Who balances your checkbook and pays the bills? Clicky Poll

LadieBumbles

I just finished paying the bills and balancing the checkbook and was curious to know, who pays the bills in your house?

We share the duty - I was off today, so I took the reins.  [Poll]

dadonet

My husband does for now but i'm taking over cuz he is seriously sucking at it

christen_z1

I do it. I don't want to even think about what our financial situation would look like if my DH took over that stuff. lol.

LadieBumbles

dadonet:

My husband does for now but i'm taking over cuz he is seriously sucking at it

We were at a friends this weekend and the subject came up. Our friend said the first month they were married they did it together - sat at the kitchen table with all their bills and wrote out the checks to mail them off (this was before online bill paying).  She said that she wrote the checks out and he stuffed the envelopes - and 30 days later got late notices because he stuffed the wrong checks in the envelopes! Ooops! She does the duty now.

cnw112784

christen_z1:

I do it. I don't want to even think about what our financial situation would look like if my DH took over that stuff. lol.

THIS! I love my husband and he is good at many things, but money and bills are not one of them, it took almost 2 years for us to clean up the mess he had made in college with his finances and random bills he never paid, overdrafted etc....I let him get his own savings account and I said, you HAVE to write down what withdraws you make since our bank doesnt print it in a book or anything, and he said he would, well the next time we went to the bank the account had been closed because there was no money in there....so yea I just handle everything and I think he likes it that way, no money worries for him...

babes12

i pay certain bills and balance my checkbook all the time. 

DH also pays certain bills but is awful w/ balancing his checkbook.  he's terrible w/ money.  ugh.

A Pregnant Pause

I voted SS. We keep separate checking/savings accounts (we have one combined savings account) and we pay different bills. He pays the mortgage, taxes & utilities. I pay the car payment, car insurance and groceries. We both have separate credit cards. We are authorized users on eachothers' accounts, however typically we spend on our own and pay our own cc off. We've discussed combining finances more after LO arrives (our joint savings account is really more "fun money" than anything else) because I will either be staying home (no more income!) or we'll be absorbing $2k a month in daycare fees. It doesn't really make sense for one of us to specifically cover this.

dadonet

LadieBumbles:

dadonet:

My husband does for now but i'm taking over cuz he is seriously sucking at it

We were at a friends this weekend and the subject came up. Our friend said the first month they were married they did it together - sat at the kitchen table with all their bills and wrote out the checks to mail them off (this was before online bill paying).  She said that she wrote the checks out and he stuffed the envelopes - and 30 days later got late notices because he stuffed the wrong checks in the envelopes! Ooops! She does the duty now.

LOL that would be him! This past week our power got shut off because he forgot to pay the freaking bill! Lets just say on a day when its 90 and muggy out without A/C he had a very PO 6 month pregnant woman do deal with he is lucky to be alive 

dadonet

LadieBumbles:

dadonet:

My husband does for now but i'm taking over cuz he is seriously sucking at it

We were at a friends this weekend and the subject came up. Our friend said the first month they were married they did it together - sat at the kitchen table with all their bills and wrote out the checks to mail them off (this was before online bill paying).  She said that she wrote the checks out and he stuffed the envelopes - and 30 days later got late notices because he stuffed the wrong checks in the envelopes! Ooops! She does the duty now.

LOL that would be him! This past week our power got shut off because he forgot to pay the freaking bill! Lets just say on a day when its 90 and muggy out without A/C he had a very PO 6 month pregnant woman do deal with he is lucky to be alive 

jeshapiro

My husband is no good at it, so I do it all.

cantalopes24

MH doesn't even know how much he makes unless I ask him to look at his pay stub before it gets deposited. I do all of our banking and bill pay. We have joint everything except we have seperate credit cards with $300 that I put $100 towards a month if they carry a balance. If he runs out of money it doesn't affect me and it's only 1 thing for him to track.

Janimal

We have two joint accounts.  One is mine to handle and one is his.  He pays some bills, I pay some bills.  We each have our own credit cards too although we both can use them.  If he is running low in "his" account, he gets money from mine and lets me know.  We have a set amount that automatically goes to investments and savings, so after we pay bills, whatever we have left is at our personal discretion so we don't have to run purchases by each other.  Although we always discuss big ticket items first. 

We never fight about money. 

Saemilyn

DH is a financial genius so I let him at it. He plays the stock market, moves money around and manages to save a TON of it.

It may be a bit old fashioned but I love not having to deal with the finances. I'm still in the loop, it's just not one of my responsibilities.

pennysuedog

My husband is a bean counter he does monthly budgets and has all sorts of accounts and spread sheets. 

He pays all the bills with his salary and what little money I make I manage.  I buy groceries and fun stuff.

cantalopes24

Janimal:

We have two joint accounts.  One is mine to handle and one is his.  He pays some bills, I pay some bills.  We each have our own credit cards too although we both can use them.  If he is running low in "his" account, he gets money from mine and lets me know.  We have a set amount that automatically goes to investments and savings, so after we pay bills, whatever we have left is at our personal discretion so we don't have to run purchases by each other.  Although we always discuss big ticket items first. 

We never fight about money. 

This is huge for us. My parents never fought about money but his parents always did. I don't think it matters HOW you manage your money as long as it works for your family. We got in one small fight over something stupid he wanted to buy and I sat down and went over how all the little stuff he buys adds up, there is only so much money we can spend every month. We decided to do the seperate credit card thing so it's his responsibility to make sure he has the money he needs for personal discretionary spending. No arguing because he either has the money or doesn't.

 

MrsClark8109

Money stresses me out alot--not lack there of, just spending it in general. I'm a firm believer in having 6 months worth of expenses in liquid assets at all times, and with the babies coming, and new house--seeing large withdrawls creeps me out (even for like the down payment, I refuse to know the numbers)

So we set up and agree on a budjet together--clear any and all expenditures with eachother but when it comes to actually writing the check we dont--we do autopay-- our church donations monthly, mortgage, student loans, car payments, internet/cable/cellphone bills, electricit and gas bills and we dont use credit cards so there are no monthly bills for those.

The only bill we dont autopay is groceries--and we take out set amount of cash on the 25th of each month and use only that to pay.

Sammy-Mae

I took over because we were constantly getting calls from bill collectors.  I am still paying down both our credit cards because I used them to get us back in the good books with our bill collectors.  DH used to pay things like rent and phones and then ignore the rest or only partial pay the rest so we could have more fun.  I was sick of the phone calls so I took over.  I maxed out both credit cards to pay all our bills in full and have been slowly paying them down over the last couple of years.  We will be debt free with the exception of our mortgage by the end of August.  I am actually very excited because this means we can actually put more than small amounts into savings every month and have way more wiggle room in the event something happens, like oh, having to take the cat to the vet three times in the same month you have all these expenses to get your house ready to sell. 

jkitty520

I voted SS because we (as of right now) maintain separate checking accounts and mostly handle paying separate bills.  After we got married and had some checks written to both of us, we added my name to his checking account so we could deposit them, but I still have my own checking account.  He pays all the mortgage, insurance, utilities and big expenses from that account (he makes more than double what I do).  My paycheck goes into my account and I pay for our groceries and small things, and my own car payment and insurance, etc. 

Neither of us has any credit card debt or school loans (I finally paid all of mine off in anticipation of LOs arrival - WOOHOO!) so we are good there - the only major debt we have is the mortgage and my car payment.

Once LO arrives and I am only working part time, or not at all, we are going to have to revisit this topic though, and come up with a new plan. 

UGADawg8

I couldn't tell you the last time I balanced a checkbook. . . heck, I haven't written a check in years!  We just check our online banking frequently to make sure there is nothing odd. 

As for bills, we have a joint checking account that all bills are paid out of but it's my responsibility to pay all the utilities, car payment, and credit card (which we pay off each month, i only use it for the Disney reward dollars).  He pays the mortgage and cell phone bill.  We pay everything via online bill pay though. 

Soon2BMrsN

Just depends on who has the time.  During the school year, when I'm working, DH usually takes care of it in the mornings after I leave (he doesn't have to be at work as early as I do).  But when I'm off, I usually take care of it.

carstekj

I pay all bills and check out our bank account online often... I don't really balance a checkbook, since I do most things online.. My DH would be totally lost if he had to pay the bills... he doesn't even know how much money is in our account most of the time.... 

FrauElyse

We agreed when we got married that I was better at organizing and managing things, so it's been settled for awhile.

xtencornfield

Either of us could do it but I chose to take on the responsibility. We have all joint accounts except for our credit cards, which we almost never use. I do believe that if I hadn't taken over the finances we wouldn't have near as much in savings as we do and DS most certainly wouldn't have a college fund, LOL. I also just moved our big savings account to a new bank to get an even better rate...this isn't something DH would be proactive about. Just trying to convince him that we need a more solid budget plan with #2 on the way was a trial...and his main focus at work is budgeting!

love4penelope

I don?t ?balance? my checkbook but I handle all the bills. I had a bad experience with my ex-husband many years ago. He used to handle the bills ? I ended up with bad credit because he let stuff go to collections, many times the electricity would get shut off cause he didn?t pay or the gas or something.  So, now, with the love of my life, I have an excel sheet I created ? I have all the bills listed, some are due at the beginning of the month and some are due in the middle/end. My husband and I have our own personal account and then one for the bills. This is the best thing I came up with!!!! When we both get paid, I look at my excel sheet to see how much needs to be transferred from our personal to the bills account. I log in, transfer the money and pay the bills that are due. This way he has his own spending money / I have my own spending money and I never have to worry about something going through at the wrong time or something to make any of the accounts go into the negative!!!! This sheet includes our bills and groceries for the month. We each pay for our own gas.

boylanbabies

I used to but when I deployed last year he permanently took over those duties. Perfect.

ansulak

Janimal:

We have two joint accounts.  One is mine to handle and one is his.  He pays some bills, I pay some bills.  We each have our own credit cards too although we both can use them.  If he is running low in "his" account, he gets money from mine and lets me know.  We have a set amount that automatically goes to investments and savings, so after we pay bills, whatever we have left is at our personal discretion so we don't have to run purchases by each other.  Although we always discuss big ticket items first. 

We never fight about money. 

** This is what we do.

leahraewku

We're opposite of most everyone else.  I am horrendous with money.  DH is in charge of all finances and I'm on a monthly budget.

JMKaut

I voted SS - DH and I worked through our budget together and then set up automatic payments for bills....so that's together, sort of...

and the check book - we do it mostly together, organizing things to go in and everything, but he's the one who actually puts it through on the computer...

 

LauriJean_2009

We have one joint checking account and then each have our own accounts.  We each put a set amount of our paychecks into our joint account each month.  This is for savings and bill paying. What's leftover is our own to spend as we wish.

We each pay our own car payments and any individual credit cards.  We only have balances on 3 cards right now and the total is let than $500.

I have a personal savings account that has 3 months of my salary in it for emergencies.  

I make a significant amount more than DH and therefore take on more of the financial responsibility.  He is smarter with his money than I am, but I like To spend what I make.