How do I fold side-income into our budget so my husband doesn't know?
"Maybe you can just hang onto the cash and upgrade the things you buy for cash now a bit.  Buy the better cut of meat, the nicer pair of shoes, etc. Since you have no trouble with bending the truth a bit.. if challenged, the shoes were ""on sale"". And no you must have lost the receipt.  Not that I'm advocating it, but the only time I notice my better half's shoe habit is when a garbage bag of the old ones goes out the door." These earnings will likely have tax implications, depending on where in the world you are. So, your budget concerns not nearly as important as having an honest conversation about money with your husband. Better for him to be mad about the truth than to continue the lie, and potentially have this become a much larger legal, not just marital, problem. I doubt that it is possible to keep something like this secret from your husband forever. If you get away with it once, I'd guess you'll probably try it again, and sooner or later he'll find out. He'll notice that things show up in the house that aren't accounted for in the budget, or he'll see a statement from your secret bank account, or one of your friends will carelessly say something about it when he's around, etc. I found out about some of my ex-wife's secret finances when she wasn't home one day, I got the mail, and found a credit card bill for an account I knew nothing about. If the preconditions on the question are that you're not going to tell him the truth (and you're not going to get a divorce), I think the only realistic answer is that there is no way of keeping this secret with a high probability of success.
First:  great job on getting it together.  This is good for your family in any respect I can think of.  This is a life long process and skill, but it will pay off for you and yours if you work on it. Your problem is that you don't seem to know where you money goes.  You can't decide how whacky your expenses are until you know what they are.  Looking at just your committed expenses and ignore the other stuff might be the problem here.  You state that you feel you live modestly, but you need to be able to measure it completely to decide. I would suggest an online tool like mint.com (if you can get it in your country) because it will go back for 90 days and get transactions for you.  If you primarily work in cash, this isn't helpful, but based on your credit card debt I am hoping not.  (Although, a cash lifestyle would be good if you tend to overspend.) Take the time and sort your transactions into categories.  Don't setup a budget, just sort them out.  I like to limit the number of categories for clarity sake, especially to start. Don't get too crazy, and don't get too detailed at first.  If you buy a magazine at the grocery store, just call it groceries. Once you know what you spend, then you can setup a budget for the categories.  If somethings are important, create new categories.  If one category is a problem, then break it down and find the specific issue. The key is that you budget not be more than you earn but also representative of what you spend. Follow up with mint every other day or every weekend so the categorization is a quick and easy process.  Put it on your iPhone and do it at every lunch break.  Share the information with your spouse and talk about it often. "While Googling answers for a similar personal dilemma I found Mvelopes. I already have a budget but was looking for a digital way for my husband and I to track our purchases so we know when we've ""used the envelope"". It's a free app." You can fairly simply make a spreadsheet in your favorite spreadsheet application (or in Google Docs if you want portability). I like to make an overview page that shows how much I take in per month and what fixed bills come out of that, then break the remaining total into four to get a weekly budget. Then, I make one page per month with four columns (one per week), with each row being a category. Sum the categories at the bottom, and subtract from your weekly total: voila, a quick reference of how much you can spend that week without going over budget. I then make a page for each month that lists what I bought and how much I spent on it, so I can trace where my money's gone; the category total is just a summation of the items from that page that belong in that category.  Once you have a system, stop checking your bank balance except to ensure your paycheck is going in alright. Use the spreadsheet to determine how much you can spend at any time. Then make sure you pay off everything on the card before the end of the month so you don't incur interest. "Your heart is in the right place. Especially since they've got a kid. If you really want to help them, have the uncomfortable conversation with them that they need to have about money. Specifically, how to develop and stick to a budget. It is a painful, but valuable lesson for life.  Depending on what type of relationship you have with them, you can approach it in different ways... just giving them friendly advice is perhaps the lightest ""touch"" you could have... but might not make the impression you need.  If they are asking you for money, I would personally make it a condition that they work through their personal budget with you, and then start living within that budget. If you're lending money, it's not too much to ask to follow their accounts or finances so that you can see that they're on the right track. If you're a close enough friend, you could really walk them through it and help them to develop the habits of: estimating how much they will earn in a month estimating how much they should spend in a month,  tracking how much they are actually spending, and  comparing how much they actually earn with how much they actually spend.  Doing this every month until they get out of the weeds. They should at least do it every 3 months when they're in good financial shape, but even then each month doesn't hurt. Setting them up with something like Mint.com (if they're in the US) would be a handy place to start. You can share the login information with them if they trust you... and then they can change it once whatever agreed-upon terms come around.  It sounds weird, I know, but I have helped two friends out of credit-card debt this way. The hardest part is getting around the discomfort/taboo/shame of them knowing they need help and not wanting to accept it." The Avalanche method does not work because most people don't have enough money to make an avalanche.  If you somehow had a windfall that was greater or equal to your highest credit card balance, then by all means pay that one off.   However, most people do not have that kind of situation.  Instead they should use the debt snow ball method.  They only have regular income that is typically much smaller then the balances. Another part of your plan that is especially troubling is that you are continuing to utilize credit cards.  You need to cut them up, and stop using them.  First of course save $1000 for a small emergency fund, the pay them off smallest to largest.  Do a budget each and every month.  Work an extra job or three.  Any extra money that hubby brings in goes towards one of the credit cards. BTW you don't have a math problem you have a behavior problem. I'm not certain I understand what you're trying to do, but it sounds like you're trying to create a business expense for paying off your personal debt. If so - you cannot do that. It will constitute a tax fraud, and if you have additional partners in the LLC other than you and your spouse - it may also become an embezzlement issue. Re your edits: Or for example, can you create a tuition assistance program within   your company and pay yourself out of that for the purposes of student   loan money. Explicitly forbidden. Tuition assistance program cannot pay more than 5% of its benefits to owners. See IRS pub 15-B. You would think that if there was a way to just incorporate and make your debts pre-tax - everyone would be doing it, wouldn't you? "If my wife and I tried this, we'd call it grounds for divorce. However, I think most long term couples actually do this, and it is just a budget.  It is common practice for two spouses to deposit money into a single checking account.  All of the household expenses are then paid from that single account.  Same as you describe: if I spend money from the joint checking that is less money available to my wife. Based on your dollar amount, I'd have to say great work on thinking about saving early on in life.  I think though, if you are actually starting out, getting into the habit of saving a ""dime of every dollar"" would be more beneficial. At some point your income will increase, and when it does so should your savings.  By ""paying yourself first"" your savings will keep pace with your spending and you will be a happier person when you income starts to fall again." Do a monthly budget, unique to each month, before the month begins, spend all of your money on paper. Use envelopes to help you keep track of how much you have left for things you buy throughout the month. Have separate envelopes for things like groceries, restaurants, clothing, entertainment. Put the amount of money for each category in cash in the envelope. Only spend the money out of the correct envelope and don't mix and mingle between envelopes. Pay in cash, with real money. Don't use credit or debit cards, it's proven you spend more when you are not paying with cash. Other than the two answers (both of which recommend waiting until marriage to actually combine finances, and which I agree with), there's the general question:  how does a couple choose to manage finances? In our marriage, it's me.  I'm more numbers-minded than my spousal-unit.  I'm also more a sticker for time.  I work and spousal-unit does not. We had some good friends -- upon marriage, spouse1 felt like he should take on the role.  He went on a several-week trip (leaving spouse2 at home), and upon returning home asked spouse2 about the late fees.  Spouse2 was appalled.  Spouse2 ended up keeping the job of managing household finances. There's enough pieces to the puzzle that it can be divided any way you choose -- any way that works for you and your spouse/virtual-spouse. One other point:  talk about how to manage your money, before you marry.  Dave Ramsey recommends a strict monthly budget.  I like listening to Dave Ramsey, but we've never had a budget.  Instead, we agreed during marriage counseling two things: First, talk to your husband about this. You really need to persuade him that you need to be saving, and get him to agree on how and how much. Second, if you husband is not good at saving, work on getting something set aside automatically - ideally deducted from a paycheck or transferred to a savings account automatically. If he is the kind of person who might dip into that account, try to make it a place he can't withdraw from Third, get some advice, possibly training, on budgeting. Buy a book, take a video course: even start by watching some TV shows on getting out of debt. "A budget that you both agree on is a great goal. X% to charity, y% to savings, $z a month to a reserve for house repairs, and so on. Your SO is likely to agree with this, especially if you say it like this: I know you're concerned that I might want to give too much to charity. Why don't we go through the numbers and work out a cap on what I can give away each year? Like, x% of our gross income or y% of our disposable income? Work out x and y in advance so you say real percentages in this ""meeting request"", but be prepared to actually end up at a different x and y later. Perhaps even suggest an x and y that are a little lower than you would really wish for. If your SO thinks you earn half what you really do, then mental math if you say 5% will lead to half what you want to donate, but don't worry about that at the moment. That could even work in your favour if you've already said you want to give $5000 (or $50,000) a year and mental math with the percentage leads your SO to $2500 (or $25,000), (s)he might think ""yes, if we have this meeting I can rein in that crazy generosity."" Make sure your budget is complete. You don't want your SO worrying that if the furnace wears out or the roof needs to be replaced, the money won't be there because you gave it away. Show how these contingencies, and your retirement, will all be taken care of. Show how much you are setting aside to spend on vacations, and so on. That will make it clear that there is room to give to those who are not as fortunate as you. If your SO's motivations are only worry that there won't be money when it's needed, you will not only get permission to donate, you'll get a happier SO. (For those who don't know how this can happen, I knew a woman just like this. The only income she believed they had was her husband's pension. He had several overseas companies and significant royalty income, but she never accounted for that when talking of what they could afford. Her mental image of their income was perhaps a quarter of what it really was, leading to more than one fight about whether they could take a trip, or give a gift, that she thought was too extravagant. For her own happiness I wish he had gone through the budget with her in detail.)" "If you ask ten different couples what they do, depending on a variety of factors, you'll get anywhere between two and ten different answers. One personal finance blogger that I read swears by the fact that he and his wife keep their finances totally separate.  His wife has her own retirement account, he has his.  His wife has her own checking and savings, he has his.  They pay fifty-fifty for expenses and each buy their own ""toys"" from their own accounts.  He views this as valuable for allowing them to have their own personal finance styles, as his wife is a very conservative investor and he is more generous. My spouse and I have mostly combined finances, and view all of our money as joint (even though there are a smattering of accounts between us with just one name on them as holdovers from before we were married).  Almost all of our purchasing decisions except regular groceries are joint.  I couldn't imagine it any other way.  It leaves us both comfortable with our financial situation and forces us to be on the same page with regards to our lifestyle decisions.  There's also the ideological view that since we believe marriage united us, we try to live that out.  That's just us, though.  We don't want to force it on others. Some couples find a balance between joint accounts and his and her fun money stashes.  You might find yet another arrangement that works for you, such as the one you already described. What's going to be important is that you realize that all couples have the same six basic arguments, finances being one of them.  The trick is in how you disagree.  If you can respectfully and thoughtfully discuss your finances together to find the way that has the least friction for you, you're doing well.  Some amount of friction is not just normal, it's almost guaranteed." I'll chime in and say that my wife and I thought this was a really dumb idea, until we tried it. I was keeping track of everything in my checkbook ledger, but having the physical money in the envelopes really does work! We thought it would be more hassle than it's worth, and there were hiccups the first month or two, but in the end we both agree this is what started our movement towards responsible money management and debt reduction. We have the following Categories:  Obviously, ymmv, but the point is to take any categories in your budget that are hard to budget for, as they vary from month to month, and just set aside an amount form your paycheck, in cash, for each one of those categories in an envelope.  What I've noticed is that by putting the money aside up front, it's MUCH easier to stick to the budget. We'll often shuffle money around in the envelopes if priorities change for a particular month as well, so rather than taking money away from an extra payment on a debt or our planned savings transfer, which would have been our default action pre-envelopes, we can just move $XX from Date Night into Groceries if we have to, hence, planning out how we'll spend our money, budgeting, has gotten a LOT easier since adopting this system. I won't answer in a detailed manner because most people at this site like answers with certain bias' on these questions, like pool resources always relative to which partner is asking.  If you follow the above advice, you are hoping things work out.  Great!  What if they don't?  It will be very messy.  Unlike most of my peers, I did NOT follow the above advice and had a very clean exit with both of us feeling very good (and no lawyers got involved either; win-win for both of us with all the money we saved). One assumption people make is the person with the lowest income has the strictest limits.  This is not always true; I grew up in poverty, but have a very high income and detest financial waste.  I can live on about €12,000 a year and even though my partner made a little less, my partner liked to spend.   Counter intuitive, right?  I was supposed to be the spender because I had a large income, but I wasn't.  Also, think about an example with food - sharing expenses.  Is it fair for one partner to split whey protein if one partner consumes it, but the other doesn't (answer: in my view, no)? My advice based on your questions: Balance the frugal vs. spendthrift mentality rather than income ratios.  If you're both frugal, then focus on income ratios - but one may be more frugal than the other and the thought of spending €300 a month on housing is just insane to a person like me, whereas to most it's too little.  Are you both exactly the same with this mentality - and be honest? Common costs that you both agree on can be easily split 50-50 and you can often benefit from economies of scale (like internet, cell phone). Both of us feel very strongly about being financially independent and if possible we both don't want to take money from each other. This is so healthy for a relationship.  My partner and I split and we both still really love each other.  We're headed in different directions, but we did not want to end bitterly.  What you wrote is part of why we ended so well; we both were very independent financially.   Kids are going to be a challenge because they come with expenses that partners don't always agree on.  What do you and her think of childcare, for instance?  You really want to know all this upfront; again a frugal vs. spendthrift mindset could cause some big tensions. open a bank account  under the business name and put tthe money in there  You can probably simply speak to the banker about having a business account and  setting aside money for taxes,, etc  no rocket science there  just don't  lie about  your income is most important,   or many  It's not how much you make its how much you deposit in a bank, that's the first thing   the tax man might look at IMO