In response to my recent article about love and money, I received this message from reader Steven Foster of Anacortes, Washington, which is slightly edited for space reasons:
I know I am considered old fashioned, but my wife and I got married in 1973 and went through a lot of stages with our finances.
The underlying principle has always been the same. There is no such thing as hers or mine, there is only ours.
I was the major bread winner, but if things got tight, she just didn’t have enough to do and was bored, or we had a special project and needed extra money, she would get a job and help out.
Now, as we get older, it still holds true. If something comes up, and we have to spend money on either one of us, it is just money – and not hers or mine, just money needed to be spent.
In retirement, there is only one pool, well four accounts because of retirement accounts, but one total available pool. We live accordingly.
This has taken a lot of stress out of our lives over the years as we never have the yours or mine issues to fight over or argue about. It has kept us very close together as with the money being only one pot, we are just one couple and we live as one unit.
I believe that if more couples would live this way there would be less divorce and happier lives.
And in response to my article about setting a budget for college spending, I received this comment from Diana Bruce of Washington, D.C., also edited a wee bit:
I had my kids use the money from their summer jobs to pay for their daily expenses during the school year. And their paychecks were direct-deposited into their savings accounts. It felt important from a youth development perspective to have my kids in charge of spending the money they made — and not have it go into some “college” pot they didn’t manage.
The summer before college, I had each kid make a list of every item they used in a day/week/month, and research how much each costs. Then I sat with them to build a monthly budget and add their usual spending on fun stuff. They decided how much they needed every month, and then we set up a monthly automatic transfer from savings to checking at the end of each month that they used for their spending money and daily expenses.
They were not responsible for tuition, housing, meal plan/grocery budget, utilities, trips home or medical expenses. Well, one kid was responsible for housing the last two years and got a resident assistant job!
I added them as authorized users on my credit card halfway through college, once I had faith that they could follow my rules for usage — these were individual decisions based on each kid’s readiness. I remember getting into credit card debt with one of those cards they promoted on campus when I was young, and I recommended that my kids delay their own card until they’re done with college and making their own money — more maturity and more experience managing money.
Both are now out of college and know how to manage their money because they learned it with monthly practice and guardrails that lowered over time. And they learned it at their own pace, because they’re both very different.
Share your money story with me: onthemoney@thomsonreuters.com.
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