Reply to Getting married in our 40s. How should we combine finances?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We are late 30s and just got married last year. Had a kid just a couple months ago.

We have separate accounts for everything. We put everything on the joint credit card and we split the bill evenly every month. A typical monthly credit card bill is $4K and paid in full each month. We take turns paying the mortgage each month. When our kid goes into daycare, we will just likely take turns paying that. For example, if DW pays the mortgage in January, I will pay the daycare bill for January. In February, we switch bills. Vacations go on the credit card and are split. Our wedding was put on the credit card and split. We recently bought a car and paid cash - we each wrote a check to the dealership for our half. When we bought the house, we each paid half of the down payment and closing costs from our respective bank accounts.

It helps that we both have the same salary (about $175K each). We plan to make equal annual contributions to our kid's 529 (about $5K each). We both max out our 401Ks ($19K/yr). However, I have a lot more money than DW in the market while her savings account is 5x the size of mine.

I have student loans that I pay each month out of my own bank account. DW is debt-free and thus has significantly more spending money.

I pay for my own activities. For example, I go skiing with buddies a few times per year and I pay for that myself. DW likes to go to spas or Broadway shows with her sister, so she pays for that herself. DW buys a lot of clothes online, so she handles all that thru her personal credit card. We don't monitor each other's ancillary spending.

The joint credit card is the best way to keep separate finances. You can put pretty much every purchase - aside from a house or car - on the credit card and divvy it up at the end of the month. [/quote]

sounds exhausting to me but i'm glad you guys figured out something that works for you[/quote]

It's not exhausting. We literally have three bills per month to pay: credit card (divide in half), mortgage, and child care. All the utilities + TV + cell phones are put on the credit card via autopay.

We each have our own retirement portals through work, so it's not like we can manage those jointly. I can't manage her 401K and she can't get access to mine; you literally need to get onto our work networks to gain access.

We toss in money to the 529 once per year in a large lump sum from our personal bank accounts. Easy peasy.

I have money in my own Vanguard IRA that I play with. I have some money in crypto. None of this would change if we decided we would merge bank accounts.

Frankly, so many accounts preexisted this marriage that it would be a huge pain in the ass to close and consolidate them all. We each have active credit card lines that are nearly 20 years old - closing such old accounts would negatively impact our credit score. That's the reality that most couples who meet later in life will face - it's easier to just remain with the status quo. 
[/quote]

NP here and you could probably even automate some of this to make it even easier (i.e. billpay for mortgage amount $X every other month and same with daycare).  The credit card would probably still have to be manual.

We do something similar to you guys except the joint credit card, mortgage, daycare and 529 contributions come from a joint account that we both contribute certain amounts to periodically but we retain/manage the rest of our earnings in separate accounts.  One slight advantage of having separate and joint accounts is that you can automate all the bills (mortgage, daycare, recurring 529 contributions and utility bills which in my area you can't bill to a credit card).[/quote]

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