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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP, we have separate accounts, and honestly, it would feel weird to me to do things the way you do them, the same way it would be weird to share an email account with my husband or to have a shared cell phone. I have my bank account, where my checks go, and he has his. We don't share credit cards. Our names are both on the mortgage and the utilities, but that's it. It works for us to have one person designated to deal with mortgage, one person designated to deal with the power bill, water bill, daycare bill, etc.

I say "it would feel weird to me" because while I love my husband and our marriage is great, it is important to me that we also maintain our independence. People are probably going to throw out ideas like "what if you get divorced" and I agree that in the extremely unlikely event that we were to divorce, you would have a harder time separating financially from your husband than I would.

To me, getting a joint bank account when I got married felt exactly the same as changing my name. Why would I give up the name I've always had? Why would I close the bank accounts and credit card accounts that predate my marriage in favor of a new, joint account? It was not a symbolic gesture that I wanted to make.

If it sounds like I am judging the way you do things, that is probably a little bit true, but your post seems to assume that my marriage is "abnormal" because we don't share a bank account and that's ridiculous. My bank account number has NOTHING to do with my marriage.[/quote]

Thanks for being kind and honest. That's exactly the point I can't understand. What's the point of being married, then? If you're not "all in"?

In my country you get to choose who will change names and you don't need to do it. It's not necessarily the wife getting the husband's last name so I'm not familiar with that. I didn't adopt DH's last name for other reasons (visa issues and inability to recognize our marriage in our countries), but I understand that some people feel the need to keep their individuality... what I can't understand is why people get so caught up in preserving something (the individuality) and end up sacrificing the relationship.[/quote]

I don't understand how having separate bank accounts means that I'm not "all in" or that my marriage is less sound or that I have trust issues. I would agree that if we had joint accounts and then all of a sudden we started maintaining separate accounts, that would indicate an issue with trust. Honestly, though, OP, we just did not combine in this way. We lived together for 4 years before getting married. We've known each other for 12 years. When we moved in together, we combined our furniture, our kitchenware. We started sharing closet space and space in the bathroom cabinets. Those were things that practically, we had to do. Changing accounts to have a joint account would have been a change. It would have required switching direct deposit. It would have meant getting new checks, etc. I'm not saying that those things were difficult to do - they just were not a priority for us.

We don't haggle over a cab ride or dinner. Sometimes one of us pays, sometimes the other one. Usually it's him, because he makes a lot more than I do. Money just isn't an issue for us. We make enough to be comfortable, live within our means, and save well. If we were living paycheck to paycheck, we would need to think about it a lot more than we do. It just sounds like for you, this is a big important issue. That's fine. To each her own. For us, it's not something that we feel like we need to combine/change/whatever. I don't think it's better or worse. It's just how we have always done it.[/quote]

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