From "Me" to "We"

Marriage is the union of two lives… and two bank accounts?

I’ve talked with many different married couples and have heard varying opinions on having a joint account.  Most of the responses I’ve heard sound like the following:

 “We keep everything separate.  I have my own account and my wife has her own account.  As long as we split most of the bills 50/50, she can do whatever she wants with her money and I can do whatever I want with my money.”

“I don’t trust my husband with access to my bank account.  If he can’t control his own credit card spending, there is no way that I am going to let him touch my money.”

“I believe in having 3 main accounts: mine, yours, and ours.  This allows us to equally contribute to our shared living expenses such as rent, groceries, and bills.  We should take individual responsibility for our own money.”

What is your attitude towards having one joint account in a marriage? 

New bonus for Chase Ink cards and Freedom activation

Well folks, this is going to be a big week for Chase.  If you haven’t already heard (since it’s already been mentioned on almost every hot deal or frequent flyer blog / forum), Chase has increased the sign-up bonus for the Chase Ink cards for national small business week.

From June 16 to June 22, you can now earn an additional 10,000 points for Ink Plus and Ink Bold credit card signups for a total of 60,000 bonus points (after spending $5,000 in 3 months).  

Chase is also increasing the sign up bonus for the Ink Cash and Ink Classic cards, which are now 25K bonus points instead of the normal 20K bonus points.  While these cards have no annual fee I recommend applying for the Ink Bold or Ink Plus to take advantage of the first year free and much larger sign up bonus.  You can always downgrade your card into one of the no fee Ink cards later.

Investing Primer: choosing your investments

This is the last post in my investing series.  The other posts are here:

Part 1: save, save, save
Part 2: stocks and bonds
Part 3: risk, asset allocation, diversification
Part 4: mutual funds and ETFs
Part 5: minimizing costs
Part 6: tax efficiency
Part 7: market timing

Today I will talk about getting started with choosing your investments.  

“I want to do more research on investing before I jump in.”

Learning about investing is important before taking the plunge and opening your first investment account.  With so many different ways to invest, it is easy to get overwhelmed to the point of doing nothing.  

What I’ve found is that the more you learn about investing, the more you realize how little you know.  You will never learn everything; it’s too complicated.  That’s why I suggest learning the basics before getting started.  Over thinking things will lead to paralysis, and not doing anything.  

As it turns out, simple investments usually end up producing better consistent returns than complicated investments.