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Monday 14 January 2013

finances

Who is in charge of the finances in your house? In my house, its me. I prefer it and secretly I think my husband prefers me to look after them too although I know he does hate it sometimes.

Before we had kids and we were both working full time we used to pay bills whenever they came in, we never had any savings and used to just do and buy whatever we liked. Fast forward to now and we are on a so so strict budget. An old friend of mine came over one day and set up a budget for me on the computer, one that added up by itself, so all I had to do was put it what bills we had and how much we had to put aside every fortnight and off we went, it took a while to start adding up but we eventually got there. I adjust this budget every single week, I know how much money needs to go  where as its right in front of me in black and white. So whenever a bill comes in I know I will have the money there, and that gives me peace of mind and lets me sleep at night. Every single cent of our money is accounted for, this can be hard at times as sometimes we have to 'save' for a couple of weeks if we have a special event coming up or a birthday present we have to buy but we now have savings and our kids also each have their own bank account that money gets deposited into every fortnight, its not a lot but its better than nothing. Also having this budget is what allowed us to save to renovate our backyard, it took alot of saving for years but we eventually got there and now we have a beautiful backyard to enjoy.

The reasons why my husband can sometimes dislike my obsessiveness over our finances is because he can never buy me anything without me knowing, because I am on Netbank every few days, he knows that I can see where he has been and what he has bought. Last Christmas he bought me a motorola xoom tablet, and because he knew I would be able to see that he had bought one he disconnected one of the wires from the back of the computer so I couldnt go onto netbank and check the credit card statement, so here I was ringing up the interent company complaining because we had no internet when it was working perfectly fine the day before, my husband just sat there and didnt say a word, lol. So he was very very sneaky and did that because he didnt want my snooping on netbank to ruin my xmas present.

So do you have a budget that you stick to? or are you more relaxed and live week to week?
Who controls the finances, you or your partner?

2 comments:

  1. Shaun looks after the budget and bill paying for us. I know basically where everything goes and when. It is my job to keep an eye on the credit card to make sure it does not go over budget because I am the one who buys the everyday stuff. We use credit and pay it each month.We have different accounts for savings. I like that Shaun does the majority of it as I am in charge of and keep track of everything else. It is one less thing to worry about for me, if you know what I mean. I hate that I can not buy stuff for him as a surprise but then again we don't usually buy for each other Christmas or birthdays anyway at the moment. Bec

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  2. Sounds like a good balance between your husband and yourself Bec

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