Married with Separate Finances?

[Smallsteps]

We have separate finances. Simply put we never bothered to marry until last year but have been together for over 30 years ( 3 grown kids and 2 grandchildren)

I have access to most of his accounts he has no access to mine. I hold all the assets for example 2 homes and vehicles and investments.
When we were young he was just bad with money and he makes at least triple of my income( always has) so I took over the money.
I have not gotten around to adding him since we actually got married. I had kids as right to survivorship on many accts I will probably change to him now.

It may seem cold but having a friend just go through a messy divorce ( she stayed home gave up career for kids and end up with nothing and is working 3 jobs to try to keep her lifestyle) I think at the very least she would have been better off keeping a side account of the times she did some PT things. at least her own EF or something. I have also seen another friend that had a home and savings got married to Longtime BF only to find he changed as soon as he said "I do" wanted to control all so they quickly divorced and he took half of her assets she brought into marriage.

It is easy to be gun shy if you see the failures and bad outcomes. .
I think separate finances can work for people. we separate bills like 75 him/25 me based on his higher income.

[Thrif-t]

Wow Jenn you're in a tough spot, I feel for you.

I'm another in the joint camp, been married almost 28 years and we had no choice but go joint as it took both our incomes to pay our bills. I think when you are working together and your money is jointly held you usually fare better financially and as a couple.

Of course I only have this point of view because of others around me. My sister and her husband keep everything separate and there is a total disconnect on what they should/could be doing to lower their taxable income. They file taxes joint, will you? In my opinion they waste a lot of money paying unnecessary taxes when they can for instance be putting money in an FSA to pay medical expenses or more into their 401ks or IRAs to bring taxable income down, but they don't work together on anything.

I think you're smart to be giving this a lot of thought before you jump into anything. I always thought I was going to be a career woman too, but you know what, when I had my 1st baby all I wanted to do was stay home and give her the kind of childhood I had growing up. I'm not a stay at home mom but I have worked part time since our 3rd kid was born and I wouldn't trade it for all the money in the world. And I absolutely would've out earned my DH had I stayed in my field full time, but you know what, that wasn't important to me after kids. So you never know how you'll feel about working after kids, you might not want to. We change a whole lot as we age.

[Jluke]

If you don't mind sharing, do you both have visibility to what the other has and does with their money and do you make big decisions together? Was the reason for separate finances driven by differences in income and spending habits (you didn't want to put your financial situation at risk given you had more, earn more, and are a saver)?

We each have our assigned bills to pay.

We share a credit card for most purchases.

She has a separate credit card as well.

She is extremely debt averse so she doesn’t spend more than she has available.

We can transfer money to each other as needed.

We know what each other has in the various accounts but we don’t watch each other like hawks.

The need to keep it separate was mainly so she wouldn’t spend money that I had earmarked for future bills (i.e. property taxes, etc).

We we were both set in our ways. I did get her to switch to using a credit card for all of her purchases so she got rewards.

Big purchases usually fall on me (water heater) but she will contribute to some items if we plan in advance (new carpets)

[disneysteve]

My boyfriend has made it very clear that the expectation is that we both work, always. That’s fine with me. My career is very important to me. I also have the same expectation for him.

I know that most of the children responsibilities would also fall to me and this could have consequences for my career. However, the argument here is that he’d be fine without kids, so I am bringing that responsibility upon myself (not that he wouldn’t share in parenting and costs but that it wouldn’t be a reason for him to share the burden of any resulting loss of income).

Huge red flag here! Even more than the money issue, you need to be 100% sure that you do not want children ever before you continue on here.

3 of the main things couples fight about and divorce over are money, kids, and religion. You're already battling 2 of the 3 (and haven't mentioned anything about the third).

[jenn_jenn]

Huge red flag here! Even more than the money issue, you need to be 100% sure that you do not want children ever before you continue on here.

3 of the main things couples fight about and divorce over are money, kids, and religion. You're already battling 2 of the 3 (and haven't mentioned anything about the third).

We’ve already discussed kids and religion.

I want kids. He doesn’t necessarily want kids but he doesn’t not want them. He’s fine with me wanting kids and if we were to marry, we’d have kids. My point was that we’ve already discussed kids and agreed we would both continue to work. Reasoning related to financial impact of kids wouldn’t be a good justification (at least in his mind) for us to have joint finances.

[jenn_jenn]

We each have our assigned bills to pay.

We share a credit card for most purchases.

She has a separate credit card as well.

She is extremely debt averse so she doesn’t spend more than she has available.

We can transfer money to each other as needed.

We know what each other has in the various accounts but we don’t watch each other like hawks.

The need to keep it separate was mainly so she wouldn’t spend money that I had earmarked for future bills (i.e. property taxes, etc).

We we were both set in our ways. I did get her to switch to using a credit card for all of her purchases so she got rewards.

Big purchases usually fall on me (water heater) but she will contribute to some items if we plan in advance (new carpets)

I can see why this works, thank you for sharing.

[disneysteve]

we’ve already discussed kids and agreed we would both continue to work. Reasoning related to financial impact of kids wouldn’t be a good justification (at least in his mind) for us to have joint finances.

So what happens when you have your first kid and that maternal thing kicks in and you decide you just can't stand putting her in daycare as an infant and want to stay home with her until she's ready for school? It happens all the time to woman who swore they'd never give up working just because they had children.

[MonkeyMama]

No, I would not consider separate finances. This topic has come up many times in the forums, and after thinking about it many times, it comes down to the kind of relationship I want. I want an all-in, 50/50 absolute trust kind of situation. Even when people talk about making exceptions re: building assets and marrying later in life (maybe a second time)... I just can't see why I would marry someone if I didn't trust them 1,000% to the point of joining finances. If I didn't feel comfortable combining our finances, then why get married? I wouldn't see the point. It's not the kind of marital relationship I have experienced or seen modeled by our elders. I think it's fine to say, "I enjoy spending time with you, but I don't want to marry you." In addition to all that, I live in a community property state, so a lot of this is moot. I think a lot of people are under the illusion that they have separate finances when they don't (in my state).

& of course, I think kids change things significantly. I am going to break out a separate post on that.

I also think there's probably some grey area in the middle. I just don't like the whole, "I make more money so I get to spend more money" attitude, as has come up sometimes in the forums. Or something like, "You wanted kids so you can bear all the responsibility of that." Stuff like that. I don't think just because you have separate accounts means you have "separate finances". You can still be working as a team. Just as an example, when we married, we hadn't bothered to combine any of our accounts. We both worked full-time. My income was enough to cover the bills and we didn't want to live beyond that, plus I liked bookkeeping. So my paycheck went into my checkbook to pay all the bills. We kept our separate credit cards. My husband's paycheck was deposited into his savings account and generally went to retirement/investments and the down payment on our homes. I wouldn't consider this "separate finances" in the slightest. It was just the simple solution and we didn't give it much thought beyond that. But we could both easily support the entire household and didn't have much motivation to do much beyond that. Then we had our first child, 3 years into our marriage. I told my husband, "I'd like to be on the savings account in case something happens to you. & vice versa." You know, it was 100% legally mine (if something happened to him; 50% if we divorced), but once children were involved, that just changed things significantly. The immediate access suddenly became important. & don't get me wrong, I am sure it was dumb we didn't put each other's names on our accounts sooner, but it was just of so little consequence when we were two-income/childless. We made sure to make all our accounts joint after that. I don't even know if him not working really changed anything at all since he had never paid any of the bills from his income. But it was just kind of merging everything so we had one account for savings and one for spending. But I don't know that we particularly changed the overall financial structure of our relationship. That's just re-arranging accounts, and no longer having a buttload of extra income to invest. But most the "big picture" and logistics have never changed. I've never doled out money to my spouse because he didn't work. We both have access to all our assets and are perfectly capable of handling spending, money management, etc. This doesn't change because he was home raising our kids, and it's not going to change if our roles ever reverse for any reason. We are a team.

[jenn_jenn]

Wow Jenn you're in a tough spot, I feel for you.

I'm another in the joint camp, been married almost 28 years and we had no choice but go joint as it took both our incomes to pay our bills. I think when you are working together and your money is jointly held you usually fare better financially and as a couple.

Of course I only have this point of view because of others around me. My sister and her husband keep everything separate and there is a total disconnect on what they should/could be doing to lower their taxable income. They file taxes joint, will you? In my opinion they waste a lot of money paying unnecessary taxes when they can for instance be putting money in an FSA to pay medical expenses or more into their 401ks or IRAs to bring taxable income down, but they don't work together on anything.

I think you're smart to be giving this a lot of thought before you jump into anything. I always thought I was going to be a career woman too, but you know what, when I had my 1st baby all I wanted to do was stay home and give her the kind of childhood I had growing up. I'm not a stay at home mom but I have worked part time since our 3rd kid was born and I wouldn't trade it for all the money in the world. And I absolutely would've out earned my DH had I stayed in my field full time, but you know what, that wasn't important to me after kids. So you never know how you'll feel about working after kids, you might not want to. We change a whole lot as we age.

I really appreciate your comments.

A lot of good points that I’ll need to talk to my boyfriend about. I hadn’t thought about tax filings or FSAs. I’d want us to do whatever made the most financial sense. I don’t know where he’d stand on these things.

I’ve seen a few of my friends already go through the working with kids dilemma. I know there’s a good chance that after I have kids, my views on my career may change. I’ll probably value my career a lot less and I may even actually want to stay home. However, I respect the decision and expectation we’ve set on this together - that we’ll both keep working.

[jenn_jenn]

So what happens when you have your first kid and that maternal thing kicks in and you decide you just can't stand putting her in daycare as an infant and want to stay home with her until she's ready for school? It happens all the time to woman who swore they'd never give up working just because they had children.

It does. There’s also plenty of women that after having kids and despite wanting to stay home with them (for all of the great reasons and benefits of doing so) that don’t have that luxury of doing so and are forced to go right back to work and they are just fine. There are plenty of people who have successfully raised happy families and children while having two working parents.

[disneysteve]

It does. There’s also plenty of women that after having kids and despite wanting to stay home with them (for all of the great reasons and benefits of doing so) that don’t have that luxury of doing so and are forced to go right back to work and they are just fine. There are plenty of people who have successfully raised happy families and children while having two working parents.

Absolutely. I in no way was trying to imply otherwise. That wasn't my point. I was just saying that the pre-baby plans often go out the window after the baby is actually here and both partners need to be on board with that, assuming you financially can stay home if you wish.

[kork13]

Huge red flag here! Even more than the money issue, you need to be 100% sure that you do not want children ever before you continue on here.

3 of the main things couples fight about and divorce over are money, kids, and religion. You're already battling 2 of the 3 (and haven't mentioned anything about the third).

Jenn,
It sounds like you're really struggling with these descisions, and I'm loathe to give this kind of advice via a sterile forum post... But I'll express my concerns. Reading all of what you've told us, Steve said almost exactly what I was thinking. You disagree on a couple of very significant areas (kids & money) that a married couple absolutely MUST see eye-to-eye on in order to build a happy & successful marriage... Those are both big red flags. The other major concern is that there sounds like he has some significant trust issues. Nothing against him, because we all have our troubles, and you don't have any control over the family you're raised in... But if anything, THAT (a lack of trust) would be an absolute non-starter for me. Perhaps you can work through the trust issues...but my experience is that life together, after marriage, gets harder before it gets easier.

I'll also bring up that my wife & I are both in the military, so I understand completely the dynamics involved there. Military life is almost always tough on families, especially if he's in a job that will send him on deployment or temporary duty either often or for long durations (or worse yet, both). It's part of the reason that my wife is leaving the military in a few months, and why I'm VERY happy that she (and we) are able to do that. We're often so stressed out that we're seeing it rub off on our two young boys, and that's honestly kind of terrifying for me. All of that to say, know what you're getting into. If your husband's unit has a spouse's group, ask a few of them to lunch, and just ask them about their experiences -- how they've made it work, or what they've struggled with, and that sort of thing.

My wife & I have had joint finances from the start. We tried to do the thing where each of us has a little side-account for our personal "fun money", but it just didn't work for us. And that (the bolded phrase) is the big point. Every couple works differently. For some, joint finances is the one and only way that things work (that's us -- at this point, there's no way I would, or could, go back to having separate finances). For others, partially separate (with personal side accounts) is better because it gives you a little extra freedom. Some do prefer totally separate finances while sharing joint expenses. In general, I say 'to each their own'. Do what works for you, as long as you both agree on how you'll handle your money.

I guess I'll leave you with this: If you were my sister, I'd tell you to sit down with him and have detailed, serious conversation about all of these issues. It's not an easy talk, but it can serve as a good pressure test. If you can talk through everything and feel comfortable about the situation, and are optimistic about your future together, go ahead and press on. But if you walk away and you don't have that optimism, or you've got something in your gut nagging at you, it's probably best to cut bait and move on (amicably if at all possible). All the best to you, whatever you choose. But you're very right -- you do need to choose, and probably sooner the better.

[jenn_jenn]

No, I would not consider separate finances. This topic has come up many times in the forums, and after thinking about it many times, it comes down to the kind of relationship I want. I want an all-in, 50/50 absolute trust kind of situation. Even when people talk about making exceptions re: building assets and marrying later in life (maybe a second time)... I just can't see why I would marry someone if I didn't trust them 1,000% to the point of joining finances. If I didn't feel comfortable combining our finances, then why get married? I wouldn't see the point. It's not the kind of marital relationship I have experienced or seen modeled by our elders. I think it's fine to say, "I enjoy spending time with you, but I don't want to marry you."

I very much respect this view.

I think you’re right, it ultimately comes down to the kind of relationship you want and are comfortable with.

That’s going to be different for different people - and why I really appreciate everyone’s comments.

[disneysteve]

I just can't see why I would marry someone if I didn't trust them 1,000% to the point of joining finances. If I didn't feel comfortable combining our finances, then why get married?

My feelings exactly. When people say they keep separate accounts because they're a saver and their spouse is a spender or they keep money separate so they have it to pay the bills when they come, I wonder if they knew about those issues before getting serious with the person and deciding to get married. I know sometimes the spending issues don't surface until later, so that's a whole different problem, but I'd think most of the time they are at least somewhat apparent before marriage if you're together for a while.

[MonkeyMama]

So what happens when you have your first kid and that maternal thing kicks in and you decide you just can't stand putting her in daycare as an infant and want to stay home with her until she's ready for school? It happens all the time to woman who swore they'd never give up working just because they had children.

Jenn, and take this comment to heart too. Steve nails it on the head. Things very rarely go as planned. I 100% agree with this, even though I prefer to work and have worked full-time with kids. Our first child did not fit at all into our plans, and then our second child was polar opposite so we had to regroup again. It's not an "all moms want to stay home" lecture. (Though honestly, most do the first year or two). It's a feeling probably almost every mother/parent has ever felt, that you had no idea what you really signed up for. The best laid plans? Ha! (We planned to have one of us home, and then scrambled to find social outlets and come up with daycare costs for our first child. Then my second child still really mostly needs an at-home parent at 13. Talk about two opposite extremes. I never felt any guilt whatsoever working until I had my second child).