Gilda

Sorry I didn't follow up on this, Grace has been off for three days in a row for the first time in weeks, and of course, Star Wars.

To clarify, here's how we do things.

First, as a teacher, I have a special retirement account available to me, a 403b, into which I can put up to 1/4 of my pretax income. I have that maxed out. For example, $1000 a month into the 403b means that my gross salary, before taxes of any kind, is $1000 less, so I get that thousand invested at a cost of about $700 take home. Grace likewise invests the maximum pre-tax dollars she can in her retirement account, which isn't nearly as generous as mine, but which has employer matching, so it comes out about even.

So after that, lets say for simplicity's sake, I bring home after taxes $3000, and Grace brings home $4,000. Rather than try to figure out percentages of bills, we originally just put all of both checks into the joint checking, save for the allowance.

Lets assume that the monthly allowance is $500. I get my check, it's $3000, and I deposit $2500 into joint checking, $500 into my personal checking. Grace gets here check, deposits $3500 into joint checking, $500 into personal checking. Because we keep a baseline of $1000 in checking, that puts us at $7000. We have about $1000 coming in from our business, and that goes into the joint account. All family expenses come out of that (including my sister's), mortgage, car payments, utilities, cable, food, toiletries, anything job related, joint entertainment, medical expenses etc. At the end of the month, the day before payday, we'd balance the checkbook. Let's say there's $3700 left of the original $8000; to keep a $1000 baseline, we'd transfer $2700 into savings, and deposit our checks, and start anew.

We did that for most of the first two years. The idea was that there was no "mine" and "hers"; it was all "ours", thus the equal allowances, and no divvying up expenses based on income. We also made savings untouchable; no spending that unless the other approved. The savings was there to provide an emergency fund should one of us lose her job, or there were emergency medical bills etc.

But since we've started talking about having a child, we want for me to be able to stay at home with the baby for the first few years, so we needed to ensure that we could survive on one income alone. So we started using the system described above. I get my check, put my $500 allowance in my personal account, and put the other $2500 in savings. Grace gets hers, puts aside her $500, and puts the other $3500 in checking, and we try to live off of that from month to month for an entire year, without touching savings. The end result is the same; after the allowance is taken out, all of both incomes go into joint accounts, but this way we ensure that Grace's income will support us both.

In another year or two, the plan is to have a baby, and I'll take off for a few years to be a stay at home mommy and housewife. When we do that, living off of her salary alone, we'll still have equal allowances, because even though it'll be here salary alone supporting us, we don't consider our incomes to be hers and hers, but rather ours. When our child is old enough for full time pre-school (about 4) and I go back to work, my salary will again be "our" money.

The allowance part is what really prevents arguments over money. The monthly allowance is inviolate. Neither partner gets any say in what the other spends her allowance on; mine tends to go for comic books and clothes, hers tends to go for Japanese cultural artifacts, clothes, and presents for me. The savings is also iviolate; nobody touches that without the other's permission. The joint checking is negotiable; we've worked out exactly what constitutes joint expenses, and what constitutes personal expenses. But sometimes, something comes along that doesn't fit either, so we figure that out together.

We've avoided 90% of the money arguments this way. The numbers above are for illustrative purposes, and do not actually represent our income and expenditures.

It's a little more complicated than that, because we're not actually legally married, but not by a whole lot. It allows us to focus on other parts of our relationship.

Oh, and the basic system was one Grace proposed, and we worked out the tweaks between the two of us. Which is to say, Grace said "Let's do things this way," and I agreed.

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