Family Finances
January 19, 2008
Mir from WantNot has some advice about building credit and family finances. She has some simple, but effective, advice about his, mine and ours accounting:
I don’t care if you work or you stay home; I don’t care if your spouse is a jerk or up for canonization; if you are married, you still need to have at least one bank account and one credit card in your name only.
Most couples I know I have 3 accounts, which means one main account to pay rent and bills, and two separate accounts for individual purchases. I’m a big fan of separating “our” money and “my” money, to avoid bickering over shoes, XBox games, model railroads or whatever one person just has to have! But Mir also points out some other possibilities.
Death. It seems impossible that in the midst of having to cope with the tragedy of losing a spouse that anything could be even harder than the loss itself, but guess what? Here in the United States, when a person dies the IRS often freezes their assets. It’s a special little party trick of theirs, regardless of how much money is actually involved. And while those assets are frozen, if you don’t have a separate account, you might not be able to pay your bills. Huh. That doesn’t sound like much fun.
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Legal action. It’s highly unlikely that someone is going to come along and sue your spouse for something, and I hope it’s equally unlikely that your spouse has a hidden debt or gambling problem or addiction for which creditors are going to come knocking on your door. But it’s possible.
