I got a really great email today from a friend of mine who just got married. She would like to use Spending Profile with her husband and was asking if the service could handle joint or shared accounts.
Your site and blog look good! As I mentioned when you first talked to me, it would be really useful to have the tool be manageable for a couple (or even a family’s) expenses rather than just an individual’s expenses. I would like to try out your site, but it doesn’t make sense for us unless we can do everything i.e. common expenses, Emily personal expenses and Emanuel personal expenses. Hmm, I just thought of something. I suppose that we could have 3 separate accounts. Is there a way to link accounts or to combine the accounts, so that for example I could combine half of the common expenses plus my personal account to see what I actually spent?
This really got me thinking. It’s not the first time I’ve been asked about family accounts. Many people haved shared financial responsibilities, and they cannot and should not manage their finances in isolation.
In a word, YES, I definitely plan to add this functionality. The challenge will be to stay in line with Spending Profile‘s aim of being simple to use, and not to turn it into a complex system with too many features many people won’t use.
It should be possible to open a single “joint”, or “family” account to which multiple people will have access.
As for organizing the transactions, I think this will tie in quite well with the feature I described in my last post on Sub-categories. Joint or family accounts could have a top level of categories, one for each person, as well as a common one for shared expenses. For example, Emily, Emanuel, and commen could be at the top level, and then with each you can define your own categories and subcategories.
Different views of the data could hide or show different people’s transactions. For example, there could be a View menu with options such as,
- View Emily’s transactions only
- View Emanual’s transactions only
- View Common transactions only
- View All Transactions
- View a Combination of the above…
Where the last option would allow you to pick exactly what you want to see. For example, you could choose to see all of Emily’s transactions, combined with 50% of the common transactions, to get your full picture. Hm, perhaps that should be the default. And you could choose a split different from 50/50 if desired (I’m thinking of families where the income is unequal, such as where one partner is a full-time parent).
This should be extensible to families with children. Then we will no doubt get into hiding transactions from certain members! This could get interesting… And what about allowance, or transfers from one family member to another?
Again, I do have to keep in mind that Spending Profile is meant to be simple. I’m not attempting to rewrite Quicken or MS Money. I think this functionality will be a valuable addition, and the challenge will be to find the right balance.