This series was inspired by the recent marriage in our family. I organized some information with my brother in law and new sister in law in mind. If you find these tips to be useful, please share them.

Congratulations on getting married. I hope you have a happy and long one. One of the biggest reasons marriages have problems is due money issues. Remember your marriage is more important than money. Use money as a way to bring you two closer, not drive you apart.

This post is about creating a financial system that will help you and your spouse without having to keep tedious track of it.

Choose a Bank or Credit Union That Works for You

The best protection you can give your money is knowledge. Know your rights as a consumer and work on familiarize yourself with competitors’ rates and products. If necessary, you’ll know which bank to transfer your money. Use your money to show banks that support that support financial institutions that respects and value their customers, not belittle and exploit with fees.

Some Features to Look For in a Checking Account

• No annual fees
• $0 required minimum balance
• Online BillPay service
• Debit cards for purchases and ATM transactions
• Plenty of in-network ATMs around you

Some Bonuses to Look For in a Checking Account

• Interest bearing
• Optional overdraft protection
• Online images of most cleared checks

We use ING for our joint expenses and savings and have not had a problem with them. Their Electric Orange checking account is wonderful and fit all the essential criteria listed above plus it offers some interest on our money.

Setting Up Bill Pay

It took less than an hour to set up most of our bills with our checking  account. We only need around 20 minutes a month to pay bills.  Once you set your online bill pay system up, it’s very easy to maintain.

We took copies of our bills and set them in a pile. I entered the bill names, addresses, due dates, account numbers, and bill amounts with our bank.  You can set the bills up to be recurring, where it will pay it automatically for you. If a bill changes from month to month, I just login and change the amount. The bank takes care of the rest.

Easy Ways to Monitor Your Financial System

There are different ways that can help you watch and track your spending habits.

Personal Spreadsheets

We use a Google Spreadsheet for our joint budgeting. It’s free and easy to use. It lists our deposits and expenses for the month. We also add a buffer in case we go over what we plan. Using Google for our joint budgeting spreadsheet is great as we share the spreadsheet and it notifies the other person of changes. We review our  spreadsheet on an as needed basis such as when we went down to one income.

Mint

We also use Mint to keep an eye on our spending habits and set have alerts sent if we’re getting close to reaching one of our spending limits, such as eating out. We keep each other in the loop with balances before we had out to go shopping.

Wesabe

I have a Wesabe account and use it occasionally, not tracking my spending, but for the community. Wesabe has a HUGE community that can motivate and enlighten you on finances. Type in a goal that you have, you’d probably find a group on the topic. It’s a great way to bounce ideas off of people.

Your Take

Do you have any stories about what worked and what didn’t work with you? Do you have any ideas on future posts on the series?

Related Blogs

• Related Blogs on Marriage and Money: Automating and Free Bill Pay

This series was inspired by the recent marriage in our family. I organized some information with my brother in law and new sister in law in mind. If you find these tips to be useful, please share them.

Congratulations on getting married. I hope you have a happy and long one. One of the biggest reasons marriages break down, though, is money. Remember your marriage is more important than money. Use money as a way to bring you two closer, not drive you apart.

If you’re looking to have a solid financial foundation with your marriage, here are practical steps you should start with right away.

Create a list of goals you wish to achieve in 1, 5, and 10 years. You two need to think about what you value. Talk about some financial and personal goals you’d like to achieve.

• Do you want to eventually own a house in the country or do you want a condo in the city?
• Do you like to have some gadgets or do you want to collect cars?
• Does either one of you want to start a business?
• Do you guys want kids down the road?

Asking these questions can allow you to build something together instead of cobbling a plan as you go. It can save you some headaches. Learn about each of your money personalities and talk about the differences up front.

Share with each other a list of your debts and assets. You need to have a clear idea of what your starting point is to have a plan as a couple. Don’t lie about the amount of debt you have, if you’re on the same page you can both work down on paying down your debt.

Create  a budget or spending plan together. Your first couple of times doing a budget together will be wrong. All couples have to go through this as they are merging their money, bills, and goals. My personal tip is to add 15% to your budget for things like car repairs, rental insurance, etc. Both of you should have a say on where the money goes.

Open a joint account together. Our main accounts are joint accounts and we both have access to the individual accounts in case of emergencies. I know some couple have separate accounts, but having some money pooled together encourages you to talk. consider having a joint savings account for some mutual goals, like a house down payment. I also recommend saving up for at least an annual vacation for the two of you. It doesn’t have to be grand or exotic, you just want to get away from it all and spend time together.

Make paying off debt a priority. Look again at your spending plan and see how much money each month goes towards debt. If you can eliminate that, you can spend that money instead on your dreams and goals. Use either a debt snowflake, snowball, or avalanche to work your way to being debt free.

Build an emergency fund. Start small and tuck away one months’ expenses and then automate a small deposit into your savings while you eliminate your high interest debt.understand that marriage, just like life, has some unexpected events. An emergency fund can relieve a lot of stress and tension in your relationship.

Rent an affordable apartment. Please try to keep your rent as reasonable as possible. If you are in a marriage with a lot of debt already, having a modest amount for rent can be a huge way for you to have money to pay down debt. You can always upgrade later, but it hard to downgrade. We had a very small first apartment (ask our friends), but we were able to pay off the car loan faster and later we upgraded to a more spacious place.

Drive used cars. I wish I didn’t have that car loan when we first got married. It was an annoying monthly bill that slowed us down on building our savings. Owning a car also means car insurance, gasoline, and maintenance bills. If you have a car that is relatively dependable and you own it, that’s a great win. If you live in a city with a good transportation system, then use it.

Set up free online bill pay with your bank. Most banks and credit unions offer this money and time saving feature. Spend an hour setting up your free online bill pay with your bills, account numbers, due dates, and amounts, and you’ll only need a few minutes a month to keep it up. I’ll have another post just on that soon.

Your Take

Do you have any stories about what worked and what didn’t work with you? Do you have any ideas on future posts on the series?

Related Blogs

• Related Blogs on Marriage and Money: Financial Game Plan

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