Combining finances

Monica313 · September 2013

My fiancé and I are moving into our first apartment together in a month and I was just wondering how and if we should combine our money. I know I don't want all of our money shared in one account, but I was thinking of having our separate accounts that our pay checks go to and then one shared one that we can pay bills from. I'm thinking it will be easier that way, we can both put half the money for rent and utilities and such and write a check from it. It seems better than each bringing cash and like putting it in a jar or something. Does anyone have any thoughts on that, or other ways to deal with shared bills?

MrsD06 · September 2013

Honestly, my husband and I just combined everything from the start and it has always worked for us. We discuss any large purchases. My best friend and her husband have separate accounts as well as joint accounts and they are each responsible for certain bills. If one needs extra that month the other just transfers it over. It really depends on personality types and how you each deal with money.

CuriousKiddosMama · September 2013

Dave Ramsey would say to not combine until you are married that way there are no issues if somebody gets cold feet.
However, having said that, I think it makes a lot of sense in your situation to combine them or at least to create a joint account right now to pay those joint bills out of. I lived with DH before we got married for a couple months, but he was also unemployed at the time and he moved in with me so we didn't combine anything until after we were married and he got a job again. I just kept paying all the bills that I had been paying. He got a job again a month or so before the wedding, so he ended up paying a bunch of the wedding bills (my parents were retiring/ and moving so weren't able to help much).

hoffse · September 2013

My husband and I waited until after we were married to combine (even though we had been dating 8 years... just in case). We combined heavily though.

Now we have everything joint except for one account that is exclusively for his student loan disbursement checks. We have a weird sort of joint/separate thing going on for the next several months until he graduates. We just didn't want me dipping into that loan amount accidentally and us spending it down too quickly. We are going to "pay back" anything not used in that account right after graduation. He will have about 3 months to study for the bar exam before working, and once he has moved in with me for good (his law school is about 3 hours away from me right now), we can afford to live on my income alone until his job starts. Since he is paying a separate rent and school expenses, this is what works for us to make sure he has enough without overborrowing.

Anyway he is going to close that account right after graduation and then it will all be joint. A lot of folks feel like shared bills need to be proportional in terms of the person making more contributing more, etc. I think the cleanest way to do that is to just send it all to one place - then, if you make 60% of the household income, the money in that account used for expenses will have come 60% from you. Keep in mind that if your FI were to die or become incapacitated suddenly, you would still have legal control over that joint account without having to go through any legal loopholes to access that money. That was very important for H and I, especially since we are commuting 3 hours to see each other on the weekends for the rest of the school year.

Other folks like to have most things joint and then a couple of separate accounts that get "play money" each month. H and I hardly ever purchase anything over $50 (other than groceries or gas) without running it by the other person anyway... so this felt kind of pointless to us. Also, we are both so cheap that on the rare occasion I go shopping for fun, he knows I'm only buying stuff that's a good deal and vice versa. But this is a method that works for a lot of people because it's a no judgment/no guilt method of having some fun while being responsible with the majority of your money.

Our credit cards are also all joint - we each have several in our name with the other as an authorized user. This only works if you fully understand the spending habits of the other person. We were open enough with each other about things we bought and what they cost, that it came as no surprise to me to see $14 greens fees for golf every few weeks appear on my credit card statement. It's just not a big deal for us. Do keep in mind that you are legally responsible for all charges that the other person makes on your card and if you are an authorized user on a card that doesn't get paid in full each month that can negatively affect your credit. But H and I pay all our cards off in full each month. So for us that works. We have done extraordinarily well with credit card rewards, so we charge virtually everything just to get points. We both look at all the cards every other day or so, which means we always know what's going on with the other person's spending habits.

Finally, we each have the legal authority to buy, sell, trade, etc. on each other's retirement and investment accounts through Fidelity. Many of these accounts can't be joint by law, and we wanted to be able to make decisions about the other's account in the case of an emergency. For a lot of folks this would be too intrusive, but it works for us. It's also really nice in that Fidelity's platform lets us see the other's accounts when we log in to our own, all on the same page. So we always know our joint net worth at a single glance. We are also each other's beneficiaries on these accounts. That's incredibly important.

In general, as long as there is financial transparency between the two of you and you have the same goals in terms of savings, retirement, buying a house, having a kid, etc. then however you want to do it should work fine. I do recommend making sure that each of you has the login info to the others' accounts if you decide to keep them separate. This will keep you both honest since you know the other person can look at any time.

HoneyBee973 · September 2013

My DH and I did everything backwards, according to the 'norm'. We bought a house before we were engaged, etc etc. About 3 or 4 months after we bought our house we combined our accounts. It was just easier and made sense for us.

Start with having separate accounts, and one combined as you mentioned in your post for house bills. See how that works out for you.

mana8503 · September 2013

When we were moving in together, it was easier to let H take care of the rent and I took care of the other stuff (groceries, cable, gas, etc). It pretty much came out to be close to 50/50, and H liked having a set amount where the other stuff goes up and down depending on the month. We didn't fully combine until we had the house and were 6 months from getting married.

Mom987 · September 2013

We have one account for paychecks and bills. Nothing separate. Then everyday spending is from a second account (we both use), which we can see and transfer instantly with the first one.

Mom987 · September 2013

hoffse said:
My husband and I waited until after we were married to combine (even though we had been dating 8 years... just in case). We combined heavily though.

Now we have everything joint except for one account that is exclusively for his student loan disbursement checks. We have a weird sort of joint/separate thing going on for the next several months until he graduates. We just didn't want me dipping into that loan amount accidentally and us spending it down too quickly. We are going to "pay back" anything not used in that account right after graduation. He will have about 3 months to study for the bar exam before working, and once he has moved in with me for good (his law school is about 3 hours away from me right now), we can afford to live on my income alone until his job starts. Since he is paying a separate rent and school expenses, this is what works for us to make sure he has enough without overborrowing.

Anyway he is going to close that account right after graduation and then it will all be joint. A lot of folks feel like shared bills need to be proportional in terms of the person making more contributing more, etc. I think the cleanest way to do that is to just send it all to one place - then, if you make 60% of the household income, the money in that account used for expenses will have come 60% from you. Keep in mind that if your FI were to die or become incapacitated suddenly, you would still have legal control over that joint account without having to go through any legal loopholes to access that money. That was very important for H and I, especially since we are commuting 3 hours to see each other on the weekends for the rest of the school year.

Other folks like to have most things joint and then a couple of separate accounts that get "play money" each month. H and I hardly ever purchase anything over $50 (other than groceries or gas) without running it by the other person anyway... so this felt kind of pointless to us. Also, we are both so cheap that on the rare occasion I go shopping for fun, he knows I'm only buying stuff that's a good deal and vice versa. But this is a method that works for a lot of people because it's a no judgment/no guilt method of having some fun while being responsible with the majority of your money.

Our credit cards are also all joint - we each have several in our name with the other as an authorized user. This only works if you fully understand the spending habits of the other person. We were open enough with each other about things we bought and what they cost, that it came as no surprise to me to see $14 greens fees for golf every few weeks appear on my credit card statement. It's just not a big deal for us. Do keep in mind that you are legally responsible for all charges that the other person makes on your card and if you are an authorized user on a card that doesn't get paid in full each month that can negatively affect your credit. But H and I pay all our cards off in full each month. So for us that works. We have done extraordinarily well with credit card rewards, so we charge virtually everything just to get points. We both look at all the cards every other day or so, which means we always know what's going on with the other person's spending habits.

Finally, we each have the legal authority to buy, sell, trade, etc. on each other's retirement and investment accounts through Fidelity. Many of these accounts can't be joint by law, and we wanted to be able to make decisions about the other's account in the case of an emergency. For a lot of folks this would be too intrusive, but it works for us. It's also really nice in that Fidelity's platform lets us see the other's accounts when we log in to our own, all on the same page. So we always know our joint net worth at a single glance. We are also each other's beneficiaries on these accounts. That's incredibly important.

In general, as long as there is financial transparency between the two of you and you have the same goals in terms of savings, retirement, buying a house, having a kid, etc. then however you want to do it should work fine. I do recommend making sure that each of you has the login info to the others' accounts if you decide to keep them separate. This will keep you both honest since you know the other person can look at any time.

We are almost identical. We trust what each other spending, rarely over $50 if it's not already talked about or something needed for the house. I know there will be some golf spending but that's his biggest expense ($20-30).

Combining finances

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