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One of the things that everyone must eventually learn to do is to take care of their money. It’s much easier when you are young, single, and have few obligations! Eventually though, we all grow up and begin to take on more and more responsibility, like buying cars, getting married, buying a home, having pets/children to look after. Money is supremely important in our lives, yet few of us talk openly about how we manage (or mismanage) our money. I think this is sad actually, because I bet we could learn a lot from each other.

When I was single I had very little to worry about money wise. I saved most of my money, and treated myself to a few things each paycheck. I didn’t have any debt, and very few expenses. When my husband and I got married he had debt from student loans and medical expenses. We had a small household that needed to be run, apartment to pay for, and food to buy. I like to call it learning by fire, because there were all these things we suddenly had to take care of that I never thought of before (like utilities and medication).

In our household I take care of the budgeting and bills, but we always talk about it together too. It’s important that even if one person handles it all, both people are included in it. This is especially important if you want to plan for big purchases like cars, computers, furniture, etc. It also makes it a lot easier to stick to the plan when your both on board!

Here is what has come to work for us through nearly 9 years of learning together:

We like to use two cards (one each) that we pay off in full each month. It’s like using cash, but with a full record each month of where the money went. I love this because it makes it easy to see what categories might need to be cut back, and which things we aren’t spending enough on. For future big purchases we try very hard to save up before hand. It’s amazing what happens along the way that you don’t always plan for, having money set aside to be used for surprises is important (this isn’t like long term savings, which shouldn’t be touched).

For paying bills I like to keep it very simple. I pay a bill the day it arrives in the mail. I love online banking that is offered through my credit union for free. It makes it so easy to pay a bill, and keep tabs on our account. I know that some people have elaborate systems for bill paying, but I really love the simplicity of paying the bill the day it arrives in the mail.

Other things that work well for us is to make it automatic! I set up everything that I possibly could to be done automatically. Our long term savings are set to come out into a money market savings each month, we never really see it in the checking account that way. Debt repayment is automatic as well (be sure to see what kinds of deals you can get with your student loans when you do auto pay, we get rate drops every few years). Recurring bills are automatic such as house payment, car payment when we had one, insurance, and other loans. It’s so nice to know that it will be taken care of right on time. I do like to check in and make sure the payments have gone out like they should, but not having to enter them all in is a big time saver.

We also plan for a little fun too! I think it’s important to do this, even if you are trying really hard to get out of debt. Everyone can set aside a little money to do something fun with, even if it’s just $5.00 for a movie rental and box of candy for a movie night in. Extra income in our home, from blogging and side projects goes into the “fun fund” for future fun purchases like vacations, home decor, games, and the like.

What kinds of things do you do in your household? Are you the main person in charge of the money?