Wedding Blog
Money. The most dreaded topic.
What to do with our finances after we officially become Mr. and Mrs.? I’m an independent contractor, meaning that I don’t get a regular paycheck, but work job to job. So for tax purposes, I keep close tabs on my business expenses, and have 2 separate bank accounts, one business and one personal. I only transfer money into my personal account to cover my minimum personal expenses, and leave the majority “pool” of money I have in my business account. Long story short, a joint checking account would be really unfair to Mr. Penguin, because he would deposit ALL the money he makes into the account, while I would deposit a minimum amount to cover my personal credit card.
Lately, not having combined accounts has really gotten on my nerves. Now that we cohabitate, I’m sick of deciding who pays for groceries, who pays for dinner, who pays for plants, furniture, ANYTHING. It’s not even a “50/50″ thing, because neither of us care about who’s paying more or less, its more of deciding who has more money on hand at that particular moment. And after 2 years, it’s getting exhausting.
There is nothing more in life I want than to have a joint checking account, or at least have only one account that he and I pull from. While I enjoy the freedom of blowing ridiculous amounts of money on a pair of jeans without having to “report” to my spouse, I still wish that the whole 20 seconds before we make ANY purchase didn’t have to involve a “oh, you pay for this one and I’ll pay for the next one” type of conversation. What I’d give to just have one of us “whip it out” at any purchase, not batting an eye, because after all, it’s OUR money, not his or mine.
So…what to do? I’m toying with the idea that I pay our entire mortgage, and we share the money that he makes for our personal expenses. Outside of that option, it looks like we are doomed to a life of “I’ll get this one…”
I know this is a very unique situation, but I’m wondering if anyone out there has reservations or concrete reasons why you can’t “mix your money”?
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Why don’t you each have a personal checking account (his pay check goes to his, your accounting stays yours) and then have a joint account where every month some amount from both of you is automatically deposited and then pay all the two-of-you expenses from that. Even if you don’t have a regular income each month there’s probably some minimal amount you’d be “throwing in the pot” anyway. Or on your big months you’d put in more than on the thinner months. Just so that there’s a yours, mine and ours. There’s no reason you shouldn’t keep a “mine” account separate from the “ours”. It’s your money, you earned it, you can buy those jeans if you want! And that’d make it easier for you to keep track of the business vs personal balance of funds. Plus with all the ID theft now it’s not a bad idea to have more than one account in case you have to shut-down one if the # is compromised. Then you can still access money.
I understand your situation. I have always been hesitant to share my $ with anyone, so when we bought our house, fiance and I decided to open a joint checking account for all of our joint expenses (groceries, mortgage, utilities, car payment (we share a car), gas) we also put in money for entertainment so when we go out, we don’t have to do that”I’ll get this one, you get the next one dance”, honestly it has been the best thing we have ever done! We never have any issues related to money and who spent how much and we still maintain our individual accounts for own expenses, like cel phone, personal purchases, school loans, etc. I think we will keep it this way even after we get married.
How funny…I know that pre-paying conversation well.
My guy and I don’t mix our money. We each pay certain bills that balance out and reflect how much we bring home. We’ve talked about it, and both love the independence of having our own accounts. And when we go out to eat, we just take turns paying.
I get looks all the time. People (including my bank) have asked me repeatedly about joint accounts like it’s the most natural step in the world…get married, get a joint account, have kids etc. But this is what works for us.
A nice side effect of not joining our accounts is that we don’t argue about money. We have two different bookkeeping styles, so there’s automatically less stress by keeping them seperate.
On a more personal note, I grew up watching my mom pinch pennies and make it work without an income of her own. She found that she had little to no power over the money sitatuation, and I don’t ever want to find myself in that position. I like the independence that comes with my own accounts, so I think those conversations before the card comes out are worth it.
Yep - interesting topic and everyone is different. I have a friend who’s been married over 6 years has two kids - and they keep their money separate. It always boggles my mind who they do that. Who pays for childcare? Who buys kids clothes? How do you plan a vacation. It works for them - but she did say it’s getting more difficult.
I’m in the belief that part of committing to each other in marriage is the ‘ours’ concept. No more yours and mine. So I’ve owned my house for a couple years - now it’s ‘ours’. So you have thousands of dollars of student loans - it’s now ‘our debt’. My husband made a comment recently that he was bummed he hadn’t been saving for retirement and I reminded him that ‘my’ retirement fund was really ‘ours’. That’s just the way it is now. We both have lost parents and have inheritance money invested - it’s ‘our’ money now. We have a budget that accounts for all the money we spend and all the money we are saving for items and trips. Part of that budget is a ‘blow’ fund for each of us that we can spend as we want with no questions asked. Otherwise most purchases now affect us both - so we communicate about them 
It’s been 6 months and it’s working out great so far.
My fi and I have separate accounts. We rent, so we pay half the rent and other house bills (electric, etc) each at the end of the month.
For everything else, we have a joint credit card, which all food and going out expenses goes on. At the end of the month, we split that 50/50 as well. Personal purchases go on our personal credit cards. Since basically everything can be paid with credit cards nowadays - we’ve never had a problem.
Very easy! And more practical then a joint checking account imo because you don’t have to worry about whether there is money there or not when you go to buy something.
I think California is a community property state, which means it doesn’t matter whose account the money is titled in, from the time you get married - it’s both of yours, half and half. Since we got married, we just started to view each of our separate accounts and credit cards as “ours” even though they’re in our individual names, and whoever happens to have their credit card most handy when we’re at the store just pays for stuff. Neither of us is a big spender on personal items, though, so that helps. I used to shop a lot more and was worried about having to get too many purchases approved when married, but since we’re pretty much on the same page, it doesn’t come up much. We have a joint account but don’t bother transferring money in and paying out of it just to make paying for things seem equal. If you really want a joint account for the reasons you described, why don’t you just each transfer a fixed amount of $ into the account, whether you decide on equal amounts or proportional amounts to what you each earn? You can set up automatic transfers from each of your individual accounts for however much you wish.
We deposit both our paychecks in the joint account. Since he makes 2x more than I, he takes out at $500 allowance each month for misc things. I only take out $300 a month.
All joint expenses we pay for together. The allowance is for when I want to buy a pair of shoes, or he wants to go buy some motorcycle parts, etc.
It works for us!
We had a great recommendation from one of our marriage weekends. They said they put 90% of their total income into a joint account, but each person keeps half of the remaining 10% as their “fun” money. That way you can blow it on the expensive jeans, no explination needed.
We’ve always had our own personal accounts and one “house account”. We figured out our monthly joint expenses, and he deposits “X” in each month and I deposit “Y” each month. It’s not exactly 50/50, but it works out each year. -We both have good months and bad months through the year (I’m in real estate).
Hubby owns an excavation contracting business and like you, keeps most of his money in the business, until he’s ready to take an owner draw or paycheck.
Great post– Mr. Jasmine and I have been discussing how to divvy up money after we get married. I’m also so tired of deciding who pays for vacations, dinners out, drinks, etc. I can’t wait for joint accounts!
We have a joint credit card that we use to pay for household items so we can rack up points for trips but we also have our own individual accounts. We also set up a joint checking for bills which we both put the same amount in each month. But we still decide who pays for dinner and its works for us.
good luck! i hope you figure out a system that works for you.
we keep everything separate, and plan to continue after we get married. i pay most of the bills b/c he’s currently a student and doesn’t keep money in his checking account, then he reimburses me for half. i pay for groceries, he pays if we go out together. we buy our own clothing and toys with our own money.
why? well, part of it is the aforementioned “expensive jeans” reason (more like shoes and books for me) and part of it is that we’re both very independent people. and part of it is that he refuses to do my taxes for me so i’m not sharing a checking account.
I also am an independent contractor, but we’re married and before I started my business, we had already decided to put all our earnings into the joint, and keep what we need to pay our individual bills (student loans, credit card debt) in our personal checkings. With my new business, I keep 40% of my business money in my business account (for taxes) and move over the rest into our joint, but us to use for any of our expenses.
It was easier this way, than to figure out who can pay what, etc…
Like many people have already posted, we keep a joint checking account expressly for rent, groceries, utility bills, etc. We worked out a spreadsheet of our joint costs each month (including a little money for going out to dinner, a movie, etc every once in a while), and then figured out how much we could each contribute based on a very different salaries. We purposely got a checking account where you can earn mileage points for purchases made with your debit card, so that’s a bonus, even with the annual fee. As for personal purchases, etc, we each keep our own checking accounts and credit cards for these types of things.
We also got a credit card in both our names that we can use specifically for wedding related purchases since they tend to be pretty big - monthly payments come out of the joint account, but this way we also get Starwood points.
We’re getting married April, but we already merged all of our finances in July. It is soooo much easier - we love not having to have the conversation about “who pays for the cab on the way to dinner”, “who pays for dinner”, “who pays for drinks after dinner”. It’s all our money. I love it too, when I’m on my way to work, and realize I only have a few dollars in my wallet, and I can just ask FI to give me some cash to cover lunch. No “i’ll pay you back” or “here’s my atm, can you hit my bank during lunch and bring me the money”.
We have a basic budget, but we don’t have to explain every little purchase to each other. We both have the common goal of saving for the honeymoon, or furniture for our new condo. He doesn’t have to explain it when he gets new clothes, or any small little purchases. Any big purchases we discuss.
I think one of the reasons that we’re so comfortable with merging everything, is that that’s all we know - both our parent have completely merged finances. My mom no longer works, but she doesn’t have to “Ask” my dad for money. They have the same checking account and have joint credit cards. It was very weird to me when I reached my twenties and started realizing that not all married couples do it that way. I just can’t imagine that lifestyle.
My Fi is a contractor. We have sperate accts and plan on having seperate account when we wed. He makes WAY more $ then me. I pay for all the important stuff and we use his cash for fun stuff. Plus he likes to feel like the man when we go out and he pays. Mostly I just ask him for $ all the time and he asks me what I think before all major video game purchases. It works for us!
I SO appreciate everyones comments. Its great to see some of the “creative” ways couples make their finances work. Its really getting me pumped to sit down and have this “big talk”. I definitely wasnt avoiding it or anything, I was just curious as to how other people are handling their finances, and its wonderful to see how young couples are merging their lives and their finances in unique ways. Thanks all!
My fiance and I combined our finances when we moved across the country. We make vastly different amounts, with very different expenses. What we decided to do was open a joint savings (wedding fund!) and joint checking. Each time one of us receives a pay check we put 5% in our savings, 80% in our joint checking, then 15% in our personal accounts. We’ve changed the percentages around a few times, and if either of us ends up having more than we’d planned at the end of the month we transfer it into our savings.
We both put about 90% of our paychecks into our joint account (well, accounts, split b/t joint checking and joint savings) and then we take $275 per month out of joint into each of our personal accounts. I actually wanted to make it even less than that, because it’s really only for real splurge items (ie all of our normal clothes and meals where the other person isn’t present etc, still get paid from joint money.) But just knowing there’s a little bit there that you can do aaanything you want with is great. Although honestly I haven’t spent a penny from there yet. Haha.
We set the “into personal” amount as a set dollar amount rather than a percentage, or a set dollar amt into joint, because right now we make about the same amount, but I plan to switch careers in the not too distant future, which will mean a dramatic pay cut (at least at first) and I resent the idea that i should be “punished” for that by getting less spending money than my husband. I am also planning to take a little time off when we have kids, and expect that that won’t mean that I can’t buy anything for myself anymore!! I am very much of the “once we’re married, it’s ours” school, and in fact, I added Mr. Bluebell as a joint account holder on my inheritance account prior to getting married just because I didn’t want there to be any trouble with one of us needing to access the other’s accounts for some reason (which is why both our personal accounts are technically “joint” and we just use an honor system not to monitor the other’s spending)
That said, I’m not sure exactly what I’d do in your situation Penguin, since it is so different! And I’m sure most people’s are, so eh. But that’s what works for us!
ct is right — check the laws for your state. Without a prenup, the state’s laws control whose money is actaully whose. Creating separate accounts in California doesn’t actually mean that money in your name belongs to you. Any money earned after the wedding becomes community property.
If you truly want to have separate property, earn it before the wedding, put it in a separate account you never touch again, and stipulate in a prenup that it’s separate.
My fiance and I are keeping our pre-wedding assets separate, then just having one checking account for everything we earn after the wedding. Everything we earn after the wedding will be “community property” anyway, so we should both get full access to it! We trust each other, and this account arrangement reflects our philosophy that we are both equally entitled to the money and manage our money together.
We actually have a joint account that we established during the summer when I moved into his place. There’s never been a problem with one person spending or making more than the other and we always make decisions jointly on how the money should be spent. On paydays we will deposit all of the checks but take out about a $100 that is split between the two of us for “mad money.” Certainly there is some space for grace for little things outside of that but they never exceed $10-$20 and don’t happen too often anyway but for the most part it works for us well. Making sure that we are both in agreement for how the money is spent is definitely good for us because it provides lots of accountability AND introspection about if it’s really something worth spending on or not.
You could do what my fiance and I do - we have our own separate accounts but a joint account as well, out of which we pay the bills, rent, if we go out to dinner etc. Work out what you will spend on these a month, split it (in half or, like we do, in proportions of what we earn), and then pay that amount into the joint account each month.
Like most of you, we still have our own separate chequing accounts and credit cards. We’ve had a joint account together ever since we moved in together 5 years ago. It just made things easier for paying rent and utilities. At that point we split the bills equally and paid the same amount into joint account. Dinners, dates and personal stuff were from our personal accounts.
Now that we are engaged, we still have the same banking setup, but our attidudes are a little bit different. FI is still at University and does not have an income yet, so he is living off a Line of Credit. Now because when we are married, his debt will kind of my debt as well, I’m contributing a lot more than half into the shared account for bills. My FI never asked me to do this, I’m doing it because I don’t want “our” debt to grow, and I make enough to support both of us. Plus, later on the roles will be reversed and FI will be the bread winner.
I think it is important to keep a personal account for each of you. We plan to keep all our accounts after we are married and financially set up. This way each of us has spending money to do what we want. If you buy your husband’s Christmas gifts with the joint account, he’ll know what you got him, especially shop early and the statement arrives before the gift is given.
i haven’t read all the responses, so sorry if this is redundant. i’m in the exact same boat as you. it’s further complicated by the fact that i’m incorporated, so business and personal stuff must definitely be separated. i totally feel you as i’m just as frustrated. i’m
You guys have some great tips. We haven’t gotten to that point yet, but I did broach the subject once, to which FI’s response was we’d keep it the same as it is now. He makes more than 2x’s my income and I have student loans and CC debt that still need to be cleared out. So question for the others - what do you do if one person still has debt to pay off? I will just keep paying off mine. FI usually pays for meals and vacations and also has a mortgage. I buy all the groceries and have a bit of a shopping habit but he lets me indulge in. I know it will all have to change eventually though.
My fiance and I have our own separate accounts along with a joint checking account and a joint AMEX card. We did this after moving in together 2 years ago so that we wouldn’t have to deal with multiple checks etc for rent and groceries. Since we both have Wamu accounts we just transfer whatever funds from our personal accounts to the joint one online which is very convenient.
When it comes to entertainment, I have never paid for anything the entire time of our relationship so that’s never been a problem. Money ownership has never been issue because we know our bounds and while we both work we still try to act like we’re students in college. Ah, the things you learn.
Most states are “community property states,” so we wrote a prenup to ensure our income stays seperate unless we put it together- specifically, we each own a 50% share of our joint account, and we’ll each own 50% of our future home. It would be easy to combine everything- we actually make about the same income, and I have student loan debt, but he has a brand new car he makes payments on We just both feel better managing most things as individuals- at least for now. The other advantage is the prenup and also limits his liability for my debts, and vice versa, even if it’s for something that happens after we got married. Other posters have better articulated my feelings about the security of having “yours” and “mine” - it really is a lot less stress because you don’t feel the same need to control how the other spends their money. In our case, it doesn’t mean we don’t have a lot of discussions about where we are going, how we are investing or saving, or give each other advice- it just means no one goes to bed obsessing over it when we don’t agree. If I were in your place, I’d probably suggest you each put a little extra in the common fund, enough to cover entertainment, gifts, decorating- the things you do together, in addition to your fixed expenses. Then, you could keep using your personal funds for anything over and above that- clothes, going out with friends, and so on- but you would have an pre-agreed upon budget for some of the random things- shower curtains, a new ficus for the living room, a dinner out- that might come up in any given month.
Hey I know this is a little late but my fi and I are in the process of combining our finances as well an thanks for the post. I have also read about several modifications of the joint acount plan where you have separate accounts and then a joint account where you each put in a set amount (some people suggest it should be proportional to what you make or at any rate not necessarily equal depending on the circumstances) I know for us we’re both graduate students and living on graduate student salaries so this really helps us budget at least it worked this month.
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Mrs. Penguin, Northern California
Age and Occupation: 27, Weddingbee Editor in Chief
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 30, Doctor of Physical Therapy
Engagement Date: January 29, 2007
Wedding Date: June 7, 2008
Blogging Since: September 14, 2007
Venue: Winery in the Gold Country
About Me: I love the Spice Girls, dogs with underbites, bean burritos, making messes, high fives, avoiding showers, crossword puzzles, blogs, weddings, and blogs about weddings!
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