How do you deal with expenses when married?

[dawnwes]

Shared. No ind. accounts or money.

But I still tell my DH, "What is yours is mine and what is mine is mine."

[Like2Plan]

Shared. No ind. accounts or money.

But I still tell my DH, "What is yours is mine and what is mine is mine."

Too funny.

[Scootbell]

Still joined all financial accounts and we both are separately income..

Its always expensive and pressure after marriage but we should manage all things smoothly and finally I don't think its going the same.

[Singuy]

To the OP

Are both parties making money or do we have someone staying at home?

I think Disneysteve's method works better if only one party participates in making money..or else you'll make the person not making money seem like someone you are raising(as in, you keep things seperated but distribute that individual an allowance).

If both parties are making money then maybe do a hybrid.

10% of earned income per party is your individual allowance, 90% goes into the pot for housing/kids/schooling/food for the famly, etc.

This way if your wife wants to help her brother (and say you absolutely dislike), she can without you resenting her(this can also include spending on anything you disagree with).

[ua_guy]

"It's complicated". Then again, it's not. We lived together for more than a decade before marriage became legal for us, but we made do--even owning a home together.

End result is we have a common retirement savings goal and strategy, as well as general savings and money management strategy. We have some individual accounts, but that's mostly a legacy from our unmarried days when things were unclear from an estate perspective (i.e. in the event of my partner's untimely death, we feared his mother may try to meddle in his estate because she's legally the next of kin in absence of a legal spouse, and having joint accounts would present legal battles for me). So we would generally split expenses by income just to maintain accounts but it didn't really matter.

We sit down together every month and tally everything up, settle all the accounts, pay bills. There's visibility and trust. Individual purchases of any real value (not really defined) are generally discussed in advance, but there's also healthy wiggle room "within reason" - as to not jeopardize any goals or come up short.

We probably need to go through an administrative "re-org" of our accounts and consolidate, which we'll save for a rainy day, just for the sake of simplicity and ease of access. In our early days, managing money was a little unclear but it's something we've grown into, together. "We" manage "our" money and it's taken basic compatibility and also effort.

[Debt-free by Thir-ty]

This is actually something my fiance and I are discussing right now. He wants to keep it the way we have now: a joint account for household expenses and individual accounts for everything else. However, I want to do away with the individual accounts when we're married. My logic is that at that point, everything is ours. His logic is that he doesn't want to feel restricted if he eats out or buys soda. I think he'll come around to a single account because he understands where I'm coming from. I used cars as an example. Right now, he pays for his car out of his account, but when we're married, our family car will be ours and no one person will be paying it. It's an ongoing discussion, but we're talking about it now, so no one is surprised down the road.

[Singuy]

This is actually something my fiance and I are discussing right now. He wants to keep it the way we have now: a joint account for household expenses and individual accounts for everything else. However, I want to do away with the individual accounts when we're married. My logic is that at that point, everything is ours. His logic is that he doesn't want to feel restricted if he eats out or buys soda. I think he'll come around to a single account because he understands where I'm coming from. I used cars as an example. Right now, he pays for his car out of his account, but when we're married, our family car will be ours and no one person will be paying it. It's an ongoing discussion, but we're talking about it now, so no one is surprised down the road.

Can't you just make the family car be paid for by the family joint account? If your husband thinks the way he does, then that means there may be something he would want down the road that only he wants. He doesn't need to feel guilty about it or have long compromises with you.

Also you can have the freedom to buy whatever you want without him questioning you...given that all of the household joint items(the impt stuff) are already taken care of.

Vacations/rent/mortgage/property tax/insurances/family cars/all utility bills/all of the kid's expenses/emergency funds/savings can be in the joint pot.

Purses/shoes/exotic sport cars/watches/whatever hobby you have/birthday gifts for each other/ can be in the individual pot. Just make the individual pot a small portion of the individual's income.

[disneysteve]

His logic is that he doesn't want to feel restricted if he eats out or buys soda.

What he needs to realize is that once you are married, every penny spent affects BOTH of you. It affects how much you can spend to buy a house. It affects where you can vacation. It affects how much you save for retirement, or your kids' college education, or a new roof. If he goes out to eat every day, that's money that isn't available for other purposes. If the two of you agree on a budget together that includes his eating out, that's great, but he can't just keep "his" money and spend it however he wants. Once you're married, it isn't "his" money any more.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

I think joint accounts can work but usually people who do it have more than enough money to cover everything. I notice people usually combine the pot when the budget is tight. The tighter it is, the more every penny spent has to be accounted for. When there is tons of leftover and it doesn't matter? Then people seem to not care.

[Augustine]

The trouble with keeping your finances separate is that it becomes easy for one party to hide financial information (good or bad) from another, which can breed a lot of mistrust and put unnecessary strain on the marriage.

[disneysteve]

The trouble with keeping your finances separate is that it becomes easy for one party to hide financial information (good or bad) from another, which can breed a lot of mistrust and put unnecessary strain on the marriage.

I can't speak from personal experience but it would seem that separate finances could work better for couples where both partners earn similar incomes. If there is a big income discrepancy, or one partner is a stay-at-home parent, everything needs to be joint or else the lower earning partner wouldn't be able to survive.

My wife hasn't worked for much of our marriage. If not for joint finances, she'd have very little saved for retirement, for example. Since everything is joint for us, I fund her Roth every year. When she was working, we had 50% (the maximum allowed) of her income going to her 401k. She couldn't have done that on her own.

[Singuy]

I think joint accounts can work but usually people who do it have more than enough money to cover everything. I notice people usually combine the pot when the budget is tight. The tighter it is, the more every penny spent has to be accounted for. When there is tons of leftover and it doesn't matter? Then people seem to not care.

I kind of agree. My wife and I agreed to the 10%/90% rule(10% fun money for individual, 90% for family) but we pretty much don't follow this rule at all. I think the fact that we have a lot left over is why we don't follow this rule.

[MonkeyMama]

I'll clarify that no matter how equal or unequal or income has been (has been both for periods of time) or how much or little we have leftover, we will always combine everything into one pot. For us, we understand that every decision affects each other, and no amount of separating money will overcome that reality. I guess that's all it comes down to, for us. It's never occurred to us to separate our income or bank accounts.

[maynard]

We share everything and only have joint accounts. When you trust the other person and you both have similar philosphies about money and savings, its a no brainer.

[sandrark]

We've been a couple for 34 years. We've been married for 18.

We bought a house together before we married. At that time, we kept all accounts separate, and I paid the joint bills from my account. DH just paid me his half.

Once we got married, we established joint accounts. Technically, all of our accounts are joint (except one account he has, from an inheritance. I've encouraged him to keep that his own, with a Payable on Death titling).

So, while we legally own everything jointly (including cars), in practice we have "his, mine, and ours" accounts.

Our pay comes into our individual accounts, and we each transfer the household amount needed into the joint account, from which we then pay all joint expenses throughout the month. This includes transfers to our joint savings and escrow accounts, so both short and long term goals are funded.

Our individual accounts are our own. I get a monthly massage, DH flies recreationally. I read a lot (and have an active budget amount for books); DH saves up over months to upgrade his digital camera. I choose to spend more on clothes for my professional office attire; he spends more on an Xbox membership so he can game once a week with his far-away friends on Thursdays.

This works really well for us now. I can see a time when it will work less well - such as when we're retired, and most of our income will be from my pension.