Money and marriages

[IzZzy]

Typical bloody lawyer...

Hehe

Just a quick question. do you both earn the same, what is the one party earns less what happens? Do they still contribute their 50% even though they only remain with a R100 afterwards?

I earn more. We each pay half because we each get half of the benefit.

 

[SauRoNZA]

Nope. My savings are above the line (ie, company pension/provident contributions), and bond repayments.
Things are separate because there's actually no such thing as a joint account in SA.
I operate my accounts, she operates hers. Most of the debit orders come off my account, some come off hers. There's no sense in opening ANOTHER account with associated costs etc for "shared" expenses. We each pay what we can, and it works.

Yeah sadly there is no properly Joint account in SA although I've heard that FNB apparently offer one.

I didn't mean open yet another account, I meant closing some and having one.

Predominantly for me it's about transparency but also cutting costs. I already hate paying my bank money for keeping my money and it would irritate me even more knowing we are pissing money away for yet another account and then related costs for debit orders etc.

Our life insurance and RA stuff is one debit order, so is our home loan etc. If I had to split that all up I would piss another R100 away every month in bull****.

 

[Sinbad]

Yeah sadly there is no properly Joint account in SA although I've heard that FNB apparently offer one.

I didn't mean open yet another account, I meant closing some and having one.

Predominantly for me it's about transparency but also cutting costs. I already hate paying my bank money for keeping my money and it would irritate me even more knowing we are pissing money away for yet another account and then related costs for debit orders etc.

Our life insurance and RA stuff is one debit order, so is our home loan etc. If I had to split that all up I would piss another R100 away every month in bull****.

FNB don't do a joint account, but you can have an account with another person having full authority to transact. Our bond is like that - in my name, but my wife has ATT and it appears in her online banking profile.

 

[Pitbull]

I was just talking to a friend who is married (I am not) . She was telling me they split every cost in the house halfway. :wtf:. I thought when you get married you are now 1 i.e do all things together and not independent. I might be wrong, i was looking forward to getting married but I worry about such issues as they can make or break marriages. Please help me understand someone.

My wife handles our home finances. I get spending money. Works best for our household. She has my personal account card 98% of the time anyway I want to spoil myself without her knowing I use the business account.

 

[SauRoNZA]

FNB don't do a joint account, but you can have an account with another person having full authority to transact. Our bond is like that - in my name, but my wife has ATT and it appears in her online banking profile.

Yeah that's the same setup we have at Nedbank except that she doesn't have an account of her own so no internet banking profile therefore uses mine instead.

Have duplicate cards etc.

Was a nightmare when it came to OTP's until the Smartphone app was launched and the devices permanently linked now.

 

[Sepeng]

That is a very good point! Transparency.

I know way too many people where the husband (or wife) have a separate bank account that they don't want their spouse to know about etc. And it boggles my mind that people can operate like that.

And for the love of all that is holy! GET A WILL!

Or like my folks - mum has no idea what dad earns, where it goes etc.

Also, tied to the will issue - transparency helps in case of death of a spouse. I think it's important to know what policies, RAs, pension/ provident funds exist, what each person is entitled to, all that.

 

[SauRoNZA]

Also, tied to the will issue - transparency helps in case of death of a spouse. I think it's important to know what policies, RAs, pension/ provident funds exist, what each person is entitled to, all that.

Actually where my comment stems from because a colleague of mine died recently and he was one of those people hiding everything. She's still struggling to find what was going on where and I suspect a lot of it will only come about a year from now when people start asking for money or something.

 

[SauRoNZA]

Also I should say sharing has made it incredibly easy to save money and not piss it away on **** because we have sort of a 2-stage authentication in place before spending money on crap.

 

[Sinbad]

Actually where my comment stems from because a colleague of mine died recently and he was one of those people hiding everything. She's still struggling to find what was going on where and I suspect a lot of it will only come about a year from now when people start asking for money or something.

If you have your spouse named as a beneficiary on RAs, policies etc won't those companies come looking for her if you die?

 

[envo]

One major thing that needs to be discussed and sorted and STUCK to is a budget and who pays for what or if there will every

I liked an idea I read a few years back where you add all your expenses (house/cars/insurance/savings/food) together. You add your salaries together. Then you deduct your expenses from your "salary" and divide the remainder by 2.

That way if wife wants to buy a cream from a rhino's horn for her crows feet and it costs her R500, that comes out of the remainder. Both get the same "play money" out after paying for all things mutual, and one doesn't feel inferior vs the other if one earns more than the other.

Of course you can still be petty and go "I earn more yada yada" but then you shouldn't have been married in the first place (being an immature c**t which shows you don't respect and love your partner at all)

But like I said. I like the above idea. No more fighting about budget and who bought what

 

[VinoG]

the love of money remains the route of all evil.

sometimes one needs to give up everything, start again and build up a new you and never get attached to anything in this life. It will only drag you down. Nothing lasts forever and nothing else is as important as truth and self respect.

 

[f2wohf]

Hehe



I earn more. We each pay half because we each get half of the benefit.

Don't you eat more than her by being a man ? And use more space in the sofa and in the bed by being taller ?

 

[Gnarls]

We've worked out how much we need a month for all bills, grocery shopping, and some entertainment. We have a shared account for shared debits and groceries. At the beginning of each month we each put 50% of the monthly amount needed into the share account

If you want something for yourself, ie shoes, bottle of whiskey, you use your personal account

Planning to get married at the end of the year. We've had this discussion and we'll probably work it like this. We've worked out how much our living expenses including savings are, deduct this from the sum of our incomes and split the rest.

 

[SauRoNZA]

If you have your spouse named as a beneficiary on RAs, policies etc won't those companies come looking for her if you die?

I would imagine so but what I'm thinking is how do they find out you died?

Obviously it gets to them eventually somehow but I'm sure it's not instant.

 

[Sinbad]

I would imagine so but what I'm thinking is how do they find out you died?

Obviously it gets to them eventually somehow but I'm sure it's not instant.

Yeah I guess.

I imagine my work provident/group life would know when I didn't pitch up one day That's the bulk of the money anyway.
My other RAs and life policies are done through the same financial adviser as my wife uses, so that's easy enough I'm sure.

 

[SauRoNZA]

I liked an idea I read a few years back where you add all your expenses (house/cars/insurance/savings/food) together. You add your salaries together. Then you deduct your expenses from your "salary" and divide the remainder by 2.

That way if wife wants to buy a cream from a rhino's horn for her crows feet and it costs her R500, that comes out of the remainder. Both get the same "play money" out after paying for all things mutual, and one doesn't feel inferior vs the other if one earns more than the other.

That's largely how we do it with regards to our "static" salaries. Our budget is broken down into income and expenses on a Google Doc that we share and gets updated accordingly when things change.

We then draw our "salaries" from the remainder.

Anything like overtime and commission I get or Tax returns or bonuses we don't add to our budget and we see that as real play money where we buy things for the house or things we really wanted for a while.

Generally when it comes to big things that we don't necessarily collectively want we it's a case of "I want something for XXX so you can get something for XXX as well" and this comes out of that money that sits outside the budget. So if I want to buy a R6000 exhaust for my bike she'll get to spend around R6k on whatever she really wants. We've become so disconnected from the money over time that it's not even a case of needing to be exact to appease the other. Sometimes I'll have something for 6k and she'll spend only 4k and we call it even. Which is what other people don't seem to get because they'll panic about that remaining 2K as "their money" while we don't see it as either of our money in the first place.

It's a business. We run it like one. And since I want to "retire" at 45-50 it works really well.

 

[Topdoggdbn]

Similar to SauRoNZA and Pitbull

Salaries combined. both get equal spending/sundry money after all expenses paid. All monthly or repeatable expense are added to budget and paid from whoevers account is convenient. my account handles all the debit orders. but not for much longer.

for us it works well but there are still issues with the way we handle money.
Wife wants to pay cash but I am the opposite.

 

[SauRoNZA]

Yeah I guess.

I imagine my work provident/group life would know when I didn't pitch up one day That's the bulk of the money anyway.
My other RAs and life policies are done through the same financial adviser as my wife uses, so that's easy enough I'm sure.

Yeah look in my case it's the same...but then that's what we are talking about with regards to transparency.

You have transparency in the sense that she known your financial advisor and also knows that you have an RA in the first place.

Some people are really strange about these things and would meet that financial advisor in secret and hook up the RA on the side as well.

 

[F1 Fan]

Many people operate like that and I honestly don't know how they manage. Especially not if both partners aren't on the same pay scale then they certainly can't split it all 50/50 without major ***. Or do they split it based on salary difference?

Personally we see it as a team effort in our house and we have one account both our salaries go into and a credit card in my name which is just for backup.

We operate our finances like a business. So long before we got married we bought our house which we each own 50% of and we threw all our money together then already. Then we got married ANC with pretty much the only exclusion being my pension fund from a previous company as it was a large chunk of change that thew us out of balance. Going forward everything else is 50/50.

We each draw a "salary" in cash which we split equally for day to day stuff. Big things go on the budget and requires approval from both parties.

All Tax return money, bonuses whatever go in the same pot with our salaries. If there is excess we go back to the budget to spend it.


But your marriage is what you make of it. Your partner needs to understand your needs long before you get to that point anyway.

We operate exactly the same....and it works perfectly well..

 

[SauRoNZA]

for us it works well but there are still issues with the way we handle money.
Wife wants to pay cash but I am the opposite.

See this is the part where I say over time we become so disconnected from it that we see the same pool as both of ours and we don't try and "match" each other at all.

So basically we draw a grand at a time (or closest default amount) to save costs. This goes into our wallets so we have some cash for day to day stuff like lunch etc.

Everything else is card swipes and generally amount to household stuff like groceries or recently baby related items. But by example my wife sees a special for a baby car seat she knows that we need it and it's reasonably priced and she buys it without needing to ask me about it.

We've built the habit to the point where we know what the other one will or won't approve. People think it's a case that she has to phone me every time she needs to spend a hundred rand but it's nothing like that at all because over time we've learnt each other's spending habits and automatically know what will and won't fly.