So, who takes care of the bill-paying in your marriage?

Last week I put out a question to my facebook friends--who takes care of the bill-paying in your marriage? Not who earns the money that pays the bills, but who sits down with the checkbook or at the computer, and does the job?

This was prompted by a comment from Sheila Wyatt, my niece. She is a June bride and made a comment that she was tired of paying bills. I got to thinking--who does this job in most marriages? Obviously, someone has to, so I put out the question.

I got over thirty responses! Oh, I told them, I didn't mean to be nosy and only to reply if they wanted to. Two replies were that the husband and wife shared the responsibility. Of the rest, we had ten husbands and nineteen wives.

So, what does this mean? Probably not much of anything! Most seemed comfortable in how it was set-up to work for them. I was a little surprised to find that there were that many husbands (ten) amongst them. My husband and son Roy were included amongst them--like father, like son? Even though the women outnumbered the men, the task of paying bills is not as gender-specific as I thought it was.

My comment was that I enjoyed the fact that Ken took care of the bill-paying and that meant one less thing that I had to do! But there is more to the story than just that...

In the year prior to our marriage in May, 1971, we were dating, working to save up money for our life together. Ken had arrived home from Viet Nam in April, 1970. I graduated from high school in June and started a job at a bank in St. Marys. Ken worked at Brockway Gulf.

In August on 1970, Ken's dad died of a heart attack and Martha was left a widow. Ken took over paying most of the bills until we got married the next May. (Martha, in her upper 50's, got a job at a dry cleaners where she worked until she could draw retirement)

Ken was used to paying the bills and continued doing that for us in our marriage, and he does it to this day! I think it is a little source of pride for him to do it. I am not ignorant of our finances, though, and we both understand our money matters.

This is what works for us, and I can truthfully say we have had very few problems between us over money.

Another interesting sideline to this: When we were first married, we had decided to raise our family in the traditional way of the man being the bread-winner, and the wife being the homemaker. I worked for a year and a half after we were married (I retired to motherhood at age 20!). Since we wanted to learn to live on what Ken earned, we did not use what I made for living expenses. My salary went for extras--the washer and dryer, later on a freezer (which is still in use at Newry convention--boy, that one was a good one!). We also made payments on the principal of our mortgage with my earnings, which ended up saving us a nice chunk of money in interest over the years.

Years later, I found myself turning a rug-weaving hobby into a business. Once again, that money did not go into the household funds, but went back into the business for supplies and equipment--I eventually acquired a total of six looms! It also bought some sewing machines and sergers along the way. I think some of what I earned helped to build on our addition for a studio (now it is our bedroom) and may have even helped on our new kitchen.

Last winter I worked at H&R Block and made some dollars, too. I also sold out a lot of my weaving stuff. Some of that money went to buy the new bedroom furniture in our downstairs bedroom.

These are just things that worked for us, in our lives and in our time in history. By careful managing, we raised four children on one income. Ken has had good health and a pretty much steady work. I think he has probably gotten about 6 weeks of unemployment. None of our children were interested in going to college after high school, so we did not have the expense of education for them. Three out of the four of them have done a great job in being responsible to get their own education and we are proud of them for that!

Money issues can be a great source of contention in a marriage and can produce a huge power struggle. Hopefully the young ones getting married these days will have the wisdom to choose wisely and make money work FOR their marriage and not against it.

Just my musings...