[Married People] Do you keep your finances separate from your spouse?

I think it depends on if your wife is a working professional or a stay-at-home housewife. If the first, then I'd assume 3 accounts like Space Ghost breh stated earlier, is best. If the latter, then there's no reason for her to have her own account I guess. Unless you make her one and give her some sort of an allowance.

I plan on doing the 3 accounts once married, with her holding the "joint account" to pay all the bills. I don't want that headache.

 

Or to use it to extort sex.

 

Probably the only way one poster in particular can get it.

 

<img src="http://image.toutlecine.com/photos/b/o/g/bogart-humprey-portrait-03-g.jpg" height="512" />

 

My wife is a working professional and we have near identical earning power. We both much prefer to have everything combined and nothing separate.

 

Wife and I both work and we deposit into the same account. We merged checking, savings, and investments after we got married. Still have separate credit cards, but I'm trying to convince her to become an authorized user on mine so we can pool rewards together.

 

You could become an authorized user on hers.

 

Joint banking with separate credit cards paid from this account. Separate credit cards is just preference in rewards.

 

I keep it separate. I don't want her seeing how much money I lose on Draft kings.

 

I have the better credit cards. :grin: Discover It and Chase Freedom with their rotating categories pretty much covers everything for 5-10% cash back. Chase Sapphire Preferred for travel rewards and redemption. She has a Chase Freedom and a Target Red Card, one is redundant and the other is a store card.

 

You brehs have experience that I don't have. Do you discuss every purchase with your wives? My buddies that have basically one account for both usually tell me how much it sucks that they can't go and spend on the useless "guy" stuff without having to convince the wife. I guess It's good in a sense that you become more efficient with less pointless crap. But it also makes difficult for surprises (i.e. bday, anniversary)

I plan on having at least 20% of my total earning to myself. The rest can go to family (her included) and the joint.

 

Combined. I see this reasoning of having separate accounts to be 'fair.' But, I don't really think marriages should be fair. I try to take more than my share of the burden and give my wife more than her share of the rewards. So long as she tries to reciprocate then you have a marriage in which each is working in the best interests of their spouse and relying on their spouse instead of themselves for protection. (Now, if one party isn't as committed as the other, that's a recipe for disaster.)

We do have some separation on credit cards -- we're both authorized on two, but she uses one and I the other -- but that's a bookkeeping arrangement so that she can review her statement (and I mine) for charges she doesn't recognize.

 

When we were young and poor, anything that cost more than $20 warranted a conversation. Now we're not so poor but we both understand the financial picture -- if either of us chooses to spend, we spend. We might have a conversation about the credit card running too hot sometimes but that's it. Of course, it might help that I hate spending money and won't buy useless guy stuff.

 

I don't necessarily agree or disagree with it, not being married I have never been in that position, but I have no trouble understanding it. Say Joe and Sally are married. Joe makes a good living as a mechanic or whatever, while Sally either doesn't work or makes minimal money as say a car hop at Sonic. Joe doesn't want Sally burning through all of the money he is out there making on makeup, clothes, and shoes. If she wants to spend the money she earns on that stuff, it is fine, but his labor shouldn't pay for it. It is basically a rejection of the community property concept that each partner is contributing equally to the whole regardless of their measurable individual financial contributions. I would say community property makes more sense when one of the partners takes primary responsibility for the kids/household (as a system it developed in a time when the norm was breadwinning husband/father and stay at home wife/mother), but if the lesser earning spouse expects the greater earning spouse to contribute equally on the homefront, community property makes less sense.

 

For anything over like $200 then yeah. But anything less doesn't matter much. We both kinda trust each other not to spend too much outside of our means, unless it's a good deal that we can't pass up. As for surprises, we don't really look at our statements until it's due.

 

Wife and I have a combined checking acct, both paychecks go directly into that. Also a combined savings account that we use as an emergency fund and saving for things like an upcoming down payment on a house.

We did keep separate savings accounts open but they are not active, each just has a small amount of money sitting in it. Hers we actually plan on closing soon and putting the money in our joint savings, mine I will keep because I use it to get reimbursed for work expenses/travel and don't want that mixed in with our regular checking.

We do have our own credit cards but they are each linked to the budgeting app we use so there are really no secrets there.

This method has worked well for us so far - we know where the money is going and exactly how much we are saving every month. No worrying about who's going to pay for what when it's "our" money. We do both earn about the same but I don't think we'd do it any differently if not.

 

Joint account in which I'm the only one putting money in and it pays for all the mortgages, utilities, etc. Wife has her own account and uses that for her personal spending. Needless to say, she's swimming in money. We each buy whatever we want. I'm happy with this arrangement. We have never argued about money.

 

We have separate accounts.

I would love to be able to combine at some point, but I have so much debt I have to pay that it's easier just to keep my account separate.

 

You make it sound so nefarious. It's "our" money, so I don't see a problem with keeping track of what money goes where.

In my case, my wife likes to spend and I am definitely more of a saver*, so yeah, I'm going to keep track of her spending. Especially when she's home for the summer....when the phrase "I'm just going to pick up a few things" gives me a panic attack.



*cheap b*stard

 

It would sound better if the wife got to monitor where her husband is spending money as well.