On Money

With this new job that I landed, I am the bread winner, by a pretty healthy margin.  Which is weird.

Coach is 90% in charge of our money.  He has an emergency savings account set up, an account to pay loans (such as car/student, and soon a mortgage!), a normal savings, a vacation fund, a gift fund and an everyday checking account.  We share all of these accounts, and a set amount from each of our paychecks is dispersed into each of these accounts.

It feels like we never have any freaking money, because it goes so many different places.  But when we need it for something, it's there, ready and waiting.  And Coach brought tremendous amounts of savings into our relationships....10x more than I did.  So even though I make more, he brought in so much to begin with, that it still feels hopelessly tilted in his favor.  Not that "who makes more" or "who brought more in" is very relevant, but I can't deny that I don't feel kind of sad that I didn't bring in more savings.

When I say "he's in charge" of our money, I mean that he is 10000x more financially responsible than I am.  And while I want to save for vacations and Christmas presents, money just goes through my hands like water.  I can blow $100 and have very little recollection of where it went.

So if Coach says that we need to put a set amount in savings, I'm going to do it, even if I feel pinched in terms of spending money.  Because if I want to go on a big shopping trip with my mom and sisters this winter, I guarantee that he'll extract money from one of those accounts so that I can go and have a good time.  And if I get laid off, or if he has to have a big surgery, or if something else bad happens, then he has money set aside that will easily get us through.  He's amazing like that.  I am so thankful that he is as good with money as he is.  Because I suck terribly at it.

How do you and yours handle money?