Separate or Joint Checking Accounts?

[Eeyores Butterfly]

This is a spin off of another thread. For those that are married, did you do separate or joint checking accounts, and why?

 

[paintnolish]

We have separate accounts- we just kept the ones we had before marriage. We are on each other's, but we don't use them. It is just easier to stay organized and keep track of things. Dh pays the mortgage and car payments. I pay the utilities and groceries, generally. We kind of trade of paying for movies, dinners, etc.

 

[Ember]

Our finances are separate. I have my own bank accounts as does he. For credit cards, I have the two cards we use for travel or major purchases (to collect travel dollars) and he has his own low limit card for his own use. I handle the day to day finances because I'm better at it. (That sounds arrogant, but it's true. He forgets things.) At the moment we live on my salary and his goes almost entirely to debt repayment - almost there!!

I never wanted a joint account, I like having control of my own money.

 

[Disney Doll]

We have a joint, then DH has a separate one for his business related bill payment. Both of us are on both accounts though.

 

[wdwfan16]

This is a spin off of another thread. For those that are married, did you do separate or joint checking accounts, and why?

We hold everything jointly, unless we cannot for legal reason (401Ks). For those the other is the beneficiary.

We entered the marriage with nothing except each other. We both love, respect and trust the other with our lives and our money. We each have POA just in case and our wills are such that the other gets everything, unless we both die together, then the kids get everything, in trust.

We both feel that having separate accounts would indicate we are not completely in the marriage together.

We both get "spending" money, so there is no control issues with money. It really helps that we are both on the same page WRT saving for the future. We enjoy ourselves but also believe in helping others. We have not trouble talking to each other about money or any other subject.

This is what works for us.

 

[mickeyboat]

We have joint accounts except for a savings account I opened on my own for the kids' college fund (he was not available to sign at the time I opened it). DH also has an account for his business that I don't touch, although I am a signer on it.

 

[Judy in Texas]

Suze Ormond says that a couple should have 3 checking accounts... one for each person and then one household account that is funded with an equal percentage of total pay by both people (ex: both people put in 50% of their pay).

 

[Pakey]

Joint. I handle all of the finances for our joint accounts plus my husband's business accounts.

 

[It'sWDW4me]

I was married at the ripe old age of 21 and thought that seperate checking accounts were a sign of distrust in your spouse. 6 years, multiple bounced checks (my ex was a spender and never made sure entries were recorded into the checkbook), many tears, and 1 divorce later, my thoughts on this subject changed.

Now that I'm almost twice the age that I was when I first married, if I were to ever get married again, I would prefer to have 3 checking accounts - his, mine, and ours. A mutually agreed upon amount from each of our paychecks would go into the "ours" account to fund the joint bills (heat, electricity, cable, mortgage/rent, savings, etc) and whatever is left over from the paycheck is our individual play money. No worries as to if the check I'm writing will be ok or did he use an ATM and didn't tell me?

Of course, this is my theory of what I would expect to happen. Don't know if I'll even ever get to the point where it would be tested. Just IMHO.

 

[lspst8]

I've only been married 4 months, but so far my husband and I just use our original checking accounts. We just set up a few savings accounts for long-range plans (vacation account, save for a bigger house account, and save for future maternity leave account) that are in both of our names. I also added him to the large emergency fund account I had entering into the marriage. We both had a lot of thing automatically deducted from our checking accounts, and we didn't want to go thru the hassle of changing everything. All of the household bills/martgage are in my name only as I owned my house for a long time before I even met my husband.

 

[Luv Bunnies]

Everything we have is combined - one checking account, one savings account, joint investments. Only our 401k/IRAs are separate because they were set up by the companies we worked for. When my husband got an inheritance from his mother, he transferred all the money to our joint accounts. We never fight about money and have nearly identical spending habits. Neither is worried about the other spending too much or taking off with the money. We've been married for 21 years and it works for us!

 

[natenapril]

Everything is joint in our house, It works for us

 

[Nie0214]

Joint. When we were dating we had separate accounts, but found that we were so similar in how we handled our finances (from our 401ks to our spreadsheets tracking all of our spending) that managing multiple accounts was becoming annoying and useless. We see it as our money. Of course we'd never make a big purchase without consulting eachother, but it's ours.

It actually scared me how OK I felt with combining our accounts, as I never trusted anyone with my money, finances, etc. But we're just so alike in spending habits that it was never a concern for either of us.

I can understand how a his/her could work, but it is definitely not for the two of us.

 

[paintnolish]

Ember- Dh is not very organized, either. I balance my account; he never does! It's not like he bounces checks or anything, but I don't think I could count on him getting me all the receipts from the debit card...that sounds like a disaster to me! So, I know what you mean!

 

[Magic Mom]

We have two joint accounts. He uses one and I use another. It makes sense for us because he is deployed so often.

 

[wdwfan16]

Suze Ormond says that a couple should have 3 checking accounts... one for each person and then one household account that is funded with an equal percentage of total pay by both people (ex: both people put in 50% of their pay).

To me this is a problem. Say DH makes 100K and I make 50K. He would contribute $50 and I would contribut $25K. Each would have the same amount left to spend. So he has way more money to blow and that could cause issues in the marriage.

 

[eliza61]

25 years married and we've have a combination of the two.

We have a joint account for household bills and we each have our own checking account. We have a joint savings account and seperate 401K's and IRA's.

I've never equated money with trust. Just never understood how having my own checking account suddenly means I don't trust my husband or respect him? LOL. I know a few women who's husbands up and left them even with joint accounts so obviously one does not equal the other.

We were in our mid twenties when we got married both living in our own apartments and just never felt the overwhelming urge to combine both.

We talk over the big money issues (car, house and college tuition) and don't sweat the small stuff.

 

[ICF]

Everything we have is combined - one checking account, one savings account, joint investments. Only our 401k/IRAs are separate because they were set up by the companies we worked for....We never fight about money and have nearly identical spending habits. Neither is worried about the other spending too much or taking off with the money. We've been married for 21 years and it works for us!

exactly the same with us, except married for "only" 14 1/2 years.

IMO, married means you share your money and not keep everything seperate and each pay certain bills or only get to spend "your" money. It's all our money.

 

[puffkin]

Ours is joint although he hardly ever looks at the accounts. He is not a big spender though and goes with the flow.

We have had one major fight about money. He wanted to go out and buy new work pants, shoes, contacts, Fantasy football entry fee and something else all at once (over $500 worth of stuff). I told him that wasn't in the budget this month, he could get the contacts now and the rest next month. He blew up with how can we not have money, blah, blah, blah. So I sat down with him listed out ALL the bills I pay including incidentals. Showed him how much comes in and how much needs to go out to pay the bills. I asked him to show me what was frivilous to cut out (we did end up dropping the newspaper). He wasn't willing to cut anything else out and neither was I. He saw that I wasn't spending frivilously and that is the last time we argued about money. He just knows now that if he has some big things coming up to let me know in advance so I can budget them in.

 

[jodifla]

We've done different things over our almost 22 years of marriage.

We've always had separate and joint accounts, but we've used them differently.

When we were first married, we put money into the joint accont and paid our bills...but that didn't work for us. So we ended up divviing up the bills and paying them out of our separate accounts, and having a joint savings. That worked well for a long, long time.

Then when our employment situation changed with one person going PT, we ended up having one main household account, and separate personal checking accouts.

I find it harder to have a main household account, frankly. It's hard to know how much is in the account, because you don't know what the other person has spent. It's an easy way to end up with bounced checks.

In most marriages it's less a matter of trust and more a matter of personal spending styles & habits and spending pain thresholds. Especially early in our marriage, it drove me nuts to watch him spend OUR money on some things. It was easier when it was his money.