Getting Hitched? Should You Hitch Your Money Too?

All of our accounts (checking, savings and investments) are joint. However, we each have an individual separate checking account. This is where our Mad Money goes. Mad Money is our monthly “allowance” plus any birthday/Christmas/graduation monies that we receive that are intended for our individual use. There’s not enough money to get into trouble but enough so that when I decide I finally cannot live without that new iPod touch, I can get it without forcing my family to live on Ramen noodles for the rest of the month.

We each are in charge of keeping track of the money in our individual accounts, but I’m in charge of the budget and day-to-day bookkeeping of the joint accounts. We do have all our information in Mint with weekly overviews of our spending sent to each of us by e-mail so my husband is kept up-to-date on where our money goes.

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We have been married eleven years and have always had seperate accounts. It works very well for us. When I worked and he was going to school I paid most of the bills and he paid one’s that he was aloted based on his small salary. When he finished school and got a great job we realoted the bills so that I had certain ones and he had other ones. We always trusted the other person to handle the bill they were responcible for. It allowed us each to have a seperate savings account and spending money. He always trusted me to pay my share of the bills so if I went out and bought a purse he knew I had the cash for it or I wouldn’t have bought it. It really saved us alot of arguements because not once has he ever questioned one of my purchases and I do the same for him. Then when we adopted our children it was agreed that I would stay home and raise them. We discussed closing my account and having one joint. I just couldn’t do it. It was then he took the bulk of the bills and I got the subsities that the kids get (they were CPS adoptions) to pay for them clothes, supplies, McDonalds, etc We opened up a Home Depot Credit card that is joint so if I buy gas or groceries then I am to use the card so we earn points. He pays it off at the end of the month and it allows me to have more cash to spend on the children since the subsities is their money. He also knows that I am spend thrify and have never abused the card. Since I am a Stay at home mom, I couldn’t imagine having to ask him for money, it would feel so degrading after having it seperate for so many years. I can also say we have never fought over money!!! The seperate accounts work for us.

Our paychecks and bills are all paid from a joint account. The bulk of our really accessible money is in joint savings, followed by joint checking. We also have a good chunk in some joint investments. When we first got married, we didn’t really argue about money, but we definitely questioned one another. I also felt guilty because we had moved for his job, and it took me awhile to find one, so sometimes I felt bad for spending money…like it wasn’t mine or something. We solved that by doing weekly allowances. For over 3 yrs we’ve done it on a cash basis. I recently set mine up to auto-transfer to a personal checking account, just because if I buy online, it is hard to do that with cash, then “pay back” to the account what I’ve charged on the card, etc. Basically, that money is ours to do with as we please (within reason of course!). For me that means going to lunch with friends, buying coffee every day, etc. For him, it means saving a large chunk to buy the latest computer gadget. It works well for us.

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The DH and I have joint savings and checking accounts. Each week a pre-determined amount is transferred automatically from checking into the savings account. Then, also each week, we both get an “allowance” to be spent however each of us sees fit. Both of us save out of the allowance too. This savings goes for little indulgences or larger expenses. I have been saving out of my allowance to get a set of new tires for my car. The DH feels uncomfortable without cash on hand so he usually stockpiles his and then it goes back into the shared savings account. So we have a little freedom and flexibility built into the system. I am the bill payer and he trusts me to take care of all things financial.

Congrats on your engagement! I’ve really only hear of joint accounts and if marriage is in my future I would definitely lean more toward that way of dealing with finances.
One of the biggest problems I’ve seen with finances in marriage is that all the responsibility is left on one persons shoulders. Paying of the bills, working out a budget and so on. I find that the person who takes care of the bills has a higher stress level when it comes to life in general because they are always calculating cost in their heads, which can lead to bitterness. Where the other person who has no idea what’s going on with their finances gets bitter when they don’t have the money they want in their pockets.
I think it is best to share the responsibility, I know there needs to be an elected person to make sure it gets done but I think that both spouses should know where their money is going and why the budget is the way it is and the best way to see that is to sit down with the financial spouse and see for yourself. Money is a big issue in relationships, there are so many ways it can eat away at each person…it’s important to have a good plan ready to put in play before you get married.

Great post!

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Wow! This is fantastic feedback and exactly what I wanted. It is great to know that my fears of separate accounts may not need exist. Looks like many people have happy and healthy marriages with them. I’m looking forward to reading more comments. Thanks for letting me guest post Tabitha!

We too have joint accounts for everything, and that started the day we moved into our house (prior to engagements and marriage). It started with one account that a set amount of money was to be placed in for household bills, then it boiled down to the fact that we were spending the same money regardless of “who’s” account it came from. All the money was pooled, and we trust each other to make good judgements about spending and discussing big purchases.

I have seen separate accounts in marriages as well, and in all honestly, the biggest marriage problem of that relationship is… you guessed it, MONEY. The marriage is on the rocks and money is at the root of all fo it. From what I have seen, it’s not something I would recommend unless both people are equally invested in the marriage and in the bills.

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My husband and I had separate accounts, now we joined them. I used to take care of all the bills out of my checking and had savings that were for us to use if necessary, but both accounts were in my name. My husband has savings accounts/investments from before we were married, and those are in his name. It took us a while to combine things, but mostly because of procrastination, not principle. Now, my paycheck almost entirely is deposited to joined checking and then we make savings/spending decisions. All purchases go from that account. This makes me more disciplined about buying and really consider if I need anything. This is working great for me, as I was trying to curb (i.e. stop) my spending and works great for my husband because he really is not a spender. I maintain a separate checking account only because my student loan is connected to it and it is a major pain to get it transferred to another account. I am working on it, though. All in all, I believe that having our joint pool of money is very good, I feel that I need to have greater accountability and this is exactly what I get. However, I found that since we joined all money, we save less, as my husband does not transfer money to savings every 2 weeks, like I used to… but we are working on it too. I completely trust him to buy whatever he needs, and for large purchases, like car maintenance, several books at once, new coat, etc we always discuss first, then make a decision.

When we first met, we had two separate accounts, and made about the same amount, so we just went 50/50 or took turns.

Then we got married and my husband got a new job that paid about twice mine. So we got a joint account and kept the separate ones. Every other paycheck went into the joint account and we paid joint bills out of that. And we kinda split the other stuff by percentage. Since I brought in 1/3 of the income, I paid out 1/3 and so on.

Then, we moved again, and I had to spend awhile looking for a job. And my husband got a pay raise. We didn’t really change our financial arrangements, which was a mistake. But I’d always paid my own bills, and I didn’t want to seem like I was taking my husband’s money. (silly in retrospect, but I was being stubborn)

To wrap up, I really like each having our own account with our own “fun money” and having a joint account for joint stuff. It feels a little silly to have so many accounts, but it works well. The reason I like each of us having our own fun money accounts, is that I don’t have to feel like I have to justify spending so much money on more eyeliner or pens, and my husband doesn’t have to justify buying yet again another flash drive or boy scout patch.
No spouse should ever be the other spouse’s “parent” in terms of money.

I’m almost-married, and we’ve been cohabitating for three years.

We have joint checking and savings, which we use for bills, groceries, nights out, etc. We also each have a personal checking account, to be used for whatever we like.

I honestly can’t imagine any other system working for us. Completely separate seems too complicated, and with completely joint… I feel like I’d have to ask ‘permission’ to grab a latte on the way to work or buy anything for myself.

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Good and thought-provoking post. Thanks, Weakonomist. My wife and I have separate checking accounts, but they are integrated. First, her name is on my account and my name is on hers. Second, the bills are divided up so that each of us pays certain ones out of our earnings, and we each have a fairly generous allowance, which we do not have to account to the other for. So far, it has worked out fairly well.

Recently married (10 months next week) and we have a joint account to pay bills, rent, groceries, etc. That’s where the paychecks go, out of that we each have our cash allowance (weekly) and I put some of mine into a HYSA. So far its been the perfect set-up. There isn’t the feeling of “mine” and “yours” but there’s the flexibility of not feeling guilty for buying a new pair of shoes or a MP3 player because that’s what the “fun money” is for!

We’re getting married in June, but have been living together for over a year. We’ve got a joint checking account for paying the bills; the JOINT bills. However, we each have our separate checking accounts for paying our individual bills. By individual bills I mean things such as fuel for our cars, weekly lunch or dinner money (used during work or such), and even our monthly car payments as we each have new cars that we purchased separately.

This system has worked for the past year or so, but I’ve been thinking of ditching the individual accounts and sticking with the joint account. As pointed out in this post, marriage is about sharing. We share every aspect of our lives, why not the money? I think it just brings trust and balance to a relationship. With all of the worry and frustration over money these days, who wants to add the extra stress to a new relationship (or a thriving marriage) of “who’s money is who’s”?

“I paid half of everything though he made three times what I did. He said it wasn’t his fault if I had a low-paying job.”

That post reminded me of the problems we’re having. I make more money on paper but all of our health insurance (med/dental/vision) is coming off of my salary. The wife says that her doing housework should be worth something, even though I actually help out with a lot of it. While that may be true, her housework doesn’t pay the electric bill or the mortgage. What has happened is that she is constantly broke and I am the one that has to pick up the slack and pay almost all of the bills. I want us to get a joint account so we can at least pay the household bills out of one account and then set up an allowance system. We’ve been married a year but already the arguments over money are causing issues. (Before we got married, I made slightly less than she did)