Married Finances

We opted to fully combine because its easier for me to track what's going in and out (I handle most of the bill paying/budgeting). Plus, I'm currently in grad school full time and not working, so he's really the only one financially contributing at the moment. However, there isn't 1 right way to do it. Before getting married, we lived together and had a joint checking account we would both deposit money into (along with having our personal ones) to play for rent, groceries, utilities, etc. After we got married, we decided to close the individual accounts and keep the joint. Talk to your partner about what they were interested in doing and see what works best for you 2 as a couple.

We opened a joint checking and a joint savings when we purchased our home together. We both have a set amount from our paychecks that goes into each of those accounts for mutual expenses like mortgage, utilities, and mutual savings, and the rest goes to our individual accounts. We're starting to lean toward just combining everything so that we don't have to move money around so much and because it will be easier when we have kids and even more shared expenses. Like PP said, there's no right or wrong way to do things, you just have to figure out what works best for you.

We’re older (40’s/50’s), and kept our finances separate—married almost three years. We pay jointly for things but not necessarily equally. For example, we split monthly expenses but he pays more for our mortgage. We have never fought about money! Except when planning our wedding. Lol.


Interestingly, my husband has been talking about merging accounts when he retires which I get but it makes me nervous! So we’re talking through having a joint account but taking a percentage we split (10% or a dollar amount) we each have for our monthly personal budgets. No questions asked. If we do that in the future, it’ll be an adventure.
If you’re unsure, meeting with a professional to help you pre-communicate about money and spending/saving priorities might help you both decide what’s best for you.

We are engaged, not married yet, and have maintained separate accounts (which we plan to continue after we’re married as well). To be honest, I handle all the finances anyway, so it probably technically wouldn’t matter if we had a joint account or not. But, I think it is important to have separate accounts just to have that feeling of independence and autonomy. I like knowing that I can spend my “extra” money however I wish and no one else is seeing it/checking up on it/judging it. For example, I spend an astronomical amount of money for my hair. My fiancé never complains about me going to the salon, but I am sure he would crap a brick if he knew how much those trips were costing! LOL The same holds true with what he spends his money on- he is always buying some new tool or gadget or truck part... I am sure if I saw the receipts to those things I would think it was a ridiculous waste of money. But, it’s important to be able to treat yourself to things that make you happy, without having to justify them or feel guilty.

We combined everything, I personally just find it easier to track where all our money is since most of our expenses are now ones that we share. I was actually relieved to combine too since up until we get married we’d have to venmo each other every time we made a purchase. I will say that I kept open a personal credit card because whenever I buy a gift for my husband he would see it in our joint accounts. But thats the only reason thats open haha

We are in our 40/50’s and I have children from a previous marriage so we opted to keep things separate. We have worked out what things we pay together and what we pay separately and it seems to work for us. We also have a joint account for some things. Yes, it’s a bit complicated but I worked hard for a long time and saved money for my future and for my children.

We had a joint account together for stuff that would go towards the both of us like our bills

We chose to fully combine everything after we got engaged, and it has been working out really well for us. I am pretty much in charge of our finances, as per my husbands request, and it has made it way easier to pay our bills. Also, it has helped us save more because we can both see what is going on overall with our finances all the time. We are both still free to buy whatever we want/need, but we make a point to discuss big ticket purchases with each other before making them. We both have personal credit cards still, because I didn't want either of our credit scores to take a hit by not having any credit activity. Combining finances doesn't work for everyone, but for us we didn't like the idea of entering our marriage thinking this is mine and this is yours, everything is ours now.

We have a joint checking and savings, but we also have our own accounts. We share all of the bills but we have our own money to do with what we’d like.

We have one joint account for savings. Then we each have our personal accounts for spending. We split the bills 50/50

When we got married, I was added to my husband's bank account because we couldn't deposit the checks we received from the bank without both of our names on the account. I don't have a debt card or anything for the account so I can't actually really do anything with the account. I am not on his credit card account and he isn't on my bank account. For now this is how we have left it, but we might change it eventually.

We have a joint savings. Our checking is separate. We share bills but have our own spending money to do as we like. It works

I feel like this DISCUSSION needs to happen BEFORE you are engaged/married.

my boyfriend and I have had multiple talks on finances, having/raising kids, how we want our married life to look, roughly where would we live..house vs apartment... you need to be on same page before getting engaged.

View Quoted Comment Oh we are. We have had plenty of discussions about it before we were even engaged and then when we got a place together we got joint checking and savings but still had our separate accounts of both. Right now we are just trying to figure out if we want to keep it this way, go fully combined or what will be the best way moving forward. We are the same page about pretty much everything including kids. We have even discussed what we want to do when we are ready to buy a house (build or buy one that's built already) and are on the same page there especially where we would live. All those talks we have had.

View Quoted Comment Awesome! Good luck! I would love to have a custom built house!

View Quoted Comment We are doing what you guys used to do. We are doing both joint accounts (savings and checking) but we also have our own separate accounts of both. We just weren't sure what would be better. We kinda want to have just joint so we could both see things as that is the issue right now. We can't see what the other person has in savings. Just on the fence.

View Quoted Comment We thought and talked about that too. We just need to figure our what would be best for us. We have joint checking and savings as well as individual of both. We move money a lot and we both wanted to see what was coming in and going out because that has been one big thing we have had issues with.

View Quoted Comment That's smart. Each couple is different and you will two will decide whats best

View Quoted Comment Yeah, consolidating just made it much easier to budget and allocate things to savings for us. Also, we both have similar spending habits and neither of us are big spenders.

At the moment, they are completely separate, but that's partly because of COVID.

Aaaaaaaaaaand also because we were supposed to open up a joint account, and DH maybe didn't get all the paperwork I told him to get and to check and even where it was and it was a Thing and

Anyway.

We're going to keep separate accounts for our incomes, and then create a joint account at some point to pay bills. Right now I am mostly in charge of the bills and then he has to Venmo me and it's a pain.