re: How do you and your spouse handle money?

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I trust my wife completely or else I wouldn’t have married her. If. Your worried about trusting her with your money you should rethink marrying her


Pretty much spot on.

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The problem you "never separate" folks seem to have is your mind auto defaults to nefarious reasons for things not being joined. You realize it's possible accounts can be separate not because of lack of trust or skepticism in the partner but for convenience instead, right? My wife and I have each had our own accounts since we were teenagers and just didn't feel like combining everything when we got married, although we did combine some. Neither of us have any debt besides our mortgage and are responsible spenders. Our accounts not being completely and fully conjoined has absolutely les than nothing to do with trust.

1. Get cash back when ever you make a purchase at the store.

2. Stash the money and don't tell anyone.

3. Thank me later.

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The problem you "never separate" folks seem to have is your mind auto defaults to nefarious reasons for things not being joined.

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I'd argue it's actually these folks who really have the trust issues.

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Well yesterday she brought up joint accounts which I do not have an issue with from a visibility standpoint (aka there's nothing I'm hiding in there that I don't want her to see), but I've never done this before and I am struggling to visualize how it would work unless it's all just in one big pot, which seems messy as hell since we both make and spend our own money generally.

Is there a hybrid method where we both just transfer money into a communal pot for shared expenses every month and it all gets paid for out of that? Do I just need to suck it up and we both share a checking account and a credit card? She was saying she feels its what "adults" do but I was not visualizing well how it actually makes things any easier. The last thing we want to do is also make it so the pot seems bigger, and we both dip into it a little more because it becomes more "ours" rather than "mine" or "hers" which I think mentally allows us to be a little stingier.

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There's no one way which works for everyone but what my wife and I do works for us and sounds similar to the hybrid you mention.

We each have our own separate checking and savings accounts. We also have a joint checking and a joint savings account.

We've set up auto-draft with our work so that an allotted amount from each check automatically goes into joint checking each pay period (with the rest going to our own individual accounts). Any time a deposit of over $300 goes into joint checking, $50 is automatically moved from joint checking into joint savings.

Joint checking and joint savings are used for things like the mortgage, car insurance, utilities and Christmas gifts for our parents, siblings and birthday presents for the minor nieces and nephews (since we don't have kids). Joint savings is a bit of a cross between an emergency fund and for major home repairs (we recently had to have two trees cut down, for example).

Our personal accounts are for us to spend/save as we wish. We both have full access to each other's accounts in case of emergency (we are both very open with our finances with one another as we have nothing to hide).

I spend less than she does, but neither of us has any personal debt nor are irresponsible with funds. We usually sit down and balance our accounts together once a month.

Take your time and tinker with the process until the two of you find a scenario that works for you.

WSJ article about how joint accounts are better for the marriage

This is a good read.

I always thought we would have joint but 15 years later too lazy to combined. We are use to managing our own accounts and it works.


Really alot of ways you can work. Maybe at a minimum fund your joint account with emergency and budgeted expense each paycheck. Keep your individual for your fun money.

We have joint everything and I manage everything. Wife stays at home so it's not really a she makes this I make that situation.

We have big categories for our spend that have monthly limits. She and I get a set of money every month to do whatever we want with. Mines usually spent on bourbon and guns, hers on clothes and junk.

It works for us and we have a healthy relationship with money.

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You can set up 3 bank accounts in the same bank. All deposits go into the primary account, pay bills out of that, then transfer funds to the other two accounts and you each spend out of your own "account" that is your allowance.

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Married for nearly 20yrs. We do something very similar with 3 shared accounts. Our first account is tied to our debit cards and it serves as our two week "allowance" which is used for basic daily spending,,,gas, lunch, ATM cash, etc. When we first got married, that amount was $400 every 2wks and it was deposited from her check.

With her check, everything over that $400 and 100% of my check went into our 2nd account which is our bill pay account. We would top off this account with 1-2 months of bill money then transfer the excess into our savings account.

This system really kept us on track when we were first starting out with high debt and limited funds.

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At the end of the day, it’s all the same money after you marry her

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Amen. If you can’t trust her with that, you’re probably not trustworthy yourself either and should just get the divorce papers drawn up. You’ll need them eventually.

My wife doesn't even know what all accounts we have. I'm pretty sure she hasn't opened her own 401k account since we were engaged. Money is the one thing we never argue about.