BellaOnline Forums Relationships Marriage name changes for brides...

Issues around "my money/his money" don't usually come up, although I do admit to the question of who's paying for dinner coming up. A long, long time ago, we went through the exercise of splitting expenses based on each income. Housing (rent or mortgage) has always fallen to me; credit cards, home equity, car pmts, utilities fall on him. And we've adjusted things over the years as incomes changed. He was in school when we got married, so I took the hit for a lot of years. He now makes a lot more than me, so now he pays the lion's share. So we don't really have discussions around anyone's "turn" to pay rent/utilities, etc.

I have two big reasons for separate finances: first, he used to be TERRIBLE at balancing his statement and I was NEUROTIC about it (although with online banking, I haven't balanced anything for years now). Second, my grandparents - they held everything either jointly or in his name. When he died suddenly, ALL of their money was tied up in probate and my grandmother spent months in limbo waiting for the estate to be settled. I never want to be in the position to be denied access to my own money.

The money issue comes with age - we have mixed finances - when we got together we were very young with no money so there was really nothing to consider in that department. We have both worked to buy our home and secure our future.
If however, I were to marry now I would be giving money much more thought. I would not want to jeopardize my financial security (I've worked too hard for it) so it would be a much bigger issue.
Financial dependency - I couldn't do it....my parents struggled financially raising five kids and I'm afraid that has left me with a need for financial control and independence.

Tb - I am also neurotic about balancing the checkbook, credit card statements, etc. And the other reason is what you mentioned about the problem when one person dies.
I couldn't see "monthly meetings" to go over credit card receipts and have him say he throw out his, etc. If he decides it isn't important then he can do his own!

We are also on separate car insurances. He hates how I drive so he is happy with that.
I just never switched over to his when we got married.

It does feel great to be independent even within a marriage. I need that :O)

Our finances are pretty well integrated, in part because there's so little to go around, and in part because I'm neurotic about keeping up with the pennies (you should see me freak out when there's just a $1 or less discrepancy at checkbook balancing time!) and he would never even remember to pay the rent! So I manage the money. Any expense over a set amount comes under discussion before purchasing.

We may be poor now, but we both have some long term potential for hitting the jackpot in our careers (his potential is admittedly higher than mine), so we plan to have a pre-nup in case we ever divorce. Basically, everything falls under the category of "ours" unless we split. Then it would "(s)he who earned it keeps it." (Not having kids together will keep that plan simple and feasible. I can't imagine what havoc shared children would reek on post- divorce finances.)

We married fairly young (I was almost 23, he was 25). I ended up hyphenating my name because it didn't feel right to change it completely. This was to the consternation of DH's family, who are very traditional in mnay ways (Eastern European). It was very important and symbolic to me, although I didn't worry about the veil or my dad escorting me down the aisle. (BTW doesn't the honeymoon also have some "bad" significance to it?)

Since we were young and dind't have much when we married, we've always done our finances together - however we do have differing styles of money management - it doesn't lead to fights but we really do have to hash things out at times. I like feeling that we pool everything together. We each have a credit card that is just in our name (for emergencies, to buy gifts, etc). Perhaps because DH isn't the controlling sort about money, it seems to work well for us.

Andie

I changed my name because I wanted to. I find it to be a vanity thing although it took me a while to officially change it. One thing I find it to be a hassle is if u get separated. Other than that.. I like it.