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Enthusiast
My husb and I share our accounts completely... We're married. This is silly in the first place. Like yeah maybe if one person was making $300k and $50k I'd see where you're coming from, but you should have a household budget rather than individual you can or can't buy x y z budget and be equal (not same, but equal). If someone is making less and working fewer hours they usually help more around the house. A successful marriage is not splitting things 50 50. It's you each give 100%!
Right on!! Most divorce happen around money issue.
Rising Star
My wife and I solved this issue early on in our marriage. I make the money, and she spends it. Problem solved.
Hit me up when you want a second wife (now or later) I volunteer
Your household makes $160k, you don’t need to divide costs. They’re your spouse, not your roommate.
Wow. A lot of snarky comments here! To answer your question OP, my husband and I have one shared account for household expenses, but apart from that, we each have our own separate bank accounts and investments. Contributions to the shared account, which cover our joint living expenses, are based on percentage to ensure that our contributions are fair relative to what we each earn. So long as our shared expenses are covered (mortgage, food, utilities) I don’t care what he does with his money and he doesn’t care what I do. This arrangement works really well for us...we’ve been together for 10 years and we have honestly never once fought about money. He wants to buy a new car or a boat? Go for it! I want to splurge on an expensive handbag or vacation with my friends? No problem! Interesting observation for me to read about how many people here balk at this idea...
Ok D3 and SD1 you are marriage goals. Did you propose your current financial structure of did you partners? How did you agree to structure your finances the way you did?
Rising Star
I would just like to point out one thing: yes, marriage is 100-100, but, people can change over time. I had a joint account with my ex-husband and if I were to get married again, I wouldn’t. I believe in one joint account for expenses and each person have his or her own account. The future is uncertain. If someone develops a gambling or shopping addiction, all the money from a joint account can be drained, no questions asked. This way, if one account is drained, you still have money to fall back on. I know it sounds like a long shot, but it can happen. This doesn’t mean not sharing expenses, just being cautious and looking out for each other after seeing so many couples go through money problems after joining accounts.
There are other benefits to what LB1 described. I trust my wife completely and know that she won’t run off with all of our money if we combined all of our assets into one account. That said, she is more of a spender than a saver. I have automatic transfers set up for both of us to our joint account for expenses, joint savings accounts and retirement accounts, and what she has left over at the end of the month is hers to spend. If we had just one account (I make 3x more), she would see a lot more spending money. I am very frugal, so this is just a way for us to manage our different mindsets without creating conflict.
I happen to disagree with ASA1, but everyone has something that works for them.
We both have our own separate accounts and a shared account to which we contribute a set % of our income monthly. That pays our rent, bills, shared vacations, pets, etc.
We also keep our own accounts for our own spending. I can buy a nice hair dryer and my SO can buy hockey equipment with our own money. It works great for us.
Congratulations on 20 years VP1!! And happy you found solutions that worked for you both!
Split mortgage based on percentage to be fair.
Rising Star
I can tell you worked really hard on your reply, great job!
Imagine having that high of a combined income and nickel and dimeing household expenses.
Chief
After taxes, payments, savings, household expenses, it’s not really that much money to where you shouldn’t consider how it’s being spent. My SO and I make over double that combined and we still split and discuss our finances appropriately. Again, after all of our monthly expenses are paid (apartment, credit cards, retirement, investment) the left over money isn’t THAT much. I think at whatever income level you’re at, even if high, there’s nothing wrong with planning out how the money is spent with your SO. It’s called being responsible, not “nickel and dime-ing.”
Pro
Uh, all the money goes in one pot.
The end. I can’t imagine the emotional and psychological energy of trying make sure everyone paid their “fair share”. Fees like you’re practicing for dividing assets in a divorce...
Visual Storyteller
Do you understand the concept of marriage??
AC1 the issue here is that you’re using an antiquated reference to bolster your mean comment which suggests that OP’s marriage is somehow less legitimate than yours because they’re considering a financial arrangement that is different from your norm
Enthusiast
Also should you each be trying to max your 401k rather than worrying about fun spending money? Just trying to wrap my head around this as that's a relatively normal household income, not like crazy money
Come up with common goals and match based on what is best for your household. Does one company match more? Does one have a Roth 401k option?
What A1 said... you're married, you have a household. You should budget that way. I make over 100k and my wife makes 30k. I don't track who pays for what, we just have a joint bank account that both of our paychecks go to and all of our household expenses flow from. We have a good chunk of change leftover monthly, which we mutually decide what to do with (save towards a goal, extra student loan payment, or fun money). I work more so she generally helps out more around the house, but I'm no slouch at home either
Theoretically, I think this is a fair approach. It’s a good use of Pareto principle where you split for your biggest expense - mortgage on a % basis, while for others you split evenly.
However, I think your incomes are close enough that it’s pointless.
Rising Star
My wife and I do not understand what splitting means. We have one balance sheet of combined assets because we plan to spend the rest of our lives together. As such splitting anything just seems silly 😆
Pro
My fiance made a good deal more than I did (was laid off and it effing sucks). About 30% more. We contributed equally to the household bills and rent/mortgage. He would normally pay a bigger share for our vacations.
The only way to figure this out is to communicate with your partner.
Pro
We also put all income into one account and pay all bills from that account. If either of us wants to make a discretionary just-for-fun purchase over about $150 we will consult each other first. We haven’t had an issue with either of us overspending on things we can’t afford. Major purchases like cars, appliances, family vacations, etc we discuss a budget prior to purchasing.
I make around 4x as much as my husband - maybe a little more than that, but he is self employed with variable income so it’s hard to pin down. My preference would be to put everything in a shared pot, then monthly put equal amounts into separate accounts for discretionary, no questions asked spending, and anything above that amount would need to be a joint decision.
We don’t do that though—my husband prefers 100% control over his income. So we put money for bills into a joint account monthly (I put about 2/3), and then I tend to pay for extra things and big expenses - from picking up an extra grocery run to paying for a down payment. I do 100% of the savings - maxed 401k and plus saving about 40% of my take home for emergency fund (more while loans are on hold for coronavirus). Even though I’m the one actually putting the money aside into accounts technically in my name, everything is joint savings and I consider savings to be our savings. And we live in a community property state so legally they are joint savings too.
I would not recommend this arrangement and I still don’t understand why it’s his preference. The end result is about the same, except that if we combined everything, he would have more monthly spending money and joint purchases would come from a joint budget and impact both of our savings/spending. Since I’m the high earner now and we don’t have kids, I figure his preference on how we manage money is fine. We’ve talked about needing to change strategies once either of those things change but haven’t figured out what we will do exactly.
Pro
I am in a similar situation (except my wife is also contributing to her savings) and it works for us. She prefers to have 100% control over her own money.
I too thought we would have shared with equal allowances, but she vetoed. I pay the mortgage and she pays the nanny (it about equals out). She buys stuff for our kid and we true up at the end of the year. She buys most of the groceries and I pay all the utilities. It seems to work. As long as you both are happy, do what works for you!
I make significantly more than my boyfriend (10+ years together, no kids, don’t want to get married) and we split the mortgage by each contributing 27% of our take-home pay and all other shared expenses are split down the middle on a shared credit cArd, we have separate bank accounts. Often times I’ll pick up dinner or a large grocery bill. We just bought a new couch and I paid for it, but the expectation is even stevens unless otherwise mentioned. Never once have had an argument over money.
Enthusiast
It was easier for is us pick certain bills and divvy it up that way. I took the mortgage and property taxes. My husband took car payments, home/auto/health insurance, utilities, etc. We have a joint card which we both pay on and we each pay our own credit cards.
Enthusiast
We do have a joint account, I just control what I put into it to make sure taxes get paid, IRA is funded, etc. I’m the “squirrel” in the fam - if my husband sees $$ in the account, we’d have even more weekly Amazon packages coming to the house haha. On the flip side, his tolerance for risk is much higher than mine and we would not be in this awesome house if not for his “high risk, high reward” mentality. But it also means the drops can be dramatic and this method is a way to mitigate my risk.
Yeah. I was totally against sharing accounts at first but it makes more sense. My wife and I share accounts and it’s much easier to pay bills. We’ve given ourselves “personal” budgets on things we want for ourselves. We’ve been able to save much more than we used to individually.