What happens to individual savings and debts when couples get together?

In My Humble Opinion
21

[QUOTE=aerodave]
I guess I’m going to be the first (only?) voice to say that my wife and are are as joint as can be when it comes to finances.

Our paychecks go into the same bank account. Our savings goes into the same account. This cash pays the mortgage, utilities, and payments for both cars. We make all our day-to-day purchases on the same credit card account. We pay that off monthly from the aforementioned cash. When either one of us wants to buy something small, we just do it. When bigger purchases are involved, they get discussed.
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Same here, and it’s worked out beautifully (and in our case, the debt we brought into it was pretty lopsided in one direction). But like others, I wouldn’t recommend this arrangement until marriage.

22

[QUOTE=wasson]

She is under the impression that she’ll live there for free while she pays down her debt. I don’t believe that is a fair situation at all, so we’re going to sit down very soon and work out a budget.
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Good luck!

To the OP: Chiming in on keeping things separate, especially debt. Thanks to our one pour-in-fixed-amount-for-expenses-each-month joint checking account, it’s totally not my business how much savings or debt he has, nor is mine his, and it works out great. Just make sure you both agree on the fixed amounts you’ll be contributing each month and what expenses they will cover (and that both people can afford it - if someone has a problem with overspending, it should be shunted off right after payday), and it should work out all right.

23

I totally agree that the level of jointness I’m a party to is only applicable to married couples. But I think we merged checking accounts even before that, when we were cohabitating. It just got too hard for one of us to pay the bills and the other to pay back their half.

Basically, you have to find the arrengement that suits your personalities and financial situation. People who marry later in life after having substantial adult financial independence tend to stay more separate. My wife and I brought nothing to the table, so there wasn’t much to be possessive over. It works for us, but I wouldn’t recommend getting straight into it.

In fact, my advice to the OP would be to not assume her debt until youre married. And even then, it might make sense to wait a while to see how thigns are going. You want to be pretty sure you’ve got a stable, life-long relationship before you give up so much of your individual wealth.

24

My wife and I (19 years) have totally separate accounts, no common accounts. I am a rabid saver; she likes to spend and I know she has quite a bit of credit card debt. It all seems to balance out in the end. She pays most of the bills, I get the big stuff - mortgage, vacations, cars.

Basically, she has a whole lot more tolerance for debt than I do and this “system” works out for us. She can tolerate a certain level of credit card debt, I can’t live with any and this way I don’t have to see the debt. So her way of saving money is to pay bills that I would have otherwise paid. Seems like a crazy system when I lay it out like that, but it works for us.

BTW, my first marrage, her second. She came into the marrage with a good bit of her ex-husbands debt that she was trying to deal with.

25

Find a girl with no debt. You’ll thank yourself in the long run. The romance won’t last as long as the credit rating.

I’m serious.

26

We maintained separate accounts after marriage.
When my wife had our first child she quit work. We actually maintained two checking accounts on one income (ain’t multiple direct deposit great). I paid the major bills out of my account so her account got a smaller cut from the payroll. But the nice thing was she was able to write a check without worrying whether I had any other bills to pay out of the account. It also made Christmas and birthdays nicer. We could write checks for gifts without each other seeing the transaction.

27

Thanks for all the input.

For the short term, I was indeed planning on keeping our finances separate, each of us paying from our personal budgets what we can afford on housing, utilities, groceries and so on. I was just wondering if all of this becomes moot if/when we “Officially” commit. But I was just wondering if that was only postponing the inevitable.

I was deliberately vague in my OP, but I do want to assuage any possible suspicions about the girlfriend:

• the debt is completely school-related
• she works extensively outside of her studies.
• she is more thrifty than I am

She recently had a great day-long interview at a local college that had an IDEAL position available. But it takes a while to hear back and we’re understandably anxious about it. She of course is looking at Plans B-Z, but the job market is tight, regardless how wicked smart she is.

And Gatopescado, I understand where you’re coming from from a pragmatic and odds point-of-view, but you know far too little about the situation or our relationship to give that kind of advice. Just sayin’.

28

[QUOTE=aerodave]
I guess I’m going to be the first (only?) voice to say that my wife and are are as joint as can be when it comes to finances.

Our paychecks go into the same bank account. Our savings goes into the same account. This cash pays the mortgage, utilities, and payments for both cars. We make all our day-to-day purchases on the same credit card account. We pay that off monthly from the aforementioned cash. When either one of us wants to buy something small, we just do it. When bigger purchases are involved, they get discussed. It’s not asking permission as much as informing. (“I looked at the budget, and I think we can afford this…just be aware that a new computer’s worth of money is about to go missing.”)

We don’t argue about money. Ever. We can’t because neither one of us knows whose money we’re spending. And neither of us is more stingy or spendy than the other, so there’s no issue with one of us hogging all the discretionary income.

We kno most people don’t eaily operate this way. It probably helped that we started in very similar finanical circumstances when we got married 5 years ago. We were recently out of college, and both had mostly debt and no real assets. For us, sharing half the common debt was about the same as keeping our own.
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My wife and I did this. Unfortunately when we divorced I found that she’d cleaned out the joint accounts and had the houses in her name. So, basically I had to start over with nothing but my clothes and my car, and she tried to take the car!

29

[QUOTE=Brad Serum]
Thanks for all the input.

For the short term, I was indeed planning on keeping our finances separate, each of us paying from our personal budgets what we can afford on housing, utilities, groceries and so on. I was just wondering if all of this becomes moot if/when we “Officially” commit. But I was just wondering if that was only postponing the inevitable.

I was deliberately vague in my OP, but I do want to assuage any possible suspicions about the girlfriend:

• the debt is completely school-related
• she works extensively outside of her studies.
• she is more thrifty than I am

She recently had a great day-long interview at a local college that had an IDEAL position available. But it takes a while to hear back and we’re understandably anxious about it. She of course is looking at Plans B-Z, but the job market is tight, regardless how wicked smart she is.

And Gatopescado, I understand where you’re coming from from a pragmatic and odds point-of-view, but you know far too little about the situation or our relationship to give that kind of advice. Just sayin’.
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How much of it becomes officially moot once a marriage license is signed and filed? Varies by state, consult an attorney (if you think it might be a problem - which it doesn’t sound like you do). In general, once you hitch yourself together you aren’t going to let her starve because she has student loans, or say “well, I’M going on vacation, but you can’t afford it, bye.” Or at least, most people don’t.

Its really more of a psychological thing. Some people do fine with one account. Some people need their own money. Some people like to keep strict his and hers accounting. After listening to people here and other places talk for several years, my take is “do what works for you both” - there are dysfunctional joint situations and dysfunctional share everything situations, and functional joint situations and functional share everything situations.

30

[QUOTE=Brad Serum]

And Gatopescado, I understand where you’re coming from from a pragmatic and odds point-of-view, but you know far too little about the situation or our relationship to give that kind of advice. Just sayin’.
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Really? Well, let me welcome you to my twisted, warped mindset. I’m wound tighter than a garage door spring and this is how I think:

Paying interest on debt is a no-no. Its a big waste of money and has a huge opportunity cost. Think about this the next time you buy something- would you buy it if it cost 2x the price? 3x? Probably not. So Sweety has a huge school debt shes paying off. Education is great, but if it ends up costing 2 or 3 times the original tuition, she isn’t any smarter or doesn’t get additional degrees. The extra money was for nothing!

50% of all marraiges end in divorce. Flip a coin. Which side are you on? (Everybody I’ve ever met says “It will last”, but the statistics don’t lie) I’ve been involved with lots of women, and in hindsight have been happy to get rid of every one. (I’m sure they would say the same about me)

If you live/share expense with another person, you are kidding yourself if you think you can “keep finances seperate”. Sure, you can have seperate accounts and all that goes with that, but think about this: Every month Sweety pays on her debts (with a butt-load of finance charges), is another month of missed opportunity for savings, up-grades, new stuff- whatever.

Okay, now lets impose my warped thinking on your situation. You plan to stay together, right? So why wouldn’t you want to sink all your available capital into getting debt free? After all, with a bunch of debt incurring interest, about half of the relationships income is going toward nothing! Wouldn’t it drive you nuts to think that every month you could have a new TV or a bunch of CDs or just squirrle away some money?

Well, thats what I did. Met a gal with a huge debt, saw her basicly working to pay the interest and stay afloat. I decided I kinda liked her and figured we would hang out (we’re married). So, to benefit us both, I sunk all my money into bailing her out. We are now completely debt free and in my mind, don’t waste any money on interest charges.

Of course, she hates me now (because everybody changes, certainly not all her fault) and if we end up in the “other” 50%, well, I get to look forward to coming out with maybe half of everything I’ve paid for. :rolleyes: Yea!

What if I didn’t pay off her debt? Well, we would probably have less than the half I’d end up with! Kind of a “lose-lose” situation! We would still be under a massive debt and have poor credit to boot!

Its too late for me, but I gave you the best advice I could think of, knowing what I know. As far as “your relationship” goes, I’ll bet its about like any of the many I’ve or anybody else I know has had. “True love” at first, followed by a slow slide into complacency and eventually tolerance and maybe on to apathy and possibly disgust. Like I say, people change and statistics don’t lie. Here’s to you and the right side of the 50% equation! :smiley:

31

See what kind of crap I post when I can’t sleep! :smack:

32

You can’t have joint accounts in Japan, and I wasn’t allowed to have my name on the deeds to our house when we bought it because I had no income at the time.

We have separate accounts and always have had, but I give any money to my husband for a long term savings account that he has that has higher interest than I could get (it’s linked to his job.) He owns the house outright but it is willed to me in its entirety, so I feel safe that it is “ours” not “his”.

One thing we did when we got engaged was sit down and show each other every bank account we owned. I simply turned up at his apartment with my stuff and asked him to get his books out. He was a little surprised but did it. I found out later that many Japanese women are given an allowance and have no idea what their husband earns - they also have “belly button stashes” that they keep secret from their husbands.

We have found that going the total transparency route has been very good for us, and we have never really felt the “your money” “my money” thing.

Over the years our methods of working things out have changed as our lifestyles have changed. Both working and no kids era, he felt very strongly that he wanted to be “the provider” so his bank account paid utilities, rent etc. That pretty much stripped it out, so the leavings was his “pocket money” and my pay was “fun and savings”. My money paid for our household setting up which was really from scratch as he’d been living in a one room apartment and I’d come to Japan with two suitcases full of stuff and every intention to go back to England! It also paid for our wedding, a couple of really good holidays, and was the main chunk of the deposit on our eventual house, though it was saved in his name in that high interest account, which bit me in the bum later when it was “his” money as far as the loan officer was concerned.

We had seven years where I didn’t work, so it was just his income. I had the bank book and I did all the budgeting and spending as I was home with the kids and was the one who actually needed to handle cash on a daily basis.

Now that I have my own business and he is still working, he still has all the utilities going from his original account. His pay comes in and straight away I divert money to all the things that we have to pay that month. This leaves just enough in that account for his “pocket money” (I hate that phrase, makes him sound like a kid that I dole money out to…) There’s also enough for about ten days worth of food shopping. Two weeks later is my pay day, and that money pays for all the other daily expenses and food, plus savings, house maintainence and vacations.

I still do most of the day to day management of money simply because he works such long hours out of range of ATMs or the internet (not allowed at all in his job) but he knows everything I do.

I do think it is important for each partner to know at least the rough state of the other’s finances, but it is nice to have separate accounts too. For him, because his bank account that his pay goes into became the main daily use account, he ended up not having a private place to stash money, and he says the best present he got from me was a chunk of money and the forms to open his new, non-touched by me, account!

Another vital thing is to readjust with each life change. I have a friend who started married life with an “each pays half” system, and three kids and only two half days of work a week later, she is still expected by her husband to cough up her half of the expenses every month. I would have left him years ago!

33

My honey and I aren’t married (we cohabitate) and our finances are just about exactly like aerodave and GangsterOctopus. Both of our paycheques go into the same account and all the bills get paid out of it. I had more debt going in (mortgage), but I also have a much bigger income.

We each have a “personal” seperate account that some $$ go into - if I do extra work (I get contracted to run exams) the funds go into my “extra” account and I can buy him gifts and stuff out of there without him knowing exactly what they cost. He’ll just write himself a cheque out of the joint account for his “extra” account for the same reason.

It works well for us, mostly because neither of us is particularly het up about money.