This is what we have, as well. You and your future wife will need to figure out how much each of you should put into the account each month. Mrs. Magill makes much more than I do, so her contribution is bigger.
QFT
It depends on your financial style.
I am a saver. I balance my checkbook to the penny every two weeks. I rarely spend money on myself.
Ivylad is a spender. He rounds up his entries in his checkbook and calls it good if he and the bank are close. He will buy stuff we need around the house 2-3 times a week.
We used to drive each other nuts. Now, I have my account, he has his. The household bills naturally split themselves (I cover the mortgage, the HELOC, the water bill and my groceries for work, he handles the electricity bill, the mortgage on our rental property, and groceries for the house.) Anything we need together (car repair, vet bills, vacation, etc) we save up for.
Why do you think it will be easier? Writing each other checks and deciding who’s going to pay for stuff based on who’s feeling “flush” at the time, as Scarlett67 has shared, sounds like a royal pain in the ass to me. Plus you have more accounts to balance. I just don’t see the point. Obviously it works for some folks, and that’s great.
For us, I take care of paying all the bills and managing our joint accounts but that’s just how our division of labor works out. She could do it too and has equal access to everything, of course. Neither of us are real spenders so we don’t worry about some sort of weekly allowance.
To me, the separate accounts thing seems kind of to be a way for each person to spend money on stuff their partner might find stupid or wasteful. They don’t want to catch any grief for their weekly comic book or manicure habit.
I may be married to Scarlett67 and I didn’t even know my wife was posting here! Except that I won’t be 53 for another 2 weeks. That would have been a surprise.
My wife and I tried a joint account at first. I kept putting money in and then, when I went to get it out, it was all gone. It’s not that my wife can’t manage money, it’s just that her savings comfort level is so much lower than mine that when she sees a few thousand $ in her account she feels like it’s OK to spend. I need a large rainy-day reserve to be comfortable. I don’t even want to know what her credit card debt is but I do know she has a certain comfort level there that she will not exceed.
We both have jobs and we both trust each other to not go too crazy but we just have very different ways of looking at the situation. Over the years we have evolved into a system where she pays all of the bills out of her money except for the big stuff. I do the new cars, college for the kids, house remodeling. If she has “extra” money that she wants to “save” she just pays for some things that I might have covered, like dinner out. She knows I will hoard it like Scrooge McDuck.
Well, the writing checks to each other doesn’t happen a lot, maybe once every 6 months or so. And it’s almost always him writing a check to me to pay something online, because he hates doing stuff online.
And the “flush” discussions take about two seconds for stuff that’s not already decided by default. “Wanna eat out tonight? I’ll buy.” “Who writes for the groceries?” “I will.” Or “Can you get it this time?” “Sure.” There’s no big debate or argument. It’s mostly a matter of deciding who has to dig out their wallet.
Again, some couples may operate that way, but we don’t. I don’t care if he wants a magazine subscription or some new CDs; it’s his money and if he enjoys it, fine. He actually spends very little on frivolous things. He might splash out on a trip to Home Depot for a home improvement project that’s probably necessary, like replacing old windows or putting in a bathroom floor. I say, he won’t spend the money unless he can afford it, and hey, we get a nicer house for it. If he buys a bunch of new pants to wear to work, well, he probably needs them. He’s a big boy. Ditto for me; I make most of the money and I work pretty hard for it, so as long as I’m paying the bills that are mine, he doesn’t care if I indulge myself a bit. We don’t consider each other’s interests stupid or wasteful, and actually they overlap quite a bit.
My husband and I have totally separate checking & personal savings accounts.
We have a joint money-market savings account, though.
I don’t think it’s weird, and it works for us.
My husband and I have separate checking and savings accounts and one joint account from which we originally paid the downpayment on our house. We don’t use it anymore, though - we just keep the minimum amount in there to keep it open in the event we need a joint checking account and pay bills out of our separate accounts. We’ve never had an issue with it. We’ve discussed using our joint account to pay for our household expenses, or just eliminating our separat accounts, but we’ve just never sat down to do it.
We’ve only been married five years, so I’m sure something could come up, but we’re both responsible with money, neither of us cares what the other buys as long as it doesn’t inhibit our ability to pay for our living expenses and we trust each other implicitly.
We handle our money much in the same way ivylass and ivylad do - he manages the mortgage and utilities, I take care of the cell phone, groceries and all child-related expenses (daycare, clothing, doctor’s visits, etc.).
We came to this division of payment very casually - we never sat down and calculated things out to make sure we were paying exactly (or even roughly) half. It just naturally ended up the way it did. And it works for us.
Since my edit time has expired, and I’ve now had a chance to read the rest of the thread:
ETA: no, out marriage is not in danger of ending, and we don’t hide finances from each other.
The bills are all in both our names, and we each pay the same bills every month, so we’re not going back and forth wondering who does what each month, because it’s always the same. We each have a set amount of “fun” money we can spend each month, too.
Huh. I guess I never knew how weird having separate accounts apparently is, since it’s just not something we talk about that often.
i am not married, i did watch my parents who were very different when it came to money. to dad money was water, look at it just flow out of my hands. to mum money was concrete and it was set in stone cold bank storage.
mum ended up do that which scarlette67 does not want to do. completely manage the money and give hubby xxx amount per week. this worked well for the most part, except every now and again dad would just not come home with the pay check (before direct deposit). those were hid under the bed rows.
my conclusion, each has their own accounts, and one joint saving and one joint checking. each puts a percentage (40, 50, the above mentioned 75) directly into the joint accounts, the rest they can do what ever they want with.
household expenses, vacation wildness, new water heater, etc are done from the joint accounts. with direct deposit and online payments it is much easier to manage the joint account.
Three things I have learned during my experience in retail banking:
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Joint accounts are pretty much always a bad idea, and by “pretty much always”, I mean “always”, including now. Whatever advantages you are trying to gain by setting up a joint account, there is another way to accomplish the same thing that does not require true joint ownership. Even if you can trust the other account holder(s) to never, ever do anything malicious* even in the heat of anger, there are about a thousand ways to quite unintentionally screw up a joint account beyond repair that are easily avoided by maintaining separate accounts.
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Nobody listens to the above until they’ve learned it for themselves the hard way, especially when it involves loved ones and triple-especially when it involves a newlywed couple, so there’s no point in elaborating on it.
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The multitude of "you were right"s I continually receive from family, friends, acquaintances, and former customers in regard to this are gratifying, but also frustrating, because the amount of needless strife I’ve seen occur over joint accounts is well and truly mind-boggling.
*While the OP may understand this perfectly, my experience is that many, many people do not grasp the full significance of joint account ownership. If you and I open a joint checking, and for the next ten years you make all the deposits and write all the checks without me having anything to do with it, I can still walk into the bank tomorrow, close the account, and walk out with every dime. This sort of thing happens a lot.
So what, exactly, is her objection to maintaining separate accounts? That it is “insane and abnormal?” She doesn’t find it easier to keep everything the way it is, and just be non-jerks about splitting up responsibilities?
We’ve been married for 30 years, have always had a joint account, and have never had even a single problem with it. (So, wrongo Roland.) Quite simply being married to us means that it is our money, not her money or my money.
When we got married she was working and I was in grad school, so she made more than I did. Once I graduated, we decided she’d stay home with the kids who soon came. After they grew she started writing. But I disagree that she should have any less access to our money for personal things when she was not making anything than now when she is. It helps that we are both savers, and have had maybe two mild money arguments in 30 years. We don’t need each others’ permission to buy small things, and we agree on big ones. Sorry, “your credit card of mine” at the grocery store or at dinner sounds more like dating than being married.
Since she works at home she pays the bills when she needs a break, and I balance the checkbook, but the checkbook is out there for all to see. At Christmas we write TYL for Tell You Later for presents. We both screw up once in a while, but we have never bounced a check in 30 years.
If things get tight, are “personal” accounts sacrosanct, or does everyone contribute as needed? I’d hope so. I can see private accounts if there is the thought that one party is irresponsible, but do you lock up your car keys and things also?
We have three accounts: two separate, and one joint. But the way we work it is a little different that most, I think:
Both paychecks get direct deposited into the joint account, and we pay ALL of our bills from that account.
Every month we put aside a certain amount for savings. Of that amount, 70% stays within our joint savings in some fashion (e.g. in joint investment accounts).
The other 30% of the money put aside is split evenly, so 15% to each of us, to go into our individual savings, to be used as we each wish. Some of that money is in interest bearing savings accounts, some is in individual investment accounts – whatever we each feel comfortable with. The individual money we have in savings is ours to do with as we please – we can splurge it on anything we want. That’s our agreement. We often use it when we want to buy a gift for the other.
It’s been working well for us for quite a few years.
Ed
Didn’t say no one had ever had a joint account without a problem, just that they didn’t confer any advantages that couldn’t be attained through other means without the numerous potential pitfalls. (ETA: Well, that and the fact that in my experience both as a banker and among friends and family, the horror stories outnumber the tales of long-term success by a couple orders of magnitude, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t any of the latter.)
I’m glad to hear yours has worked out for you, but I still wouldn’t (and don’t) recommend them.
Contribute as needed, of course. I would not keep money from my husband if he ran short, and he would not do that to me.
Our personal accounts aren’t kept in order to keep money from each other, we just find it easier to work our budget this way. We have not been married that long (just about 3 years), but one thing we’ve never fought about is money, because we have something that works for us.
Good advice here, but the biggest thing I’d suggest is do you know your partner’s spending habits ahead of time? Money is the biggest thing couples fight about IMO. Make sure you can live with them, and don’t expect him to give up all of his hobbies and only spend where you want him to spend.
Us, we have a joint checkings account and separate savings accounts. He does all of the banking and I don’t feel like I am getting an allowance or anything. He just has a much more analytical mind than I do. I hate trying to follow all of that stuff, and he makes sure our bills are paid.
(One thing I do find odd is my coworker who has separate accounts from her husband…and who does all the grocery shopping and as a result has to nag him sometimes to give her a check for groceries. I know I am only hearing one side of it but it shouldn’t even have to be asked; food money should automatically be a joint thing. Everyone eats, don’t they?)
BUT that doesn’t mean it will work for everyone or that Scarlett is wrong even a little for feeling the way she does. I really just came in here to respond to this…
That…is an awesome first date.
Fine advice, Roland. But just your opinion (however expert).
How about the advantages of keeping things as simple as possible by having as few accounts as possible, and commingling your assets because as a serious manifestation of your committment to your joint enterprise? As someone said upthread, in some respects keeping assets separate gives the impression of maintaning an escape valve…
Heck, my wife and I have gone through as rough a times as most in our 23 years, but I don’t think as single serious stumble was related to joint finances.
And if we split up, however she could hurt me financialy in the short run (tho I don’t think either of us would be that petty), I’d be able to bounce back plenty quickly.
Actually, now that I think about it, my original phrasing that joint accounts are “always a bad idea” (and the “orders of magnitude” hyperbole in my last post, which incidentally WAS hyperbole) may be giving the wrong idea. I don’t mean that joint accounts never work. Maybe a hypothetical will help clarify.
Suppose I launch a “TravelPod” service that operates from airport to airport, with the same schedules, fares, and service options as the airlines. In fact, it’s identical to airline travel in pretty much every way, except for the fact that it’s impossible for TravelPods to crash. In this situation, regardless of how often airplanes do or don’t crash, taking an airplane instead of a TravelPod is always a bad idea. It’s in that sense that I say the same about joint accounts. The setup innately confers myriad disadvantages and potential pitfalls – even when the account owners act reasonably and with good intent – that are simply factually impossible with separate accounts, with extremely limited (I’m tempted to say “no”, but will refrain) added benefit to make up for it. If you feel it’s worth it, though, I wish you nothing but the best.
More importantly, as I should have added to my FIRST post: congratulations, New Beginning, and much happiness to you in your new marriage. 
On preview: as Dinsdale quite correctly points out, my advice is just one man’s opinion (and I don’t feel comfortable styling myself an “expert” on much of anything…just sharing my own experience and hoping to be helpful).
(All of the following assumes that neither of you can imagine a situation in which you would deliberately screw up the bank account to hurt your spouse. If that’s a possibility, go with separate accounts)
Which is more likely to be a problem:
You have differing approaches to money that drive your spouse crazy
You or your spouse is likely to hide financial information from each other
If the first is the problem, go with separate accounts. If the latter is more likely to be a problem, go with joint.
One advantage of a joint account: it will have more money than the two separate accounts would, so you’ll be less likely to bounce a check. With irregular incomes, I could see that being an issue.
Do you both not mind dealing with bills and finances, or does one of you really hate it? If one of you really hates it, having a joint account and putting the one who hates dealing with bills and finances less in charge of it could make your lives more pleasant. You could no doubt figure out some other chore for the non-banking spouse to do instead to keep your contributions equal.
This may not be a good idea. My parents set up college accounts for me and my sister when we were very young. Those ended up counting against us for scholarships much more than money in accounts in our parents’ name would have done, or at least I think that’s what happened.
Thanks for all the thorough responses so far. There certainly are a number of very strong and very different opinions. I knew the straight dope crowd wouldn’t let me down.
To answer some of the comments and questions:
A lot of people are talking about trust issues. To that I answer, huh? I didn’t mention anything about trust issues in the OP and I’m surprised anyone went there. I have no trust issues with my SO and she has no trust issues with me. It’s true that we have different spending habits, but we’re both responsible people and wouldn’t do anything stupid without consulting the other first. To those who say that separate accounts bring up trust issues I guess I just have to scratch my head… If that’s the case then I’d assume there would be trust issues regardless of how your money was managed.
The main reason why I think it would be easier to have separate accounts is because, although I trust her completely, we are very different in the way we manage our money. I have an excel spreadsheet that I update with every transaction that I do, and if my bottom line doesn’t match what my online banking says, I go crazy until I figure out why. Even with my obsessive style, this happens at least once ever few months. If we had joint bank accounts, I’d probably be taking care of most of the bookkeeping, and I’m scared that this would be happening on a weekly basis and I’d go insane.
Someone mentioned that having separate accounts is weird because you have to decide on who pays for what… Well, as another person mentioned, it’s just a matter of record keeping - we still consider the money to be shared. So what does it matter? How does it change anything? To me the only issue is which method is easier to manage.
Finally, as for why she objects to separate accounts: I think it’s mostly symbolic. She finds it abnormal for married people to have separate accounts. Maybe she’ll join the SMDB and defend herself properly, as I’ve no-doubt contorted everything beyond the reality of the situation.
PS: After reading all of this, I have to admit that I’m seeing some of the advantages to having a joint account and considering carefully…