Budgeting as a couple (non-wedding)

FH is very proficient in Excel, so he made us spreadsheets. You're right that it is tedious, but that's the best thing for finances honestly; detailed and organized. We have one spreadsheet that lists out each one of our bills and how much they are, as well as our income. Then we have a separate spreadsheet that keeps track of what days our bills are do as well as what days we get paid. I made a Google calendar so I could visualize money coming in and going out, which works better for me. We also have cashback credit cards that we use to pay all of our bills and then we pay the statement balance in full so there's never any interest and we're getting money back on money we were going to have to spend anyways

I use a planner.

Every month I calculate expenses on what needs to be paid/saved.

Ive been doing it for over a year and it helps.

Out of curiosity, do you guys have shared accounts with your FHs and a separate one for yourselves, or just separate, or a joint one only?

I use mint.com - you can link it up to your accounts/credit cards so it takes away from some of the manual entry of a spreadsheet. It also categorizes your expenses so you can see if the majority of your budget is all going to restaurants, etc. You can add in your monthly income and can see how much you have or haven't saved at the end of each month.


I added in my car loan and my fiance's student loans too so we could see the progress there and factor in the monthly payments. It could be used as a net worth tracker if you added in a home too.
My fiance and I also like it since we can both add in our separate accounts and see where we are at. We haven't opened up a joint account yet so it helps to put us both on the same page.
Sorry for the long post, I've just been using it for about 5 years now and am a huge fan! I recommend setting it up on the website version and then using the app for checking in....that's my one negative is that I don't think the app is quite as robust as the desktop version.

EveryDollar is the way to go! It's free to use. If you want to link it to your account, that cost extra.

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We have a shared checking and saving that we use for our utilities, house payment, and to save for the wedding. We're also have our own separate accounts that we use for anything we personally want and to pay down previous debt and student loans on our own. We won't combine all of our money until we each have paid off our own debt.

I would love to have a program that breaks down what categories we're spending on, which account it's coming out of (FH frivolously spends on food out) so that we can recognize for the both of us where our money should be funneling

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I've used Mint in the past and really liked it! However, I read that Mint hasn't adjusted to allow two users for one account. If you had a way to make it work for both of you please let me know