who pays

[GuardianOne 0]

She's not here yet, but we both agreed to have our own separate accounts and a joint account. No matter what our income in, we will set a % of our income into the joint account for bills, then the rest goes into our own account and leftover in savings.

[Rings 10]

Loke pays the rent and the medical insurace and I pay the rest of the bills. We both work full time. I am the mom that runs the kids to school and picks them up and I do homework duty, but he does all of the laundery. I do trash and dishes... hahaha I don't even know how it happened that way it just sort of became our routine. We have separate banks accounts and a joints savings and we both add money to savings per month... the rest is for special secret christmas gifts that we don't want our signifigant other to find out.

[Gemmie 142]

We have one joint account at the moment that pays for everything, but as soon as I start working and getting my own money, we'll also have separate accounts. I'm guessing we'll start paying bills from the joint account and food/leisure from separate ones. We haven't talked about the specifics yet but we're both really good with money (and tell each other every time we each spend money) so we'll have no problems.

[lechatnoir 0]

Right now I'm the bread winner and my husband stays at home. He does most of the cleaning and cooking. We have a joint account and even when he starts working, all the money will go into this account. I pay all the bills and manage our budget. We also believe that we are "one unit" and do not believe in keeping separate funds.

And on another note, hubby is changing his last name to my last name. I do not have to change. I refused to change my name again after my first marriage. Changing your name to your married name is stressful enough and having to change it BACK to your old name is just an even bigger pain. I was married the first time for about 3 years and apparently IRS only looks at the first name on a tax return...which is usually the man's. So, after I got divorced and tried to file my taxes in my maiden name the IRS tried to tell me I hadn't filed my taxes for 3 years... was a huge pain in the #### and I will never change my name again lol. It took me like 3-4 years after I got divorced just to get all my accounts switched back to my maiden name...

But luckily I have a wonderful husband and has no problem changing his last name to mine.

[Nikita2Charles 32]

Joint Family Checking, then a separate checking account with online acess to the joint account for my wife.

That way it's easier to see what's being spent and avoid overdraft.

[tallcoolone 102]

For the 2 years I covered everything.

My house/living expenses in USA, and her school and apartment and living expenses in Philippines.

After she graduated and came to USA, I carried all the bills since she was not legally able to work.

6 months ago, she rec'd her GC and Work Permit, So after she had her 1st paycheck I gave her all the household bills to pay.

I oversee what bills are paid and make the decision on all expenses.

[rebeccajo 14]

IMO, this kind of thing should be sorted out before the immigration and the marriage.

[ms_jinga_lala 0]

I have no idea which one of us will wind up making more money and to me it doesn't matter. I intend for all our bills and money to be together, all joint accounts, everything shared. To me it doesn't matter if it's my money or his as long as he is the one physically paying for most of it. I am a little old fashioned and when we go out to dinner, I won't be seen taking the check or giving them my money - that will all be him lol. He wants it that way too. Of course, he wants to get here get a good job and take care of me completely but I have dreams of my own and I really want to work.

To make him happy when we go out together I won't pay for anything physically. It will all come from our joint accounts so there will really be no way to tell who's money is whose once he gets a job, but until then it will all be my money. I'm content with that. We will budget together and make decisions together no matter what. It doesn't matter who's money it all is, most all of the decisions will affect us both fairly equally. We will both need to agree on frivolous spending and eating out and such as that. There won't be a lot of big purchase decisions for us to make because I already own most everything. But when one comes up in the future, we will make it together.

I think I will be the primary money manager and watcher though. He's not that good with math and I already have all my tracking and budgeting set up. I just have to teach him how to use the program lol. I want him to at least be able to know, even if he doesn't click on the update buttons and keep it all updated for me.

[BJZags 17]

IMO, this kind of thing should be sorted out before the immigration and the marriage.

I agree with that. BUT, the dynamics are changed somewhat when one partner moves here and cannot work for a spell. This shift, even though expected, is perhaps more difficult to put in "practice" than might be initially planned, especially if the person immigrating has always been self-sufficient up until the time of the move.

[Mrs.J06 4]

We put 80% of our incomes into a joint checking account which we use to pay bills, house payments, groceries and as vacation money. What's left over goes into our joint savings.

20% go into our "personal" accounts and can be used for whatever.

If we know we have bigger expenses coming up we put 100% in the joint account.

Has worked very well so far, but we discussed this a long time before I came here.

While I was waiting for work permit and GreenCard I lived off my husband's income for everyday stuff and my savings for luxuries I thought I had to have. We both knew I would be out of income for a while but neither one of us had any issues with that.

[Marilyn. 340]

I started giving my hubby an "allowance"

he gets 20 bucks a week to spend on whatever he wants and he can only use his ATM card to put gas in his car..

[karenros 0]

We have one joint account and everything comes out from them... once we got married there is nothing like his money or my money its our money... both of us work fulltime...

[NickD 202]

My wife was more than happy to turn over all the finances to me, she never liked paying bills. Ha, I don't like it either, but someone has to do it. We discuss all of our purchases before making them, now I am saying when shopping for something over a couple of bucks, have to talk it over with my wife, LOL.

She is a very frugal careful shopper like me, we get along very well. We split up for mall shopping and she goes with her friends, if I tell her she can spend a thousand, comes home maybe spending a hundred or nothing if she doesn't find what she wants for the price she wants to pay. She is a nut on computers and digital cameras, don't have to get permission to buy that stuff.

She is from a country where no returns are permitted, even if you buy a piece of non-working #######, that is sure common around here lately. So had to train her to save her receipts, it took her four years to finally return something that didn't fit her, but she feels very awkward about that, I enjoy returning things. She is better at finding the cheapest airline rates than I am, so I leave that to her, I am good at appliances, so that is my job, but she insists on picking out the color.

We get along real fine, never a major argument in six years, our minor misunderstandings are mostly due to a language barrier, but we just laugh that off. Was worth dealing with the USCIS for five years. Both of our ex's knew how to blow money ten times faster than it came in.

[Hokie97 5]

I paid for most of the things to do with my visa and the wedding, because I was working and have savings from selling my house right before we met.

Since moving to the UK, I have been unable to find work, and he is on benefits, so we're only using his money, but I'm in charge of it. He has made some questionable spending choices in the past, so we have some debt to pay off, but we're doing it from his income, because we know we need to save the profit from my house sale for their visas (my husband has two children) and our move to the US next summer.

It has been an adjustment. I've always been good with my money, even though I never had a lot of it. It's been hard to take care of the four of us on his benefits (since I'm not eligible for public funds), but I think it has really helped me learn a lot, and when we move to the US, I'll be better able to take care of us all. We will both be working, and we have vowed that we will not use more of my savings than we need to. Because we'll need it for future passport renewals and removal of conditions on their greencards in a few years. And of course for emergencies.

The hardest thing for me to deal with was hearing my husband say he wanted something and I did not feel we had the money for it. I didn't want to say no to him. After (many) discussions, he's finally convinced me that he knows the difference between wanting and getting, and just because he wants something, doesn't mean he thinks he's going to get it. We all get an allowance on pay day, and we have to make it last the two weeks until our next deposit. This is has worked well for us.

[movingsoon2 0]

My husband pays the mortgate on our house & all the house bills. I pay for the food/household stuff as I just started working. It works for us for now.