It’s to be expected: the thesis in the OP challenges those holding seperate accounts. Naturally, they are more likely to post rather than simply vote.
I bet you each have your own toothbrush too! What kind of marriage is that?
Yeah, we’re freaks.
This is so true. He can look at the money, help determine how to spend the money but he gets no where near my budgeting and tracking spreadsheet. Years of effort have gone into it!
As an aside, we keep everything jointly because my husband can’t be trusted with money. (We both agree on this and he will be the first to tell you that his life is better with me in charge of all the funds.) So, I don’t think that keeping them separate or together has anything to do with trust per se, it’s just what works better for different people.
(Though I do credit him with the best financial decision we ever made which was to buy a small, cheap house instead of a big, expensive one. We are making the tight quarters work and we can afford to save for our retirement and go on vacation. Plus, less cleaning!)
Same here.
I was under the impression that most couples have a mixed system.
Certainly our financial advisor agrees that it’s fiscally healthy to diversify a bit so that you don’t have everything in one place. That way if something goes really, really wrong, you aren’t screwed. Like, if one day the IRS made some huge, Kafkaesque screw-up and decided to seize everything listed under my name, some of our assets would be protected because their uniquely in her name, not mine.
I think people need to remember that “separate” accounts does not mean “secret” accounts. We have access to each others’ accounts and information, and we’re open and transparent in our financial management. It’s not “my stuff” and “her stuff” and keep yer paws to your own stuff!
As to the poll - if I were to guess, I’d imagine that there was probably a correlation between level of income and system chosen, with the higher the income, the more likely the partners are to have seperate accounts - for the simple reason that the number and type of financial transactions engaged in by them is likely to increase.
No. Our finances are unified.
However, we have no shared bank account. So what? It’s what works for us. Our finances are still unified.
Yeppers. Again, so what?
This too. But the division changes to suit our needs; it’s not fixed in stone.
But not this. My money is hers, and her money is mine. I know what she earns, and she knows what I earn (we’re both Federal employees, we’re at the same grade, I’m a step or two ahead of her within the grade, we don’t even need to look it up on the publicly available tables), and we each have a good idea of what the other has in his/her accounts. Neither of us really gives a flip who pays for what, so long as we’ve got a system where everything gets covered and neither of us find ourselves with a dangerously low bank account. We work it out along the way, and our rather loose system has been working fine for 20 years.
Our finances are unified. And our bank accounts and stuff are separate. Which question did you really want the answer to?
Well no. Unless he locks away his clothing in a secret vault or something. Of course there are going to be things that are yours and that are his. My question really boils down to access. You can go through his medicine cabinet, right? Not that you find it necessary to do so, just that you have the ability to.
Same thing with bank accounts. Is your name on the bank account? Then you have a shared bank account. You may never ever look at the statements or take a trip to the bank, but the bottom line is that you at least hace access to that information.
But if your name isn’t on the account, you’re left completely in the dark. And you can say “I trust my husband,” and I’ll believe you. But I still just think there’s something wrong with keeping your spouse in the dark about what’s one of the biggest sources of tension in a marriage.
I would agree based on anecdotal information/observation. We’re not necessarily “higher income” but we save and invest rabidly which makes for more complex accounting.
ETA:
Why the heck would you ever think that’s the case?
Between us we have three bank accounts.
We each have an account that our salaries are paid into, and a joint account that big bills (car payments, mortgage utilities etc) come out of.
We each put an agreed minimum amount, proportional to our earnings, into the joint, with the understanding that anything extra added on top of that is communal “rainy day” money.
We each have bills that come out of our own accounts- e.g. his phone bill and Lovefilm charges, my medical indemnity and professional fees.
We put agreed amounts into our own tax free savings account- but that money is also considered communal.
Beyond that, any extra money in our own account is disposable, if we wish.
If one of us wants to make a big purchase we can discuss whether it will come out of the joint account, our own personal accounts, or a mixture. Otherwise, we’re free to spend our own money as we choose.
We have our own credit cards, but we each have agreed that the full amounts are paid each month.
When I become self employed in a year or so I’ll probably open a separate business credit card for tax purposes.
I keep track of the budgets and finances and who pays for what, when. No I don’t know how much he has in his account at any time, but I know how much is in mine and the joint.
The bills get paid, we have savings and the freedom to spend our own money without running each little thing past the other.
My parents have completely separate accounts.
The bills all come out of mum’s and she knows how much is in there to the penny at any time and how much and when dad needs to put in.
My dad is deeply technophobic and doesn’t have a credit card - my mother has her budget worked out on mutiple spreadsheets. Since he’s self employed and she was a SAHM for years and kept all the books and filed the taxes I don’t really think it is about trust, she’s simply better at that stuff, and having separate accounts made sense for tax purposes.
Irishfella’s parents are the opposite- they have a single joint account.
Our own systems work for all of us.
I personally, couldn’t be married to someone who went through the statement at the end of the month and queried every single one of my purchases. We have agreed between us what our saving targets are, and as long as we meet those and our financial responsibilities, I don’t really worry about what we decide to treat ourselves to.
Not technically, no. But we do have “agent” status on each other’s accounts (we didn’t always, but the teller suggested it and it seemed like a good idea). I don’t know if I can sign his checks, but I can withdraw money from his account. Ditto for my accounts.
I forgot about the joint credit card, which is primarily for gas because he hardly ever carries cash. I pay the bill. Sometimes if he makes a large CC purchase such as lumber, he’ll write me a check to cover it. I would still consider that “his” purchase and not joint.
He would actually prefer to turn over his check to me and let me handle all of the finances. We were close to that state when he was woefully underemployed and made almost nothing, and I was pretty much paying all the bills and giving him pocket cash besides. But I refuse to take over completely. He’s a grown man and I won’t relegate him to having an allowance. (Besides, how would he buy me presents? 
)
Who says he’s in the dark? I don’t keep my check register or savings book under lock and key, and I’m not hiding anything. If he needs or wants to know, he’ll ask and I’ll tell him. And vice versa. In fact, we have such discussions all the time. “Got any extra cash this month? I could use some extra for the bills.” “Lemme see, I’ve got $400 until payday, I could give you $300, how’s that?”
Everyone’s marriage/LTR is different. Money may be “one of the biggest sources of tension” in some marriages, but it isn’t in ours, and hasn’t been for 20-some years now, so I think we are doing just fine. If you would be uncomfortable with this financial arrangement for yourself and would feel there was “something wrong” with it, fine. But please don’t assert that because we use it, there must be something wrong with our marriage, in which you are not a participant. It’s (1) not true and (2) really none of your business.
You still get the little book thingy? I miss those! We just get printed statements once a month which we keep in big, ugly, three-ring binders.
My wife could scrutinize a year’s worth of statements for all my stuff if she was so inclined, it’s all right there in filing cabinet. It honestly boggles my mind that anyone would think “we’re in the dark” about each other’s account information when the drawers are overflowing with information.
Correction: if it is your account, you have the choice to tell your spouse what is in it or not. You are only “keeping your spouse in the dark” if you choose not to to tell them, or lie about it.
Strikes me that requiring legal access to that information, rather than simply asking for it, is the less “trusting” position.
Edit: and of course, like most people, I have my statements lying around in a file where she could see them (if she wanted, which she doesn’t). It’s a non-issue.
Recalculating what again? If I get a raise or a bonus, or if she gets a new book deal, the money goes into the joint account or moved to the joint investment account. No part of it is mine, no part of it is hers, it is all ours. Nobody gets allowances either.
Dividing up money according to income or something seems like serious power games to me.
“Ours” seems to be a hard concept to grasp in the world today.
I think the point here is that “ours” doesn’t depend on the details of accounting.
I think we qualify as high income, and we have joint and unified accounts. We might accumulate many - for instance we have an old checking account and a new, better one we qualified for when we took out a mortgage refi with our bank. My wife shares an account with our daughter in Germany which I’m not on (but can see) since she is more involved in the money transfers. We also have a massive ML statement each month. Like I said, we started with not much money, but we’ve never seen the slightest reason to split the accounts. In fact, quite the opposite. If you aren’t counting pennies, there is even less reason to get anal about allowances and the other person’s discretionary spending. We share a house, we share a bed, we share children, we share all sorts of bodily fluids. Why not share money?
Again, having seperate accounts doesn’t mean that money is not shared. It is simply an artifact of accounting.
If you are allocating raises, it goes far beyond the details of accounting. Accounting is important, and since we’re from before the era of on-line accounts we do paper registers and quicken, but it doesn’t imply the need for multiple accounts.
Actually, my wife knows what I make better than I do. My company has done away with paper statements and we lost our nice paycheck app when we got bought, so my wife enters my pay from looking at the deposit on line at the right time of month. I only see it when I balance the checkbook.
When people talk about writing checks to each other, that is not really sharing. When I ran a research project at work, my budget was not the same as the other budgets for other projects, even though we were shared in the higher level program and of course for the company as a whole.