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

Laura Martinez

Laura Martinez