Turn the Spender Into a Saver!

Typically in a marriage there will be one spouse who saves and one spouse who spends. There is some truth to the theory, "opposites attract." In my marriage, (obviously since I have this blog) I am the nerdy saver who is very practical, frugal, and will save every penny I have. My husband is just the opposite-- He is the fun, relaxed, care-free one in the relationship who likes to spend.

As a couple, we have the same goals, but we have still have a hard time finding the balance between spending and saving. I want to save every dime, (almost to a fault) and he wants to save a little, and have fun too. We decided we would budget $25 each for our own personal fun money. As he did not check our mint.com budget very regularly, we were finding he would go over his $25 very quickly. We tried to envelope system (where you put cash in evelopes for each category of your budget) but when the cash was gone the debit card would get pulled out. I kept trying to think of ideas to help him stay within our budget.

Finally, I was talking to my friend and she told me about a method that she and her husband use to keep their budget. In their marriage, she is the spender and he is the saver. They have 3 bank accounts. They have their joint bank account, and then each have their own personal bank accounts. Usually I am not a fan of married people having separate bank accounts but they only use it for their "fun money." They each have an allotted amount that is automatically transferred at the beginning of each month into their separate accounts. She spends her "allowance" each month until the card won't work anymore (kind of like a monthly gift card to herself) and he, being the saver, has a card that is loaded due to his lack of spending.

I thought this idea was absolutely BRILLIANT! We just need to get to the bank and get our accounts set up so we can try it out.

What do you think? Could this work in your marriage?