Combined Finances

Combined Finances

This post is for the married couples out there. I know a couple friends who are married and still don’t combine their finances. They really don’t have a clue about each others finance’s. They are doing well, but it always shocks me as to why they don’t combine their finances.

I ask them why and they say it’s working the way it is. They both have their own accounts and then have a separate account for the household. Weekly they will both throw in some money to cover the household expenses. Mortgage, bills etc. One of them generally buys the groceries each week. They don’t have to worry about their spending since they each have their own accounts.

I think this is a horrible way of doing things, it’s sloppy and most likely more work. First off you don’t have to be married to combine your finance’s. I always said marriage is just a expensive title. If you and your spouse have been together for a long time and you trust each other why not combine your finances. There is so many benefits to having combined finances.

One Account, One Card

Me and my wife have one chequing account, and one credit card with both our names on it. All payments come and go to that one chequing account. It’s clean, we both can see what comes and go’s and have a exact idea of how much money we have for life expenses / investing/ giving. It also saves on bank fees having only one account =) Sure me and her could go blow the whole account and be broke. But luckily shes on the same page as me and doesn’t like to blow money.

The only downside I see to this is gifts. I look at our accounts often and try to keep that credit card balance at 0 dollars religiously! She always says it sucks at my birthday or Christmas when she needs to buy me something and I can see where she bought stuff. Ie a sports collectible store it’s pretty obvious that’s a gift for me! I tell her to just pull out cash and the problem is eliminated.

Friends have brought up the concept of they can buy whatever they want with their own accounts though. Yeah that is true, but me and the wife generally buy whatever we like although if its over $100 we generally talk about it first. (Some of you may be shocked at that) You talk about each 100 dollar purchase? haha we talk about a lot of 50 dollar purchases as well. Most stuff over 50 bucks you really don’t need and would that money be better off invested or used for something else?

Investing

Ok so that’s the basics of sharing your chequing account. But what if you shared every account? I generally manage all our money. (In a way this bugs me because when I die will she know what to do? I try to teach her) Anyways I used to have to log into her account and add money to her RRSP or TFSA but the bank brought up some term (I forgot what its called) But she had to sign some paperwork and now when I log into my account I see her TFSA and RRSP’s now too! I can now contribute to her accounts within mine.

Now when I log into my one bank account I can see all our accounts. The chequing account, the credit card, MY tfsa, Her tfsa, Her RRSP, Our son’s RESP and our Mortgage. Can’t get much simpler than that. Oh plus we don’t pay those annoying bank fees anymore. We used to pay a $10.95 service fee each month, by having all these accounts together banking is now free.

Finale

By seeing our total combined finances in our chequing account it lets us know how much we can invest. Whatever investment account we would like to throw money at, we do. Me and the wife have a clear view of our financial situation, there is no question of is she/her saving for retirement? Do they carry alot of debt?

I think by sharing your accounts in the open it makes finance’s that much simplier, cuts down on cost’s and makes your financial future that much clearer! You two are in it for the long haul, do it together!

Curious if you are a couple do you share your accounts? Why not?

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! I’m thankful for a lot of things, you the reader’s are one of them….. Thanks.

Go Leafs Go!

Rob

Hey I’m Rob, creator of Passive Canadian Income.

In 2011 me and my wife had almost $60,000 in debt and a negative $7,000 Net Worth. Through hard work and financial education we paid all that off. Now we are focusing on increasing our Passive Income Streams to make the money work for us. Feel Free to Follow along the Journey by clicking the Social Media links below or subscribing to get notified of new posts on the sidebar.