“Why did you need a notebook anyway?” MindReader says to me, reclining in our squashy sofa and sipping his cup of coffee.
“It’s my new budgeting plan,” I say.
“Ah. Are you in trouble again?”
“No,” I say. “I just got a bank charge in December and it came out yesterday and sent me over my overdraft again so I will get another bank charge for January…”
“Billygean…” MindReader says. “If you need money just say.”
(Indeed, Internetz, controversially, it seems, MindReader and I pay for all joint things [rent, food, bills, petrol, meals out, cat litter, oh the cat litter, etc] out of our joint account but keep our residual money separate. So he cannot tell me not to buy bath bombs and I can’t tell him not to… well, okay, just the bath bombs thing then).
“I was too scared to check!” I say.
“And the notebook…?”
“Well,” I say, as we hear Benny rustling around on the floor behind us. “I am going to save for us! So we can buy a car! Or a house! I looked at my bank after I got the nasty charge letters, and I reckon I spend about £100 a month on being… unprepared.”
“What?”
“Like I will spend £5 on lunch as I forget to make it, and then £10 on dinner stuff if you go out or I’ll buy a bag of crisps for 70p when you can get 5 for £1 in the Supermarket… And then I always buy other things like those tea towels I bought. Though they are lovey. So I am going to write down all the impulse buys I wanted to make but didn’t and see how much I’ve saved! And this way I’ll have extra money, so I won’t even have to stop buying clothes. Or saving what I already save. Sometimes. It’s perfect!”
“Right,” MindReader says. “So you can’t have takeaway tonight?”
“No. The Notebook says no.”
“Not even if I pay?”
“Well… maybe.”
“And you’re really going to save it?”
“Oh no.” I say. “I meant to tell you… I’m going on holiday with my friend during the Olympics as I can’t handle you watching it all the time. Like the World Cup. I can’t do that again.”
“Wait – not a car then – a hol-”
Just then, Benny launches himself onto the bookcase, where he teeters for a while, then launches himself down onto us, ginger paws flying everywhere.
And my crap-with-money bombshell is ignored. For now.
I find it fascinating how different couples handle money between them. Some only have a joint account, some only one person controls it and the other has zero clue, and then there’s one couple I know that each has different bills to pay (he pays rent, she pays utilities, he pays groceries, she pays clothes, etc.) and the money is completely separate. And now yours…a joint + individual. Fascinating.
I know, I find it so fascinating too! What do you do?
I’m the primary income so my money all goes into a main checking account, out of which comes all our regular bills. I then pay as much as I can towards incidentals as possible. I also do all the bill work; Yolanda does almost none of it. She has a PayPal account with debit card that she gets all her income from her business into, and pays expenses out of for her business, and then picks up what incidentals she wants to and/or if we run out of funds in my account, hers holds us over till the next payday.
Probably not ideal — I’d like her to have more hands-on with bills, but then again, it’s very hard to manage the juggling of them all when there’s more than one person involved, so for now, it works.
I was distracted by your Benny on the Swedish Alligator… I will have to take a photo of our Ginger Lion (Zac) next to our alligator (Boris) for you to see why…
)
Ha, I would actually love this if you did!
[...] a stone’s throw away from each other. We should meet for lovely lunches, but… well. The Notebook says [...]
[...] a stone’s throw away from one another. We used to meet for lovely lunches, but… well. The Notebook says [...]