My wife and I share joint expenses. I’m looking for a program that we can both sign up for, link our bank/cc accounts for data aggregation, but only share expenses with each other that we specifically mark as “joint” expenses. Then, ideally, we could create monthly reports showing who owes who how much, and also, what we jointly spent on various categories.
I use personal capital (purely for aggregating transactions and tracking balances in accounts) so I would ideally like to do it there, but I don’t really see any way to do what I’m thinking. Of course we could both export transactions to a csv or something then create some sort of mapping template and grab the csv data with excel, but that’s less than ideal.
Something with all the features you want may not exist, but does something meant for roommates and general bill splitting work? They’ll keep track of the joint expenses, and what’s been paid, and maybe the categories.
So, maxing out cash back categories? You could make some of your category cards joint/AU. Or give up the marginal rewards for the tracking convenience. I didn’t ask if it’d be optimal, only if it’d be easier .
What you want in the OP sounds unnecessarily complicated. Both of you would have to categorize every transaction as joint or individual, right? And you’d have to do it instantly or at least the same day, because who can remember by the time the monthly statement arrives.
Yeah, fair, though it’d end up being cheaper to have an engineer build something than to give up maximizing points/cash back/offers/other credit card benefits.
We already record our joint expenses anyway so that’s not too big of a deal.
The small transactions we just ignore so it’s not too difficult to do it monthly.
Not when the goal is to hide your personal spending from your spouse…
Probably the “easiest” solution is to each keep your own records, then enter duplicate records onto a “joint” program for the shared expenses.
Of course, the real easiest solution is for both of your to keep track of everything in one file/program, and just trust each other to not mess with/snoop in the other’s accounts…
Are you really saying that a custom solution would be less than the marginal rewards (i.e., 5% category vs 2.5% everything) from your joint CC spending? Somehow I doubt it.
We spend too much on travel and dining out. But it’s also not just the cash back percentages. SUBs/annual fee offers, Amex FHR/chase [whatever it’s called] benefits for hotels that aren’t part of luminous, extended warranty benefits, trip delay benefits, amex/chase offers, Delta companion certs.
The first step is admitting you have a problem. Buy yourselves a couple of Viewmasters, a decent set of All Clad (not the non-stick), a couple of cast iron skillets, and some Henckels 4 star and you’re all set.
Alternatively, Eurail passes and a personal chef would be easier.
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