When you first buy a home, there is so much to sort out. One of the big things that you need to arrange is your cash. I am very particular when it comes to cash and expenses. I grew up having very little money, that has made me very cautious as an adult and I am happy managing the money.
So today, I thought that I would write you guys a post all about how we manage our home finances. Just in case there are some people out there that are wanting some help and advice on how you can manage your own moving forward. I am not saying that this is the right thing to do. This is just what worked for us over the past couple of years and we have no plans on changing things up.
We have separate money.
One big thing that I think has really helped us and our house, is that we have separate money. I don’t think that it would cause us to divorce if we pooled our money, but this works best for us. This enables us to both spend our money on the things that we want, without seeking approval of our other half. To some this seems ridiculous, to others this is the best thing, this just works for us. If my husband saw me spending thousands on a new Chanel bag he would kill me. Likewise if I saw him at football spending hundreds on drinks for the lads, there would be stern words.
We also have money together.
However, for the house, we have a joint account. At the beginning of the month when we both get paid, we send money via Standing Order into this joint account. From that joint account, we have all outgoings that are related to the house. All Direct Debits come from this bank account, if we need to buy food it comes from this account and also any home improvements. We pay into this account more than enough to cover all household bills as well as some money for a rainy day. We want to be prepared for worst case scenario like our boiler braking, etc.
I am the card holder and manage all payments.
As I mentioned above, I am very careful when it comes to money. I grew up in a single parent household and money was very tight. Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t on the poverty line, but it did make me realise that if my mother was more careful with money, it may not have been like that. I am very calculated with all of our spending and planning and my husband doesn’t mind at all. For us, we find that it helps that only one of us manages everything centrally instead of each of us doing separate bits.
Spreadsheet to show all payments.
At work, I have the nickname ‘Queen of Spreadsheets’. I even work in marketing; spreadsheets shouldn’t be part of my daily remit. However, they are part of the planning part of my OCD and I bloody love a spreadsheet. I have a spreadsheet which documents all of our incomings and outgoings as well as predicated spends moving forward. This is on Google Drive, so if my husband ever wanted to know what we spend, what we have saved, etc. he can just go on and take a look for himself without any questions being asked.
We adjust our payments depending what is needed.
The great thing about having the spreadsheet is that as things change, I can just go on and it shows clearly what needs to change. For example, if Sky put up our monthly bill, I can log on and adjust the figures. Or, if we are savings for something, I can set a target and it all auto adjusts what our input into the shared accounts need to be.
I hope that finding out how we manage our home finances helped you guys. It can really be a minefield when you buy a new home. Especially if you are first time buyers. I really do think that it is things like this that children should be taught in school. These are skills for live.
Even though I understand that things within the housing market and finance are always changing, giving people some indication is surely better than nothing. Please do leave me a comment below. Let me know how you manage your home finances in the comments below and let’s start a dialogue!
