Member Questions

Healthy or not, I am not sure, but this questions brings up a lot of emotion and lots of different answers. I have been married for 7 years now, and both of us are successful. We never considered separate accounts. We just created a "family" account. I think honesty plays the biggest part in marriage and finances. My husband and I are honest with each other about our family goals and our individual luxuries. We work make sure the family is secure and each of us gets to enjoy the fruits of working so hard.

I think it's odd to keep your money separate. How do you decide who pays for what? What is a family expense, and what comes out of your own money when you run to target?? What if one of you makes almost all the money? Then the other person has nothing? We've had a single joint checking account since we got married. We have our own business accounts, but that is because businesses need separate accounts or you open yourself up to personal liability, not because we want to keep the money away from each other.

When we first married, we had 3 accounts--his, mine and ours. He never liked it, and it was complicated and a pain to manage. When he went off to Saudia Arabia for a tour, we realized we needed to consolidate so I could manage all the money from home. We just kept the "ours" accounts. I still manage all the money, and he has no idea what we have in our bank accounts at any given moment (although I always do)! This suits us.
He doesn't spend money without talking to me about it, and we have a limit of what we can spend for gifts and incidentals without prior discussion. That way no new cars show up or something like that. Hee hee.

I think these discussions are not only healthy, they're vital for the marriage! I our household, we determined how much we needed for all household expenses. We divided this amount up between us, so that we each contribute a set amount each month, proportionate to our respective incomes. We each have a personal account for the rest. The joint account pays for all the household expenses.

Given our respective incomes, "the rest" may not be a whole lot, but I think it's important to have that autonomy. Besides, it's nice to be able to buy a little treat - for yourself, for your spouse - and not have the other guy know exactly how much it cost! It's a good system for us. We revisit the budget every year or so.

If you don't talk about this up front, there will almost certainly be confusion, exasperation, hurt feelings, resentment - far better to hash it out than not! Then everyone knows.

I have always kind of agreed with Dilek, but a few years ago we merged accounts because it just got to be too much to maintain his, mine and a joint. I needed to streamline. And especially when I began my business last year and my income took a cut, it was nice to know there was always money in the bank to cover the expenses - my personal account would have gotten really low!

Wow I'm surprised this is even a question. Maybe I'm living in a different world. I've had my bank account since I was 14 when I started working and I plan to keep it that way until I die. I like having my own account. It's mine. My husband and I share everything and keeping the seperate accounts, as well as a joint household account really makes our finances easier to manage.
Even though I work PT and my salary is very different from my husbands (thank you husband ;-) I feel it's still nice to see that my professional efforts create income that our family can spend!