I don't understand couples that keep separate finances. When you get married its "we" and not "me". It seems like keeping one foot out the door. Note: I've been married for 23 years with everything tracked in joint accounts the entire time but we do have a small "fun money" monthly budget item for each of us that is a black box.
Because joint accounts have always seemed weird and controlling to me? I don’t want my wife to have to “check in” when she wants to buy something. She can spend her money on whatever she wants. We split the bills according to our income (more or less) and discuss saving more when we know larger expenses like a trip or home improvements are on the horizon.
I don’t need access to her checking accounts or credit cards because I trust her to be financially responsible and I don’t want her to ever feel like she has to justify spending money on something she wants to me.
Interestingly enough, your reasoning is why we share accounts. I'm the sole income earner, so it would seem controlling to me if my wife had an "allowance". I'd presumably still feel that way if she worked outside the home but we had an income (or spending) disparity; it's all our money (both in how we treat it and, if it came down to it, how the law sees it) and we can both use our judgement on whether to buy something. We both have access to everything because we trust each other to be financially responsible.
We still generally talk to each other about anything over a few hundred dollars, but it's more like asking your friend to reassure you because you're not sure if it's worth it. You just want someone to say "dude you've been asking if you should buy X for months just buy it".
It does help that she hates clutter and I think everything is a ripoff so neither of us does much frivolous spending. Also I bring in far more than we need and it almost all goes to savings anyway.
> Interestingly enough, your reasoning is why we share accounts. I'm the sole income earner, so it would seem controlling to me if my wife had an "allowance".
I’m also the sole bread winner and my wife does have an “allowance”. It gets deposited into her account. I also have an “allowance” that’s slightly less than hers - what’s left over after all of the bills are paid and savings.
> I'd presumably still feel that way if she worked outside the home but we had an income (or spending) disparity; it's all our money and we can both use our judgement on whether to buy something. We both have access to everything because we trust each other to be financially responsible.
My wife and I also have access to everything.
> It does help that she hates clutter and I think everything is a ripoff so neither of us does much frivolous spending
Well, we don’t have to worry about buying stuff at all or creating clutter. Everything we own has to fit in four suitcases. :)
You're thinking all the money of both people has to go in the same join account, but that's not the case. You can have a "for the bills" join account, and then each person has their own separate account. Every month each person transfer a certain amount to the joint account to cover the bills (50/50, 70/30, whatever split works for them). Any other money is spent in the person's own account and has nothing to do with the other, no need for controlling or justifying.
> All money in one account results in the most satisfaction.
Does it though? It could also be seen the other way around as "If you're already satisfied and trust each other, you are more probable to use a join account".
> Procedure [of Study 1]: Once both partners completed the intake survey (month 0), we randomly assigned couples to one of three bank account structure conditions. We informed couples via e- mail and provided condition-specific instructions. In the Separate Condition, we instructed couples to continue using separate checking and savings accounts and to not open joint checking and savings accounts, for the duration of the 2-year experiment. In the Joint Condition, we instructed couples to open joint checking and/or savings account(s) (within 1 month of them receiving these instruc- tions), use those joint account(s), and discontinue using their separate account(s) for the duration of the 2-year experiment. In the No-Intervention Condition, we told couples that they could manage their money however they liked for the duration of the 2-year experiment.
> I don't understand couples that keep separate finances
> You can have a "for the bills" join account, and then each person has their own separate account.
If you keep your own separate account, in any way, shape, or form, you are keeping separate finances. Transferring money into a shared "staging" account to pay bills from is just a more convenient implementation of one person paying the bills and then requesting money from the other. Either way of doing this - shared account "pool", or transferring on a case-by-case basis - is fine. What people (including me) are reacting with suspicion to, is the structure of _fully_ joined finances, where neither party has sole control over any finances of their own whatsoever.
To add, I don't want only one person the relationship to know how to manage money. If I pass away, I don't want my partner to be unable to take care of our kids because I did all the budgeting and investing.
In theory, sure. In practice literally every person I know with singular checking accounts has to check in when making any purchase more expensive than a tank of gas and expect the same from their significant other.
For most people it's because they live paycheck-to-paycheck, at least after things like 401(K) contributions.
Of course if you are lucky enough to have $30K+ coming in per month and your necessary monthly bills are closer to $5K then budgeting and tracking spending out of the checking account is wildly unnecessary.
But if you have say $5K-$6K coming in each month and $4K of that goes to necessary monthly bills then checking in for anything more expensive than a tank of gas ($60 or so) starts to become necessary.
Why would having separate accounts eliminate the need to communicate for larger purchases for couples in the latter situation. Sounds like that would lead to even bigger issues.
Separate account transactions can't accidentally cause a critical bill payment to fail from the bills account (joint or individually managed). They de-risk the effect of small purchases, which it's fine for one person to keep to themselves, on the bill payments which affect all partners.
Purchases might cause insufficient funds for topping up the bills account later, but that's on a longer time cycle, and someone will know about it. So it doesn't eliminate the need to communicate about large purchases (or the sum total of many small ones), but it does eliminate the need to "check in" before individual purchase decisions, and eliminates showing each other the fine details of all your personal transactions when each of you sees the statements of your joint account(s).
E.g. some people are happier buying a bagel every day for lunch, or maybe an ice cream, or trying something else, when their partner is not posted an electronic trail that shows each bagel or ice cream purchase every day, exactly what time of day the transaction occurred, and price accurate enough to infer number of fillings.
It doesn't in terms of agreement on purchases. But it makes the actual logistics of balancing the checkbook easier. You definitely know that you are or are not overdrawing.
(fwiw I use joint accounts, but I can see the benefit of separate accounts if both people are working or otherwise busy and there isn't time each night to balance the checkbook.)
You can have your bank account set to allow overdrafts or reject them.
But even then, it works different if you’re using it at a point of sale with your debit card and a scheduled payment that doesn’t immediately show up as pending.
It’s just a hassle that can easily be avoided by separate joint accounts.
Of course we have a small savings account that takes care overdrafts automatically (with a $12 fee).
I strongly disagree. Splitting finances allows each person to be responsible for their own money and avoids disputes over whether one person is spending more than their fair share.
For me doing the exact reverse works better, most of the funds are owned by the individual and a small joint account for fun activities.
It just sounds like so much extra work. Transfer $X on date Y for Z bill, repeat for both partners x each bill. Good grief!
Then, how do you avoid the strife over "personal" spending when one spouse makes much more than the other? I can buy a Porsche for myself because my salary is large, but my partner has to make do with a bicycle because she works at a non-profit? How do vacations and other shared things get paid for? Equally? proportionally? I could see a fight happening in each of those systems.
What if one spouse decides to stop working? You pretty much have to switch to a single, joint account at that point, right?
More power to ya if you've figured this out. It sounds exhausting and would never work in my family.
> Transfer $X on date Y for Z bill, repeat for both partners x each bill. Good grief!
This takes me approximately 10 minutes a month to total up and send over as a Zelle request. Hardly arduous.
> How do vacations and other shared things get paid for? Equally? proportionally? I could see a fight happening in each of those systems.
Sure, if you haven't discussed ahead of time what your strategy is going to be and people are blindsided. If you have (in our case - general vacations are shared, vacations to go see one of our family are covered by that person), then not necessarily, no.
> What if one spouse decides to stop working? You pretty much have to switch to a single, joint account at that point, right?
My partner's been out of work for a few months now, and...no, we haven't.
EDIT: wait, hang on, I'm even more confused now, because:
> I can buy a Porsche for myself because my salary is large, but my partner has to make do with a bicycle because she works at a non-profit?
Surely that's _more_ stressful if you have a shared account? With separate accounts, you just do your thing - it's your money, you do with it what you will. If your money's in a shared account, you either have to suppress your desires (not a healthy thing to do in life, especially in a relationship), or have the conversation about how _I_ want to spend _our_ money.
> Then, how do you avoid the strife over "personal" spending when one spouse makes much more than the other?
When I married my wife she was making $35K and I was making $90K in 2012. By 2020, at 46 and 44, I “retired her”. She was making $25K and I was making $200K+.
The entire time, it’s always been the same, we have separate joint accounts and her money goes into “her” account and “my” money goes into my account. They are all both joint accounts and I made sure she had enough to cover her expenses and spending money. Off and on throughout the years, she carried health insurance for the family that took a big chunk of her check and her car note came out of her check.
I only spend out of my account and the same for hers.
> Then, how do you avoid the strife over "personal" spending when one spouse makes much more than the other.
This is both of our second marriages. Neither one of us are extravagant spenders and we talk about all major decisions.
While we were 35 and 37 when we got married, we were both basically starting over. Her from a previous divorce and me from a previous divorce and being over leveraged with real estate post 2008.
> How do vacations and other shared things get paid for? Equally? proportionally? I could see a fight happening in each of those systems.
While we had separate accounts, everything went into one virtual “pot” on a spreadsheet and I made sure she had her agreed upon amount of spending money every pay period after “her” bills came out of her check. Vacations were subtracted from the pot.
> What if one spouse decides to stop working? You pretty much have to switch to a single, joint account at that point, right?
These two are _pretty_ similar (though not the same) - neither has inherent judgement in them, they're just flavours of "eh - it's not for me". Much more important to avoid conflating "I don't understand people who do X" and "People who do X are wrong".
The issue I have with joint accounts is just logistics. Two people spending constantly out of one account seems like a nightmare.
My wife and I have all joint accounts so there aren’t any secrets. But I know what is in “my” account only changes based on what I spend and the same for hers.
Of course all of our savings accounts that can be joint are.
Replying to my own comment instead of editing it...
There seems to be a common statement of it would be a nightmare if two people are spending out of the same account. This is were a budget comes in. My wife and I have been monthly budgeting for most of our marriage and I think it is an essential tool for a few reasons:
1. Unless you plan what you are going to spend (even with one person) how do you know you'll have enough in your accounts to handle both mandatory and discretionary spending?
2. Spending it all on paper, together, before the month starts lets you have money discussions without the stress of already having or wanting to spend the money immediately.
3. It gives you an overall picture of your spending vs savings vs charity.
4. It helps you remember to pay those occasional bills, like property taxes (for those like us without mortgages where you pay them yourself instead of paying into escrow).
Not having a budget is just as strange to me as having separate finances.
21 for us, same joint accounts. It probably helps that we both have financial niches we like to pay attention to. I’m the retirement and investments person while she’s the paychecks and credit card person (we don’t have a budget per se, but CC is a nice way for us to get a spending report without much effort).
Well, are you posting together to Hacker News, or is it your personal hobby that you don't feel bad pursuing instead of doing another load of laundry. Shouldn't it be "I" and "We", with balancing shifting from couple to couple and over time? Personally if I like game on Steam, I just buy it rather than asking my spouse. So joint account is also kind of like my account, so long as I am reasonable. But for people with limited resources or big dreams, things may be more complicated. I would want to know if my Steam purchase still leaves money for the water bill.
> we do have a small "fun money" monthly budget item for each of us that is a black box.
This is what we have done, but it's been a gradual process (starting before we got married) of moving our shared expenses to a joint account, and that "fun money" is just kept in our own separate checking accounts. That way we can keep a tight eye on our joint spending and savings goals, but don't have to worry about each other's spending preferences (within agreed limits).
It can make inheritance simpler in some cases. And if the other person develops into an asshole (not that anyone plans to) then it can also be simpler when it comes time to part ways.
That’s not true of all marriage vows. It’s not uncommon for self written vows to essentially be a long-winded way of saying “I promise to be a good partner as long as we’re married”.
It's all about where you set the boundaries, and yours is perfectly valid too. People can and do have a wide variety of arrangements in marriage, some sleep in different rooms, some never meet the other one's friends, some sign a prenup and some don't, and so on.
In many places, you don't. Washington State all property is 50/50. Half my income is my wife's, even though I make 800k and she makes nothing.
I dunno, the idea that you are willing to make a commitment to someone for the rest of your life but also try to hold back money from them is so alien.
My rationale is that prenups are an acknowledgment that sometimes, people discover things don’t work out. Agreeing what each person has from the beginning confirms the commitment of marriage is beyond the money/wealth that existed before.
I’ve never been married yet but this perspective seems rare. So many people’s lives get destroyed or seriously damaged after a bad divorce. Why not do something that would ease the pain for both parties?
The alternative is to say, "knowing who we are now, we are going in together. Fifty fifty. Egalitarian. If someday in the future we split, we both walk away with half."
Holding on to the idea that somehow anything is "mine" or "yours" rather than "ours" is a waste, imo. You can try and protect "mine" with a prenup, or you can accept the "ours" nature and make peace with that. I find the latter to be simpler, more elegant.
Even though Washington is a community property state, you can still have a prenup agreeing that your two incomes will be separate property, if you so wish and if you execute it correctly.
In the states I'm familiar with, that's largely just gonna cover pre-existing assets, and you need to be talking about a large initial discrepancy (millions or more) probably to make it worthwhile. I've also been advised that it's easier to do something more like "the prenup will say you'd get 10%, but you revoke your claim to trying to get more" than some sort of "it's all mine!!" - it needs to be non-coercive and give both parties consideration and a reason to make the agreement. Lawyers told me that there's a often a big difference in that world between "what a lawyer might be willing to write up and get people to sign" and "what's gonna hold up in court."
I see joint accounts as snooping into each other's affairs. People should be able to have a large degree of independence. Maybe this study says otherwise. I still think that it is prudent to keep separate accounts, even if we are "unhappier".
i don't know but i feel that if you are not comfortable to share your spending habits with your partner then you already have a trust issue that you need to resolve. of course the same is true when one partner demands to see, instead of both being relaxed and share these things when it's convenient or you are trying to figure out a budget or taxes or you need to track if/when certain payments were made or something else that requires taking a look.
