My Marriage is Financially Weird

I hear about how one of the big issues that married couples fight over is money, and I think, well, they're just stupid. Money disagreements are ever-so-easily avoided, if only you are willing to be the complete weirdos that Brian and I are.

Before we got married, I was the type of person who would anxiously move money from savings to checking to avoid an overdraft, because I couldn't be bothered to balance my checkbook. Brian struck me as such an organized person that it seemed like a good idea to open a joint account, you know--like regular married folks do--and let him handle all the finances.

This turned out to suck. For all of his organized ways, we learned that Brian is much freer with a dollar than I am. He looked at a suddenly-double checking account balance and thought "Wow! I can buy things!" while I suddenly felt as though I needed permission to access my own earnings. Yet once this became apparent, did we fight? Did we whine about the unfairness of it all? Did we get a divorce? No, we did not. We got separate checking accounts, and that was only the beginning.

To this very day, we each write a check for half the mortgage. He pays the electric bill, I pay the gas. He pays the satellite and cable, I pay the water and garbage. We take turns paying for Brandon's after-school care. We each pay our own life insurance and cell phone bills, and of course we maintain our own vehicles. When we need a new appliance or hire somebody to do the yard work, we split that.

You wanna laugh? We go dutch in restaurants. We go up to the grocery checkout with one cart, and Brian takes out everything he selected and pays for it, then I take out what I selected and pay for that. "All in the same cart?" the store employees ask us. "Yep," we say.

Now in a way, I'm getting screwed on this deal. Brian makes about $15K more than I do a year and he still seems to have plenty of fun money to throw around while I, for all my miserliness, can't pay off my Mastercard to save my soul. But there are benefits, too. For one thing, it keeps me strong. If anything ever happened to him or to our relationship, I wouldn't be overwhelmed at the idea of having to manage my budget. Another benefit is that we both have the opportunity to say Yes, I think we can afford a new TV (in which case we split the cost) or No, I can't spare the money for a weekend trip (in which case the one who wants to spend can either pay for it all him/herself or wait until such time as the other one can afford it). There's really a lot of freedom in this arrangement and I don't know why more people don't do it. It's hard to whine about what you have and don't have when you are free to manage your own earnings however you want to.

Another good thing is that when Brian gives me a gift, it's really from him. When I give him a gift, it's really from me. I always thought it was odd for my dad to open his Christmas gifts from my stepmother and have to thank her for them when he'd paid for them all. And it must be weird for the dependent spouse too... thanks for my birthday gift, oh, um, and the roof over my head and clothes on my back and this tube of toothpaste you also purchased for me. I actually think that is a weird way to run your family finances.