Reply to merging money when you become a family

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I cannot imagine not  having 100% joint finances with my husbands. Bills come out of joint account. Paychecks going into joint checking/savings. We need something, we buy it. If its super expensive, we discuss it.

Why make it complicated? I don't think I could be married to a man to didn't trust me to be financially responsible, or if I couldn't trust him to be.[/quote]

Why are you drawing the conclusion that separate bank accounts (left over from our separate, pre-marriage lives) = lack of trust? You trust each other or you don't. My husband and I have talked extensively about our financial philosophies; we are on the same page, we just haven't needed to merge things until now. [/quote]

We all come into marriage with existing accounts, I think. We're not child brides.

I link it to trust, because non-joint finance couples -- like 15:33 -- always say (or suggest) that they keep their finances separate so they can spend "their own money" any way they like. As if joint accounts means you now have to get permission every time you want to buy lunch or a new blouse or whatever. Or they want to keep the cost of certain items a secret from their spouse.

To me, the only explanation for having separate accounts is to "protect what's mine" -- which suggests you don't trust your partner.
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Right now for us it is really to allow each person to balance his/her account and to split responsibility for actually opening bills, making sure it is correct, and paying in a timely fashion. If we had a true joint account to it would likely fall on one person to manage all the bills. When the aftercare bill is incorrect, I'm emailing to get it corrected since I both pay the aftercare bill and have the dependent care account.  When our cable bill is incorrect, DH calls.  There is also this feeling I want to avoid of having to tell the person in charge of the finances every time I spend money so that person can balance the account.  Oh, I sent my mom $100 gift card, oh I went out to lunch today and used the debit card etc.

We added each other to our accounts but I will admit that was post marriage and two kids.  I always wanted to make sure I had at least a mortgage payment or two saved away in case DH went thru a mid life crisis and wanted to leave me for a much younger woman.  Never say never but I feel fairly confident DH would make sure his kids were taken care of at a minimum.  I would also like to think after 15 years I know my husband.[/quote]

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