Bank Accounts

You still need to discuss the budget with him and make sure he's onboard

My fiancé and I have access to each other’s accounts and we have a joint savings account. We had this wayyyyy before even being engaged. It allows us to see what we are spending our money on and help each other save more that way. Like if he sees me spending a bunch of money of like coffee let’s say he will remind me that I can make that at home more often to save.


I don’t think you should wait to join. Just like you stated you have talked to him about how much the wedding is going to cost and what you will be spending so he won’t be shocked I believe

I think you should wait until your married, not because of budgeting for the wedding, just because technically if your not married your money is not his and his isn’t yours. When you are married you are one and so the money should reflect that but before hand it shouldn’t. Regardless of whether you decide to join accounts now or not, I do think you should have a conversation about the wedding and what you are spending though because even if you don’t feel like your being deceptive about the spending it’s not a good sign to be apprehensive about him having full knowledge of the money being spent. It might not be a fun conversation but I think it needs to happen to make sure you start your marriage off on the right foot.

You need to get him on the same page with the wedding budget ASAP. You say that “you” and your parents are paying for the wedding, but you’re also merging your finances so that really means (if you do combine &dollar that you are BOTH paying that amount from your shared money along with whatever from your parents. You say that he’s paying for some things now too. I think this is confusing because if you want to combine your bank accounts it’d all be shared - which in your case I actually think is best to keep separate u til you sort all that out.
I’ll add: my spending habits are much higher than my husbands. We have shared AND personal accounts. I don’t have to “feel bad” about spending however much I want on candles and sweaters and anything I want from my personal account. We share savings (most) and bill $.

We put my name on his account so we can have a joint account but that was after I started doing an automatic deposit into said account. I have a separate account set up for my student loans & whatever’s left over goes towards vacations. He knows exactly what’s being spent on this wedding. You need to get your fiancé on board...

We got joint accounts when we got engaged.
My husband didn’t know exactly what was being spent, but he was involved with setting a budget and knew approximately what would be spent at the end. We also discussed what each vendor would cost when we booked and we booked all major vendors together.

I'm not joining accounts until I'm married. You're not married til your married, and I wouldn't want to have to disentangle our finances if fiance has a case of cold feet.

We only have a joint savings right now, which is being used to save for our house purchase hopefully happening in the next couple of months!

But we have agreed we will keep our joint savings for all home savings, a joint checking for all home spending (groceries, dog supplies, and whatever else we will both jointly be using) and each have our own separate checking for personal spending money.

I have 2 other savings accounts that I use, one is to save for christmas spending, and one is a general savings that changes what its for based on whats coming up, usually a vacation but for now its for wedding stuff! He also has a savings account for whatever he wishes to save up for, usually a new snowmobile or snowmobile parts.

A lot of people have sperate opinions on how to do finances, so it really is whatever works for you guys as a couple! For me, having the joint savings account really helped us save money for our house, cause neither of us wanted the other to see us dip into it for unnecessary spending so it really helped us save! But we both definitely want our own checking accounts for personal spending because if he saw how much I spent at Target or I saw what he really spend on snowmobiling both of our heads would implode.

We moved in together last May and opened a joint account immediately. We had a joint savings account for vacations and such even before we moved in together, but we moved in together it made much more sense to have a joint account that all money went into. We then each have an “allowance” that I transfer to our individual accounts so we have spending money of our own for personal things or gifts for each other. 90% of our money is all in one bucket though. While we aren’t yet married we are committed to each other so no fear of joining our money.

We keep our own personal accounts where each of our direct deposits go into and also have joint accounts where we pay bills from. We make all our household purchases on our joint credits cards to get the points and then pay them off in full every month. But when I'm doing my own personal shopping I keep that separate and the same for him as well.

We also have the mortgage in both our names as well as his car loan. We've had this setup for years even before getting engaged and it works for us.

I don't think we plan on doing join accounts at any point. We kinda go equal on everything mostly. I think we like having our own accounts. It works for us. We already live together but this is what we prefer at the moment. I like knowing what I spend comes from me unless he offers.

Agreed with others that merged or not, you need to be fully transparent about what the wedding is costing. It should be as simple as it was here - you assured a bunch of strangers that you aren't going overboard or strapping yourself for cash for the wedding, so you should be able to tell the man you plan to marry the same.

Also, if you are worried about this reaction, how do you know you won't be worried about him finding out how much you spend on whatever other thing you enjoy that he doesn't currently know what it costs? Maybe he thinks the candles you buy are only $15 when they're really $40. Or the coffees you get in the morning are really $5 when he thought they were $2.

If you plan to fully share an account, this discussion needs to happen now rather than later, as it suggests bigger implications for how this will be handled in the future.

My fiancé and I have already purchased a home together and also have a 4 month old soooo we have a joint account. He has a set amount deposited into this account mainly for bills or any other joint expenses and savings (which I oversee anyway). We both still have our separate accounts as well though for our own personal things. You must get with your FH and get him in the loop with wedding budget for sure

We each have our own checking/savings and then we got a joint checking/savings when we moved in together (way before even getting engaged). We use the joint account to pay all of our living expenses (mortgage, utilities, etc.) and we both contribute money to the savings regularly.

Once we moved in together, even though we weren't married - we were still combining our lives and responsibilities, so we agreed on a "We won't spend more than $xxx amount before running it past the other person." Usually, it gets brought up, discussed, and then "do what you want" - but a couple times, we have reminded each other of random upcoming expenses (new tires on a car, some sort of work on our house, a trip, whatever) and we have rethought that spendy, impulsive purchase - and it helps us by keeping that communication open so that we can function better as a team/unit.

My husband and I added each other to one another's checking accounts after we got engaged, and combined our savings accounts at the same time. He doesn't really look at our bank statements and rarely logs into our accounts to see what's there. We use the account he is the primary on as our bills/daily spending account. We turned the account I am primary on into our "fun money" account for vacations and larger purchases we want to make from time to time - and we obliviously still have our savings account where a percentage of our paychecks automatically go.

My suggestion here would be to let him know the budget you made for the wedding that you are comfortable with. In my personal opinion, if you are able to comfortably live your life while spending a good amount of money on your wedding, there is nothing wrong with that. It is, however, a decision that should be made as a couple and I do think it's something he should be aware of. I thought my husband was going to lose it when I was giving him a rundown of what our wedding was costing us (we paid for it 100% on our own), but he surprised me and told me to do whatever I wanted to make sure it was the day of my dreams.