Married Couples #1 Arguement is Money?

wearymicrobe wrote:

joey48442 wrote: I make more than my wife. She feels bad that she's not "contributing" as much to the budget. I disagree. She works hard, at least as hard as I do. It's not her fault she makes 60 percent of what I do per hour.\

This actually can cause a ton of problems like stated above. It took 4-5 years for my wife to feel comfortable with the difference. We tried the % splits based on income and it only worked because I am such a tightwad with money when it comes to monthly expenses. Eventually we just moved everything into a bulk account. For us we have a couple rules. 1. Pay yourself first at least 10%. (401K, Investments IRA, mortgage reductions) 2. Debt above our mortgage rate is the enemy. 3. 6 months of emergency cash in a higher yield savings account. 4. Find what is really important/makes you happy to spend the extra cash on it. After watching my parents live on the edge for so many years I flat out refuse to have a debt load including the mortgage above 15% take home. Its darn near impossible to do out here in California but we have somehow managed. I can tell you just looking at my account and realizing that if we both lost our jobs we would be of for at a minimum a decade without loosing the house has added years to my life from the lack of stress. Getting there took some doing though, we sold all the extras off to eliminate any debt my wife had and then we just plowed all our raises and the saved money into savings. It took a year or two to really get the snowball rolling, and I still regret some of the sacrifices but in the long run it was worth all the pain and suffering to get on the right foot.

All of our money is in a joint account as well.

Joey

wearymicrobe wrote: For us we have a couple rules. 1. Pay yourself first at least 10%. (401K, Investments IRA, mortgage reductions) 2. Debt above our mortgage rate is the enemy. 3. 6 months of emergency cash in a higher yield savings account. 4. Find what is really important/makes you happy to spend the extra cash on it.

This is similar to what I would like to arrange with some minor changes, most notably I would like #1 to be more like 30-60% 401k, IRA, and index fund investments. I really want my savings rate >50%, but I'm betting my girlfriend could make that quite difficult were she to become my wife. I'm trying to get this hashed out before the relationship gets to that point - don't want to end up with money tensions for the rest of my life.

ProDarwin posted outside the confines of the box.

ProDarwin wrote:

wearymicrobe wrote: For us we have a couple rules. 1. Pay yourself first at least 10%. (401K, Investments IRA, mortgage reductions) 2. Debt above our mortgage rate is the enemy. 3. 6 months of emergency cash in a higher yield savings account. 4. Find what is really important/makes you happy to spend the extra cash on it.

This is similar to what I would like to arrange with some minor changes, most notably I would like #1 to be more like 30-60% 401k, IRA, and index fund investments. I *really* want my savings rate >50%, but I'm betting my girlfriend could make that quite difficult were she to become my wife. I'm trying to get this hashed out before the relationship gets to that point - don't want to end up with money tensions for the rest of my life.

10% That's the dead minimum. We do counting 401K match about 31% right now. That does not count mortgage pay down. 10% though and a usual savings time and it will work out to be safe.

50% and if you keep your spending rate the same after retirement means you can check out in something silly like 14 years if you have no debt.

I have another 40 to go based on a 70 year old retirement. Though at our current rate of savings and 5% return I think I can check out around 42 years and have 200K plus a year income and no mortgage and not taking any principal. If we keep working that number just jumps like crazy and I do have a pension starting at 53 if I stay with my current company.

I have been bad lately and have been moving into a more cash heavy position with the money coming in instead of investing.

ProDarwin wrote:

wearymicrobe wrote: For us we have a couple rules. 1. Pay yourself first at least 10%. (401K, Investments IRA, mortgage reductions) 2. Debt above our mortgage rate is the enemy. 3. 6 months of emergency cash in a higher yield savings account. 4. Find what is really important/makes you happy to spend the extra cash on it.

This is similar to what I would like to arrange with some minor changes, most notably I would like #1 to be more like 30-60% 401k, IRA, and index fund investments. I *really* want my savings rate >50%, but I'm betting my girlfriend could make that quite difficult were she to become my wife. I'm trying to get this hashed out before the relationship gets to that point - don't want to end up with money tensions for the rest of my life.

10% That's the dead minimum. We do counting 401K match about 31% right now. That does not count mortgage pay down. 10% though and a usual savings time and it will work out to be safe.

50% and if you keep your spending rate the same after retirement means you can check out in something silly like 14 years if you have no debt.

I have another 40 to go based on a 70 year old retirement. Though at our current rate of savings and 5% return I think I can check out around 42 years and have 200K plus a year income and no mortgage and not taking any principal. If we keep working that number just jumps like crazy and I do have a pension starting at 53 if I stay with my current company.

I have been bad lately and have been moving into a more cash heavy position with the money coming in instead of investing.

PHeller wrote: ProDarwin posted outside the confines of the box.

It's not the first time I've broken the internet.

Weary - you're definitely ahead of me there, although you pull in a significantly higher salary. I'm putting away about 35% if you count mortgage. I'm 29, and a 50% savings rate would give me retirement at age 45. I don't realistically expect that to happen, but I want the "F-U" money there so I can focus on doing something I enjoy/spending time with kids/family at that age instead of slaving away from 8-5 every day. Hoping to increase that savings # a little bit each month by making changes for the better and not constantly needing to buy E36 M3 for the house I just moved into.

What has worked for me is just find a lifestyle you are comfortable with and then all the raises and bonuses and cash that makes its way to you just keeps going into the snowball.

No need to go backwards in lifestyle unless you are really out ahead of your income.

Time + reasonable/realistic rate of return + realistic outlook on future lifestyle = happy.

Don't get me wrong I still have a bunch of toys but they are easy to liquidate and effectively cash neutral in the long run. Not going to deprive myself in the short term if it will not kill my long term goal.

My main concern is our (relationship) desire to live in a multitude of places vs our desire to be financially secure. It seems like you can do both if your lucky enough to have an employer who is located everywhere you want to live, but it seems that for most people the path to true financial security is staying put, both with employer and with housing.

I've also heard of relationships stress related from her wanting to live one place and him wanting to stay at his job, or vice versa. "Our relationship became boring," why? "because she wanted to live in California and I had a good job in New York."

Is this just a case of partnering to save, planning 5 years ahead, and making every financial decision based on the potential of relocating after a few years?

Wow there is a lot of great advice in here.

My wife and I are new to all of this. The budget has been a bit of an issue and we've had a few arguments; but, I've learned letting her have access to all of our finances, the logins to all of our bills (cable, electric, etc), and so on has helped in alleviating the tension as she can see where our money goes. She's a full time student and a stay at home mom so I don't expect her to work even though it would be awesome if she did. Just talking about where our money goes helped ease the tension and there is very little arguing now. Part of it was my fault as I was using a huge chunk of our disposable income to pay off the last of my student loans and she wasn't very happy that I was keeping that from her (doh!).

We've also worked on ways to get rid of unneeded expenses that have also helped us become a lot healthier in our diets. We don't eat out as often; we stopped buying processed foods; we mainly buy fresh fruits, veggies, tubers, and meat as needed; and we are just as full and content with our meals and feel much better and sleep much better at that all while also saving a ton of money at the grocery store.

We also turn the A/C off when we aren't in the house, unplug things that aren't in use, switched to LED lighting (initial expense sucked), etc and our power bill has gone from an average of $100/month to an average of $55/month.

When we go out and do things we try to find things that are cheap/free yet still exciting to do. Hiking in parks, bike riding (much harder with a baby now), free museums, 24hours of Lemons races, landmarks, etc.

We also don't put anything on a credit card that we can't pay off that month. We pay a few bills each month with a credit card, pay it off that month, and get cash back on it or airline miles (can't beat that).

Like Mental said we don't finance any toys or trips either. Pay those out of pocket. If we have to save for it for a while, it's better than paying $1500 interest on a $6000 purchase ya know?

I guess one last stupid thing I've been doing for years my parents always taught me to do. Anytime you get some extra cash (bonus, tax return, garage sales, etc). Put a certain % into your savings, use the rest to pay down any debt you may have. I ended up making some extra cash off of my per diem from the last business trip I had and made an extra payment on my car which will cut two months off the length of the loan netting me some savings on interest.

wearymicrobe wrote: What has worked for me is just find a lifestyle you are comfortable with and then all the raises and bonuses and cash that makes its way to you just keeps going into the snowball. No need to go backwards in lifestyle unless you are really out ahead of your income. Time + reasonable/realistic rate of return + realistic outlook on future lifestyle = happy.

Good advice. I'm trying to go "backwards", not because I'm ahead of my income, but because I would like to accelerate my financial independence. At a 10% savings rate, I'd be working until I'm 60. Screw that. Many of the sacrifices I'd like to make have little to no effect on my lifestyle... although if it took ditching the miata to get my SO on board, I think I'd be ok with it. I've found plenty of other non-racing fulfilling hobbies lately (crossfit, mountain biking, etc)

PHeller wrote: I've also heard of relationships stress related from her wanting to live one place and him wanting to stay at his job, or vice versa. "Our relationship became boring," why? "because she wanted to live in California and I had a good job in New York."

This was a major contributor to why my marriage failed- my ex worked in NYC and while I had wrangled transferring to a job that allowed us to live about an hour outside of the City, she was frustrated with not being able to live the 'high life' that all of her single or 'loosely dating' friends did in the City (friends which also worked multiple jobs to afford to live there- in tiny apartments) because I refused to move into the City unless we both had stable, well-paying jobs there that would allow us to not be living on the edge of ruin all the time.

Money is not the issue, disagreeing on how to spend it is! I know that sounds odd, but when two people make different amounts and have different ideas on what to spend and where, it is an issue. Whether you make minimum wage or you are a Hollywood celeb, you MUST agree on where the money goes. Making one person "in charge" is NOT the answer, this will lead to more fights than the MMA.

Sit down and make a budget that you both agree on. Then stick to it at all costs. Include some rewards for making budget (like a dinner out occasionally) and some goals like a vacation. Work on it TOGETHER. Have a common goal. Use something like Mint to get good visibility of where the money is going. Look at your biggest expenses and shave them. Get rid of the unnecessary. Ban cable for a year. You can do it!