansas City for his friend’s bachelor party, and wanted to know if it was worth an extra $33 to fly into an airport closer to our house.
It’s worth an extra $33 for you to stop calling me at work about asinine finance questions, I thought. Here’s my logic: $33 is what I spend on two taxi rides. $33 is the morning hours I spend at work where I’m not productive anyway because I don’t function before 10am. $33 is what I pay for a blouse at Nordstrom Rack. Asking for permission to spend $33 is absurd in my book.
And that’s what personal finance management comes down to for me: cost-benefit analysis, where the benefits aren’t always tangible. It’s not that I don’t care about saving money, but I’m a firm believer that the little things don’t add up if they are a wasting your time. My husband loves penny-pinching, which is not a bad thing, just a nice-to-know thing.
And maybe that’s why we fight a lot about our finances.
Popularity: 49% [?]
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Monica O'Brien is the founder of Twenty Set, a website about personal and professional growth and development for the Millennial generation. She has been a blogger since 1998 when blogging was still in its “Dear Diary” form and in May 2007 began blogging for personal branding and profit.
Email this author | All posts by Monica O'Brien
Ha. You totaly cracked me up on this one! My fiance is in the banking business and he does the exact same thing to me. If you want $20 get it out of bank, you work there! I totaly think it is a guy thing.
EK - I agree, this is something I think a lot of couples could probably relate to. My mom tells me anytime she wants to buy something and doesn’t want my dad to know she withdraws the money from the bank over a series of weeks, because he can’t track her purchases as easily that way! I’ll admit I’ve learned some good techniques from her.
The reality is joint accounts make things both easier and harder - you always know who’s paying the bill, but it’s also harder to track how much the two of you put together are spending. And there is that inclination to ask your spouse for permission on frivolous purchases.
Thanks for the comment! I’m glad you found this entertaining.
Hil-ar-ious. Money issues are funny, aren’t they? I’m totally with you on the lunches. I don’t have the exact same issues as you, but I can relate - I think all (or most) married couples can.
Ha ha! This post makes me laugh, although I think my husband and I are the opposite. He isn’t loose with his spending, but I do appreciate it when he discusses even small purchases with me. He can be a bit of an impulse shopper and when he calls me, sometimes he realizes he doesn’t need to make the purchase. Or, on the other hand, I realize, if it was important enough for him to make the call, he has at least thought through the purchase.
So, I am always the one who says - did you make your lunch? Or, considering our financial priorities, is going on a golf weekend with your buddies really necessary? Could we invite them over for a BBQ instead?
Ugh! Posting this reply has made me feel awful about what must seem like my own control issues. I must go home and confess my undying love to my hubby and thank him for putting up with my demanding ways!
My husband and I have a joint account right now. We agreed to discuss purchases over a certain amount…in our case it’s over $200.
We are also testing out having individual accounts linked to our joint account and transferring a specific amount each month that we can spend on whatever we want, guilt free. Hopefully it won’t be too much like getting an allowance.
You can spend all your time figuring out the best way to save every penny you can, or you can spend money to save time or get you better quality. Or even to have fun.
A recent example: I spent $13.95 to get my state taxes filed instead of spending the extra half hour to type it out and get it filed for free. I know that’s more than some people make in a hour, but at the time I really didn’t have an hour to spare, and by just plunking down the cash I could get the taxes taken care of with no further effort. Worth it in my book.
Splurging on fun things is debatable and there is no rule of thumb I live by, except the fact that I can have no fun and lots of money or fun and less money.
You sound a lot like P. Trunk in this post - that’s a compliment. Anyway, I think there’s some research out there that proves that people who worry less about money end up making more of it… which is great except I’m more like your husband ;). Great post.
Oh money issues…. I guess in response I’ll say only this:
Marriage is not a business, and it’s not a joint venture… it’s a unit of one, and the left hand has agree with what the right hand is doing.
I think we fight about money, not because one person is a spender and one person’s a saver, or one person splurges and the other one shops for the deal… We fight about money because we don’t know where we’re headed.
If there isn’t at least a basic plan for what we’re going to do with our money, there’s going to be a fight.
hahaha — you should just tell him to make your lunch for you =)
Awesome! Never eat alone is the only way I make myself feel better about buying lunch…
…and then my co-workers pack their own and sit up at their desks without me (or I, without them). :\
Thanks to everyone for the comments. I appreciate the people who found it entertaining, and I should probably mention that my husband and I talk about finances quite often and always work things out. In fact, we just went over our taxes together and it went very well. So this isn’t meant to be an “I hate my husband” post, but rather something people who have to share money can relate to. The post is one-sided, but my husband is always welcome to post on my blog - he just doesn’t want to write!
To touch on a few points, I don’t think it’s bad to want to save money. I’m personally very bad at penny-pinching, because I’m a “big picture” person. So I’m the one pushing us to buy a house as soon as possible and get rid of one of our cars, and he’s the one who loves to cut back and save here and there. Realistically, we both have to meet somewhere in the middle to make it work, and we mostly do.
I like Jamie’s idea - I have talked to my husband about having two separate accounts and one joint account. It seems to work well for people, according to my informal work survey (which I do every time before I write posts nowadays).
My husband and I also have the “purchase limit” amount, but we only apply it to certain categories. For example, we wouldn’t ask each other about buying school books, but we might ask about buying a new pair of running shoes.
I am also a big fan of having fun - which is why I don’t care about things like a cable package for baseball. It helps that I know my husband will watch it all the time and it will make him very happy because he loves baseball too. For fun stuff that we will actually use, I have no problem spending what it’s worth.
I’m interested in the research Rebecca mentioned. It makes more sense to me the other way: people who end up making more money worry less about money. People who can make more money don’t worry about spending it because they always know they can make more. It’s hard for me to see it the other way around, unless those people are taking more risks that produce larger returns. It might be a little of both.
I agree with Matt, having goals in a marriage is important, and this is especially true with finances. A lot of managing a joint account is meeting somewhere in the middle if you have opposite ideas of where the money should go. But I also believe that two people are bound to have opposite ideas, which is why I’m a proponent of the setup Jamie described above. It wouldn’t work well for my husband and I now because he is a full-time student, but I think someday we will move to this model.
Michelle - it’s funny, all his classmates assume I make lunch for him.
But casual sexism supposedly doesn’t exist, right?
Devin - I hate when that happens! Though I understand, because some days I do just want to eat at my desk. On my team we designate Friday as the day we never bring lunch. So at least once a week we know for sure we’ll go out. And we also have 10 people on our team, so there is always someone looking to make lunch plans.
hey Monica
Finances can be a sensitive issue, and I’m really looking forward to the lovely discussions I’ll have some day. I’ll have to remember your story, by the way, I also found it entertaining. I love your transparency, thanks for sharing!
While I would agree that lectures over finances would be quite irritating, I nonetheless appreciate your husband’s respect towards you and your marriage, and thus do not quite agree with the way in which you have addressed this marital squabble…just a few cents from a married young’un such as yourself. =)
Miguel, you will definitely have plenty of financial discussions when you are married. Get excited for that…
Ann, I’m having trouble interpreting your comment and I don’t want to make assumptions about what you mean. So what I will say is that people handle their marriages differently, and each couple has to find a way to work best with their spouse and reach a compromise. That compromise depends mostly on the two people’s personalities and their needs/wants.
Thanks for the comments!
My husband grew up in a house where ridiculous amounts of money were spent on large volumes of junk and everyone wondered why there was no money to live in a better house. They all fell victim to the “its a really good sale” mentality - and then ended up with stuff no one wanted or used.
I grew up in a house where you didn’t think twice about dropping $100 on a pair of shoes but it was unheard of to buy 5 pairs of $20 shoes. It was like that across the board on every purchase.
Now he and I are stuck trying to balance the two extremes. I get mad when he buys cheap things but I didn’t think twice when he invested 2k in tools for his contracting business. For the time being, our way of compromising is that we each get a checking account with a set amount of money and its no questions asked for how that money is spent.
Now I need to learn how to hide the noticable cringe I’ve developed when he walks in the door with a bag from walmart…
Monica, you had me laughing today! Your honesty is refreshing. Men…well I think this post has proved that they have the ability to nag too. The key is to maintain some individuality with your finances. Some stuff you can have joint but it doesn’t need to be all of it.
I have to disagree with Ann’s comment in particular. I think that a lot of your husbands behaviour may be a projection of insecurity about the origins of the finances, i.e you. I don’t care what the modern 21st century societal rules say; most men aren’t comfortable with a financial imbalance. His making comments about how you spend the money is about readdressing that balance. At the end of the day, the litmus test is, if the situation were reversed, would he be OK with you dissecting his spending habits? Hmmm, me thinks not!
Monica, two books I’ve read that are aimed at young women and I think would be very applicable in this situation are Women & Money by Suze Orman and Goal Digger by Alicia Dunams. Check ‘em out, they’re both great.
Dorie, it’s interesting how our parents have so much influence over us even after we move out. In my own experience it seems like husband and wife start with their old habits learned from childhood, and eventually find some happy living medium.
NML, it’s a very different ballgame for women who are the primary earners in the marriage. I’ve found that most people who can’t relate have a more traditional setup. The pressures on both husband and wife are huge though, and can put extra strain on a marriage.
Cody, thanks for the book recommendations! The book I read awhile ago was Nice Girls Don’t Get Rich. It’s a little older but probably similar to the two books you suggested. I’ll have to check those out at some point.
Thanks for the comments!
@ Monica - my fiance and I have gotten a ton of financial advice in our pre-married state, and some of it seems inoperable (I love Dave Ramsey’s savings ideas, but I am not a cash carrying person, so his system just doesn’t work for me.)
Anyway, I know you aren’t alone in fighting about finances because everyone I know is telling me how to avoid it when I get married. Even though I don’t anticipate it to be a problem - but maybe that’s why it’s such a big problem: people don’t see it coming.
The best advice we’ve gotten so far is actually two things. We’re trying to decide which will work for us. One is to set a limit for what you can spend without discussing it. Im your case, maybe $35 would be a good spot
- it could be $50 or $15, it doesn’t really matter, just so long as there are perameters that you both hold as a common standard for spending without review. That way, he will quit bugging about $33 but you will have to have an actual conversation about your procrastinating rather than forcing him to read your blog or check your credit card statement to find out about this stuff (which can cause a lot of resentment and frustration. More free unsolicited advice that I think is good: Always communicate with your spouse when they need/want you to if you care about your marriage.)
The other idea is something one of our friends did when they got married and one spouse spent a lot more than the other (one also made a lot more than the other). They created seperate slush spending accounts for each of them with the same amount of cash and an individual debit card that was automatically deposited each paycheck. Say $100 for each of you. Or $200. Or $500. Or something. They could do whatever they wanted with that, no questions asked. Save it for a big new plasma. Spend it on shoes or sodas. Whatever. That way, they had the security of knowing that each month, they would be able to save a set amount of money but still spend like they want, within reason.
Most financial experts will tell you to pay your debt & bills first, then pay future you first (put money into savings), and then spend what’s left. So this advice seems like a practical way to make that happen.
Tiffany, great advice for married couples. I know when I was getting married people were absolutely dying to tell us how to manage our relationship; you must be experiencing the same thing in the midst of your own wedding plans. It’s good to have all the advice as long as you can extract the pieces that will work best for you.
It’s funny, I actually told my husband all of this stuff in person before I published the post, but after I wrote it. I wanted to leave it in it’s original frustrated form though because it was a little funnier and a little more true to the reality of financial disputes between loved ones.
Surprisingly, he was cool with me posting this, and thought the piece was funny. He’s laidback for the most part (except about finances!), which is one of the things I love about him.
What I would love is if he would write his own side of the story, but I absolutely can’t get him to write anything for this blog, even though I’ve bugged him repeatedly! Blogs are just not his thing I guess.
@ Monica - I understand! And I actually loved the frustrated tone of the post, because it’s so full of life and reality. But I do know that sometimes as someone who’s so used to parts of your life being dissected by others on blogs, that can be difficult for significant others to understand / be cool with / appreciate / participate with.
What really suprises me is that both my dad and my boss have actually commented (under their real names) at both of my blogs, no less, but I never am really sure if my fiance has read them or not. But dad will start talking to me one day about something I said the other day, and I will be like, what? And then I will realize that he’s talking about something I wrote on a post. It cracks me up!
I’m also fortunate, like you, that my fiance is very laid back about things and encourages me to write about reality like it is. So I’m glad that your husband supports you, because I know it can be tough for the spose of a blogger, just from other people’s stories.
Keep rockin on!
Nice sharing…Financial issues are very funny, i run a joint account with my hubby and we always have an agreement on limit we can spend expect for precautionary motives.
My husband also didn’t like that I spent $ on lunches everyday, but I argued the same thing - that I didn’t want to pack my lunch, I didn’t want to make the time, etc. So the compromise was that he started packing my lunch! The thing is, I’m not opposed to eating a packed lunch, I just had no desire to pack it myself, so this has worked out really well for us. I have to admit, though, on the occassional day when he doesn’t have time to pack it, its nice to treat myself by going out for lunch again.
Tiffany, I always ask my husband if he’s read my posts too. I just never know - and I think sometimes he’ll read just to see if he got mentioned again!
Biodun, joint accounts are definitely difficult, but you are right. The key is communication about what types of spending are acceptable - and I’ve found that as long as both people have equal “rights” on what they can spend there are far less problems.
Rory, I always tell my husband he should pack my lunch, but he refuses! He packs his lunch anyway though, so I’m not sure why it’s a problem. I think it’s more principle - he thinks I should pack my own lunch and he refuses to “princess” me.