How do you divide up shared and individual accounts with your spouse?

[Anonymous]

Husband and I are trying to migrate to more shared accounting system (instead of two larger personal accounts and one small shared one). Curious to hear how others do it themselves or would approach our situation.
This is our situation, how would you set it up so that we largely have shared account but each have a personal account we can still tap into?

LIFESTYLE
2 young kids. Renting. 2 full time salaried jobs.

INCOME/SAVINGS
Me: $140 + lots of savings
Him: $160 + moderate savings
(Neither are likely to change drastically)

CURRENT ACCOUNTS
His/Her personal checking and savings accounts (60+% of income)
Small shared account for household expenses (<40% of income)

MORE IDEAL SET UP
?
?


If you kept a small personal account (for gifts, personal splurges), how did you justify how much goes into the larger shared account if one of you makes more?

[Anonymous]

Do you not like the way your DH handles finances? Is there a reason you don't want to 100% share accounts?

DH and I share accounts 100%, it just seemed easiest. We are even on each others credit cards. To minimize gift checking before birthdays/Christmas, we just don't look at each other's favorite credit card statement beforehand.

[Anonymous]

Our setup is like this:

Savings: enough to get the full employer match. This means more for him, but I get a better deal on my pension because I've been a Fed for longer, so this evens it up. DH currently makes more than I do, but he also has bigger student loans, and spent an extra year in grad school while I was working. I did most of the down payment on our house, because of that. So I think we're pretty even, in the big picture.

Personal accounts: Fixed dollar amounts for student loans, clothes, fun, etc. NOT done by percent.

Shared account: Full paycheck, after savings and personal accounts. This is like 90% of our discretionary income.

Bonuses: Splurge on something for yourself, or put it towards a family luxury such as a vacation. Bonuses often go towards something one of us wants more than the other, e.g. my DH likes fancy vacations and I wouldn't want to make it a priority but if it's bonus money I'm fine with it.

[Anonymous]

You've got to work out what you both can live with. For my husband & myself, we agreed that 95% of our incomes would go into the joint family account and 5% is automatically disbursed into separate personal accounts.

[Anonymous]

For me, part of the definition of marriage is shared finances.

[Anonymous]

All but $800 every 2 weeks goes into a joint account.

$400/person every 2 weeks goes into our own accounts.

If you want to purchase something over $100 from the joint account you have to consult the other.

If you don't want to consult the other use your personal account.

I make more than my H does. About twice a year we have a big expense that can not be handled by our joint account, my H usually does not have enough money to cover the expense. I cover it with "my" account.

Really this just keeps my H from spending all our disposable income and he feels I don't control what he spends his money on... he is a spender.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You've got to work out what you both can live with. For my husband & myself, we agreed that 95% of our incomes would go into the joint family account and 5% is automatically disbursed into separate personal accounts.

We have something similar. It also helps in case a card is compromised that each one of us can access money from a non joint account.
Every year we move unspent excess from the separate accounts into joint savings Etc. we both put just enough in the separate ones pet pay period where it's the minimum direct deposit amount so we don't have to pay to keep the account.
We still discuss all purchases over about $200. As simple as "hey I need maternity clothes so I'm going to put a bunch of stuff on the credit card and pay that part off with the personal account" so there's no concern when the bill is higher.
We had some hard conversations about savings and spending and our family money goals way before we got married so now it's easy.

[Anonymous]

One checking account, one brokerage account, one credit card, individual retirement accounts (cause that's the law). All of it is jointly owned -- we don't do percentages or allowances -- and all purchases are transparent, and discussed if they're significant.

Neither of us would spend a lot of money on anything without talking to the other. We don't do material gifts, we spend on experiences. We "surprise" each other with the idea (I got a gift box with sunscreen, hiking socks, a map of Tuscany and an Italian cookbook for my birthday), but we research and make the actual purchases together.

[Anonymous]

We have one joint checking account that our paychecks are deposited into, and then several joint savings accounts earmarked for different things. All major bills are paid out of joint checking, including our vastly different student loans.

We do each get personal money, but it's a fixed amount rather than a percentage. We prefer that because it emphasized that we both contribute equally to our family, even when our incomes are not the same.

This method of joint finances works for us, but that's really because we're both essentially on the same page about money.

[Anonymous]

Do what feels best, as long as money is not used as a form of control or power in the relationship.

All of our $$ goes into one operating account which is jointly owned. All expenses, investments and savings are allocated from this account with no regard to our income levels. We did try to have separate checking accounts where each of us gets a set equal amount each month, but this did not work well as I always ended up having to make "loans" to my DH that he could not repay timely or satisfy on reasonable terms (he would offer to perform services like mopping the kitchen. As if he does not benefit from a clean kitchen lol. He also would offer sexual favors--this was more appealing).

We both max out our 401ks. When we had to pay into daycare and could not save as much, we both set our 401k savings to the same amount. We also make joint decisions on investment choices, however, I generally yield to my DH in this regard. I am better at budgeting and saving, but hes better at investing and risk taking. We maximize our strengths and manage our weaknesses.

[Anonymous]

OP here. Thanks for the tips and insight. Very helpful. I like the idea of just keeping small fixed amount into personal accounts for gifts/splurges. Think I'll propose that.

Appreciate the insights.

[Anonymous]

You and your spouse have really similar salaries, surprised by so much separation. For some reason when I see scenarios like this I automatically think of the Joy Luck Club where the husband and wife split everything down the middle to the cent, dinners, groceries, etc. Sounds exhausting to keep track of it all!

DH makes significantly more than I do, no children.

We have a few CCs, checking, savings, and investment accounts together. All bills, vacations, and large purchases are joint expenses. We each receive an "allowance" of about $500 per month to spend on whatever we want. For him that's beer, baseball games, and gifts for me for me that's shoes, brunch with friends, and gifts for him. Since all of our accounts are together, we just avoid looking at the account around birthdays and holidays when we might giveaway what we've bought the other person.

Works for us but I agree with other PPs, find out what works for you.

[Anonymous]

We have 3 shared accounts,but my DH is horrible with money so I manage all the finances and he gets "pocket money" for a week. Of course he can use shared debit or cc anytime but he prefers not to. Works just fine. Btw that's how it is in his and my family.

[Anonymous]

We have one joint cc for all of the major expenses (gas, food, going out to eat, etc.) and two individual cards for personal purchases (clothes, etc.).

We have one joint account from which the major expenses are paid (joint cc bill, mortgage, utilities, etc.) and two separate accounts to do with as we please.

We add enough money to the joint account every 4 months so that it has $30K in it.

[Anonymous]

Something that is very simple but I found helpful:

When I asked my mother about how my parents arranged their finances in their marriage she said "we did different things at different times. For some years we had these 2 accounts that blah blah blah. Then I stopped working and we moved to this other account. Then for some years we moved money monthly from this account to the other..." Ah ha! You do not need to decide now what you will do for the rest of your lives with your bank accounts. You can do something for a few months or years and if it doesn't work for you, rearrange!