Tell us how you track shared expenses in Simplifi!

Coach Natalie

Are you sharing expenses with someone? We'd love to hear from you on how you track these items in Simplifi, and any tips or tricks you've picked up along the way!

I'll go first! There are a couple of scenarios when it comes to tracking shared expenses in Simplifi for me:

1. For situations such as going out to eat with friends where I am paying the entire bill and am then reimbursed by others for their portion, I enter the entire expense transaction using the appropriate Expense Category ("Restaurants", in this case), just as the transaction would appear on my bank's website. Then, I use the same Expense Category for the reimbursement transactions, which offsets the total amount of the expense with some income. Ultimately, I end up with the net amount for just my portion of things!
2. When it comes to sharing expenses with my husband, I am very basic. I personally don't even try to break things down to know what portion of each bill is mine and what's his — I instead track the money he sends me as "Personal Income", and then track all of our bills and other expenses using the applicable Categories. Since I'm the one that pays all of the bills and he just sends me money, I've found this to be the easiest approach for me!

We know that some users track shared expenses with their significant other a little differently than my personal method, or maybe you're sharing expenses with a roommate instead. We also know there are some unique situations out there. How do you make this work for you in Simplifi? And what could Simplifi offer to make this process easier for you?

Please let us know in the comments below!

DannyB

49 years ago my spouse and I combined our income and expenses into one unified budget and never bothered to sort out who spent what. This required us to talk about this part of our life together which has been a healthy part of our story together. At some point we decided to set up two checking accounts, one for my wife’s income and one for my income. When we set this up we also made some decisions about which household expenses would be covered by which account. Again, this kept us in tune with each other regarding how we were financing our story. Also, this gave each of us a sense of freedom to use extra income however desired and since neither of us are extravagant spenders and we both had access to each account this arrangement allowed us to be individuals as well as a couple. Today, Simplifi along with automatic notifications from our bank allow us to continue to track our common expenses that are shared without trying to sort them out as well as our individual expenses. As @Coach Natalie said, this is our unique way of handling our shared finances.

Flopbot

@DannyB, great response! When we got married, we too combined our finances; I trust her, she trusts me. Separate accounts just seemed like they would encourage secrecy, suspicion, & complication. Simplifi is the first software I've found that's made it possible for my wife to easily check on our finances - if she cared to.