Big steps

Ian and I took a big step today - we set up a joint bank account for our household expenses.

This is a huge change for us because up until now we've always kept our money separate; each of us pays a bunch of household bills from our own accounts. But since we're going to be buying a house together, we decided that it would be best if all the household bills came out of just one account. It'll be easier to keep track of what we're actually spending as well.

Of course we're each keeping our own separate accounts with our own separate investments and stuff. I've opened up accounts at Ian's bank to make transferring money into the joint account easier. And to get away from my current bank, which has annoyed me very much. I'd actually left this bank ages ago because they annoyed me then, but they bought out the bank I'd taken my accounts to. I'm feeling no small amount of satisfaction in leaving my bank again :)

Over the next week I'll go ahead and change all of my deposits and withdrawls. The bank could do it for me but I'd have to get all my account information together anyways, so I'll just do it myself.

It feels weird to be doing this, in a way, because it's like we're mixing a part of our money together. We're common-law anyways but having some of our money together makes the infrastructure of the relationship feel that much stronger, as though there's more binding us together, if that makes sense. It's sort of scary to me because I've never been this committed to someone before. It's going to take a while for me to get used to this, I think.