I vividly remember the first time Mr. W told me that his "future wife" would have to sign a pre-nup. We were on our first trip to Napa together after a year of dating and I'm sure I was fishing around for information to see if there was ever going to be a ring in my future. He said nothing about a ring but made sure to mention that pre-nup.
Fast forward two and a half years, and there we were exchanging vows with no official pre-nup to be found. Instead, we have a verbal agreement that goes something like this, "Don't ever cheat on me or I'll take you for everything you're worth!"
In addition to the absence of any sort of written financial agreement, we newlyweds also chose to forgo setting up a joint account.
This was mostly my decision, as I thought it would be very easy to split all the bills down the middle. And for awhile everything was pretty simple. But the past year and a half has been an interesting real estate ride, and with it has come an increasingly convoluted financial management system (i.e. a wicked Excel spreadsheet that I've taken over and can't ever seem to get balanced quite right).
With multiple mortgages and a slew of utilities bills—and far too many dinners out that have ended up split on two credit cards—we finally decided it was beyond high time to open a joint bank account.
So Friday we went to one of the local banks and consummated our financial relationship.
And it was beautiful.
Afterwards, we drove straight to a tasting room to drink wine.
We don't have our debit cards yet and neither of us has set up an online banking account, so it doesn't totally feel real. But very soon we'll be putting deposits into that puppy and paying shared bills out of it. Just in time for all the big scary expenses that will be coming our way when we start renovating the house next spring.
And speaking of renovation, we are *this* close to getting the gas line installed which means I'll be able to unsheathe this powerful beast from her plastic and bring her in the house where she belongs. And all will be right and properly dried in my world again.
As part of the prep, Mr. W had to do more work on the gas line trench this weekend.
Which meant I got to take on the extremely important job of hanging the Christmas lights. I only know one other woman who hangs her Christmas lights. I feel that I've entered a new class of cool.
I also took the opportunity to do a little Christmas decorating...which mostly amounted to placing shiny balls all around the house. Yep, it was a weekend for balls. Christmas balls, dirt balls, and my wannabe financially independent balls finally getting neatly tucked into Mr. W's purse where they belong.
You are so funny. I am happy to hear we're not the only couple that splits bills on two cards (for us, it's the grocery store). We haven't yet considered joint accounts, but we still only have one shared property. So, we'll see... =)
ReplyDeleteThe only reason we caved on the joint account was because the spreadsheet is a big pain in the butt. If I weren't so lazy, we would have probably stayed separate forever. :)
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