Mine is not quite as dramatic as that.
My wife moved out about a year and a half ago and our finances have been pretty much separate ever since. We do still share auto insurance and a phone bill, but if she ever starts missing her half of the payments, I'll get her removed ASAP.
Back in January I started using an online site called
Mint to track my finances. It's got some easy tools for tracking expenses and making budgets; I figure that if I have to be self-sufficient financially, I might as well start off 2012 right.
I transferred my credit-card balance to a new card that gives me 0% APR until…July of 2013, I think? I don't remember offhand. I'm making double minimum payments until then, and holding onto things like my tax refunds (and hopefully soon a full house payment) in savings until the 0% period ends or I owe less on the card than I have set aside.
Fortunately, I make enough on my own that her moving out wasn't completely financially devastating. I got a small raise last summer, and I've been working on refinancing the house since December; If I can get that done I hope to be a couple hundred dollars up each month. I've been getting the garage cleaned up and doing some small work on the house; when the refi comes through, I might spend a little bit to get things repainted, repaired, or replaced.
As for my wife?
I know she used her tax refund to pay off her credit card, but has also put some money back onto it. She's looking at losing about $3/hour in pay if her job goes away and she gets transferred to a new department (or worse, if they just lay her off altogether). She said she was going to try to set aside the difference in pay, to see if she can make it on less money.
I don't mind that she's moved out; until the past year or so, she's never really lived on her own. She moved out of state from her parents' home to her own apartment here in Oregon, but we sorta-kinda lived together after a couple of months. (Technically I still had my own apartment, but it was almost literally a hole in the wall and I had a roommate.) So this is probably the first time she's really had to be 100% responsible for herself.
Me: 45, Her: 40. Married 16 1/2 years, together(-ish) 20.
Status: BD 8/25/09, she moved out 8/28/10. No talk of D.
Every day is another chance to get it right.
http://www.vachss.com/mission/behavior.html"Counting days won't buy us years" —Wings by HAERTS
"Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past." —Lily Tomlin
"When we commit to our lovers, we implicitly promise to forgive them. There is no other way we can live with someone for better or worse or until death do us part." —Dr. Frederic Luskin