Hi all,
I’m wondering if there is a template or a way to budget the bills as a couple.
Me and my wife earning different salary values, we split the expenses as a %, for example: 60%-40%.
Is there a way to budget that, so we, at the beginning of every month we will now how much money each one of us has to put on the a shared account so we cover all the together expenses?
Thanks in advance.
Best Regards,
That’s a timely question! See this latest thread about shared finances, and you might want to post your question there. Your scenario is the same one in which my spouse and I tailored our Tiller foundation, splitting shared costs by a ratio of each persons income, and what I consider a cleaner way of accounting for his/her/joint spend and budgeting.
Hi,
I didn’t quite understand the change there, because it implies change the tiller template right?
Other thing is that, for example. I transfer money for the total rent in our joint account. Now my wife owes 40% of that value to the joint account, or for me.
At the end of the month I would like to know how much we pay in our join expenses and if each of us is not paying over our capacity.
It sounds like you are using the joint/individual account method of shared finances already, but here’s what my spouse and I do:
Then there’s the decision each couple has to make: does the income default to joint money, and you each get an allowance for discretionary spend, or does income default to our individual accounts, and you pool only what is required for joint expenses. We chose the latter, so our paychecks go into the individual checking.
Regular shared bills are paid from joint checking and gives you a sense of how much you each need to transfer on a monthly basis into joint checking. Irregular shared spending, such as for restaurants and home supplies, is paid with the joint cc. That allows us to see on the cc statement how much we spent that month on shared expenses and how much we each need to transfer into joint checking to cover it. Everything else is paid with our individual cc’s and checking.
Joint Savings is for our emergency fund joint savings goals like home improvement.
We determined our split ratio based on our income ratio, rather than a straight 50/50.
How to use Tiller to monitor shared expenses will depend on which of the methods you use below, and I am a big fan of Transaction Tracker.
One method to budget for shared expenses without a community template or foundation modifications is to add two categories for shared expenses, like his-Rent, her-Rent. See this Tiller article How to Set Up Tiller When You Share Expenses.
Existing templates that help you budget for shared expenses include:
Budget Plan
Category Schedule
Note that a community member will be sharing a new template soon. Information here.
Maybe others can share their method of using tags for shared finances.
We determined our split ratio based on our income ratio, rather than a straight 50/50.
One more question. Where do you do this? and how do you apply it in the budget for every month?
My wife receives different incomes every month, I use to calculate the % using the income of the previous month. And if one of us misses the transfer to joint account, that one has is % in debt…
Thank you