The Budget Experiment

For the month of April my hubby and I are trying a new approach to our budget.  As a way of trying to reduce my stress and make him more accountable for his spending (not that he’s unreasonable, but anything he bought caused me more stress) we have indirectly switched roles.

The idea is to live mostly off his income and “bank” mine for debt and savings.  Now he does not make enough to cover everything, so I still look after some bills.

I made a spreadsheet of all the automatic payments scheduled to come out of his account, and left an adjustable total for grocery shopping.   I will deposit $100 into his account from each of my pays to help with the adjustment.

The goal is to get him to check his account more regularly as he notoriously sits back and says “I didn’t spend anything therefore, there must be money in my account”.  I pretty much allocated every penny of his income and left it so that if he came in under budget, then that money was his to do with as he pleased.  I am hoping that incentive works.

So far I have felt a huge relief.  The first few days I was tempted to check the online banking to see what was happening, but then I stopped myself.  And now, almost half way through the month, I can feel the difference this has made.  Moving the financial ownership to Han Solo, and making it as easy for him as I possibly could, will hopefully turn into a win-win situation for us.  I no longer have the regular panic of balancing both accounts.

If all goes according to plan, we should have an extra $1000 this month.  Money that is needed in a few different areas right now!

For the time being our financial life is better.

What “radical” budget approaches have you tried? What worked?  What didn’t?