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Suggestions for adding my wife to categories

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I've used Quicken for many years & have everything setup just the way I like it, I've always been single but recently got married, so I need some advice on categories & budgets. We're not planning to combine our accounts yet (she uses Monarch & likes it) but sometimes she transfers money to my checking to help out with bills. In the past when we were dating she was part of my "Entertainment:Dating" sub-category, but she insisted on getting her own/new category🙄 and that's worked well until she moved in & started helping w/bills. Now, my logical brain says her transfers should be an income category, but my emotional brain wants her transfers to offset all the expenses she incurs😁, which works well for reporting but that messes with my budget. Any suggestions?

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NotACPA

Have you yet decided what type of IRS return you're going to file? "Married Filing Jointly" would be common, but there's also "Married Filing Separately".

If you decide on MFJ, then the monies she pays toward combined expenses isn't taxable income. If it were, it would be recorded as taxable in whatever she uses and again in your Q.

To satisfy her insistence, I'd just create a new non-taxable income category and record her contributions as coming from that.

BUT, having gotten re-married 9 years ago myself, I'd try to convince her to let you maintain a single Q data file for the household, starting 1/1/26. She could certainly keep using Monarch for her own record-keeping, but if you're going to file MFJ, it's much easier to have everything in one place.

And, lastly, CONGRATULATIONS on getting married.

Snorkle

A transfer between accounts is just a transfer. A category is used when a check is written to pay for something. My wife and I share a single Quicken data file that contains all our checking, credit card and investment accounts included regardless of who owns the accounts. For any category, for example "hobby," where we might want to track the expenditure by person we have tags (her name and my name). From which credit card or checking account the funds come is immaterial for us. Quicken has preset categories for tax related items (spouse) and we use those. For identifying expenses if they are spouse specific we use tags.

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https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20529339#Comment_20529339

I think what you meant was "A transfer between accounts *IN QUICKEN* is just a transfer", and you would be correct if both accounts were in Quicken, but they're not. I use tags to track expenses like you mentioned, but I can't track her expenses because her accounts are not in Quicken. Her ex-husband was very controlling of her finances, so she doesn't want to combine them yet and neither do I, I'm totally fine waiting until we're both ready. So I can't record them as transfers in Quicken, I basically see 3 options:

Assign her deposits to an income category
Assign her deposits to an expense category (which is incorrect but would offset her as being an "expense" in my reports & budgets)
Create a fake checking account for my wife and record her deposits there then transfer them to my real account (which seems like extra work w/o any benefit)

q_lurker

A fourth option?

Record the deposits into your checking account making the category that same account name. That is typically what is done for opening balance transactions. I am not sure how that flows through various planner and budgeting routines, but it may be worth a shot.

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https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20529333#Comment_20529333

Thanks for the congrats & the advice. I'm leaning towards a new non-taxable income category for now, just do that for a year and make note of how much it complicates our income taxes. Next year I'll suggest we try adding just her checking account to Quicken for high level tracking, and she can also have it in Monarch if she wants.

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https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20529431#Comment_20529431

Interesting idea, I do that for other things like tracking vehicle values & credit scores that I don't want to show up in reports & budgets. I don't think I want to "hide" her contributions but that's a clever idea, I'll think about it more.

RalphC

I think you're on the right track. I would create a non-taxable Category income account. Call it something like "Wife's Contributions". When you deposit the wife's contributions into your checking account to pay bills, it would be coded to said category account but, being non-taxable, would not show up on your Quicken's tax reports as income to you.