Has your wife ever gone crazy with the checkbook and drained your savings?

Yeah, that method worked great back in the day. Nowadays it's easier to use an excel spreadsheet or outsource it all to Mint or Nerdwallet.

There a thousand ways to manage your money, all of them with merit but they all follow the same underlying principles:

• Think before you spend
• Track how you spend
• Don't spend more than you make
• Avoid non-leveraged debt

Whichever way works for the individual/couple is fine, so long as they make a plan.

 

Obviously a Lot of trust in your Relationship.......NOT...

 

Like @gentleroger I am a Dave Ramsey fan. But as Dave says over and over, rare is the individual who is taught how to handle money. I didn't learn until I was 50 when I used 90% of his "Total Money Makeover" to turn things around.
One of the drivers in our fleet let his wife handle all the finances. When he wanted to buy something, big or small he would ask her if they had the money. She always said yes. The reason was she didn't file any Federal or State income taxes for about 5 years, or pay any estimated taxes. He comes home, opens a letter from the IRS informing him of a tax lien against the house and an auction to sell for back taxes. He is now 71 years old and just scrapping by with SS. She her health suffered after she realized how she screwed up and passed away.
There are dozens of ways to divide the finances. Sometimes the wife is the tightwad, the husband is the free spender, sometimes the other way around. After a family discussion I would tend to separate the finances according to the needs of the relationship. Either extreme "if you loved me you would..." or "I don't trust you any further than I can throw you" usually doesn't work. It is somewhere in the middle.

 

No. I’m a misogynist ####### he-man woman hater!

 

Hence, I handle everything.

 

Some guys ask for it. I’ve watched men living paycheck to paycheck act like they are wealthy and blow money on shiney things to impress the women and all along getting into a deep debt hole. That sets him up for failure when he gets married to someone who expects it to continue.

Another thing I’ve noticed is most couples We’ve known that had to have a huge expensive “showoff” public wedding and exspensive trip somewhere hawaii type honeymoon have been doomed to fail from the beginning.
The one’s that put on some clean clothes and go down to the church or magistrate with the immediate family and a maybe a few close friends and do it privately usually last a life time.

 

12 years. It’s all who you marry. Real women WANT a strong man in charge. There’s no reason to be married to a woman who doesn’t want you to be a man. God put us in charge of the family it’s that simple.

 

If your Wife is making moves like this with the money without telling you....you have bigger problems.

 

It's a lot about who you marry. If your partner drained your account, you have bigger problems than money.

My wife and I have separate accounts. She has a little job that keeps us in insurance and every 2 weeks she gets around $650. Of that, she gives me $300, (but I think sometimes she forgets).
Anyway, I pay for pretty much everything. And she has $350 of walking around money that she doesn't have to answer for. Its worked really well for us. We've never argued about money, but I do keep her up to speed on the savings account (which she has full access to), and my retirement account.

I'm blessed, I know. I find arguing about money to be petty and I won't do it.

Good luck OP.