Climbing Out One Family’s Adventure in Becoming Debt-free

Every time I watch a newly-married couple smoosh cake into each other’s face at their reception I have this uneasy feeling of something being wrong. When The Wife and I married we were giddy, ridiculously happy, and yet civilized about the darned cake eating thing. There was no smooshing.

Sadly, something was still wrong and I think even then I felt an uneasiness. I didn’t know what it was until nine years later. Nine years and more than $10,000 in accumulated overdraft fees.

Once again: more than $10,000 in overdraft fees in nine years.

The “something” we didn’t fix until this past February was part laziness, part Status Quo, and mostly dumb. We kept our separate checking accounts from our single days.

Having two checking accounts meant a lot of things for our finances and for our marriage that I see clearly now.

First, communication about finances was stifled or downright avoided. It was simply easy not to discuss the bills. Second, the person earning less felt consciously or unconsciously disenfranchised when it came to purchasing decisions. Worst of all, it enabled the hiding of spending and dishonesty to each other and to ourselves about our financial state.

For a time I was the one who paid the bills. The Wife would transfer most of her check to my account and I would do the creative shuffle every month to make sure almost everything was paid and I had plenty of play money. It took a couple of years of that foolishness and a pant-load of bounced checks before we gave The Wife the responsibility of paying the bills. I would transfer most of my check to her account and she would perform the monthly Quicken-mating-dance that eventually led to the same outcome.

All of it came with resentment, guilt and the underlying current of fear that results from living life sans safety net.

It should not be amazing at all that living life without a plan leads to a pile of poop no matter who is holding the reigns. Sometimes we would go for 4 or 5 months without an overdraft on one account only to bung it up royally on the other one. The pure genius, of course, being that we were actually paying monthly fees on both accounts as well. Like I said, dumb.

When we finally woke up, paired our banking down and got on a written plan our lives changed. Personally and financially we are better people now.

The monthly communication about money and the commitment that piece of paper brings has affected our marriage in every way. Not only are we kicking the crap out of our debt (I’ll do a six month update with real numbers soon), but since February we have not overdrawn our one-and-only checking account at all.

Not once.

I am not saying the way we have done it is right for everyone, but boy is it right for us. If you are on the fence about sharing a checking account with your spouse I challenge you to look seriously at the reasons why. It takes more commitment, more communication and a small amount of time to do a written plan every month, but the results are stunning. $10,000 stunning in our case.

Then again, some people actually like the whole cake-in-the-face thing.

the Dad