Merging finances

When Dan and I moved in together, we decided on a system where we would have one joint account which we each contributed the same amount to every month, even though we don't have the same salaries, out of which we would pay for rent, utilities, groceries, and gas, pretty much. Fairly minimal spending on "extras" in common and separate savings and retirement/investment accounts.

We talked over what we wanted to do after getting married and decided that we would give merging our finances some more a go but if it didn't work and caused conflict, we could just go back to the way we had it before. I had some concerns around maintaining financial independence since I like to spend more money than Dan does but I do also make a bit more. I just didn't want to feel any additional burdens of guilt or pressure on top of what I already have for internal gauges of frugality.

Post-wedding, it turns out I don't really care as much as I thought I would about keeping things separate, plus Dan followed through on his promise to worry less about money without having the wedding to pay for. We set it up so that we each kept our own emergency funds, pooled together the cash gifts from the wedding into joint savings, and re-arranged our direct deposits to put the bulk of our paychecks in the joint accounts. Dan also paid off his car loan with the additional liquidity now available to him.

I get a small allowance into my own account still, basically so I can buy clothes and shoes without feeling like I have to consult with Dan (fall boots yay!). Everything else comes out of the joint account, including Dan's student loan payments, and we decided to just set a rule of needing to check with the other before making purchases that are over $50. That was implemented after a month or two of feeling confused about what would be ok to go on the joint (individual nights out with friends?) to make it all simpler.

We're tracking everything on Mint. I tried it once before but preferred the greater control I had over splitting up and categorizing purchases with the spreadsheet that I made for myself in college. Mint has improved since then and the convenience of being able to log a transaction online mostly outweighs my annoyance with its occasional miscategorizations and its limitations around keeping track of how much petty cash you should have around.

Some other perspectives on merging finances after marriage:

• Megan McArdle thinks joint accounts make a lot more sense in most cases: "Money Talks: Yours, Mine, and Ours"
• Get Rich Slowly interview on keeping separate finances

I also did a little bit of research on what's the deal with filing taxes now that we're married:

• Filing your first tax return as newlyweds
• When sharing taxes might not be a good idea
• Marriage's financial pros and cons
• About.com's articles on filing jointly versus filing separately

In summary, if you were married on December 31st, 2011, you would be considered married for all of 2011 from a tax perspective, which seems a bit weird but I guess makes things simpler. Filing jointly is generally better for couples where one partner makes a lot more than the other, but if you both work and make about the same (our situation), you should at least consider filing separately. Most people seem to advise preparing tax returns in both ways and see whether you are in fact affected by the "marriage penalty."

The other consideration is contributions to a Roth IRA. I've had a Roth IRA account for awhile, contributing the max to it when I have enough extra from the year. I already put in the max for me for 2011, so I was thinking that we should open one up for Dan and put some bonus money I've gotten into that account. Unless one of us goes back to school full-time or we have kids and one of us stays home full-time (both unlikely at this point), our incomes should increase over time, potentially to the point of not being eligible for contributing to a Roth IRA anymore, so I figure we should get more in there while we still can.

Dan thinks we should consider larger joint investment/savings account and such, like for buying a house or something, but we don't have any plans to buy property in the next few years since I'd like to live on the west coast for a few years still but we'd most likely settle back on the east coast afterwards. You can withdraw contributions (though not earnings) to a Roth IRA at any point so we could tap into it for a down payment without incurring penalties. However, you can't contribute the full amount to a Roth IRA if you're married filing separately, so we'll wait until we get our W2s for 2011 and do some calculations then since I think we'd still be able to put in Roth IRA money for 2011 until April 2012.

A couple articles on Roth IRAs:

• Wikipedia's article on the Roth IRA
• Get Rich Slowly article: "Eight little-known facts about the Roth IRA"

If you're new to personal finance, the Get Rich Slowly blog is not bad. For books, I'd recommend On My Own Two Feet: A Modern Girl's Guide to Personal Finance to start with and then The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing once you want to get more in-depth into investing.

Apparently, yes!

Today's XKCD comic:

alt text: "I'm as surprised as you!"

Also, I went to the Yay New York party last night by myself, and even got interviewed for a documentary being made about the event, which was a bit scary and awkward. However as always the APW community comes through and I got adopted by a group of three couples (one of which lives in Hoboken too!), all really cool and nice people that were easy to talk to and find things in common with, so that worked out pretty well. We even exchanged contact info on our various smartphones and I hope we hang out more, perhaps at the next APW book club.

I met Mark of Leah and Mark, who was really warm and fun and actually remembered me and was so gracious about how we didn't end up booking them. The photobooth he ran included a prop from the photobooth at our own wedding, this yellow picture frame that I'd given to Kari of The Handmade Event, which thrilled me quite a bit inside.

I am so close to getting all the thank you cards done, so with Hurricane Irena urging everyone to evacuate Hoboken this weekend, I think I'm going to go to my parents' and hopefully just finish them once and for all so that I can then also write up the reviews I owe to my awesome vendors and then for real resume wedding blogging so I can finish it off and start another blog on style & crafts. Oh and figure out a wedding album to order from Kelly, along with framing the wedding tree poster and deciding what prints we might want to hang up, and then finishing off the guestbook/scrapbook with more photos from wedding guests and honeymoon photos. Whew.

I am now no longer planning a wedding.

DONE and DONE.

It went by so quickly.

There were so many people there.

So many things went so well and so many people really stepped up to help such that overall, really, I didn't have to stress or worry about anything. Thank you, family, friends, vendors, world.

We're having brunch today with the people who are still around and then going over to my parents' to try to start carting back all the Stuff before going home to pack (and do some research...one of the tasks that got shafted last week) for our honeymoon. I have a huge backlog of blog posts to put together before I retire this here wedding blog, so it should be live for a good while through the summer, but for now, I'll just close with this tweet from @jphiii (high school friend) during the reception:

@kwugirl i can't tweet a wedding photo because you picked a venue with terrible 3G reception!

Weather Forecast: 1 Day Out

So this is the last of these posts, and the end of my foray into meteorology. Weather.com's forecast really was pretty stable after the tease of June 9. It looks like we'll get a pretty standard early summer day.

Date of Forecast	High	Low	Chance of Rain	Wind Speed	Description
9-Jun	79	63	0%	7 mph	"Abundant sunshine."
10-Jun	83	66	30%	6 mph	"Scattered thunderstorms possible."
11-Jun	84	67	30%	6 mph	"A few thunderstorms possible."
12-Jun	83	64	30%	8 mph	"Isolated thunderstorms."
13-Jun	78	63	20%	6 mph	"Mix of sun and clouds."
14-Jun	83	63	20%	8 mph	"More sun than clouds."
15-Jun	85	63	20%	6 mph	"Partly cloudy."
16-Jun	86	67	20%	8 mph	"Generally sunny despite a few afternoon clouds."
17-Jun	86	66	20%	9 mph	"Generally sunny despite a few afternoon clouds."

Here's Weather Underground's:

Date of Forecast	High	Low	Chance of Rain	Wind Speed	Description
12-Jun	81	61	20%	5 mph	"Partly sunny. Chance of thunderstorms."
13-Jun	81	61	20%	3 mph	"Partly sunny. A chance of showers and thunderstorms in the morning."
14-Jun	83	61	10%	4 mph	"Partly sunny. A chance of showers in the morning."
15-Jun	85	63	20%	6 mph	"Partly sunny."
16-Jun	85	68	10%	5 mph	"Mostly sunny."
17-Jun	85	65	20%	5 mph	"Partly sunny. A slight chance of showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon."

Finally, our hour-by-hour for tomorrow, courtesy of Weather.com:

11 AM - 79 degrees, 0% chance of rain
12 PM - 81 degrees, 0% chance of rain
1 PM - 82 degrees, 20% chance of rain
2 PM - 83 degrees, 20% chance of rain
3 PM - 84 degrees, 20% chance of rain
4 PM - 84 degrees, 20% chance of rain
5 PM - 84 degrees, 20% chance of rain
6 PM - 83 degrees, 20% chance of rain
7 PM - 81 degrees, 20% chance of rain

Weather Forecast: 2 Days Out

Weather.com's map shows rain all over the Eastern half of the US, but New Jersey is safe and secure. We are clearly God's chosen state.

Otherwise, forecast remains pretty stable.

Date of Forecast	High	Low	Chance of Rain	Wind Speed	Description
9-Jun	79	63	0%	7 mph	"Abundant sunshine."
10-Jun	83	66	30%	6 mph	"Scattered thunderstorms possible."
11-Jun	84	67	30%	6 mph	"A few thunderstorms possible."
12-Jun	83	64	30%	8 mph	"Isolated thunderstorms."
13-Jun	78	63	20%	6 mph	"Mix of sun and clouds."
14-Jun	83	63	20%	8 mph	"More sun than clouds."
15-Jun	85	63	20%	6 mph	"Partly cloudy."
16-Jun	86	67	20%	8 mph	"Generally sunny despite a few afternoon clouds."
17-Jun

The hourly forecast says that there is a 0% chance of rain at 2 PM at 83 degrees. That's a little hot for my tastes, but it's hard to complain; we did, after all, pick a late summer date.

Here's Weather Underground:

Date of Forecast	High	Low	Chance of Rain	Wind Speed	Description
12-Jun	81	61	20%	5 mph	"Partly sunny. Chance of thunderstorms."
13-Jun	81	61	20%	3 mph	"Partly sunny. A chance of showers and thunderstorms in the morning."
14-Jun	83	61	10%	4 mph	"Partly sunny. A chance of showers in the morning."
15-Jun	85	63	20%	6 mph	"Partly sunny."
16-Jun	85	68	10%	5 mph	"Mostly sunny."
17-Jun

We've been extremely lucky with the weather, so far. Here's hoping it stays put.

Weather Forecast: 3 Days Out

We're now firmly ensconced in the mid-80s as the Weather.com forecast temperature ticks up a couple in today's forecast. Just about everything else remains stable.

Date of Forecast	High	Low	Chance of Rain	Wind Speed	Description
9-Jun	79	63	0%	7 mph	"Abundant sunshine."
10-Jun	83	66	30%	6 mph	"Scattered thunderstorms possible."
11-Jun	84	67	30%	6 mph	"A few thunderstorms possible."
12-Jun	83	64	30%	8 mph	"Isolated thunderstorms."
13-Jun	78	63	20%	6 mph	"Mix of sun and clouds."
14-Jun	83	63	20%	8 mph	"More sun than clouds."
15-Jun	85	63	20%	6 mph	"Partly cloudy."
16-Jun
17-Jun

Weather Underground's forecast essentially duplicates Weather.com's for now, except that Weather Underground offers the optimistic "partly sunny" and Weather.com offers the pessimistic "partly cloudy." Strange. Is there a difference?

Date of Forecast	High	Low	Chance of Rain	Wind Speed	Description
12-Jun	81	61	20%	5 mph	"Partly sunny. Chance of thunderstorms."
13-Jun	81	61	20%	3 mph	"Partly sunny. A chance of showers and thunderstorms in the morning."
14-Jun	83	61	10%	4 mph	"Partly sunny. A chance of showers in the morning."
15-Jun	85	63	20%	6 mph	"Partly sunny."
16-Jun
17-Jun

Weather Forecast: 4 Days Out

The forecast did quite a bit of fluctuating today. When I first checked, it said 86 degrees as the high, which constituted a pretty significant change. I view that as going from "Pleasant, if a little too warm for my tastes" to "The best part of the day will be the part where I take off my suit jacket." The evening forecast looks more in line with what we've been seeing all week.

Date of Forecast	High	Low	Chance of Rain	Wind Speed	Description
9-Jun	79	63	0%	7 mph	"Abundant sunshine."
10-Jun	83	66	30%	6 mph	"Scattered thunderstorms possible."
11-Jun	84	67	30%	6 mph	"A few thunderstorms possible."
12-Jun	83	64	30%	8 mph	"Isolated thunderstorms."
13-Jun	78	63	20%	6 mph	"Mix of sun and clouds."
14-Jun	83	63	20%	8 mph	"More sun than clouds."
15-Jun
16-Jun
17-Jun

Weather Underground's computer had been stubborn, with the day's high and low holding steady all week, but we finally have some change there.

Date of Forecast	High	Low	Chance of Rain	Wind Speed	Description
12-Jun	81	61	20%	5 mph	"Partly sunny. Chance of thunderstorms."
13-Jun	81	61	20%	3 mph	"Partly sunny. A chance of showers and thunderstorms in the morning."
14-Jun	83	61	10%	4 mph	"Partly sunny. A chance of showers in the morning."
15-Jun
16-Jun
17-Jun

Also worth looking forward to: Weather.com's hourly forecast goes out as far as 40 hours. Thursday's post (2 Days Out) will go up at night, and it will include the hourly forecast for the wedding times.