Personal Finance

My wife and I have one set of shared bank accounts (checking, bills, savings), and that's it. Ever since we got married. She had her own account for like a year or so after we got married, but she didn't use it, we were just too lazy to close it for a while. We swapped over her paycheque early on.

I dunno, man, we seem to be an outlier, cause the idea of maintaining separate finances as a married couple just seems so... alien, to me. It quite literally never occurred to either of us, as an option.

Downsides include that you can't really keep secrets. For example, I know how much she spent on me for Christmas, and where from, she's just not gonna give me the receipt until next year.

And yeah, if we ever divorced, that'd probably be a problem. 12 years in, I don't think that's happening.

Anyway, if keeping separate finances doesn't seem weird to you, I don't see much downside. As long as you CAN agree on who should be responsible for what, seems entirely manageable to me. Biggest upside for joining up, I would think, is less legal work for you each to get access the other's assets, in the event of a death or similar event.

All of our accounts are joint and I manage most of it because she isn't interested. Trade offs? Joint accounts simplify management (no transferring funds or coordinating expense management), but makes it easier for someone in the relationship to check out and have no knowledge or understanding of your financial arrangements. Separate accounts require some engagement in financial affairs from both, if that's not happening you can run into problems.

Something to consider is that a common issue (particularly for women, but it can go either way) is that if one partner manages all of the household finances and they die first (or even in case of separation), the other partner can be completely unprepared to take over and manage things. For example, not knowing where money is deposited, not knowing what bills need to be paid or which can be canceled, etc.

We each have our own checking account. We also have a joint account. Each of us receives our paychecks in our personal account. We each keep a small portion in our personal accounts for each month for personal expenses, gifts, etc. The rest goes into the joint account.

We set up credit cards the same way. This gives us the means to buy gifts for each other without the other knowing. It also provides redundancy for lost cards.

We can both see the joint accounts. We cannot see each other's personal accounts. Our bank has it set up so I can see everything I have access to on a single online account.

This arrangement has been working well for years.

We had a joint account where all our income was deposited even before we were married, now we have shared access to basically everything. I mostly manage our money because she hates dealing with it. There's not really been any drawbacks, it makes life a lot easier having a single primary account that all our cash flows through.

Never saw a need for accounting between a couple. The couple is a team, pay the bills, live life. Who cares. Just always seemed like per-charge accounting and "keeping track" is an easy fiscal path to tit for tat complaints/annoyance/arguments. Might as well map how much electricity each person uses at that point, who flushes the toilet the most, etc.

Each should have private charge and checking accounts if for nothing else than gift buying. Have a joint account for most of the money, especially important if one or the other becomes ill or dies. Otherwise survivor access becomes tricky instantly.

Not poo-pooing the methods of others, the more complex methods just seem like overhead, but if they work, they work.

Married 30 years. His check goes into one account. Mine goes into another. We both have access to all accounts. I handle all the bills. We used to put both into one checking account - once our debit card was stolen and they spent so much money that we were still negative after both checks went in. Then we split them so there'salways a backup just in case.

My partner and I have a joint account that is used to pay for any shared expenditure (boring stuff like housing and groceries, as well as fun stuff like dinners out together and holidays). This account is funded unevenly, and that split is reviewed any time either of our incomes change - but it's always funded to the point that it covers our joint expenses each month. If required, it is topped up at the same split. Anything we are left with personally can be spent or saved at the individuals absolute discretion.

There was an interesting experiment that suggests that couples who have similar objectives regarding money are fine with using a joint account (or even using only one spouse's account rather than using two individual accounts), but people who have a spouse who has a very different attitude towards money will avoid using a joint account (and will avoid depositing money to their spouse's individual account) even if their individual account has a lower interest rate.

More information is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5ro4x1r16Q&list=PLUl4u3cNGP620R91K4KP_fO4l3eeK5lDn&index=19&t=3707s

In general, I think that asking your spouse to use a joint account for income and a joint account for expenses is a good idea since it provides transparency: that gives both partners a record of what the income of the partnership was, and makes it equally easy for both partners to check whether bills have been paid. As long as that happens, it's probably okay if you want to split up the income to individual accounts when the money isn't needed to pay bills and later redirect it to the account(s) used to pay bills when it's needed.

My wife and I do have a joint savings account but individual chequing accounts.

We each pay bills from our own accounts but balance from your joint one.

Depending where you live joint accounts are very useful if one partner dies.

Have two shared accounts, an instant access one for both of our credit cards and a savings account for... Err savings and interest. Works very well for us. Basically keep a certain level with instant access one and any overflow goes to savings account. Pretty simple system. On personal current accounts we keep just a few hundreds for emergencies.

Been together 20 years and we've never shared an account. I works really well for us. I'd say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

We have a shared credit card for groceries, vacations and bills. She manages it, she tells me what half of it is at the end of the month. We're fortunate to have very similar salaries, but if we didn't, you adjust the split to your version of fair.