Mike is still feeling under the weather today, so it?s my first solo video!
I wanted to talk about, well, that I don?t really know what I?m talking about.
Mike has always been financially minded? me, not so much. I?ve always trusted Mike completely, and that led me to not always ask about what was going on with our money.
When we started making our YouTube channel about finance, I was a little nervous since I didn?t know what I would be talking about. So I started researching and reading and asking Mike the questions I might have been too embarrassed to ask before.
This brought up the question of whether it’s OK for one spouse to be in control of the finances?
For us, Mike enjoys all the personal finance stuff, so why not let him take care of it?
I think it?s OK for one spouse to be in control, but it?s important for the other person to still know what?s going on. (We talked about this in our Joint vs. Separate Bank Accounts video)
I came up with a few questions to ask to get started:
How much money do we save a month?
Are we in debt?
Do we have an emergency fund?
Where are our bank accounts?
In the video I answer those questions, and throw in a few more in depth questions. Asking these helped me to know exactly how much we save and why.
Great video, you did an awesome job Lauren! 🙂
I’m happy I found your channel a while back and I’m always looking forward to your videos. Thankful you post 3 videos/week so I don’t have to wait that long until the next one is posted 🙂
As for this topic, me and my boyfriend are actually both involved in our economy. We take joint decisions about how much to save and what to spend it on and how to invest. However, I’ve been the one doing the budgeting when we’ve been doing that. Mainly it means that I’m the one looking at how much we spend in different areas, then I come up with a suggestion for a budget that we discuss and agree upon – and then we forget about the budget totally until the next time I get an incline to take it up again! So we never actually use the budget although we’d really love to. Any tips on how to stick to the budget? This time I’m going to print it out and have it on the refrigerator and do follow ups every month (that’s the plan at least). But now that I write this down I’m thinking maybe I should do follow-ups each week to actually know what’s going on with the money + be able to change things up if needed… Anyways, would love to hear if you have any tips on sticking to the budget.
Thanks for all you do, and I’m already looking forward to your next video 🙂
//Eva
Hi Eva, thank you for the kind words! That’s great that you and your boyfriend are both involved in the finances!
We’ve found using mint.com to be the easiest way to stay on track. You can enter how much you want to spend in each area, and then they send you notifications when you near that amount, or go over. Some people need to have something physical (like a spread sheet hanging on the refrigerator), but this seems to work really well for us! Except with food 🙂 that’s one thing we are still trying to master!
Thanks for watching, and good luck!