Earlier this year I had set 5 financial goals for 2008. I thought I would take some time this month to reflect and check in on our progress on these goals. I’ll start today with out first goal:

1.) Better Merge Our Finances
Since getting married last year, my wife and I still haven’t fully merged our finances. Part laziness, complexity and fear has kept us from doing so. I have been working so far this year on fixing this but it is still not done yet. It probably will take a few more months to get everything fully integrated.

Checking Account

We have made quite a bit of progress on this so far. We’ve been working to switch to a joint Charles Schwab Investor Checking account. So far I have switched over most of my finances and direct deposits to this account. My wife has been paying some of her bills from this account and some from her other checking account while we are still making the transition. I’m hoping by the end of next month to have this fully converted. Checklist for this is as follows:

• Pay all utility and house related bills from checking account.
• Stop using our individual checking accounts and just use our joint one.
• Convert all credit cards to new checking account
• Get both us more involved with expenses out of this account so we do not overdraft.

Credit Cards

We have not begun merging our credit cards yet. You’ll notice I still called some expenses “her” bills. This is something that definitely needs to be worked on before the end of the year in order to meet our goals.

• Phase out my wifes American Express and merge her account into mine (since I have had mine longer and we both have the same card). This will be our primary credit card.
• Stop using our other individual credit cards and settle on some joint ones.