- Hey everyone, welcome
back to my channel. Today, I wanted to talk about how me and my partner
organise our joint finances, but also just to talk
about money and finances in a relationship in general. Before we get into that, though, I teased this in my last video, but now I can tell you
that there is going to be a sexy scribbles colouring book. This is a digital colouring book that includes all of the sexy scribbles from the last year plus
a couple of bonus pages. So if you've been signed
up to the newsletter for the last year, and you've received all of the sexy scribbles,
the colouring in pages, then you will still get something new. If you've only got half of
them then this is your chance to get the whole shebang. And if you've no idea
what I'm talking about, hey, do you wants some
chills, sex positive, body positive colouring and
to do over the winter months? Well, do I have something for you. These are my pages that
I've done over the years, all of my, oh my gosh, all of my beautiful colouring. I keep them all in this little folder. So it's a digital colouring book, and there are two ways that
you can get your hands on it. The first way is by pre-ordering
it, by purchasing it, there's a link in the
description to my website where you can do this. It is six pounds, and there are 14 different
colouring pages included. And it will be sent
straight to your email, and you can download them to print or you can digitally colour them in, if you've got a tablet and a stylus. I said pre-order because
it actually comes out on the fourth of December. But if you pre-order,
you will get one page immediately sent to you
and then the whole thing will come to you automatically
on the fourth of December. So that is way number one
to get it is by purchasing and pre-ordering it. Obviously after the fourth of December, it will still be available to purchase, and you can just purchase it and it'll go straight into your inbox. The second way to get your hands on it is to become a patron. So one of the perks that my
patron community The Common Room have received over the last year is that even if they weren't
subscribed to the newsletter, or they missed one, they would get access to
all of the sexy scribbles. So patrons already have
access to all of them. So if you sign up to become a patron by the 27th of November, then you just will get
the entire ebook for free. The only place to get the two bonus pages is as part of the whole ebook. So you do have to be signed up by the 27th in order to get access to those. So there you have it. I've been working with
the illustrator Maddie over the last year, and I kind of wanted to
send off her sexy scribbles with a bang. And so we've managed to compile them all, get some bonus stuff, I've got
little stories and thoughts about each page as well
as part of the ebook. And yeah, I'm really proud
of this little project that's happened over the last year and glad that we can like
round it off in this way. And I hope that you enjoy colouring in and having a nice chill time. Okay, so money,
relationships, joint finances. I just wanna preface this
that there is no right or wrong way to do things. And you don't have to do things the way that me and Dan do it. Absolutely not. There is like different
versions of structures of ways that you can manage your
money within a relationship. This is just what we
do, and it works for us. So we actually got a joint account when we moved in together. So this was before we were married, but we just thought it
would be easy for both of us if there was a joint account
where mortgage and bills and like food shops and
everything that is just like for the house, for things
that both of us use, it all comes out of one account. We both still have
separate personal accounts. And whatever we choose to spend out of those personal accounts
is our own business. So that is your personal
money and we basically agree on how much each of us will put into the joint account each month. We need to obviously
cover all of our expenses, but we don't always do a 50/50 split. So it kind of depends on who
is earning more basically. We do it based off what
each of us can afford, rather than always doing it 50/50. And even though we might
not always be putting the same amount into the joint account, once it's there, everything in
that account is both of ours, is split 50/50. It's not like oh, I own 70%
of the money in this account. It's not like that at all. We just contribute different amounts, but everything that is
in there is ours equally. So that's our general structure and it hasn't changed
since getting married because obviously we had
the joint account system already in place from
when we moved in here. So yeah, we've been
sharing a joint account and merging our finances
for the last two years. And it's works pretty well so far. As you might already know,
I love personal finance. I love talking about money, I love trying to like break
the taboo and stigma around being open and honest about money, especially with the people
close to you in your lives where it's important that you
are able to talk about money, such as someone who you might be sharing the joint account with. So because I love it so much,
I also love spreadsheets, I love colour coded spreadsheet, I love organising all
these different things. I am very much the like,
keeper of the finances. Obviously, we both have
access to our own cards for the joint accounts, we both have access to all of that money, but I'm the one who kind
of like, organises it. I'm the one who knows how much
our bills are every month, I know what our yearly
expenses are as well, things that might come up
once a year or twice a year. So I do all of the calculating, I do all of the tracking of our spending. I'm the one who's like,
oh, this thing, this, oh maybe we need to like
spend a bit less over here or like, okay, we've got a new mortgage, that means that we need to put more money in the joint account,
how much can you afford? Oh, my God, we've got
this massive bill that I didn't even foresee, can we please put some more
money in the joint account? That's always me. I am the organist one of the finances. And luckily, Dan just trusts me. I do talk him through it. I don't think there's any problem at all, if one of you manages the finances, as long as both of you have access to it, and there is clear, clear communication. Because abuse comes in
many different forms, and one of them can be financial, and you want to always
make sure that you know what is happening with your money. So we both have access to the account, we both can see everything
that's happening. And anytime I am doing like an overhaul or like something changes
in terms of our bills, or our mortgage, or our income,
whatever it is that changes, I will take stock and
have a look at everything, I will kind of like come
up with my own ideas of what we could do or
what we might need to do. And then we will sit down
together and talk about it. And then I will do all of the
filling out in the spreadsheet and getting very excited
about numbers and things. So yeah, I don't think
there's anything wrong if like one person is just
like, I love doing this, this will be my household
chore, I will do this thing, as long as you're really communicating. And the big decisions that are being made are run by everybody. So I'm not the decision maker
when it comes to the money, I'm just like the monitor, I'm the one who spots the
trends, see what's happening. Speaking of trends, because I've been tracking our finances for the last two years, I have been able to see the
difference in our spending from 2019 to this year
with the global pandemic and how that has changed. And we have dramatically
increased our food bill. How is this like, what is going on? Like we're not eating out, we might be getting more takeaways. But like our actual
groceries, like food shop bill was so much more. And I was like what is happening here? And then it clicked with us,
we were like, oh, of course. Because last year, we would
both eat lunch separately, because Dan would be at work and I would be doing my own thing, so we would both pay for our own lunches on our personal accounts. And then we would only spend
money on the joint account on food for meals that
we had together at home. And that might not have even
been every night of the week, because we might be off
doing separate things with friends or whatever and so we're eating out separately. Whereas this year, with both of us working from home most of the time, we have got seven evening meals a week that we're eating together,
and then also seven lunches that we're eating at home together. So yeah, the amount of food that we're actually eating through the joint account has increased. However, it's not that we're
actually spending more on food because obviously we're spending less through our personal accounts. But that was something
that I was able to notice, because I've been
tracking all of our money. So yes, let's talk through
how I organise our finances through our wonderful,
wonderful spreadsheet. Now, I have basically adapted spreadsheets from like Patricia Brye,
and from One Big Happy Life. I've like used their like budget planning yearly spreadsheets, and then like kind of adopted
it and made it work for me. So this is what it looks
like, this is an empty one. And so the top line is for income. So this is what I put
in the joint account, what Dan puts in the joint
account, and then other. And other might be like
money from birthday presents, or like literally other
literally could be anything else where there's some money that's come in. And then we have this
whole section for savings. So obviously this year, we
were saving up for our wedding and our honeymoon, which because of COVID we
have had to change kind of both of those things, but we still obviously
had to save for them. And then we have an emergency fund, which is pretty new for us, we're like starting to create
a joint emergency fund. We both have our separate
personal emergency funds, which is very important. And then boring stuff, boring
stuff basically, what I did, we kept on getting
caught out by those bills that aren't monthly, we just kept forgetting to factor them in to what we were spending every month, 'cause they would come once a year, or they would come twice a year. And so what I did is I got everything, I was like, these are all of
the things that we pay for not on a monthly basis on like
less frequently than monthly, and I added it all up and
then I divided it by 12. And so then the amount that that came to, we now put in a separate savings part that is just boring stuff. Basically just monthly bills, but I just make sure it
gets put aside every month so that when those bills
come along, it's like, haha, we have the money, we did it. So that's actually something
that we've only just started, because of months of getting caught out and just being like fuck we don't have enough money
in the joint account. And so fingers crossed
that works, hopefully. I love implementing new systems. So that savings there
isn't just like what we did put into the joint account. Some of those savings ones like the wedding and the honeymoon also have a goal attached to them. So what I would do is I
would like start at the end, being like, okay, this is the goal, this is how much we need, and then work backwards from there to figure out how much
money we have to put in the account each month. So that savings line isn't really tracking that savings line is like, this is what you're obliged to put away, like this is what we need to put away. And then we have expenses. Now you're like what the
hell is this average 2019 actual 2020. This is, again, how
I've adapted it myself, and how it works for me. So my spreadsheet isn't
really a budget planer, maybe a little bit in
terms of the big things that we might have to save for, but ultimately, it's a spending tracker. That's kind of like how it functions more. So I tracked our spending
for the entirety of 2019. I didn't do any budget planning, I just tracked our spending. So I have this whole year
of how we spend our money. And so I obviously have an average of what we've spent every month. And so when I was doing our
budget planning for 2020, I used 2019's average, to kind
of fill out the spreadsheet and see what we needed to put in in order for everything to balance out with the wedding and
the honeymoon savings, so that we weren't going into negatives. But then as the year has gone on, obviously I've been able to
replace the average amount that's in that box with actually
what we spent that month. And then as you can see,
there's like that second line for wedding, honeymoon slash remortgage. And these are all just like big things that happened in 2020. So I'm not including them in
our average monthly spending, like what we spend on food,
what we spend on our pets, what shopping do we do, what
do we spend on like Netflix and Spotify and like all
of those kinds of things. So anytime we made a big wedding payment or honeymoon payment,
or like solicitors fees for the remortgage, that kind of like went in a separate line, because that to me doesn't
really need to be included in the average of our
monthly spending this year. And then there's another
page in my spreadsheet, which is actually where I
track all of our spending for every month, like
what we actually spent in all of these different categories, so I can then work out
the average for each one as we move through the year. I was actually showing this spreadsheet to one of my friends
and she was just like, "Mustard, how are you spending?" I can't remember what we
were spending on average, but let's say it's like 50 quid, right? She was just like, "How are
you spending 50 quid a month "on mustard?" "I didn't realise that you
guys loved mustard that much." And she thought that it was the condiment, that we loved the
condiment mustard so much that we had a whole separate
line in it in our budget. But no, mustard is our pet gecko, and so obviously we spend money on her. She needs to eat and she needs light, and she needs things in her vivarium. So we gotta buy that stuff. So y'all know, we do not love the
condiment mustard that much. But we love our baby gecko Mustard a lot. So that's my spreadsheet. Do you love it? I love it. Do you have your own spreadsheets where you do your personal finances? I would love to hear. Is your system similar to mine? Is it different? Do you have any tips and tricks? Oh, always up for like
system improvements. One of the other things
I wanted to talk about was asking permission to buy things if you share a joint account. And obviously this will be
different for every relationship, but I think it's always
important to have a conversation about what can you buy without
needing to get permission from the other person. And where is that line
when you need to be like, "Oh, can I buy this on the joint account?" Like you need to have
a mutual understanding of where that line is of
like, "Oh yeah, of course." Like you just put that on the
joint account, no need to ask. So like, for example, Jackbox six, seven, the new Jackbox, which is like a game and it's got loads of
different party games in it, the new Jackbox pack came out recently. And that is something that Dan and I like often play together and
have lots of fun times with. But Dan texted me just being like, "Can I put the new Jackbox
game on our joint account?" And I was like, "Of course." So the new Jackbox game
was like 24 pounds, which isn't even that much, but obviously, it's not something that we'd talked about getting, and I didn't even realise that it was out. And so Dan was like, "Can I buy this?" Sure.
The other big change that has happened with us personally, is that we now own this flat together, we have a joint mortgage. Previously, I owned
it, it was my mortgage, I did all of that. Obviously, Dan contributed
towards the joint account, which paid the mortgage, but we recently remortgaged
and we now own it all together. So yeah, joint mortgage. That almost feels like
more significant to me than getting married, I don't know. They're both pretty significant. But oh, my goodness, applying
for a mortgage with two of you as a joint mortgage, where
one of you has a normal job and is on PAYE, what a breeze? Like, honestly, I mean, not a breeze, like it was still a lot of paperwork. But when I applied for the
mortgage by myself, originally a few years ago, as a freelancer, they would not give me lots of money. And this time, they're just like, "Here have this massive
mortgage, all fine with us." And I'm just like, "God, dammit." And we actually recently
experienced our first like, financial marriage perk,
which we weren't expecting. Dan recently renewed his car insurance, and for the first time put
me as a named driver on it. And he was just like,
"blah, blah, blah, my wife." My wife, fuck. And because he's now a married
man, and not a single man, the price of his car
insurance went whole way down, we were like, "Ah, you
are now responsible." But yeah, Dan's car has
actually another one, 'cause Dan got his car before we met, and he's been doing his
car repayments on that. So that all comes out
of his personal account, but because I benefit
from him having a car, and we use it together for the
things that we do together, things like the MOT, new
tyres we have to get recently, all kinds of petrol and the insurance, that all comes out of the joint account. But the actual car repayments
comes out of Dan's account. But I think he's only got
like one payment left. And so now, it will be our car, will it? I don't know, legally, maybe. But yeah, so those are a few
examples of how we manage our joint finances, and also a
little look at my spreadsheet and how that all works. I hope that this has been
interesting or useful, or you maybe took something away from it. If you only take one thing away from it, I just want it to be to
communicate about money with your partner, with the
people that you live with, with the people who you might
be financially entangled with. Just that open communication
is so so important. And I know people can feel
a bit like embarrassed or ashamed especially when
it comes to like income, and being honest about how much you earn, whether it's a lot or not very much. But if you can, it's so important
to have that open dialogue and communication when it
comes to your finances. So everybody knows what's
up and what is happening. And it can also protect you
if any of those relationships might break down. And just having a grip on
your own personal finances and understanding what is
what and how things work is so important. Thank you for watching, I
hope you enjoy this video. Hope you love spreadsheets as much as me. If you don't, that's fine,
we can still be friends. I hope you're doing well and
don't forget to check out the sexy scribbles colouring
book links to all of that stuff in the description. And I'll see you in my next video, bye.
