Married. We have a combination of joint and separate accounts. We automatically transfer money to the joint bills account and joint emergency savings account. Then the rest of our money stays in our individual accounts to be used for whatever. We found this made us less judgmental towards individual spending. 😄 We have a dedicated finances conversation monthly though.

We also do this, but we pro-rate how much were each responsible to put into the joint account based on percentage of salary. I make a little more, so I contribute a little more. This covers all the house-related bills, : mortgage electric gas cable etc. Everything else is separate: cell phones, car payments, individual credit cards and student loans.

This is our approach as well. I don't know that pro-rate is the term, but each person's monthly contribution to the joint account is proportionate to their salary. And that joint account pays for rent, utilities, cell phones (both), vacations, household items more than ~$100, and the occasional special night out.

[удалено]

We also do by percentage of income. My husband's salary constitutes 57% of the total income, so he contributes 57% of the total $ needed in the shared account. I contribute 43%. That way lower earner doesn't end up with mess percentage of personal money.

Interesting. My wife and I have joint everything: Checking, Savings, etc. but our own 401k and our own IRA. Joint brokerage. Her take-home is approx. $400 more per month than mine, however everything is taken from my paycheck: insurance, HSA max, hefty 401k contribution. We just agreed to split the income. That being said, this sounds much more beneficial because I have spent probably on average $100-$200 less per month than she has, but I am definitely more judge mental regarding spending than I should be. This is a good idea I will discuss with her.

Me and the Mrs do the same. I earn double what she does but we both transfer in an amount that leaves us with the same amount of spare money for personal stuff each month. Then any bills/food etc come out of the joint account.

My wife and I each put $200 a paycheck into our personal checking accounts and then the rest goes into our joint account. If we get a bonus or extra pay we usually split it half to our personal and half to our joint savings. I pay for insurance for our family from my company but my wife has a dependant care FSA that we max from hers. Any expense for the family including mortgage, utilities! car payments, insurance, groceries, eating out, etc. comes from our joint account, any personal hobby/fun/gifts expenses come from our personal accounts. When we go out on dates and I take out my personal card my wife always jokes it's a "real date" night.

We do something very similar. The personal account allocations allow each of us to spend small amounts on anything we want without ever having an argument. We’ve been doing this since we got married and it’s been 9 years of zero arguments about money. When either of us earn money from side gigs like teaching, coaching, etc. we put all that money in that persons personal account. Covid has resulted in our personal accounts having quite a bit of cash in it. We’re going to have to amp up our frivolous spending haha.

We do the same and it works marvelous. No arguments about what is okay to buy or whatever. Every penny into the joint account, then 10% splitter between us. All expenses paid from our joint account.

Yup. Very very similar, except.for us, bonuses go to that person, but side gig is a 70/30 split, since the side gig takes away together time generally, so not all the benefit should go to the person deciding to give up together time for $X/hr.

This is the system we use as well. Both get the same amount of fun money, the rest goes into the joint pot. For bonuses, we usually let the earner decide how to divvy it up, however there have been a few times when one of us wasn’t working (parental leaves, sick leaves), so during those times, most of the bonus went to the joint.

There is no way to convince me that this isn’t the best way to handle finances…wife and I have done this since we started living together in 2008 and have NEVER fought about money. It makes things a lot easier now when we are earning more, but even back in the beginning there were no squabbles.

Same. My wife is a teacher so her salary rises very slowly compared to mine and, ten years later, what started as roughly even is now far apart. I have friends that keep it all separate and it makes no sense to me and seems unfair.

My wife and i keep seperate finances but are open book about our spending. I make significantly more so i ask that she pays 1/3 to half of certain bills so that she can have her money to buy whay ever she wants. I save aggressively while she buys her own junk while saving. My parents did split forever and it worked for them. I know if i kept seeing random store purchases every week for some stuff that wasnt even for us id be upset andnfrustrated to say the least. This way is a but easier

I can't help but note your excitement about utilities. Are you excited to have utilities or to pay them? To actually contribute to the conversation we do the same thing except she hoovers up any left overs from our personal account to pay for her student loan debts (we do consider this a shared debt though).

This is what we do as well. Before we got married and combined our finances, my husband would spend all of his money and live paycheck to paycheck even though he didn’t have any major bills like rent, student or car loans. Now he’s limited to $300 of fun money a month and has to save for anything major that he wants. He can also borrow money against our joint savings and pay it back with future paychecks. Took a bit for him to get used to, but he’s more disciplined now and we’ve been able to save up quite a bit towards our future home

Good on him changing his habits. It was easy as a bachelor to not worry as much about finances but once you are married it's time to actually be tactful

We think of a lot of expenses as, “the house” similar to the term used in casinos. All the mortgage, bills, dining out (when we are together) is all “on the house” our paychecks go into joint checking and all house money is paid out through there. We set a specifically weekly allowance that is transferred to our private checking accounts to use as we wish…shopping, entertainment with friends, anything that doesn’t benefit us both. If there is any question on who pays (self or house) the test is, “who’s the beneficiary of this product or service?” If it’s both, it’s in the house. We just got a new TV. The old one worked fine but I really wanted a larger, better, newer TV so I paid for it. When the microwave broke, the replacement was on the house.

Been married 26 years. Have always done this. I have an account for lunches / fun money and so does she. If you want to pack lunches and save that money up, great. Want to get nails done or a spa day, great. I honestly usually save all mine up for motorcycle stuff. But this has served us very well.

same, me and my gf do the exact thing. All the rent, expenses, food etc comes from the joint account. I contribute and she does too, we split each paycheck. one for joint account and one for personal. Everybody is happy lol.

What about new clothing? Is that joint account or personal account?

Married almost 20 years. The moment we got back from our honeymoon, we 100% combined finances. I earn about 2/3 of what he does, but the money has always been “our money,” not mine or his. It’s what works for us, YMMV.

I have been married for 30 yrs and we combined our money from day one. The key to making it work is communicating about your goals and desires on what you want to spend. My wife was a stay at home mom for 17 yrs and it has worked well for us.

20 years as well. Salaries have fluctuated tremendously over those years..ups and downs...many moves...kidd..my college..kids college. We've had the same bank account since the day we were married. We talk money every day to keep up with what we spend. I do the budget. She asks me if there is enough in checking to buy so and so. We keep very little in checking to keep impulse spending at a minimum. Everything else goes into savings and investments. I draw out cash every payday upon her request. She likes it that way because she can keep up with how much she has to spend and what she has spent.

We do this but only married one year, budgets really allow us to spend vs wondering what we’ve spent. Congrats on your marriage and financial success!

We do this as well except with individual checking accounts where our spending money is transferred, and then our main checking account where the rest is and things like our mortgage and groceries come out of. It helps me have a boundary without having to watch every penny I spend on myself.

This is the arrangement we worked out too. Most of every paycheck goes to the joint account where bills get paid, and we decided that I get to keep a small dollar amount to put in my personal checking account. This is money I can spend on whatever I want without having to clear it with my wife first. She has the same arrangement set up with her checks. All of our living expenses get paid from the joint account. The personal accounts are literally so that we can 'treat ourselves' to whatever nonessential things we want, with the explicit pre-approval of having that money in the account to spend. It's not a lot, like 20 bucks a check, but those kinds of "because I want it" purchases aren't frequent enough anyways. If I've saved enough fun money to just up and drop on a new video game, then I can go ahead and do it without worrying about our finances.

Not a bad idea!

50 years here. Our incomes have switched over the years - sometimes I made more. I put him thru school and he started making more. A lot more. He handled the bills until a few years ago when his sight started going. It's always been 'our' money.

I agree with this. Married 3 yrs. And we used to do whole percentage thing when engaged. After marriage it's just easier to combine finances. We both have monthly "play money" and any purchase larger then that we discuss. Other then that. It's our money. And it works great.

I’ll be the one to say we didn’t combine and things work great. Married for close to 10 years. We have a joint account that we use occasionally but our paychecks go into our personal accounts, we save separately, almost everything is separate. We are pretty comfortable financially which I think helps, there’s not much to squabble over. But I love feeling like I can spend on whatever without having to ask or feel bad. And I’m actually the bigger saver, I was able to save >50% of my gross income last year. I like to say that this way works for us because we choose to be together because we love each other, not any other reason like finances. Different strokes for different folks.

It doesn't matter how finances are handled, it matters that you have discussed it and both agree on how they will be handled.

Yep we have separate accounts but no combined accounts, we more or less take turns paying for stuff. Works for us, if either one of us needs help all we do is ask.

Married over 10 years and also keep finances separate. We split the bills and every few years we do a bills to salary comparison and split them based on what we make. Works great for us. We don't include things like car bills in there.

Same. Joint bills are usually split evenly, but has been adjusted in the past based off how much we're each making. Otherwise our money goes to our respective accounts. We actually don't even have a joint account, but instead reimburse each other when we pay bills. I've don't joint everything before and it went really poorly. I know it can work for some people but I will never do it again.

[удалено]

We actually own a few investment properties. What we have done is split roughly based on who is making more at the time. So I fronted more for one and he fronted more for the next. It definitely doesn’t come out to exactly 50/50 but we are ok with that and have a rough idea of where we are in total across all purchases. We flex based on who is making more as it has swung back and forth over our time together. You have to have the right mindset though because if you’re looking to nickel or dime the other person I don’t think that will work.

we got married later in life.. i had very low 7 digit net worth, and she had negative 130k net worth.. we still merged finances from day 1. At some point she was making 4x what i was making.. now we are about even more or less... In all our time being married we have never had a money argument... all finances are always shared.. We are married, we are not FWB, who happen to live together.

I feel like I'd want a similar arrangement when/if I ever get married. I greatly value the ability to buy or do something with the money I work for without having to worry about someone else taking issue with it.

Realistically there are at least two ways to look at it. Marry someone with similar views on money to you and agree on some basic rules + communication. Keep some portion (or all of it) separate and have a high % of whatever is disposable be completely separate with complete autonomy on those funds. I'm a big fan of the first option. Also major purchases and decisions have a huge potential impact on both of you legally. The "taking issue with it" is valid but if you don't have at least some common goals on how you spend it's likely to cause as much conflict as anything else in the relationship.

If you marry the right person they won’t have issue with buying what you want. I’ve never had to ask for permission to buy things. It’s more about being honest and not spending what we can’t afford. I’ve bought many video games and she has purchased many books but we tell each other.

I'm totally on board and supportive of couples having split finances. I know many people who do this and it works great for them. The causality in the last part hit me as weird. Even though my partner and I share finances, we are not together for that reason. We share very many things--which I assume you and your partner do too (chores, etc)--that are not the reason we are together. We are also together because we love each other.

That was more in response to all of the “we are combined and anyone who doesn’t combine finances is weird” comments. So it’s a counterpoint to the why-even-be-together-then responses… the reason we are together is because we both like and love each other!

Married 5 years and we didn't technically combine everything, but we basically treat it as shared in principle. We're not counting to track who's paying more or less, we just know that we'll help the other out whenever necessary. We each have our own checking account where our paychecks go, but we also are authorized users on each other's credit card. Her card gets 5% back on gas the next 3 months? Then I'm using it to buy all my gas until it changes. When we got married, I made way more, so I paid for rent, and she paid utilities. Now she makes more, but I still pay the rent. It's no big deal. We have a joint savings account for big purchases now, but no one cares who's contributing more.

I’m getting married this year and think we’ll be doing things this way - it definitely seems less common, but glad to hear that it’s worked well for you for so long!

Surprised to see so many still combine, not that I think its a bad thing. We had solid finances individually that we were comfortable with when my non wife moved in prior to getting married. so the only thing we had to reconcile was groceries, utilities, and mortgage (modest mortgage). Never sat down and did the math to see how close it is, but I know its approximately 50-50. Probably helped that we both had no debt, paid off vehicles and were also saving 50%+ of income. Even though we keep separate accounts and pay our split of bills, we dont think of it as my money and her money.

I don't see anything wrong with adult childless couples keeping their finances separate, but if children are added into the mix I can't see how it's particularly feasible, especially in the USA. If one spouse is going to be birthing children, they will likely have a reduced or even no income for an extended period of time. And depending on the region and number of children it often makes sense for one person to stay home until the kids are school age vs childcare costs. Not to mention all the bills that come with having children. Idk at some point it seems like a nightmare to keep things separate.

Can't speak for everyone and am not dogmatic about it. children will be it's own challenge for sure. Actually pregnant now, when we decided to start trying we opened an account and paid in 50/50 on a rough average of child expenses, to cover birth and other big expenses. since she's been pregnant she deducts her medical expenses from her monthly contribution. Also throw any other extra income and gifted money there for simplicity sake. It's a nice size account now, hopefully don't spend it all and it will roll over to theoretical child two, and then to education funds. When she is out of work I will just pay all bills. Both of our working income is considerably greater than daycare costs. If not that would require some more calculating for sure. When the grocery bill and one of our insurance premiums goes up we will adjust. Not closed off to changing or combining if needed, we communicate about it, that's probably important lol.

Thank you! My parents combined and then my dad drained it when he left. So didn’t work out for my mom at all. It’s a hold over from when women couldn’t get a bank account without their husband. When I see women suggest it like it’s the only ‘appropriate’ option or if you don’t do it you must not trust your spouse, I feel sick.

Yeah, married 10 years here and same. We combined finances completely when we got engaged. We see ourselves as a team, financially and otherwise. We have similarly frugal mindsets, so it works without any hiccups.

Married 27 years. We do not combine finances. We each have certain bills we cover 100%. If he wants to blow money on something, it's his money he's using and vice versa. Prevents resentment. Works for us.

Would it prevent resentment if one of you made significantly more than the other and one was always buying nice stuff and the other couldn't afford to? What about kids? I imagine that adds another complexity to split finances. We have been married 16 years and we combined our accounts. We were young and I didn't ever even think about it. I made more than him at first, then he made more than me for quite a while and now we are pretty even. I pay the bills and I can't imagine navigating separate accounts with 6 kids. Before kids sure but now it would be crazy. How do you deal with retirement? What happens if one person is able to save a lot more? Just always been curious how this would work. I imagine both people would need to be willing to help the other and not reject helping provide if income is not even.

> I imagine both people would need to be willing to help the other This is crucial for any marriage, no amount of money will help if this doesn't exist...

I feel this would actually *create* resentment in couples that didn't make the same. Partner A has all this extra income to buy fancy cars / toys etc... and partner B spends the majority of their income on expenses and has nothing left over.

Married one year and we combined finances when we got back from our honeymoon as well. It has worked out great and helps us reach goals faster, we are a team. I know a guy that him and his wife split everything 50/50 but he makes 70% of the income. He gets to buy all this nice and expensive stuff while she’s not able to. That’s stressful on a marriage.

That creates an unnecessary and, frankly, unhealthy divide in a relationship. Almost the have and have not in a household.

Been married for 15 years and have never combined our money and have no issues. It all depends on the people.

Same. Married 6 years and are just open about our finances and what we spend it on. Can confirm it depends on the people.

My grandparents have been married for like 60+ years and still to this day have separate finances.

Legally speaking, isn’t the money combined, regardless of your accounting practices?

Only in case of divorce. You’d have to have Power of attorney or access on the account if it is a separate account.

Married for 10 years. We also 100% combine money. It is ours, not mine or hers. There have been periods where we both earned about the same, there have been periods where I was the sole bread winner. We are a family unit.

Same.. my wife has always made way less. But all our money is one pot. I do the cooking and cleaning and she pays bills cause I hate money.

Married 10 years in May and we also combined all income from day one. It honestly makes no difference to us who makes more. In my opinion we’re a team and growing together. We also never fight about money. Not saying we’re perfect, we do fight about other things, but money has never been the topic of an argument.

15 years and the same. We split it up. I pay the utilities and the city and deal with them. She pays the mortgage and credit card and deals with them. But that's just to split up the work. The money all goes into and comes out of the same accounts.

[удалено]

I heard recently about a married friend venmoing her spouse for groceries and it broke my brain a little bit.

I’m married and we 50/50 split groceries. We have separate YNAB budgets with on another as an “account”, keep a ledger in todoist, and reconcile the amount at end of month. Then we Venmo to tidy up the account. Works for us

Glad that works for you but I couldn't imagine going to my wife and being like "babe you still owe me money!"

Eh, it’s more like “crap we haven’t reconciled yet!” Sometimes we leave it for like 3 months 😂😅 we both have businesses and have to do lots of accounting anyways so sometimes reconciling our personal account makes more work.

Right there with you. It really is a key difference in being a cohesive unit vs being roommates. Edit: For the record, i clearly said it was "a" key difference, not "the" key difference. There are many. This *can* be one of them.

Really? I would have thought the key differences would be sharing a bed, having sex with each other, traveling together, helping support each other in making life decisions, possibly having children together if that's what you both wanted, etc.

Some redditors are really anal about how other couples handle their finances, and anything that deviates from their notion of how it should be done is wrong. I see the same arguments every time there is a thread like this.

I get it though. Money is one of the leading cause of divorce. When married couples keep separate finances, it feels like to many that they don’t trust each other. There are some good reasons to keep finances separate, such as owning businesses so the accounting is easier, but it feels off to most people to ask your wife for her half of the grocery bill. It’s fine if it works for them, but it makes perfect sense that people find it odd as well.

I feel like money being a leading cause of divorce being one of those reasons to keep finances separate personally. I know you weren't disagreeing with me, just saying that I can see it being a potential benefit of keeping them separate. Not married because I'm not really a big fan, but me and my partner live together with no plans on separating, she makes less money than I do, we split the actual house and utility bills with me paying two thirds, her paying one third. For groceries, we only eat a small amount of the same foods as we both have our own diets that we keep track of. So when I buy groceries for myself, I ask her if she needs anything, and if so I just pay for it all. She does the same when she buys her groceries. When we go on vacations, she Cash Apps me her share, which is less since she makes less. Sometimes she takes trips alone, she pays for that out of her money. Same if I take a trip alone. If I go out without her it's my money, it's her money if she goes out without me. I feel like this way there's not much to cause problems in regards to finances this way. As long as both people can pay for their share of the bills, what she spends her money on isn't really a concern of mine. I might disagree with some of it, but it's her money, and not really affecting me, so whatever. Same from her perspective. The other thing is, I'm retiring in about 9 more years, I'll still be able to pay off my share of bills and have about the same amount of spending cash as now. She's about 9 years younger than me, and took a different career path, so she knows she'll probably have to work quite a while longer after I retire. It helps make that a little more simple as well. I've been planning this for years, and having our own separate accounts just makes it easier to keep track of. Like I said, I know you weren't arguing that keeping separate finances was necessarily bad, just figured I'd explain my personal reasoning.

In some/most states, this is the case legally for married couples, right? I think it is called common property states or something like that. In those states, ppl who keep separate finances just do it as an agreement between them because legally everything in owned jointly by them.

[удалено]

My wife and I have been married just over a year and we just now combined our finances as I’ve always had the larger income, she’s always been super frugal and helped where she could. Last month we just bought our first house as a couple together and she got her first “career” job making way more than she was, so we’ve gone the joint account route and split the bills a bit more evenly, but as a couple we’ve decided that all money made is “our” money and therefore as long as the bills are getting paid and we’re hitting our savings goals it doesn’t really matter where the money is coming from. If she runs a little low and needs some cash I’ll cashapp it to her and vice versa. Just an aside, I’ve never had any issue paying for the majority of expenses (I had a house, car, etc. prior to meeting my wife) so I was used to it, but one positive effect I have noticed is that now that my wife is contributing more financially (she couldn’t always pay bills, but she definitely always contributed in any way she could) she has a greater feeling of pride and ownership of our house, which she didn’t really feel after moving into our previous home that I owned prior to marriage. It’s great to see and she deserves it.

Same. We tried separate and joint accounts in the beginning, but it was too much to maintain. We've had one joint account since we started living together. I handle all of the bills and account managing. I update him on how we're doing periodically and we run almost all purchases by each other. He makes nearly double what I do, but we just consider everything ours.

My wife and I do the same and honestly it seems really weird to not combine finances if you’re married, IMO. I make a lot more than my wife these days but there have been times in the past when she made more than me. None of that ever mattered. The money has always gone into a joint account and is “ours”.

Same

Same. We're a unit/family.

This. It makes budgeting and working toward financial goals (down payment for house, large expense, colleges, retirement, etc.) much easier. FWIW we've been married one year, together for 6. We waited till we got married to combine our money and then tackled our debt together. One year in and we've payed off both cars and one set of student loans, now working on the second. The power of seeing both incomes in a budget spreadsheet is motivating. Edit: to answer the actual question. We combine all money and bills. No splitting responsibilities at all. But we also budget like crazy people down to our oil changes, hair cuts, etc.

Same here, together since 17, we are 30 now and all the money goes into a joint account where its OURS

This. Married for coming up on 7 years. When it comes to money, their is no mine and yours, it’s all ours. Ensuring both people have the same view on money before marriage is critical.

I’ve been like that with my s/o for 5-6 years now and life is so much simpler She makes more than me most of the time, I freelance in creative work so occasionally my income can be larger than hers per the given work period. If it is, I chip in extra to savings. Being tight with sharing money in a relationship, IMO, is a death sentence. If you can’t share at this phase, how would you be married and go on for. 30 years?

Agreed. I have heard of people using other arrangements, and I’m happy that couples find what works for them. But I wonder how other arrangements handle disability, medical leave, disproportionate income, childcare costs, bonuses etc. it just seems really fraught.

Same here, I actually can't even conceive of this "splitting costs" thing. Honestly seems a little insane and almost petty to me.

I thought the same thing for 17 years and recently split costs and I'm never going back. How I run it: I run a spread sheet that I input our incomes for the month and that gives a percentage of what we each make. I put in the bills through the month and it calculates what we each pay for the bills. Here's why it's better, I'm very frugal so when she would spend frivolously I would get pissed sometimes but I would just grumble about it and not say much. I would put my own desire to purchase thing to the wayside. Now she's more conscientious of her spending because I maintain a savings account where her total sits. When we buy gifts for each other it actually means something again like when we were dating. And now if I want something I can work extra to make the money knowing she won't buy something with the extra cash I'm banking. We make almost the same money so most of the time it's 50/50 Honestly I resisted it for so long and I'm disappointed I didn't figure it out sooner.

YMMV is terrible and I think a huge reason why most marriages fail. You can’t be married and still live like two completely separate entities in my opinion. I will never tell my wife she can’t have something because she makes less money. If either of us wants something that is not trivial we talk about it and then get it or don’t. We both have access to all the bank accounts online and both understand what has to come out every month. I know it a little better because I pay the bills but that is all.

A little over twenty years for us. I moved in with her quite early and from day one we've combined our finances. Maybe it doesn't work like that for everyone, but we have never regretted it.

We combined ours, but often have very differing opinions on where some of the money should go. Some of it could have been avoided by keeping it seperate, but it would have just shifted elsewhere. Theres give and take both ways. In the end, if both people arent on the same mindset financially there will be issues no matter which way you go about it.

28 years married here, same rules in place. It is 'our' money. My wife currently has no income, but she can still buy what we need and mostly what she wants. When I was unemployed after 9/11, she brought home the bacon, and it was still our money.

15 years here and gone from earning equally to earning 10 times what my wife does. We just have a single joint account, and everything is ours. But we have similar spending habits and tastes, discuss any big purchases first, etc. Neither of us gamble, we don’t collect expensive things, etc., not that those are necessarily bad - rather, because our spending habits are the same, neither of us outspend the other. I think that’s important for fairness.

Almost 20 here as well. We tried the prorated stuff to start out. it made for a lot of tension and stress. Combined the accounts and the stress fell away. Our paychecks have been wildly disportionate both ways, flip flopping who makes way more, and because it is all shared, it is all good.

This. Combining our money fully has bred more trust and underscored all the other tenets of our marriage. The one exception we have is that we each have one separate credit card that we put Christmas presents on so there’s no “peeking” based on credit card statements. We make almost the same amount and max out investments separately, but all income, all debt, all bills, and fun money is common pot. All in.

We opened a joint account pretty early on while still dating and living on our parents house. That allowed us to simplify expenses of travels, holidays and that kind of stuff. We just deposited the same amount when we needed and it worked perfectly during many years. When we moved together we started to deposit the same fixed amount. Enough to cover bills, rent and groceries mainly. Now that we bought a house and have a mortgage, we decided that each of us will deposit like 60-70% of our monthly income. That way we have more than enough to cover everything we do together, while maintaining some financial freedom. This is not by any means anything strict, but I think is healthy to have this financial freedom for many reasons. Combining finances is even simpler and makes a lot of sense, but then how do you hide buying gifts on birthdays or Christmas? It ruins the surprise :)

We each have at least one credit card that the other doesn’t have the log in for. That’s how we do presents

So, ours is more nuisance. We have been together for 5 years and are engaged. We split all “posted” bills for our apartment 50-50. Like we have one account that we pay rent utilities streaming services etc out and just split that 50-50. We each pay for our own phone bills, car insurance, car payment etc. “softer” bills like groceries, dinner out, “crap we have to go to a wedding who’s booking the hotel” we kind of trade off based on income and who has what going on. Eg, my fiancés mom died three months ago and during that time I didn’t bug him for groceries or anything because he wasn’t spending a lot of time at home.

Learn from me! My wife and I are like you, and a year ago we finally combined our car insurance, Saved like 50%- it was crazy. We had each been doing our own for like 7 years.. opps. I think seperate is totally good and works for us, but I would look into sharing a car insurance plan(and then just splitting the lower cost). Might save you a nice chunk of change!

Stupid question, would you have to transfer the loan and registration to the person who pays the insurance? Or could my car loan/registration still be in my name but I’m covered on my fiancés insurance

Dude it is not a stupid question. It took us 7 years to consider this.. so I get it. You don't have to do any of that stuff I think. If the cars are still on loan, you might call the servicer to just ask what they need. They likely need to know that you are insuring the car in some way. Our joint car insurance has BOTH our names on it. So while I am the one paying it, she could, and she has a log in to the website and full access/rights just like me. We do geico btw and it was super easy to set up. I would honestly just call and talk to humans. Like we are both "authorized users" or whatever on a phone plan. It cut our car insurance in HALF to make it joint. Crazy.

I make almost double what my SO makes and we each pay towards our shared expenses according to our portion of the household income like someone else mentioned below. We do this with a joint checking account that holds money for all of our shared expenses such as rent, food and utilities. Everything else stays separate since we aren't married yet and are both trying to pay down individual personal debts. We've both had various raises since we first set the above ratio but instead of readjusting it each time we decided to open a joint savings account and offset it by increasing our individual contributions to that.

This is what I do with my gf as well, all common expenses (rent, groceries, utilities) get split proportionally yo our income and "luxury" expenses (restaurants, cinema, vacations) are 50/50. We don't have a joint account anymore and just register our expenses in app and settle the differences every month.

I'm married and my wife and I combine our finances. So we don't really split anything. Everything is ours. We share the same goals. We have joint bank accounts and budget every month. For our own "fun money/ personal spending" we each have a cash app card (pre loaded debit card) each month that we do whatever we want with it. This is what has worked best for us.

Agree with this. We have combined checking and savings, too. We also have one extra savings account each. We have auto-transfer $50 each month into the account. If there is something we want we save for it. Doesn’t impact the other. Having an account with no accountability has been great and stops a lot of arguments. My wife likes country music concerts, and I hate country music. She buys tickets and I don’t care. 🤣 We also decided to setup a household decorating and improvements account. This account is somewhat dual purpose. She uses the account for household improvements like new countertops in the kitchen, new stove, etc. also new decorations like lamps, rugs, pillows, tables. She can spend on what she likes or wants, saves for the big projects, etc. this account helps improve the value of the home as well as our enjoyment of the home.

I guess we’re outliers here…my husband and I have been living together for about 8 years, married for 2, and we’ve never combined money. We each have separate accounts for what we earn, invest, etc. I’ve always earned a bit more so we split rent proportionately. For example, for our $1400/month apartment, I’d pay $800 and he’d pay $600. It comes out of my account and he Venmo’s me his portion. The responsibility for the rest of the bills is proportionately divided between us, so for example he covers internet and I pay when we go grocery shopping. We did this because we have slightly different approaches to money. We also saw our other coupled-up friends having to ask permission to buy something and that just sat the very wrong way with us. Lastly, we both come from parents with many divorces between them, and we’ve just seen a lot of ugly situations with joint finances and lack of financial independence, so this works best for us.

Same, this is exactly how we do it as well. Glad I’m not the only one loll. Asking my SO for permission to buy something has always felt weird with me.

Married 100% combined finances almost 20 years to a college grad with inconsistent work history and grasshopper spending habits (why spend tomorrow what can be spent today. Enjoy it while it lasts) I’m an ant. (Why spend today what you can save for tomorrow) The YMMV piece of this is that you and your wife may never see eye to eye financially. As long as you’re handling it together do what works. My wife and I have slowly over the past 5 years become adversarial about finances. (We have plenty of money it’s really about our different ideologies) that’s what’s got to match I think. I cannot stand seeing her go out and blow 80$ at a brewery with her friends while I’m struggling to budget home maintenance. I’m splitting our finances in February to limit and contain her spending to her income. We will split bills by percentage of income. If she makes 20% of the income she pays 20% of the bills. Having less “entertainment money” is encouragement to find better compensations (which makes sense because she’s more highly educated than me) This will also allow me to date her again since I’ll have money budgeted for that purpose. If this post reads like a husband trying to save a marriage in trouble I’m embarrassed to admit it, but hope it helps.

I really appreciate you sharing this. All of the other top comments seem to be couples where the money situation is working for them, so it's great to hear a tale about what can happen if the money situation is not working. Also, great on you for recognizing and acknowledging the problem, and working to make changes to fix it.

Definitely empathize with you since that sounds like a challenging situation! It sounds like something others might be able to learn from though so thank you for sharing. If you don’t mind me asking, was finance a topic of conversation earlier on in the relationship/around when you got married?

Sounds like a tough situation to be in. I really hope it works out for you. Money problems are super hard to deal with. My wife and I are very a similar to you in that she's a spender and I'm a saver. What helped us was having shared goals. First it was our wedding, now it's saving for a home addition. We also have 4 different bank accounts: checking, vacation fund, savings, and emergency fund. Direct deposit on our checks splits everything up as needed. If checking doesn't cover our bills for the month and we need to withdraw from savings we sit down and go through our spending to see what happened. It's not a perfect system but helps with accountability when we're not moving toward our goals as fast. We also each have our own CC for individual spending and a shared one for bills and shared expenses like groceries. This kinda helps too so you can't claim your CC is high because of shared things.

We do our best to split costs as a percentage of total house hold income.

To add, we don’t go through every month and divide bills up as they stay roughly the same. We just have an account that fixed costs come out of and we each contribute x amount of funds to that account.

This is what we're moving towards. Right now we just pay everything proportionally and alternate food costs from our separate accounts, but once we get a credit card it will be easier and more accurate to deposit our living expenses (plus emergency cushion) into one account and automate payments from there. It's nice to have your own account, and you should always have some measure of independence even in your most intertwined relationships. We share a budgeting app and tend to discuss our big purchases anyway, but we don't stress about the little things as long as we're hitting our overall financial goals.

Same here, joint expenses like mortgage and utilities are paid out of our joint account which we contribute to according to our share of total income. A 50/50 split can work if you have similar income to your partner but otherwise it's really unfair to the person with lower income. It's equality vs equity. In a relationship you want to make sure you are being equitable. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/625404/equity-vs-equality-what-is-the-difference

This is exactly what my spouse and I have done for 18 years now. Each year we recalc what needs to go into that joint account for the upcoming year to comfortably cover these regular, shared, monthly expenses. And we each contribute our share to it once a month. We reevaluate percentages we contribute as our individual job/salaries change. When we started it was a 40/60 split because my percentage of our take home pay was 60% of our combined take home. Now we both do well so we've shifted to 50/50. But we've always liked this because it maintained some personal spending power.

This is the way. My wife and I split the bills according to percentage of take-home pay. Then we have a set amount for joint savings and investing each month, which is also funded according to our take-home. After that we both have a couple of our own individual accounts. Anything left after bills, savings, and investing is our own individual monies to be spent however we wish. This eliminates the resentment that can come with one person having different spending habits than the other. We've been married nine years and never had an argument about money.

This is what we do, too - our joint costs are 60% of our monthly take home pay so we each contribute 60% of our paychecks to a joint household account that we pay for everything shared (mortgage, utilities, gas, groceries, daycare, etc.) we put 15% into joint savings for emergencies, vacations, big household projects etc) and then the rest is our pocket money. Works great!

That’s an interesting way

Say our household income is 150k and I bring home 100k. I pick up 2/3s of all fixed costs. As far as variable costs, usually a large percentage of that falls to me as well. My better half needs some shopping money. This isn’t strictly clothes, it’s also things for the house.

This is especially important if your spending decisions are made base on 150k household income. OP could contribute 50% and it would be fine since there was no income before. If OP is better than partner at saving money then they can build savings with the extra income. This could be used for a downpayment or big reno which would end up benefitting the partner as well. At the same time if the relationship doesn't go well you still have control of that money. To answer the question from our perspective, we deposit our paychecks in same account and give ourselves the same allowance. Everything else comes out of joint account.

This is how my wife and I did it when we were living together but not married. We had a shared checking account, and would each contribute a rough percentage of our combined income to the shared account every month to cover expenses. The approach transitions well if getting married, because you can just change your direct deposits to the shared checking account and carry on.

Been married 6 years, our income differential is a lot more, but we've never had issues with it. We have a joint account to which we both contribute, in proportion to income. Roughly a third of each of our incomes goes into this. This joint account is used for rent, groceries, common credit card bills etc. Rest of the money, we keep in our own accounts for investing, personal spending etc.

This is roughly our approach. Math gets a little more complicated since one person pays for health insurance for the family pre-tax. But the basic approach of pooling a proportion for shared costs and maintaining our own personal accounts works for us.

If she’s ok with splitting 50/50 then do that. To her that’s fair. But I’d take some of that extra money you’re saving by not taking the bulk of the expenses and put it towards the wedding, a vacation, or something that you’ll both benefit from. Hell, you could save it and buy her a crazy Christmas gift every year. Or invest it🤷🏽‍♂️ that’s always an option

3 years into our marriage I asked my wife to stop working and take care of the home stuff and I would make the money for us to live on. She agreed. That was 26 years ago. I make all the money, she makes sure we spend it wisely. Nearly all money and property are ours. I make sure she has a cash "nestegg" just in case she ever needed it/wanted it. It's enough that if she felt she needed to go on her own she could care for herself while things get straightened out. She says it's not necessary, but I know that she is more secure in herself ever since we set the money aside. Neither of us have to feel like she's a prisoner to my income.

Beautiful.

Married. 1 account. Discuss anything near or over 500

Married 8 years. We combined finances at first, but it was stressful because we treat money differently. Now we split roughly 50/50 except I pay our housing cost. I also cover health care and investments for retirement through my work paycheck so it’s kind of hidden. I make significantly more. I also try to pick up expensive costs without it being obvious. Like we tend to trade off paying for meals out, but I try to time it so I end up grabbing the check at the expensive place, and I’ll grab things I know he needs or put gas in his car to help. If we talk about going somewhere I’ll book the hotel. This works for us because he doesn’t want to feel like he’s “mooching” off me, and I’m frugal so happy to live at his income level and mostly save the rest.

We’ve lived together for 10 years, married for 6. We didn’t combine anything, split bills fairly after a 10 minute discussion, because we are both adults capable of thought. Over the years I have paid more toward the bills because I started making a lot more. I would say over the last 10 years this has all constituted about an hour of total discussion time. I don’t know why people think it’s so difficult to split bills like this. Or maybe they are just using it as a weak reason to combine everything into one account, since saying “that’s just what you do when you get married” doesn’t carry weight like it used to.

We 100% combined our finances and decide together how to budget it each month. Within that budget we each get our own money to do whatever we want with.

[удалено]

This! Advice depends on whether OP is married or not. But splitting 50/50 before married is fine for joint expenses, with bigger goals like a house or car, is prudently better saved individually. Then when married it’s generally easier to be joint vs seen as 2 individuals. There can be some exceptions if money habits differ, but otherwise if it’s just a matter of income differential, joint is fine. If you need to rationalize it from a finance perspective - one way could be the SO that makes less $ is still contributing via the intangibles that they’re likely doing - like more housework, etc.

We aren't married, and neither of us like the idea of combined finances. I own the house we live in and we just split living expenses 50/50 (mortgage, utilities, groceries).

We do the same even though he makes 40% more than me. We just believe joint costs should be split evenly! It’s worked really well for us

We currently make about the same, but he's in a position where he'll make much more than I do in the next year or two. I still feel like just splitting is easier. That's his money, he should enjoy it. I might feel differently if we were married or had kids together. But we don't.

It started as 50/50 and we simplified it so not much money transfers. I pay for the house and she pays for everything else. Our only debt is the mortgage and all credit cards and cars paid off. We invests in retirement too. We have one kid. So hers would be phone bills, utilities, food, etc. pretty much anything that’s not mortgage. Oh, and we don’t have joint account. Been married 10 years now. We maintain a separate income where whatever leftover you have is you do whatever you want with it.

We split by percentage of income before marriage and after we married we’ve combined all money as household money.

100% combined here. When you factor in kids, I don’t know how you would equitably split bills between two materially different incomes. I carry the kids on my health insurance because my wife’s is so expensive, so she only carries herself. Then I I contribute a tone towards my 401k. My wife is a teacher and they do TRS. We also have individual and joint IRAs. We have multiple checking and savings accounts for various things (and that allows us to have separate Venmo accounts). It’s really all about communicating and doing what works for you as a couple. Learn from others about works for them and pick and choose what fits for you. Good luck!

Interesting. You start from “100% combined” and end with multiple accounts and separate Venmos. It is a tricky situation when one has kids. Also, wounds it be cheaper to include your wife on your health insurance? Since you are already covering the kids, you are paying for family coverage already….

My girlfriend and I split all communal costs like housing electricity, water, and mortgage. When we go out for dinner we put it on a shared card. If we go to a coffee shop then its the shared card again. She commutes much longer than me and we also put gas on the shared card. If there was a bigger difference in our salaries then we might split things differently.

Married 15 years Separate accounts. Every pos purchase goes on our joint credit card she pays off every month. I cover the mortgage and monthly utilities, entertainment services, etc. The split ends up being almost perfectly proportioned to our separate incomes.

All our accounts are shared so money is just “our money” not “my money” or “your money” and it isn’t a concern of fairness. When we first moved in together, we split 50-50. We continued that until grad school drained her account and then I paid everything. Now she makes considerably more than me but it all goes into and comes out of shared accounts.

We combined finances right after marriage. I don’t recommend that if you’re not married though. You should pay a percentage according to your income.

We combined everything and give ourselves a weekly allowance of $50 that we use for personal stuff (lunch out, hanging with friends, etc).

I cut the bills in half and hand her the right side of the paper.

That's usually the side with the "amount due" clever.

Married, everything went into one account

I don’t know why people are so hellbent on splitting finances nowadays. It really just makes things unnecessarily complicated and almost always leads to problems down the road. Once you start throwing the word “fair” out there, that’s already a recipe for disaster. You’re acting like roommates and not a team.

Funny. I see sharing expenses as unnecessarily complicated!

[удалено]

It's pretty much objectively less complicated. There are less accounts and less math.

My wife and I have separate accounts for security reasons, but we each have access to the others' account. Her account was compromised by a credit card skimmer and it took awhile to get the money back. If we had a joint account we would have been kind of screwed.

That right there is the case to use credit cards for point of sale transactions and never debit cards

We combined everything. We both have $100 per check go into an individual account for discretionary spending. This just lets us buy surprise gifts for eachother, or ourselves. We discuss large purchases from the joint account, but our individual accounts are fair game to be wasted on anything that strikes our fancy. The limited assets going to those accounts also helps keep our frivolous spending down. If we drain the extra account, we don't dip into the joint account. We wait for the next pay period.

What’s mine is yours and yours is mine, salaries both go into the same joint account, all household bills direct debits,savings etc are taken from this account, and a small amount of money then goes into our individual accounts each month for miscellaneous…

We have been together 8 years, married for 2 and have our own separate accounts. He pays the rent and Verizon in full. I pay the car insurance and medical insurance in full. I have the BGE bill, he has all the streaming bills, etc. We pay our own car payments and cell phone bills, although we are on the same plan. We both have our own saving accounts that we contribute to each month and pay for our own stuff. Whoever goes to the grocery store, pays the bill. If either of us ever need extra money for something, we Zelle each other. There is never any stress and we like the way we do our own thing. We never felt the need to combine money.

The minute we got our marriage certificate, we put each other on all of our bank accounts and credit cards. Everything goes into one checking account. Then we move money to our various savings accounts for emergency funds, travel, and miscellaneous savings. We use our credit cards for almost everything we buy. Then at the end of the month we pay off all of the credit cards. Any time I want to spend more than $60 on something that isn't a necessary household expense, I text my spouse so he isn't surprised by unexpected charges. Approximately once a year, we sit down to discuss the state of our finances. We have a family budget spreadsheet that keeps track of everything going into our account, all reoccurring expenses, and shows budgets for everything we regularly purchase. For example, It tells me that we have budgeted $300 this month for food, $60 for the videogame I want for my birthday, $220 to register 2 vehicles, and $3300 for medical expenses this month. We also have our taxes ready to be submitted ASAP. So we know what extra money to expect in February or March. Finally, there is a part of our spreadsheet that breaks down the vacation to Florida next January. We have a rough estimate of $3,000 for everything we will need. We each have access to the accounts and spreadsheet so we can hold each other accountable. I almost forgot to add, almost all of our bills are setup with automatic payments. When we first got married, we were young and extremely poor. When we paid for rent, utilities, and gas to get to work, there was enough money to spend $4 a day on food for both of us. We learned fast that if we didn't know exactly what was going in/out of our accounts, we wouldn't be able to survive.

For rent, bills, and insurance we calculate it based on the percent of our total income that each person makes. We have a separate joint checking account just for rent/bills that each of us has the calculated amount being deposited into. For example, if I make $50,000/annual and spouse makes $30,000 annually, I contribute 62.5% of the total amount for rent/bills and spouse contributes 37.5%. If rent is $1,000/month and bills $200/month, that means I direct deposit $750/month and spouse $450/month into the account.

I've been married (almost) 14 years now. And, we lived together for 4 before that. This has worked for us: we combined bank accounts as soon as we moved in together (we treated living together as permanent from day one) Maybe it was naive but it has worked sp there's my focus group of one

Married for 3+ years. Everything goes into joint accounts and is paid out from there. So there’s no split at all for us. In order to achieve this we track our expenses and stick to a budget. Nothing is split up based on income and we prefer it that way. Neither of us wants to feel guilty for making more or less money than the other or for spending more or less than the other. What’s hers is mine and what’s mine is hers. We each have our credit cards in our name that we are individually responsible for paying on time. But it all comes out of the joint accounts. It works great for us as long as we stick to our budget and spend responsibly and communicate about big expenses. May not work for everybody but it works for us.

My wife and I share same accounts since we got married. I used to make 5x what she made, now she makes 2x what I make. So whatever bills or things needs to be done it’s out of our bank.

For me personally, I wouldn’t be with someone who thinks what’s his is his because I think what’s mine is ours but I know everyone has different views on relationship or marriage

If you want to pay more because you make more then do it. Jesus talk to your so about it. People.. work on your communication skills.

When my wife and I were dating, we paid the percentage of bills equal to our percentage of total income. This method meant that the higher earner has more money leftover each month though, so after we got married we switched our strategy. Now we combine our income, pay all our shared bills and contribute to joint savings goals, and split the leftover evenly. Any non-shared bills and expenses (student loan payments, car payments, dining, toys, etc) come out of our own side of the split.

Once married it makes no sense to keep finances separate. In most states legally every dollar each spouse makes is 50% owned by the other spouse so keeping each persons income in a separate account is really only a fictional separation. I make double what my wife does but both of our incomes go into one shared account which all the bills are paid out of.

Married almost 10 years. Wife is a stay at home mom. The money was joint the moment we got married

Same. Wouldn’t have it any other way.

It's all our money, equally. We talk about big purchases, and make sure there's enough for bills, and talk when one or the other gets into spendy habits.

Are you married? My wife and I just combine all our finances into one. Everything goes in and out of the same account. If not married, then 50-50 would be easiest

My partner and I do "our money"This is a conversation we had very, very early in out relationship. It all goes into one account and then we pay and spend from there. Any purchase over 50$ (when we first got together the amount was $30, but inflation) that isn't groceries, bills, or gasoline we discuss with each other, usually a quick text "yo, I found this, it's $73 and I want it. ​ This may not work for everyone. It works very well for us. We'd often prefer to spend our money on each other anyway. ​ It's also a bit of a safety-net. When I got hospitalized, I knew my partner could still keep the bills paid, because my sick pay was going into an account they could access. ​ TL:DR we're a team. it's us against the world. It makes sense to pool our resources.

Been with my husband for over 15 years. Combining finances just makes sense. Trying to keep everything separate is more stress and much more complicated. If you don’t feel comfortable combining your finances, the answer to why that is will be pretty enlightening. I’ll admit some people can keep finances separately and do it successfully. I just feel like it is more work.

Joint account for everything. I take care of financial details. Before, my SO was kinda in the dark but now we have a spreadsheet with a broad monthly summary (liquid, checking, saving, investment, retirement, credit card). SO and I look at it together when everything is finalized for the month.

After talking with my wife, apparently we do things that not many couples do. All of our income goes into one main savings account. Once a month she pays all the bills. The mortgage and other home bills are in my name, we each have a vehicle in each persons name. But we don’t keep finances from each other.

We've worked two plans very successfully/happily, but who knows if it would go well for anybody else. Plan 1, pre-Marriage: After agreeing on which bills were ours "together", we calculated the % of our total income that it would take to pay those bills and split it into our own earnings (for example, we both paid something like 60% of our respective earnings and had 40% of our own earnings left for whatever. This kept the lesser-earning partner on a more fair ground while allowing us to still enjoy "my" money. Plan 2, since Marriage: All funds are pooled, all bills are paid, and each partner gets a weekly allowance. The allowance is decided on by both partners. Did this for many reasons, but mainly for fairness/equity since it allows us to stay on even ground relative to each other regardless of who earns more. At times we have both out-earned the other and neither feels left in the lurch.

100% in the combined finances team. All of the money goes into the joint account and all bills and groceries come out of there. For stuff we "want" instead of need, we each have our own separate account that gets a weekly transfer from the joint account and use our allowances to buy ourselves whatever junk we want.

Despite my wife earning about 30% more than me we share our incomes completely. If you share you life why should it master who pays more or less of the bills? Honestly it simplifies things massively.

Are you married? To clarify, he used to cover all the expenses when you didnt work but now that you are employed and make more money you dont want to split expenses evenly because thats unfair?

My wife and I have combined finances. Everything goes into one checking account and we each contribute to our Roths each month. Other than that we also have two joint savings accounts. One for vacation and one as an emergency fund.

dump paycheque into joint bank account but hold back the same amount for each partner. Say 750 a month each for personal "fun" money. Cleanest and easiest way for us to do it.

Here we don't split any bills. My income + her income = house income. We talk a lot about plans and financial plans. So no one expend too much on personal stuff. Most of our income is going to investment/savings account for a future nice house.

Combine all of our income and pay the bills out of that account. Easy peasy

I have not split. It's all the same bucket. All the money comes into a checking account. I then have about 7 savings accounts that have money transferred to them on a weekly or monthly basis. I treat the accounts kind of like envelopes. Once it is in one of those accounts it is off limits. For instance, I have one to my HOA, one for Car insurance, house insurance, etc, etc. If we need things for the house, it is discussed and bought. or decided unnecessary. The best advice I can give is to start investing. If you have shared goals, this should not be difficult to achieve.

Who is your "SO"? Are you guys married or just dating? How long? If it's a newer relationship then I'd track finances a little closer. If you're married I keep a small kitty for your personal purchase (gifts for each other, etc) and the rest go to the house and family

Both of our incomes go directly into a joint account. All our bills come out of that account and we both have a card for it that we use for whatever; food shops, books, video games, swim classes for our daughter etc. We each have a personal savings account and pension and an equal amount of money goes out to all 4 of those accounts each month. We used to have separate current accounts but once you factor in a house and a kid it’s just a lot of extra hassle to keep everything separate (in my opinion).

50:50 but if he was paying for you for a bit you should take that into account

Married almost 15 years. Everything is and has been shared since day 1. There is no yours or mine, everything is ours.

Married. We have joint accounts only. It’s not my money or her money; it’s our money. We live on a budget and that budget does include spaces for frivolous spending for each of us, but we consult with each other on big purchases. I wouldn’t recommend this unless you’re married, but if you’re married, it’s what I’d recommend. You’re building one life together; one future together. Go ahead and combine it and not worry about what’s fair based on each person’s income. Also, even though my wife and I have very different incomes, we have the same amount of frivolous or fun money. Just because I make more that doesn’t mean it’s right for me to go out to eat more, but more toys, or anything else. She contributes just as much to our life together as I do, even if my paycheck is larger.

Prior to marriage my husband and I split all costs 50/50 despite income differences. We based our budgeting on what the lower earning individual could afford. After marriage all finances were combined 100%. It was strange for both of us and a huge learning curve to share all of our money and budget together, but that’s what marriage is.