Acting Your Wage

This borderlines on relationship advice, but it involves money.

( Some background, leading up to now )

How things work right now is:

1. Husband gets paid every 2 weeks, gets direct deposited into his personal checking.


2. Husband transfers X amount into joint account.


3. We pay everything out of the joint account except for auto/home insurance and oddball expenses which come out of his account.


4. End of month comes, and a mad scramble ensues to get everything paid, usually involving temporarily transferring money out of joint savings.


5. Next time husband gets paid, repay savings account + $20 penalty.


6. Repeat next month.

One upside is our savings account is slowly getting bigger, but that's not the way I want to do it!

Now that our daughter is here and almost three months old, our expenses have increased in some ways in decreased a bit in others. We've also started raising sheep and I have no idea what's been spent on that because it's all come out of his account. I have asked him and he's given me some receipts, but that is a household expense and it should be coming out of the household account. Basically he's starting to pay some household stuff with his personal account which gives me an inaccurate picture of where our money is going. I'm the person responsible for paying bills and tracking where our money is going, so I need to know about everything that gets spent.

I'm posting here because I really really feel we need to just combine everything and use the joint account. We've been together for over seven years and are pretty much stuck with each other now. Both of us have similar attitudes on money and have never had a problem getting important expenses paid.

The problem is going to be selling the idea to my husband. I have a feeling he may view it as a loss of control, when I really don't feel that is the case.

For those of you who have SO's and only use a joint account, how do you make it work? What rules do you have for each other (if any)? How do you handle personal expenses, like (for example) buying new jewelry?