So, I'm writing about it, too!
I've always been pretty good with money... my husband, not so much. Whereas I didn't even get a credit card (it's still the only card I have, and I've even kept my insanely low credit limit on there on purpose) until after we were married, have always had savings accounts, and know how to stretch a dollar (I used to hand wash all of my clothes when I was in college coz I thought that $2.00 a load was insane), my husband is the exact opposite. He got his first card at 18, ate out with his friends, bought clothes, lived on loans in college. Now, I'm not knocking the loans. We needed them after we got married to put him through law school despite the scholarships he got.
Anywho, up until recently, he wanted to manage the big picture stuff and have me manage the day-to-day stuff. I was fine with it. He was the head of household, made the primary income (my business is good, but lawyer>photographer pretty much any day unless you're Jesh de Rox with his $16,000 training session). Well, I found out exactly how much we owe and how little is actually getting paid down.
Boy, did he get a talking to! I was able to keep our family alive, fed and taken care of and stay within our means, but he wasn't able to really pay down our debt. Granted, he paid on it. The bills never went unpaid, we never got late fees, no collection agencies were called. But it wasn't getting paid OFF. Big difference between paid ON TIME and paid OFF. I wanted everything paid OFF!
So, I took the reigns. I told him I wanted full disclosure. I was taking this ship over. And I did. And we're doing better. :) Basically, I'm doing a snowball technique. Kind of like what Dave Ramsey did, but I learned about it first when I was in undergrad, so I'm not giving him total credit.
Anyway, I listed all of our debts from hospital bills to credit card accounts to car loans to law school student loans in order from smallest to greatest. We pay the minimum on all. When the lowest one got paid off, I combined that payment with the second lowest one. Rinse, repeat. I update this spreadsheet every month with the amount owed, the amount paid, the due date and the date paid. I keep it nice and pretty and they'll be joining our family binder when it's finished.
We do mostly online payments, but the paper stuff we get gets filed away.
Before I took over, we had a checking account for us, my business stuff, and an account for Auds. My husband wanted to keep our savings in our checking so that he could cash in on our good interest rate. Good in theory. Bad in practice. He got that idea from the Economides Family and their book. It works for them, which is great. Just not for us because that "savings" never really got saved.
Now, we have actual savings and retirement accounts with good rates. All of our accounts (checking, savings, business, cars, retirements) for us and the kids are at one bank with an awesome interest rate set up - it's low for our debts, high for our money. That makes me happy. We have money automatically withdrawn to send to our debts as well as our savings so it makes it really easy. We're finally on the right track.
I anticipate we'll be done with our debt (credit cards, student loans, cars) within the next 5-10 years. And law school debt ain't cheap.
What are you doing to get your finances straight?
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