Never go to sleep angry at each other. “Sleeping it off” is not good practice.
This is the picture, taken in January 2006, at James Randi’s Amazing Meeting 4 in Las Vegas. I’ve taken every opportunity I could find to show off this picture, which I’m really very fond of.
My wife and I both came into our marriage with our own bank accounts. We kept them. All we did was add the other person as joint holders on each account. Her accounts are as much mine as hers, and mine are as much hers as they are mine. Both names are on both accounts.
She continues to run her life through her original accounts, and I run mine through my original accounts. We have set savings goals we meet each month, with the money going into only one savings account. We have bills that we split 50/50 along with our set savings goals. Bills are paid electronically out of one bank, and we can log into our bank accounts and transfer funds between banks and accounts.
We treat our accounts like our cars: both names on both cars, but she has “hers” and I have “mine.”
Assuming you’re healthy, in the US, and only interested in financial benefit, this is almost certain to be “Married, filing jointly.” I don’t disagree that you might want to try it both ways, but given the US tax code, it’s hard to even come up with a contrived example where married filing separately would work out better, even with wildly disparate incomes.
The usual reasons married folks file separately are to be able to claim the medical exemption (which requires that medical expenses exceed a certain percentage of your income – easier if you just count one income), privacy (if one spouse has a job where their returns are made public, for example), or weirder examples where one spouse is missing and/or criminal, and you either lack information or don’t want to become an accessory to something.
There was also some education credit that I could only take when I filed separately, but I agree that you should run them both ways and file under whichever is more financially desirable.
Make sure that your health provider (here in Canada it’s a government agency) has both of you on as closest relative–In case something bad happens I’ve heard of last minute hospital issues
Your life is now over. There is nothing you can do.
Just kidding! I’m not married so the only advice I’ll offer is to keep on going out on dates from time to time, keep things exciting. That’s just something I hear often.