I see a number of posts that talk about one spouse wanting to borrow money or one spouse wanting the other to reimburse them for something. My wife and I have been together for 31 years and I just don’t think I understand why you have separate accounts (not judging just don’t understand). To me this seems like keeping running shoes under the bed.
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Our majority goes into our joint checking/savings, but then we each have our own accounts where we take a small amount of our paychecks to spend or save as we like. It’s a very small amount but it allows us to occasionally buy what we want without talking it over first
We do yours, mine, and ours accounts. If I forget my cards at home, my husband might buy me something if I need or want it, and I’ll pay him back later. If it’s a date night or groceries, it comes out of the joint account.
I like it because it prevents me from judging him for spending on video games and allows me to spend my money guilt-free. Also easier for gifting. I don’t think it would feel like a gift if it’s coming out of the joint account. It would feel like I’m paying for my own present, and I’d probably feel resentful if I hated the gift.
My husband and I have also always had a shared account.
We have one combined account and a separate one each. Works best for us.
The number one reason for divorces around me growing up and throughout my young adult days was money – and this was not limited to income, some couples were worth millions and still argued over money. Before I even met my wife I studied couples that didn’t seem to ever have issues with money and it was almost always that they had separate accounts to some degree.
When my now-wife and I started getting serious, we discussed finances and agreed to have three accounts: one joint acct. for bills, retirement, savings, etc.; one for her; and one for me.
We’ve been together for 23 years now and have gone from poor college student and low-level Army guy, to poor social services career and poor college student with a home that we owned and a child, to now well-off engineer and higher-ranking gov. employee. We have 23 years that saw us discussing if it was water or electricity that was going to be shut off this month, to having it “fuck-it” money.
Not once in 23 years have we ever argued over money.
Not once has money been the source for anything negative between us.
Not once have we questioned our setup.
We just have joint accounts, but our friends keep theirs separate for liability reasons: she’s a business owner and if they can show they’ve never shared finances a lawsuit against her couldn’t include him as well. My parents do it because they each came into the marriage with children, so while they’ve been married for 30 years now they still consider themselves two families, combined. There are reasons.
I don’t understand it either tbh. If you have 3 accounts, with $5k in each, you still have $15k total as a family to spend as needed.
We haven’t joined our accounts yet. But budget and spend money as if all the money is ours (not his or hers). No fights but we both make enough and live in a cheap cost of living area so we arn’t overly concerned about money right now. Our investments are aligned. We talk over big purchases. We will join accounts soon but it isn’t possible with our currently living situation.
Both of us are big savers. We have high financial compatibility. I trust him to do the right things for our future together and he trusts me the same.
I also believe that he works hard and deserves to get nice things. We track the money coming in and think it through before nice purchases. I also work hard and occasionally get nice things and we take it into consideration with the same approach. So far it’s worked well. We want each other to be happy and we are both committed to a healthy financial future.
Having no debt (neither of us brought any debt into the marriage), being comfortably DINK and having low spending habits has made for a very peaceful life so far. I know this isn’t everyone’s reality. Eventually we will join accounts though when our circumstances allow for it.
We have totally separate accounts, I have mine and he has his. We’ve been together almost a decade and have never had a single argument about money. We still discuss all purchases but whatever we want to buy, we do. If he wants a fancy new gaming computer he can go buy it and if I want to go buy something expensive for myself, I do. We split most bills 50/50 (I make more so I take over a few bills completely to compensate).
We also don’t have children and we both work which I think is a huge factor. For couples with children it can definitely be easier to have a joint account for them as well as when one spouse is supporting the other but in our case there’s literally no point.
Yes we are a team, but we are still individuals. Just because we’re married doesn’t mean we’re now 1 person and have to share everything. I see some people on here get really upset about couples not having 1 account between them or think it means they have a backup plan to leave one day. Just like we have our own cars, toothbrushes, shampoo, etc we have our own accounts and can decide when we want to share the cost of something together, like our house or a new couch.
We have “my account” and “his account” but both accounts have both our names on it and we both have cards to access both accounts. The reason we have separate accounts is because I was in my 30’s and he in his 40’s when we got married. We banked at different banks. Closing accounts and moving direct deposits was too much of a hassle so we just kept both accounts. We use one for bills and one for fun now.
We had separate accounts until we had kids then joined everything together then. Before that he paid mortgage and I picked up utilities and groceries.
We just kept the arrangement we had when we moved in together while dating in a sort of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” scenario. We’ve only lived together (married and before) for about 4 1/2-5 years, but we’ve never argued about money.
We both pay different bills that add up to equitable amounts of our incomes, but our paychecks still go into our individual checking accounts and we pay bills from there.
We have joint savings for things like long term goals (house, vacations, future planning) and emergencies. And we budget together what we can afford together for expenses. But doing it this way leaves is both some disposable income/play money after bills, savings contributions, household stuff, etc. to do whatever we want with.
It just worked for us before we were married so we didn’t change things. It’s more about the logistics of how we like to handle money than any sort of philosophy about our money. We still consider our individual incomes as tools for our collective life together.
We just don’t need to yet. I need money- he sends it to me, he needs money, I send it to him. We don’t really think about it. I also grew up with parents who fought constantly about money and I’d rather just keep it separate where neither of us have to feel self conscious about our purchases so long as we have what we need and are saving. There are a billion less conflicts just requesting the money from each other and we don’t keep track.
I might set up an account just for home stuff like groceries and healthcare stuff but again, just haven’t needed to.
All of my money goes into a joint account whereas she has her own that she swears she gave me access to that all her money goes into. The bank says different….