Joint v. separate accounts

[Anonymous]

Separate everything. We've been married for 5 years and just never opened a joint account. I don't see the point and just felt it would be one more account to worry about. DH outearns me by a fair margin (2.5x my salary) and pays for everything. I will pay for groceries etc if I'm at the store by myself. I buy all my clothes and shoes etc and do not ever ask him for money.

[Anonymous]

We have a hybrid system that has morphed over time. When we got married in our late 20's, we had a joint savings account that we used to save for the wedding that later became the house downpayment savings. We each had one main credit card and one main checking account in our own name. Once we got married, we added each other to the credit cards but each is responsible for paying the main credit card had pre-marriage. We split up the bills each person pays.

There are a few reasons we started off this way. I am disorganized in personal life and work hard to be organized at work. My DH is very organized is his personal life and I assume at work. I am the type that the water bill was paid a few days late because I had not gone thru the mail stack in two weeks and that would have drove DH absolutely crazy. Big bills like credit card and mortgage I paid on time. So DH took all the smaller bills and I continued to pay the mortgage on the place I owned before we were married. I am very frugal about some things so I had basic cable and basic phone before we were engaged so it made sense that DH would take over the cable and phone bill that were upgraded to what he wanted. I knew with checking accounts I would not want to tell DH about every purchase so he could balance the account and if he made a comment about a purchase like oh we needed another Shirt in blue I would not find it cute.

Once we had kids, we added each other to the checking accounts but still have the same split bill paying except I have added childcare, school tuition, and kids activities to my list. The one big thing is we haven't really done joint budgeting and retirement planning and that is my goal for this year. We have gotten by this long because we made enough separately and while we put away for joint savings and fund 401ks in general we lived life like we had to get by on far less than our combined salaries. The problem though is if we trim fat from what we spend, we need it to go somewhere productive like more in college savings or retirement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have a hybrid system that has morphed over time. When we got married in our late 20's, we had a joint savings account that we used to save for the wedding that later became the house downpayment savings. We each had one main credit card and one main checking account in our own name. Once we got married, we added each other to the credit cards but each is responsible for paying the main credit card had pre-marriage. We split up the bills each person pays.

There are a few reasons we started off this way. I am disorganized in personal life and work hard to be organized at work. My DH is very organized is his personal life and I assume at work. I am the type that the water bill was paid a few days late because I had not gone thru the mail stack in two weeks and that would have drove DH absolutely crazy. Big bills like credit card and mortgage I paid on time. So DH took all the smaller bills and I continued to pay the mortgage on the place I owned before we were married. I am very frugal about some things so I had basic cable and basic phone before we were engaged so it made sense that DH would take over the cable and phone bill that were upgraded to what he wanted. I knew with checking accounts I would not want to tell DH about every purchase so he could balance the account and if he made a comment about a purchase like oh we needed another Shirt in blue I would not find it cute.

Once we had kids, we added each other to the checking accounts but still have the same split bill paying except I have added childcare, school tuition, and kids activities to my list. The one big thing is we haven't really done joint budgeting and retirement planning and that is my goal for this year. We have gotten by this long because we made enough separately and while we put away for joint savings and fund 401ks in general we lived life like we had to get by on far less than our combined salaries. The problem though is if we trim fat from what we spend, we need it to go somewhere productive like more in college savings or retirement.

This sounds confusing as hell. Whatever works for you, I guess. A united family shouldn't need so many paragraphs to explain how the family finances are organized.

[Anonymous]

Joint everything

[Anonymous]

Mixed, but we have very similar attitudes toward money so all funds are joint.

We each have our own credit cards, and we both had substantial retirement savings before we married, so those have stayed separate. But we direct deposit into the same account, and pay credit card bills out of the same account, and all household expenses out of the same account.

This works because we agree on finances.

[Anonymous]

I'm one of the pp's that has joint everything. DH outwards me by about 6x as much. Always has. Probably always will as I am in education. It has never been his money or my money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Joint everything. Didn't even consider split accounts. However we see eye to eye on finances and have similar spending habits. We have never argued about money. If it were a source of contention maybe we would go with split.

+1

[Anonymous]

Hybrid: two individual accounts plus one joint. We transfer money between them freely and treat all the money as "ours". Only large, discretionary expenses are discussed in advance.

There was never a real decision made about how the accounts would work. We both had our own accounts with direct deposit before getting married and it was easiest to just keep them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Separate everything. We've been married for 5 years and just never opened a joint account. I don't see the point and just felt it would be one more account to worry about. DH outearns me by a fair margin (2.5x my salary) and pays for everything. I will pay for groceries etc if I'm at the store by myself. I buy all my clothes and shoes etc and do not ever ask him for money.

+1, but I do pay utilities.

[Anonymous]

Hybrid, and we liberally transfer between our separate and joint accounts frequently.

I think we just like it that way... we have a harmonious relationship regarding money, so it's not that either of us feel the need to protect our own funds, but it just seems to work out best. My separate account is for presents, spur of the moment stuff for myself, coffee, lunch, etc. Everything else comes out of the joint account.

[Anonymous]

We have a joint checking and savings account that all paychecks go into. Joint credit card that 95% of charges go onto. All other household expenses that don't get charged (mortgage, daycare, utiligies, etc) get paid from the joint account.

We each have our own credit cards that we use around holidays and birthdays. We each have a savings account in our name only that gets an auto deposit every month. We make joint decisions about those savings and we both have access to each other's account. It's joint money, just structured separately (I know people who have had joint accounts restricted after a death/divorce/legal issues so wanted to be sure we each had some money clearly in one name only). Retirement savings are through work and in our individual names. We each have a small debit account in our own name that gets our "fun money" that's ours to spend without any judgement from the other person.

When we got married, I made considerably more than DH (~90k to his 50k). Now he outearns me (~135k to ~120k). Money has never been an issue for us though and there's never been a sense that the one who earns more should pay more or is entitled to more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have a joint checking account and joint savings account, and then we each have a personal checking account and savings account.

We figured out how much our joint expenses are (bills, entertainment, gifts, vacations, gas and car repairs, health expenses -- basically, anything we have a shared vested interest in) and we put that amount into the joint checking every month, split according to our salaries. He makes two-thirds of our total HHI, so he puts in two-thirds of this monthly joint amount.

Whenever that joint checking account is flush with cash, we transfer some to the joint savings.

We pay for our own expenses (clothes, hobbies, entertainment with separate friends) with our personal credit cards, which we pay off from our personal checking accounts.

We don't have children, but if we did, obviously their expenses would be paid jointly, according to our salaries -- him two-thirds, me one-third.

This is pretty much our set up except 60/40.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have a joint checking and savings account that all paychecks go into. Joint credit card that 95% of charges go onto. All other household expenses that don't get charged (mortgage, daycare, utiligies, etc) get paid from the joint account.

We each have our own credit cards that we use around holidays and birthdays. We each have a savings account in our name only that gets an auto deposit every month. We make joint decisions about those savings and we both have access to each other's account. It's joint money, just structured separately (I know people who have had joint accounts restricted after a death/divorce/legal issues so wanted to be sure we each had some money clearly in one name only). Retirement savings are through work and in our individual names. We each have a small debit account in our own name that gets our "fun money" that's ours to spend without any judgement from the other person.

When we got married, I made considerably more than DH (~90k to his 50k). Now he outearns me (~135k to ~120k). Money has never been an issue for us though and there's never been a sense that the one who earns more should pay more or is entitled to more.

Out of curiosity, what industries are you in and how did he exceed come to exceed you? Is yours a case of leaning back and passing up seniority/experience for the sake of family while DH continues to rise?

[Anonymous]

Hybrid.

We have a joint checking account which we each contribute to and use to pay household expenses (rent, utilities, groceries, shared expenses such as meals). Both of our names are on all utility bills. We each have an individual checking/savings account and separate investment accounts. We also have individual credit cards solely in each name; if we need to use a credit card to purchase something high-cost that we don't want to pay out of the joint account (plane tickets, furniture), one of us will make the charge and then we sort out where to withdraw from to pay it off.

[Anonymous]

Joint accounts. If there are any issues with respect to how much one person is spending, we just talk about it and work it out.