For the last decade or so, my SO and I have been more or less dividing our expenses, and Venmo/ PayPal-ing the other as needed (rent, etc).
I know a lot of couples use a shared account that they both contribute to via direct deposit. How many of you do this? Any drawbacks or other options I haven’t mentioned?
My wife and I have one set of shared bank accounts (checking, bills, savings), and that’s it. Ever since we got married. She had her own account for like a year or so after we got married, but she didn’t use it, we were just too lazy to close it for a while. We swapped over her paycheque early on.
I dunno, man, we seem to be an outlier, cause the idea of maintaining separate finances as a married couple just seems so… alien, to me. It quite literally never occurred to either of us, as an option.
Downsides include that you can’t really keep secrets. For example, I know how much she spent on me for Christmas, and where from, she’s just not gonna give me the receipt until next year.
And yeah, if we ever divorced, that’d probably be a problem. 12 years in, I don’t think that’s happening.
Anyway, if keeping separate finances doesn’t seem weird to you, I don’t see much downside. As long as you CAN agree on who should be responsible for what, seems entirely manageable to me. Biggest upside for joining up, I would think, is less legal work for you each to get access the other’s assets, in the event of a death or similar event.
We do mostly this but each have a spending account that we get fun money paid into each week. We use those accounts if either of us wants an expensive toy, buying presents, going out for work drinks or buying lunch while at work instead of bring left overs. Both pays go to the main account, all groceries and bills come out of the main account.
I guess I think that at some point you just need to go all in on your relationship. If you’re keeping things seperate in case you break up, you’re kind of planning for it to not be a permanent thing. Why bother getting married if that’s the case?
I know that’s probably an overly-simplistic attitude, but that is exactly where my brain goes, yeah.
We have our accounts from before we were married, but I don’t consider it to be separate finances. I take care of all of it. Some of our expenses come from “her” account, and some from “mine”. Every now and then I go through the bills and rebalance to make sure we aren’t spending more than each account takes in. Both of our names are on all of the accounts.
We do have one account we both contribute to, it covers our vacation fund and a car payment. I brought that account into the relationship but never used it much (long story as to why I have it), so it makes a good vacation fund account.
My account is a credit union, and it’s great, except for one issue - it’s not local. In fact, it’s in another state. Occasionally this is an issue, like when we need cash for something. My wife had an account at a regional bank (there are a few left), so we use that when we need cash. The setup works for us.
We generally buy everything on credit cards, then pay in full every month and reap the cash back awards.
It’s interesting that none of the financial institutions you have an individual account with provide an ATM that’s close to you. I mostly use resources like https://www.visa.com/locator/atm (or whatever the website of my financial institution directs me to) to find an ATM to use. There is pretty much always an ATM nearby for the debit cards I actually have (note that I usually say to not set up a debit card for accounts since that increases my risk for fraud with minimal upsides for me).
If I was in your situation and was single, I’d open an account with a bank that provided an ATM that’s close to me and/or had lots of ATMs around the country, and just keep $100 in that account so it doesn’t get closed for inactivity, and then transfer money to it when I knew I’d have to get cash soon.
Well, there’s a fee for using those ATMs, though my credit union reimburses (up to a certain amount). So, it does work and did work for many years before I met my wife. I’d get cash back at the grocery store, usually, and avoid the ATM fee issue. There might be local ATMs that are free, but I doubt it. I haven’t looked.
I was thinking larger sums of money, though. Recently I had my eye on a used bicycle for sale locally, and the seller wanted cash. I ended up not doing it, but getting $2500 in cash wasn’t going to be easy with the credit union. The local bank would have been much easier, just drop in (during their open hours) and do a withdraw. It’s a rare situation, but that’s the kind of thing that comes up.
Similarly, before mobile deposit, I had to mail them checks to deposit, with all the delays and risks associated with that.
Your solution works, but you have to watch the minimums. I’m pretty sure my wife’s account has a minimum balance (which may be $500, I don’t remember), and some banks require you to have direct deposit set up or you have to pay a fee for the account.
I’m with you. We do have separate accounts, but only for our personal “fun money,” everything else is in a joint account or on a credit card that gets paid from a joint account.
I’ve recently been consolidating accounts to make it evn easier if I pass, because I’m both the only breadwinner and take care of all the finances (not for lack of trying to get them involved). But everything is joint and I don’t see why we’d ever want separate accounts.
Married 30 years. His check goes into one account. Mine goes into another. We both have access to all accounts. I handle all the bills. We used to put both into one checking account - once our debit card was stolen and they spent so much money that we were still negative after both checks went in. Then we split them so there’salways a backup just in case.
All of our accounts are joint and I manage most of it because she isn’t interested. Trade offs? Joint accounts simplify management (no transferring funds or coordinating expense management), but makes it easier for someone in the relationship to check out and have no knowledge or understanding of your financial arrangements. Separate accounts require some engagement in financial affairs from both, if that’s not happening you can run into problems.
Something to consider is that a common issue (particularly for women, but it can go either way) is that if one partner manages all of the household finances and they die first (or even in case of separation), the other partner can be completely unprepared to take over and manage things. For example, not knowing where money is deposited, not knowing what bills need to be paid or which can be canceled, etc.
if one partner manages all of the household finances and they die first (or even in case of separation), the other partner can be completely unprepared to take over and manage things
Yup, this is us. I’ve been trying to get my SO involved for years, but they just aren’t interested. So I consolidated our accounts into a brokerage with a debit card, checks, etc, and I’m moving all my investments there as well. They get their own login as well, and I’ll probably move their investments as well (I set up an IRA for them).
Hopefully nothing happens to me, but if something does, my accounts should magically show up in their login now, so they just need to hire a financial advisor to help them understand what to do.
I’m going to keep trying to get them involved, but at least consolidating everything should make that transition easier.
Here’s an excellent list of things to prepare for in case of sudden passing. A lot of it focuses on tech, but finance has a good portion.
I’ve been dreading filling it out myself due to the security risk it can represent…
Wow, that’s awesome! I sometimes forget just how much unique tech crap I have.
My SO is somewhat tech literate, but there’s no way they’d want to maintain all the stuff I have, from my Ubuiti APs to our Jellyfin server. So yeah, good thing to think about.
That’s a great approach! I’ve been thinking I need to write a cheat sheet for how to take over everything, but consolidating it all would simplify an unplanned transition.
The key here is that they already have a login, so they can do the normal “forgot password” or whatever if there’s any kind of complications. Since they’re joint owners, nothing changes with account numbers and whatnot if I die, whereas if they were simply a beneficiary, they’d get a new account number and have to go set everything up again.
I wrote a cheat sheet years ago, and this should dramatically simplify it. I’ll just point out what the purpose of each account is and what automatic transactions are there and that should resolve most of the questions my SO might have, at least financially.
The rest of my schenanigans however… may god have mercy on their soul…
The rest of my schenanigans however… may god have mercy on their soul…
lol
We each have our own checking account. We also have a joint account. Each of us receives our paychecks in our personal account. We each keep a small portion in our personal accounts for each month for personal expenses, gifts, etc. The rest goes into the joint account.
We set up credit cards the same way. This gives us the means to buy gifts for each other without the other knowing. It also provides redundancy for lost cards.
We can both see the joint accounts. We cannot see each other’s personal accounts. Our bank has it set up so I can see everything I have access to on a single online account.
This arrangement has been working well for years.
Never saw a need for accounting between a couple. The couple is a team, pay the bills, live life. Who cares. Just always seemed like per-charge accounting and “keeping track” is an easy fiscal path to tit for tat complaints/annoyance/arguments. Might as well map how much electricity each person uses at that point, who flushes the toilet the most, etc.
Each should have private charge and checking accounts if for nothing else than gift buying. Have a joint account for most of the money, especially important if one or the other becomes ill or dies. Otherwise survivor access becomes tricky instantly.
Not poo-pooing the methods of others, the more complex methods just seem like overhead, but if they work, they work.
Yup, that’s how we do it. General setup is $X/month goes to each of our private checking accounts for personal use. We discuss any non-regular purchases over $50, unless we make it from our personal accounts.
That’s it. Transparency is a really valuable thing in a committed relationship.
We had a joint account where all our income was deposited even before we were married, now we have shared access to basically everything. I mostly manage our money because she hates dealing with it. There’s not really been any drawbacks, it makes life a lot easier having a single primary account that all our cash flows through.
Yup, exactly this over here as well. o/
My partner and I have a joint account that is used to pay for any shared expenditure (boring stuff like housing and groceries, as well as fun stuff like dinners out together and holidays). This account is funded unevenly, and that split is reviewed any time either of our incomes change - but it’s always funded to the point that it covers our joint expenses each month. If required, it is topped up at the same split. Anything we are left with personally can be spent or saved at the individuals absolute discretion.
Been together 20 years and we’ve never shared an account. I works really well for us. I’d say, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Yeah, we haven’t had any issues with solo accounts either, but I recently learned about the changes to taxes around PayPal / Venmo etc, which is how we usually move out money around with each other
Have two shared accounts, an instant access one for both of our credit cards and a savings account for… Err savings and interest. Works very well for us. Basically keep a certain level with instant access one and any overflow goes to savings account. Pretty simple system. On personal current accounts we keep just a few hundreds for emergencies.
My wife and I do have a joint savings account but individual chequing accounts.
We each pay bills from our own accounts but balance from your joint one.
Depending where you live joint accounts are very useful if one partner dies.
We have a shared credit card for groceries, vacations and bills. She manages it, she tells me what half of it is at the end of the month. We’re fortunate to have very similar salaries, but if we didn’t, you adjust the split to your version of fair.
There was an interesting experiment that suggests that couples who have similar objectives regarding money are fine with using a joint account (or even using only one spouse’s account rather than using two individual accounts), but people who have a spouse who has a very different attitude towards money will avoid using a joint account (and will avoid depositing money to their spouse’s individual account) even if their individual account has a lower interest rate.
More information is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5ro4x1r16Q&list=PLUl4u3cNGP620R91K4KP_fO4l3eeK5lDn&index=19&t=3707s
In general, I think that asking your spouse to use a joint account for income and a joint account for expenses is a good idea since it provides transparency: that gives both partners a record of what the income of the partnership was, and makes it equally easy for both partners to check whether bills have been paid. As long as that happens, it’s probably okay if you want to split up the income to individual accounts when the money isn’t needed to pay bills and later redirect it to the account(s) used to pay bills when it’s needed.
