SENIOR FINANCES
My Wife Wants to Know About Our Money
I thought that was odd
My wife recently asked me to help her understand our finances. This surprised me because years ago, she was the one who paid the bills and kept track of our budgets. I slowly took it over as she became more ill, and I had more time.
By “took it over,” I mean I put everything I could on autopay and used Mint to warn me if we needed to transfer money from savings. When we reached the age where we were required to withdraw yearly money from our retirement funds, I also set those up to be automatic.
There isn’t much left to do. I watch credit charges in Mint to be sure someone hasn’t overcharged us or someone else hasn’t hacked us. I sell stocks from our non-retirement accounts when we need extra money for repairs or whatever. It’s all as hands-off as it can possibly be.
My wife doesn’t like hands-off. When she managed things, and I was starting my business, we sometimes had to rob Peter to pay Paul, and she did the juggling. She continued to manually pay bills even after there was no need for it.
Those days were long ago. We do not need to juggle now. Unless we have a major economic crash and rampaging inflation, we should be fine for the rest of our lives. Autopay works.
