In your home, who does the finances?
I stay home with our children while my husband works, but I manage all of the finances. He has never been good with money, and has deposited his paycheck into my bank account ever since we moved in together.
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In your home, who does the finances?
I stay home with our children while my husband works, but I manage all of the finances. He has never been good with money, and has deposited his paycheck into my bank account ever since we moved in together.
My wife simply takes no interest in our finances; leaves that strictly up to me. We've always had a joint checking account, but I don't think she's ever written a check except during one 10 week period that I was out of town on business and left her a list of bills she could expect during that time. And the first three and a half years we were married, we were assistant managers of a nice 104 unit apartment complex and she was accustomed to writing receipts for tenants and making up bank deposits. She frequently asked me to check her numbers and I never found a problem, so I know she can if I could just get her interested in our finances.
I do the finances at our house. I am an accountant so it's like second nature to me. There are times when he sticks his nose into it and then messes up the system! He looks at the bank account online every so often, but I handle everything else.
My husband and I do them together. I keep the excel spread sheet, but we sit down together and go over the budget and talk about how money will be spent. It works well for us.
I think that's the best way. I wonder how much trouble my wife would have taking over if something happened to me. I do use some spread sheets for a number of things, but basically, our financial matters are on Quicken, which I've been using so long I don't even remember when I first started.:laughing: But I do think both partners should be familiar with their financial situation.Quote:
Originally Posted by fresh
I do the bill paying and keep records of all our expenditures in an Excel spreadsheet, but I keep my husband updated on where we stand and we discuss major purchases together.
I do the finances and track them via an Excel Spreadsheet. My husband could do it if he had to, he just chooses not to.
I am also a stay at home mom and I am the responsible for paying the bills. We sit together every few months and make a list of the things that need to be paid and decide what percentage of our available money should go to each in order to lower the bills as soon as possible.
If your wife take the finances then you have the big advantage that you need not to worry about excessive shopping of your wife. She can handle all the financial affairs with perfection.
I'm taking a Financial Course by Dave Ramsey. It's really helpful! So, to answer the question, I monitor my finances, but then again, I'm not married so all I have to worry about is myself!
@Monnie and @fresh, I also use an Excel spreadsheet. I've come to really enjoy Excel. :)
@Bird, I'm sorry to hear your wife isn't quite on board with you. Let me attempt to give you a tip. Women (generally speaking) love to be helpers and they love to be adored/appreciated. So if you can somehow delegate a financial task to her and shower her with compliments afterwards (in a non-obvious way), she may just be encouraged to continue helping you. Tell her she's attractive for helping you, you LOVE that about her, etc. It could work.
And Bird, how do you like Quicken? Do you use it on a Mac or PC and have what version do you have? I hear the latest version is a pain. What do you think?
Briana, I'm currently using Quicken 2010 Deluxe on a HP PC (Windows 7 Home Premium); never owned a Mac. The computer was 3 years old in January, but awhile back I "upgraded" to Windows 7 from Windows Vista. As with much of the technology of our days, nearly everything will do lots of things for which I have no use, has lots of features for which I have no use, so each new version of Quicken is worse than the last one, to me.:laughing: And of course, each time I've gone to a new version, it had to convert each of my old files. And I still have all my old Quicken files on this computer from 1993 forward. I know I do some things most folks wouldn't consider. For instance, we keep all our credit card receipts and I enter them into Quicken the same day, then reconcile them each month. I even keep track of all our cash on hand and cash expenditures on Quicken.:laughing:
I don't even remember what version of Quicken I put on the new IBM computer I bought in early 1993, but I was using Quicken for some years before that on Radio Shack TRS80 computers. I know I had a model IV TRS80 in 1986 and was using Quicken even before that. And the version I was using in 1986 did everything I wanted it to do.:laughing:
As for my wife . . . well, there's some things she's very good at and I don't know what I'd do without her after 46+ years, and I think she knows it, because I've told her she's the best thing that ever happened to me, but she's just never had any interest in computers or our finances. Maybe it's hereditary since both her mother and mine were the same way.:laughing:
Haha, well there's no shame in that. She sounds like a great woman. :o
Sounds like you're a nerds nerd like me. I used to keep every receipt and follow the same procedure, but without Quicken - just a bunch of scribbles on notepads. :laughing: It got to be a bit exhausting though.
I could really use Quicken, but I'm still working out the best solution to that need because the Mac version is a nightmare from what I've heard.
Wife does it all, by hand, pen and paper, the old fashion way. I once tried using Quickbooks for the farm but it seemed like overkill