Hello! I am getting married in a few weeks and the to-be and I sat down and worked out a budget for after we get married.
The framework is that we will have a shared checking account to pay bills, a shared savings account split into virtual accounts for emergency fund, short-term savings, and long-term savings, and a separate checking account for each of us for "personal" money - money where we don't have to explain what we bought to the other (things like Netflix, grabbing fast food, or buying something for a hobby). Anything relatively expensive we'll talk about on a case-by-case basis after we get out of debt (replacing/upgrading computers, tattoos, etc.)
We are both in school, her for auto tech, me for civil engineering. One of the benefits at my job lets us take our classes for free, up to 9 credit hours each per semester.
Our monthly budget looks like:
Income, gross - Her, $9/hour ($18,720), Me, $10/hour ($20,800), combined $39,520. I think we will need to adjust our withholding because our net yearly is $27,576 which is a fairly large discrepancy. She worked half a year last year and received all income tax back ($600), I used a tuition tax credit and received a lot of income tax back ($1.7k)
Pre-tax deductions - $120 from my check for health insurance, ~$96 for mandatory state pension plan.
Taxes... not sure on the specifics of this yet, I'll have to find some older paystubs to get a full picture.
Income, net - $2296
Rent (includes WST) - $595
Electric - $60 (varies, but this is the high end of average)
Internet - $40
Phones - $50 (high end of average)
Food - $250 (for two people)
Insurance - $110
Fuel - $80
Misc - $50
Short Savings - $250
Long Savings - $600
Personal Allowances - $200 ($100 each)
Total outflows: $2285
Assets:
Starter emergency fund of $1000
Car worth $2800
Buffer in checking account, $500
Debt:
CC - $2000
Motorcycle - $4200
Student Loan - $5000
The plan is to cut our personal allowances in half and put short and long term savings towards debt ($800/mo.), putting us debt free August of next year. Any windfalls go to debt. Anything left over at the end of the month over the emergency fund goes to debt. Debt is paid off avalanche style, CC (24%), then motorcycle (3%), then student loans (0%/5%). If time permits, I may pick up a part-time job for the weekends to help pay this down faster and any overtime she gets goes to debt, then to savings.
We haven't looked at investments yet, but I imagine we'll just start up a Vanguard account when we have a fully funded e-fund and are feeling comfortable.
Edited to add case study elements, reduced misc spending, increased short savings.