Last week on the blog, I wrote about our COVID wedding(s), and how spending on our values saved us from busting our budget. Writing that post made me realize that I haven’t actually shared with my readers how Mr. Dink and I manage our money as a couple! How could I have let such an obvious and crucial post of a personal finance blog slip through the cracks? Well, rest assured folks. The wait is over.
In addition to wanting to share with you, lovely readers, how Mr. Dink and I manage our money, I can also say that I get asked A LOT about our money management style by friends and family members. Money is such a taboo topic, and so once friends and family find out that I love talking about money (and especially once they found out about my financial independence goals), they want to ask me ALL the questions.
I mostly get questions about how I’ve gotten to where I am on my financial independence (FI) journey (aka, what is my saving strategy), since so few people in my life have heard of FI. And then, once they find out that 1) Mr. Dink isn’t as into FI as me and 2) Mr. Dink and I keep our finances separate, they want to know how exactly we manage our finances, especially from a DINK perspective (double income, no kids).
I tell them (and you) not so that you will do what I do, but to share another perspective on how a couple manages their money. Everyone’s personal finance journey is just that: personal. I think everyone should make decisions for themselves. But I also believe that the more people share their own personal stories, the better the world and our communities will be.
So, let’s get started. First up on the list of things I want to share is…
It pays to be a little choosy (read the signs)
Mr. Dink and I met later in life compared to many of my friends and family. Because of that, this was my first relationship where, going into it, I really knew myself. When I met Mr. Dink, I was more solid than I had ever been in my single life on what my goals were, and what I wanted in a partner.
I was too far along in my FI journey to deal with a partner who was bad with money, who couldn’t talk about money, or who was going to be weird with me making money (at the time I met Mr. Dink, I was still stuck on the hamster wheel in what I thought was my dream Professor job, but the fact that I was a professor with a PhD in Neuroscience turned off a lot of the men I dated).
So, when we first started dating, I would casually bring things up that would give me some data on how Mr. Dink’s relationship was with money, and I didn’t see any red flags. Although he may not have had a ton of savings when I met him (eg, no retirement accounts), he had recently purchased a house (yes, the house that would eventually have the devastating house fire). He bought it super cheap because it was a pretty big-time fixer upper (there was no shower in our part of the house when I started dating him…), but he is a carpenter, and he had big plans for how he wanted the house to be.
The first part of the plan was to get the part of the house where he would live, livable. He finished putting the shower in shortly after we met. There was only one toilet in the downstairs bathroom, and he surprised me one day with a newly installed toilet in the upstairs bathroom (he clearly knew the key to my heart from very early on).
The house was by no means perfect. There was a lot to desire. But it was functional, and he had bought it quite cheap, and for that I admired him. Plus, once he had his side livable, he started to fix up the newer part of the house to rent out as a one bedroom, which he successfully completed about 6 months into our relationship. All of a sudden, he was bringing in passive income. I may have been comfortable in the stock market at that point, but he was comfortable with real estate.
These were just some of the bigger signs that Mr. Dink would be a good money partner, but the most important key for me was being able to talk about money. He would never shy away from the topic. In those early days, I would be nervous to bring up something money-related with him, and I would always leave the conversation relieved. We could talk about money without getting emotional (mostly), and the more we talked about it, the more we enjoyed it, and the more comfortable we became.
I knew we’d be just fine when Mr. Dink made his first big purchase after I’d moved in and we got engaged. He wanted to buy a used John Deer tractor to help maintain our property. I knew he meant business when one day he came into my office and told me he needed to talk. He laid out all the details of the purchase. He had clearly been researching this for weeks and putting together all the numbers. Although he didn’t have spreadsheets, it was as close as you could get. If he was being that mindful about spending $2000 on a tractor, I knew all would likely be ok in our money world.
How we manage our spending
Before I moved in with Mr. Dink, back in the early days of dating, we pretty much split everything down the middle. All we were spending on really was food and date activities. I was making the best money I’d made up to that point, and I insisted on paying for half of everything.
Later, when I moved in, it was under interesting circumstances. I had decided to leave the not-so-dream Professor job and try my hand at freelance medical writing. So, the large income I once had was no longer. Mr. Dink was incredibly supportive of my choice and my goals. He helped me set up a home office in the guest room (which is still my office to this day!), he took headshots of me for my website, and he supported me financially for a bit. He never made me feel bad about this. He said his expenses were low, and he liked being the one to pay his bills, so we could keep things as they were for now.
This was hard for me. I had been a long-time independent lady, looking out for herself. I forget how I came up with the idea, but I asked if I could pay for all the groceries. He was thrilled not to have that expense, and I was thrilled to contribute in some way. Over time, we also shifted so that I paid for all of our vacations as well as eating out. Since we weren’t lavish in this department, I didn’t mind at all, and it continued to help me feel like I was adequately contributing to our household.
The more serious our relationship became, the more I worried that I wasn’t contributing enough. So, at the suggestion of Mr. Dink, we sat down and laid out our expenses. I made a spreadsheet that I keep to this day of all our shared expenses (as well as our separate expenses, so we can keep track of our individually monthly expenses for FI purposes).
It turned out, we spent almost the exact same amount each month on our shared expenses. We couldn’t believe it. Almost down to the dollar.
Now, leading up to and since getting married, we’ve had many a discussion about how we manage our finances. When it came down to it, we both really liked how we had things set up. Neither of us wanted to combine finances. So we don’t! It works for us now, and we’ll continue on this path until something doesn’t work anymore. We try to stick to a quarterly “money date”, but we’ve found we don’t even really need it because we talk about money constantly. I honestly never thought I’d have a partner I could talk as openly as we do about money. It’s a dream come true.
Quick but important side note here: I am deeply grateful that we are both non-sticklers when it comes to money. Maybe it’s simply because of the trust we’ve built with one another, but we’re not penny pinchers, and I think this is why our strategy works for us. I don’t think the way we manage our money would work for me if I felt like I had to keep track down to every dollar. I’ve travelled a lot in the past with my aunt and uncle, and while they too talk about money constantly, they are absolutely obsessed with fairness, down to the last penny. There’s nothing at all wrong with that, but we just don’t feel this way at all, and it takes a lot of stress and tension off of our money management system.
Our accounts
It may not be all that surprising, but because we keep our finances separate, we also keep our accounts separate. However, because we talk openly about money and have money dates, we know how much is in each other’s accounts, so there are no surprises. We considered opening a joint checking account for awhile to pay bills, but we ultimately decided it wasn’t worth it to us, because we enjoyed the system we had been using. We ultimately subscribe to the “don’t fix what ain’t broke” saying.
Because Mr. Dink works for himself as a carpenter, he has business and personal checking and savings accounts. This makes it easier for him, particularly come tax time. Aside from that, for his investments, he has a brokerage account that he puts money into monthly and an individual IRA account he (so far) has been funding yearly around tax time.
As for me, I have my own personal checking account, a high-yield savings account that houses my emergency fund, a 401k through work, an individual IRA with all my rollover 401ks from previous jobs, a Roth IRA that I fund yearly, and a brokerage account that I fund monthly.
We also have our mother-in-law suite that I mentioned above, that we have rented out occasionally, although we do not have a current tenant. We keep another high-yield savings account specific to that rental. This account, we consider our one “joint” account, even though it’s only in my name. We also have our money we received from our wedding there, and we decide together what money goes in and out of that account. For example, right now, we use it to pay property taxes and other small house expenses.
Mr. Dink and I definitely ascribe to the “set it and forget it” method of money management, with me a little more so. Because of my following of the FIRE community for so long, I am comfy cozy with my automatic investing, and letting the magic of compounding do its work in the background.
Our house
We love our house, which is why we chose to rebuild after the fire. We feel very fortunate that we also chose to refinance early in 2022, before the interest rates skyrocketed. We refinanced for a 10-year mortgage with a 2.5% interest rate.
Our current plan is to keep the house forever, and turn it into rentals when we either 1) go full-time on the bus or 2) move to a different house with more land. Being a carpenter, Mr. Dink already knows just how he would reconfigure our current house (which already has the 1-bedroom apartment attached) to make 2 additional units, or a total of 3.
We also like the option of potentially living out our elderly days here, as we can live on one level, and it’s close to town and on a main road (aka, easily accessible; if we moved elsewhere, it would be to a more remote location with lots of land).
Our cars
When Mr. Dink and I first met, we both drove old Toyota Camrys. We bonded over this and loved that we could both brag about our older, completely paid off, completely functional cars. Mine was an ’02 with 200k+ miles, and Mr. Dink’s was a ’99 with a broken speedometer that read 56k miles when he sold it to a college kid. We joke that it might actually be accurate, as the car was previously owned by his 98-year-old grandmother who owned it for its entire lifespan and hardly drove it anywhere before giving it to her grandson.
Not too long after we met, my Camry’s muffler blew and needed a whole new exhaust system. It was time for a new car. Around the same time, Mr. Dink was really ramping up his carpentry business, and his Camry, although it ran fine, was putting quite the damper on both his efficiency and his pride.
I went out and did something I wouldn’t do again, and I financed a car. I told myself it was ok because it wasn’t a new car, but it was still a $20k car. I had my first big-time Professor job, and I wanted to “treat myself” to a newer car. I bought my dream car, a 2013 Subaru Crosstrek. I put $5k down and financed the rest.
Although I wouldn’t do it again, I don’t regret my choice. I love my car to pieces. I recently paid it off, and I have no plans to get rid of it anytime soon. I plan to go with my car as far as she’ll take me. She’s perfect for our family of 2 road trips, and she gets decent gas mileage.
Mr. Dink, not too surprisingly, wanted a pickup truck to make his professional life (and our personal life, we did recently get a boat after all) A LOT easier. He decided to experiment by leasing one first, since he’d never had a truck before and his research didn’t lead to an obvious choice. He’s so glad he did. He leased a brand new (at the time, 2016) Toyota Tacoma, that he quickly learned was not best suited for his work or personal needs.
After a ton more research (you’d think he was the neuroscientist in the family), when his lease was up, he bought a Toyota Tundra. He never looked back. He talks often about how glad he is that he leased and didn’t buy the Tacoma. Like me, he loves his vehicle and plans to have the Tundra as long as possible.
Financial independence in a couple
To end, I wanted to touch on something I get asked about a lot. Mr. Dink is not as “into” achieving financial independence as I am, and people often wonder how we make that work.
For us, it’s simple. We keep open and honest communication about money and about our goals and values in life.
Sure, keeping our finances separate helps. Mr. Dink is responsible for his share, and me for mine. As long as we hold our own, who cares how we choose to spend our time and money?
But it does matter. Money is emotional. It makes us do crazy things. If I wasn’t open and honest about my “why” for financial independence, Mr. Dink may have a hard time understanding some of my values.
Society tells us we should make money, so that we can spend it. If we can make money, or even make more money than we already have, why wouldn’t we? There are so many shiny new things to buy!
Those in the FIRE community know why. Because we know what’s enough for us. We know our “why”, whether it’s the same as someone else’s or not.
The times that Mr. Dink and I have had emotional or heated conversations about making money, about me downshifting, about financial independence or early retirement, it’s because I haven’t been good at articulating my why.
When you want to go against the grain, to do something different, something society clearly articulates is “not normal”, people react. Everyone has an opinion about everything, especially when it’s considered “different”.
You don’t need to explain yourself to anyone, but it may help to be able to articulate your why to a loved one, especially when it’s a partner. For any of you struggling with FIRE because your partner is not on board, I encourage you to try to be more open and honest. I know, it’s scary. It’s vulnerable. But I’ve learned that the more open and honest I am, the more details I can provide about my “why” for financial independence, the more Mr. Dink understands. The more he softens. He’s not as familiar with the concept as me, and that’s perfectly ok. But I need to bring him along for the ride, not let him stay on the sidelines.
What’s your why? How do you manage your finances with your partner? Or a roommate? I’d love to hear from you! And, if you’re someone struggling with a FIRE journey in a partnership, know that I’m always here to talk or listen. You can reach out to me by hitting the contact button at the top of the page, or email me at [email protected].