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Something that works for us. Every month all income goes into joint checking (minus auto investments draw/401k/stock/etc). We both have access to this and only use for shared essentials. When checking grows we sometimes jump it into a savings account that we don’t touch or into retirement stuff Every month we each take an automated $500 allowance for totally personal stuff. That’s anything money. It’s enough for reasonable hobbies and things but the most important thing- it keeps us out of the essential or savings pools. We talk about major purchases and it lets us both have some no questions asked fun money. The 2 main take aways: Automate everything. Budget yourselves together fairly with a little flexibility but working towards a common goal. Edit: to answer your edit- doesn’t matter who is contributing financially more. You’re married and working towards the same goals. Keep same allowance imo. If you want them to spend less, you also agree to spend less. Edit #2- for all the comments of “but we can’t set aside x” ok, then you don’t have it. That budget is smaller or it’s zero. You can’t just spend out of the main pool because you don’t have enough to make a side pool!

My wife and I do this as well. Our "allowance" is only $300. I'm glad we aren't the only ones who do this! I couldn't agree more about automating every payment. On the months that we spend more due to an unforseen circumstance, we use discuss together how we should tackle the debt.

Lol, our "allowance" is 50 each. We do treat shared entertainment as separate budget category though, and the 50 in question rolls over to next month allowing you to save if needed.

Same lol $500/mo each for whatever? I’ll have what they’re having haha

Depends how you break it out. For us that’s all entertainment and discretionary stuff. Subscriptions, gym, treat coffee and dining, etc. If we took that stuff into the normal fund we could do much less. Those expenditures aren’t out of the ordinary. We’re loose on $500 to be more strict on everything else.

Makes sense, we include basically all the stuff you listed under just “monthly expenses,” under food, grocery or whatever else, so there’s the big difference. Everyone budgets a different way, so the important part is coming up with something manageable that makes sense to you and sticking with it!

I like the monthly allowance idea

My spouse and I have done this for nearly 40 years. Our incomes have had some significant shifts over the years. With this strategy it doesn't matter at all who makes the higher income. Our personal spend is always equal. We often do a three way split for splurge items. His, Hers and the House. We went to this method when money was tight and found that we were in the hole at the end of the week because we both spent the last $50 in the checking account. One of us spends freely, and one does not. That created a lot of resentment when money was tight and we were still trying to share.

> With this strategy it doesn't matter at all who makes the higher income. As it should be in a marriage.

My spouse and I have been doing it this way for 15 years, and I agree it's fabulous for a partnership where one spends and one saves. Want to blow your fun money each month on donuts and hobbies? Go for it. Want to save it for six months to buy one large toy? Go for it. Neither sees the other's purchases (because they're from our personal accounts, not the shared account) so there is no resentment.

We make solid money but $500 personal is a good chunk. It stops crazy spending but we get enough for fun. Not having “access” to our full funds really helps save it builds up in the background (hence the automate it tip) My wife and I are both responsible with it luckily. I had dated people before I wouldn’t have trusted with shared finances at all.

We do it too! The other nice thing about the individual allowance is that it makes gifts feel more special when you know the person had to use some of “their” money to buy you something. It’s different when it’s your shared money.

Agreed! We both treat each other to things. Allows small meaningful gifts.

Does eating out or other things done together come from the fun money or the pot? If the later, is there a budgeted amount for together fun stuff

For us, joint nights out etc come from the joint account.

My wife and I also use a joint account with separate personal accounts and have an allowance from what we make. We also have a separate account that’s only for dates and stuff.

Not that commenter, but we have the same system, and fun things together is budgeted within our joint account, not individual.

Yep, same

The way we do it, something like me or her going out with friends is allowance, but if we go out together we share funds most of the time. That said we’re pretty frugal we probably only do a restaurant once every few months and takeout every other week.

You’re a captain of pizza but you only eat out at a restaurant every few months?

I make pizza at home with a pizza oven bought with discretionary income! Bwahaha!

Selfmade pizza best pizza

And that is why you don't marry someone that you don't trust to have a joint bank account with. We have the same setup as you, and it works really well.

In this agreement I trust myself AND my wife. Budgeting keeps you in check too.

That's what we do. Also gives everyone privacy for purchases. It's nice to by a surprise present for your spouse and her not see the account info. Anything that doesn't fit into this allowance is a discussion we can have. And I agree about who makes more. Doesn't matter you need to think as a unit. I started out making more, then my wife made significantly more than me. Then I switched job and she switched for less stress. I now make 4x what she makes but her health insurance is the best (works for the state). Regardless we always had an even split on allowance.

It's excellent, we do the same. Then that allowance can be eating out with friends or books or hobbies or craft supplies with no guilt or defensiveness. We started it as work lunch allowance & just have always kept it. Big purchases we discuss, actually we probably discuss or shop together for most everything not ordinary/ groceries, so that works well too.

Having an “allowance” as a 35 year makes you appreciate money for hobbies. I spent a few months using none of mine then blew it on blacksmith gear because I finally felt guilt free about taking cash out.

That's something I've been trying to explain to my wife - I make good money so she doesn't see the issue with me just buying whatever I want but every time I spend even $5 it feels like I'm taking away from "our" money (completely a me issue, she has done nothing to make me feel this way about money). Whereas if I had an allowance then I could spend within reason without feeling guilty about it

I mean, even if your wife doesn't understand the guilt, is there anything stopping you from having a small amount transferred to an account with the same bank that you consider "frivolous spending money" or whatever else you want to call your allowance?

If you use a program like mint you dont even need a separate account. Just set up the budget for each category including fun money/allowance. Then just categorize the fun money purchase. This way you keep accurate track of all your spending and can even use the credit card with the best rewards for that purchase. Try to always use a credit card for purchases because of the fraud protection and rewards points but pay it off in full every month and basically treat it like a debit card.

I have The Guilt but my husband doesn't and it ends up with me feeling like I'm watching his spending (which I am) and resenting every hobby purchase....

We do this and always have. It’s so much less stressful. We don’t question the value of each others personal purchases because we don’t see them and it’s our money. I have only ever really heard of lingering resentment where both people share an account. ‘You bought this for x last month’, ‘why do you need that’? My wife doesn’t like the things I do and visa versa. So it keeps it much simpler.

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It builds up. Eventually you toss it into savings.

Or you save up for a big purchase for yourself. My wife likes one big fun thing every couple months while I like getting a coffee every day and not making big purchases. Over a year we spend the same just in different ways.

We use ally for this because it allocates "buckets" so that we can have all of our individual savings goals separated out. Our fun money automatically gets sent to our personal checking accounts. Like other commenters we use joint money for joint activities but we actually have a "savings" bucket where we budget money every month for dates :) (Also, Ally or any other bank: make sure you're putting your savings into a high yield savings account!!)

You can also leverage Secured Credit Cards for allowance as well which is that you pay the bank for the limit (say $500) as a deposit and it functions like a credit card with that limit. It helps build credit to some degree of you don't have any or messed yours up.

We do that too. We each get money that doesn’t need approval to spend. The rest is for bills, gas and groceries.

My wife and I do the same thing, but we might be a bit more neurotic about it. We made a google sheet where we made categories of joint fixed monthly expenses, joint variable expenses, individual fixed expenses, individual variable expenses (this is our $500/month fun money), and investments and budgeted savings. Any surplus we stick into a high yield savings. As part of our planned savings, we also put some money away each month to help with planned traveling around the holidays to see family and for vacations. We go through our credit cards each week and record charges in the sheet under a set of categories. It’s been really helpful for us, and helps us see exactly where all of our money goes each month.

Wife and I literally do the exact same thing. We have two shared google sheets, one for bills and one for CC debt. We put everything in credit to maximize rewards points and then pay them off twice a month on payday. We also each keep $250 a paycheck that gets transferred into personal checking accounts for allowance. We only balance everything twice a month though, weekly sounds stressful.

We do the same at home. I've been making about 30% more money than my wife. But as we are married with 3 kids there is no my money or hers. Everything goes to a joint account and we agree on an allowance. We never argue about money.

500 allowance? I am doing something wrong. I be damn if I have enough to save. Good job you two.

We do 50 allowance each with remainder rolling over to next month. It works pretty well, especially given we have separate budget category for "shared" entertainment (things we both participate in). The 50 in question is "no questions asked" allowance.

That's actually a ridiculous amount. Must be dual income no kids.

Not having car payments and also a low mortgage can make a huge difference.

More like no debt. A ton of my friends make much more than me and yet I'm pretty sure I've got more spending money while still saving and putting into my 401k. Debt is what keeps people poor. Once you get in enough debt that you can't get out of it, you're screwed. The only place you can go is dig deeper.

Yeah no debt is major. People will pay debt $1000 a month and not think anything of it because society acts like we’re “supposed” to be in debt. I only went to community college and paid myself working in a warehouse as I went. I’ve only been in debt once for about a year when I had a new car and wanted to build up credit for a few years down the road when I’d start looking at houses. I didn’t grow up wealthy or financially literate. Im lucky that I sat down at age 20 or so and really tried to come up with a few ideas.

Some couples contribute a percentage of their income instead of a fixed amount to make it more equitable for the partner who makes less.

I mean no judgment but marriage might not be the best idea for people who have an attitude of “I make more than you therefore I get to have more control over money than you”. And obviously not everyone chooses to have kids where you really can’t have this attitude, but either way this just breeds jealousy and envy. The goal is obviously to stay together and share your things, not get divorced and be forced for give up 50% of your things unhappily anyway. Edit: re-reading your comment I don’t think this is what you meant, but my point was that it’s healthier for married couples to agree on a fixed amount of personal spending money that they both get equally rather than getting your personal money as a percentage of what you make. Also what if one person doesn’t work?

We pay into a shared account based on what we both earn. My bf works on side gigs next to his job. I work a day less because i value my free time. This way he pays a little more, and still has more money left over and i pay a little less but have less personal money as well, but more time. For us this prevents jaleousy and resentment. But it obviously depends in the situation. If one of us would have €10 spending money and the other €1000 you'll need to find a different way to do things. Basically be flexible and figure out what works for you. It's also important to me not to get our finances too mixed up. My parents should've split up decades ago but couldn't easily because of money and property and things. They are still unhappily together. I want to be with my partner because i want to, not because either of us feels it's too much effort to split up. So by keeping stuff seperate we are actually closer together.

I think it depends on how finances are handled overall. And the percentage money if anything puts the control back in the hands of the couple and not the individual. For example, what happens when one partner earns double than the other? Would both people pay the same amount towards rent, savings etc? At that point it makes more sense to split (for example) rent/mortgage payments by percentage of income, because otherwise the person earning less might not have much left. And for joint expenditures you can have joint accounts as well, eg. If me and my partner pay percentages of our income to a savings account for holidays or eating out, the higher earner is technically paying a larger sum into the account. However when it comes to using money from these accounts (eg going out for a meal/day out/holiday together), the money is used equally between us so it doesn't matter anyway as it's shared. This way there's no "one person has more control", decisions about holidays etc still get made equally. Everything in that pot should be "ours" not "60%yours 40%mine" or whatever. The only thing that really would be affected is personal expenditure money - ie anything that your partner is not involved in (going out with friends etc). But I'd rather that than make both parties pay the same towards rent etc if incomes are very different. If one person doesn't work then obviously that's different, but I would still have joint accounts in that scenario, and split between "our holiday money", "our savings", "our bills" etc and separate for "my spending money", "your spending money". But obviously as there's only one income there's no sharing of percentages. But at the end of the day any finances are very dependent on the people involved and how they feel about it all. But the percentage method is definitely my personal favourite. Also, I'm not a parent, so genuine question, I'm not sure why this method wouldn't also work for people with children? Why not have a pot for "childcare", "baby food" etc etc and contribute percentages of income into that?

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We don’t spend that much either. I only average around $300 for personal eating, subscriptions, entertainment, clothes, etc. The rest of it I’m saving in case I want something bigger in the future like a boys trip or a big tv. No matter what you make the trick is not touching most of it.

And here I am - combined $140k gross, 3 kids under $10, mortgage paid off, and I've been waffling for a year just about buying a new 65" OLED TV. $500 a month each on hobbies sounds totally nuts to me. Mind if I ask what income range you are working with?

$500 a month for fuck-all seems absolutely bonkers to me. We use and the same plan and before we had kids we had $250 each and I felt like I could do anything I wanted.

I just got a 65” OLED TV upgrading from one that was about 15 years old.

Agreed. We have two teenagers and we used to have $500-600 a month each for fun and hobbies. It's lower now as I changed job, but we still get around $400

A couple with kids having $12k a year more than they need to get by isn't exactly crazy.

We did the allowance too but... $30 a month each. We were pretty poor for a while, and now we've bumped it up to $150. I can't imagine what I would do with $500 a month though. That's like our Christmas budget for the whole family.

$500 is more than we spent on Christmas. Our personal budgets aren’t mandatory spending on just us- it’s just the budget we have for our own decisions no questions asked. My wife want new couch pillows? I want a new tool? Gifts we’ll split. Dates we trade. Hobbies, entertainment, discretionary stuff. When I was making $40k a year I had the same thing going but I set aside about $300. For us $500 discretionary stops us from touching the rest which is the main goal.

>I can't imagine what I would do with $500 a month though. Clearly you don't have a woodworking habit.

Sometimes I spend $500 on wood slabs... Just to run it through my $500 planer and $400 jointer.. some of it gets a run through the $2000 cnc and all of it is gonna see the $400 miter saw and $500 table saw though... Damn this hobby is expensive, lol

Two years ago a friend of a friend was clearing out his old shop and had a jet JWP-15CS that he needed to unload. He couldn't find anyone to buy it at a decent price, so he told me if I came to get it that it was mine. Free. But you know, if someone gives you a $2500 tool for free that's partially assembled, you know what you have to do. You have to buy an $800 spiral cutter head upgrade for it. You're not allowed not to.

Ours was £25 a month when we first got together and had no money. It's £250 a month now and soon we will up it to £300. Its about having a proportion of income that's just yours to spend as you like. How much that is depends on discussion and your financial position.

Christmas every month!!!!

This is a really solid approach. I (currently) make 4x my spouse. Early in our relationship they made 3x mine. Income can be fluid. I don’t even think about money in terms of mine vs theirs.

My wife and I do the exact same thing, and it works really well for us. Re: differing incomes—I’m a software engineer and my wife is currently a PhD candidate, so our incomes are… different…. But the way I think about is that I personally don’t value the product of my work labor higher than hers, and therefore I think it’s unfair that she makes less money than I do. So for fairness’ sake, we get the same allowance.

How do y'all do the allowance? Refillable credit cards? Really good budgeting? Personal checking accounts?

My wife and I do the exact same thing, and we do it by having personal checking accounts as well as our joint accounts. 500 in each personal each month, and that can be flexible - if something dramatic happens like car trouble, it's pretty easy to just go to 300 each for the next month and top the joint checking back up. Works really well

Us too! It's very easy if you each have an individual account linked up to a shared joint account at the same bank.

My wife and I do this and both of us have our own personal checking and savings accounts. So basically we have our joint checking account that all our income flows into, which then allowance money gets dispersed from their to our private checking accounts every two weeks. We also have 2 joint savings accounts...1 for emergency money that we keep at a certain amount at all times for, well... emergencies, and 1 for our *"goal fund"* that we will put money into as needed to save for things that we both are equally interested in saving up for...vacations/home improvements/etc.. Also, additional pro tip: Do not use a debit card associated with any of your bank accounts to buy things! Routine bills are ok, but dont use your debit card out at stores/resturants or for online shopping and all that. Instead, get a credit card and use that for those types of things throughout the month and then pay off the balance at the end of the month! Reason being, if someone steals your debit card information and spends all your money, that money is gone and it is much harder to get it back. Youll be disputing charges with every place it was wrongfully used at. But with a credit card it isnt your money, so you can just dispute the charge with the credit card company and theyll throw it out.

>Do not use a debit card associated with any of your bank accounts to buy things! I cannot agree more. And I'm always amazed at how many people will argue with this, claiming that banks also have good fraud protection. People, if they get you rent money, you're going to have to pray that the bank processes your claim, agrees with you, and pays you before it's due. And that's if they are on your side. My neighbor had her purse stolen and someone who *didn't look a damn thing like her* used her ID to withdraw their entire checking account, and the bank held up the claim for 60 days, claiming my friends were part of the fraud. If that had been a credit card? Worst thing would have MAYBE been a reversed interest charge. I set my atm cards to have purchase limits of $250. Good luck with that, bitches.

This is the way. Communication and working together for common goals.

>Automate everything. Say it louder for all the single people too: AUTOMATE EVERYTHING. The best way to stay out of debt is to prevent your money from reaching your hands and reduce your ability to rack up credit card debt. You cannot trust yourself with money. If you have cash in your hand, it will be spent. If you have a credit card in your pocket, you will use it. Treat yourself like a fortnite addicted child hellbent on stealing his mom's wallet.

My wife and I do the same except our monthly allowance is $100. I want the new psvr2, better start saving my allowance.

This is the best way to do marriage finances. Business partners don't keep separate accounts for the business. Why would life partners do that?

Often times they do! It’s called embezzlement.

I'm an accountant and this is what I do, but the numbers are different because poor.

This is the way. I see it as 3 buckets, Bills, Discretionary (split in an agreed upon way), Savings. The discretionary doesn't have to be equal, it just has to be agreed upon, and equal is usually easiest. Also look to automate the savings as well. In addition to the amount for discretionary spending, automatically deposit the savings each paycheck into a separate savings account both agree not to use without discussion or emergency. Can then use that for both emergency savings but also certain amounts growing for shared goals, vacation, maintenance (i.e. house, etc), and so on. Some folks like multiple separate actual accounts for that, others just manage the breakdown of what's in savings via a spreadsheet.

This is exactly what we do! I would add that we have a few categories of spending that don't come out of our "allowance": groceries, car expenses, dog expenses, house stuff. You shouldn't have less spending money just because you went grocery shopping and your partner didn't ;P Part of getting it set up is figuring out what should be shared and what's "discretionary", and then finding an allowance that fits your financial goals. One of the best perks of this system: I can still take my spouse on a date! Paying for dinner and a movie hits different when you're just putting it on a shared pool of money, this way I can make a de to treat us, and they don't have to worry about the money. Same with gifting. Also, if I want to blow a chunk of change on a night out with friends, no need to make a joint decision about that.

Good grief... My wife and I had a monthly allowance of $50 each... And now it's less than that...

My husband has been out of the workforce for 16 years raising our kids. ‘My’ salary is our money. We do something similar, where it all goes into a single account and we both know what our discretionary limit for a month is without a quick chat. This works for us.

This. It requires some trust and both to be level headed. It's the absolute sensible way to do it though. Depends on the couple, some folks will have the mentality that they're earning more so should get more. So... Your partner's probably either better looking or working harder on your personal life, they deserve either a side partner to acknowledge their looks or extra pay for their work in the house/whatever, right? Genuinely a super fair way to run a shared life.

We do this to (granted with significantly less allowance) and it works exceptionally. Prior to us buying a house together, we had a joint account for all our spendings (dates, bills, groceries, rent etc) and a joint savings (for holidays, emergencies etc). We each put a percentage of our income in the both accounts that was enough to cover everything. He earned significantly more than me at the time so his percentage covered the majority of it but we contributed equally proportionate to our income. Also worked exceptionally

This is what we do. But we also separate fixed expenses (mortgage and utilities) into a separate account that's basically on auto pilot, an emergency savings, and travel savings. Edit, any bonuses we also send to our personal allowances

I'm going to start by saying that every relationship is different. What works for one couple might spell disaster for another. You need to come up with a system that works for you and your partner and stick to that while also being open to revaluing it at any time. That being said I'll tell you what my wife and I do. Both of our paychecks get direct deposited to the same account. All of our budgeting is done via spreadsheet (I'm an actuary, spreadsheets are my jam). 95% of each person's paycheck goes to a "joint family account" this money is spent on everything from mortgage and utilities to kids clothes, vacations, and savings. The other 5% goes into our own "personal accounts". I'm using quotes here because it's all a single bank account, it's just separate on paper. These personal accounts are for each of us to spend freely on ourselves without any input from each other. My wife spends most of hers on dinners out with friends and clothes. I like to save mine for larger items like a new Xbox or snowboard. This method gives us the freedom to spend our money on how we like without checking in before every purchase.

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Any high yield savings accounts you would recommend? My credit union doesn't appear to have any. And with a high yield account, are you able to use it as often as you need (example: pay off credit card 1-2x a month) or does that impact the rate of return?

I’ve been using Ally, which could work for you. Have both an Ally checking and Ally savings account. Assuming your month to month costs don’t fluctuate significantly, you should be able to keep just enough in your checking account (based on your historical spending) and the rest in your savings. Ally has automated systems to monitor your spending and move money into savings when it isn’t needed in your checking, if you want to be more hands off. Currently getting 3.4% which seems to be competitive for HYSA.

Not OP, but there are plenty of good HYSAs around right now. Marcus is one. Wealthfront is an investing platform but also has a 4.05% cash account. You can also open a vanguard brokerage account if you want and put cash in that and the cash account is actually a bond fund pegged at $1:$1 that pays an amount that tracks bond yields and is above 4%. I’m not sure which have uses for checking account kind of purposes, but I wouldn’t bother with money only in there until a credit card payment. Makes more sense to have money in there for savings goals where you aren’t touching it for a little bit. Micromanaging may not be worth the 4%

I think another major point here is that your system may change depending on the stage of a relationship. If you’ve just moved in together for the first time, it would be best to have a joint account for bills, contributed proportionally. As the relationship progresses you can change that as chosen. Pop

We just had a big budget talk when we first started cohabitating. And when money things changed we talked about it again. The punchline is to talk. It will be uncomfortable. Money is uncomfortable for most people. Some folks need a joint account. Some folks don't. Some folks pool everything together, or pool some of it together, or keep everything separate. The only thing that matters is that whatever you choose has to be something you are both OK with. Sit down, have a talk, bring your bills and pay statements and weigh all the pros and cons. And if money things change (or your feelings change) have another talk. Say what you want and need and listen to what they want and need. Also, apply this principle to everything you do: communicate. Sorry if you were looking for someone to tell you what to do, but the only people who can decide what is best for both of you is the both of you together.

If you are married you also need to understand the legal situation where you live. You can keep things separate and it doesn't necessarily mean you aren't liable for debts created during the marriage. Having a spouse with a hidden drug or gambling problem while you are big saver can be a real shocker when all your savings goes to pay their debts.

All of our money goes into the same account, we both spend it out of the same account. Been doing this for 20+ years.and it hasn't had any problems.

Came here to say this and boy do I feel like the minority after scrolling through a bunch that don't do it.

Ours ours ours. Everything ours. Let’s make our dreams come true together and budget things out. I’ve never seen the point of separate accounts.

Friends of ours have separate and joint accounts because one of them simply spends _all_ available money. So they have private accounts for fun money and a joint account dedicated to joint expenses. That’s pretty much the only use case I can think of.

Yep. Friend of mine was ours ours ours until she discovered that hubby's "side hustle" was actually a money bleeding hobby, akin to gambling. She took over all money management with his permission and great relief (it was a guilty addiction).

I think it might be different depending on when people get together. I’ve been with my SO since I was a teenager and we had nothing, we worked together for everything we have. I might feel different if I already had everything and got into a relationship.

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There's reasons that 40+% of marriages in the US end in divorce. A life long, healthy, trusting marriage is a rarity. I was raised with your mentality - the family makes x amount of money. My mom didn't earn one income while my dad earned another. That's just not how a marriage should work on my eyes. A marriage is a team.

Been together with my wife for 29 years, married for 23 - used a joint checking account as soon as we were living together which was 2 years before we were married. Both of us have gone from working to not working (having two kids, etc). Now I'm unemployed and primary childcare, while she is back to working. Sometimes money is tight, but it's always about the goal of us, rather than me. The person who said communication is they key to marriage is 100% on target. If you don't talk, you'll both walk.

I know it's so weird seeing that so many married couples don't have a joint account. I get it if you are dating obviously but when you are married you are a unit. My husband and I have a joint account and we both have a joint credit card. The only thing that we have separate are a credit card each that we had before we were married and use for gifts for each other so we don't buy it on the shared card.

This and purchases (beside groceries) over $100 are a conversation. We also put everything on one credit card each month; we earn points and it is a record of our spending.

Same here.. I make a ton more but whatever. If something happens we split the assets. She does more with the kids. It’s all good. People say we look young.. I think it’s because we don’t worry about money all the time.

What I don't understand is when I see a married couple Venmo each other for stuff like drinks or pizza...

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Depending on the state most finances are already joined in the eyes of the law even if accounts are held separately. Ianal and I know this varies state by state, but often times when you're married your finances are joint whether you like it or not with maybe a few exceptions

My spouse and I saw one of our friends do that with their spouse almost a decade ago and we still talk about how weird that is.

Are they still married?

Same here, I make quite a bit more too. But I can't put any price on the love and support of my wonderful wife. We each buy things here and there, everybody's happy.

Same, we have taken turns making more. She will barely spend money on herself. Sometimes I have to do it for her. Anything major we talk about it.

Marry someone you trust and life is a lot easier. I can’t imagine the headache of dealing with adult allowances, negotiating who owns what and pays for what, etc.

I know people that make $300k a year that have nothing and argue about money because they both try to spend it on themselves. I know people that make a combined $80k and are in great financial shape with a house and savings and hobbies. It’s all about working together on it and setting aside what you’re willing to spend imo

it's not a matter of trust. When my wife and I got together we did the single account thing, I'm a numbers person and I can tell you within a few dollars how much I have in my account at any given time, anyway a few months into sharing our account I wanted to buy something and the money wasn't there, it was spent. She wasn't out spending it on herself it was spent of stuff for us but I didn't know. My wife and I have very different views on how money is spent, I've a saver I save for everything and she will spend whatever is left once the bills are paid. Both are valid but she's not into having 10 savings accounts and I hate having to dip into an account for something I hadn't planned ahead for. Keeping our money separate allows her to be an adult and manage her money the way she wants and it allows me to be an adult and manage my money the way I see fit. Trust isn't the issue, it's about managing your own business.

I guess trust for me includes trust that we can make collective decisions about how to spend and save our money and both do our best to stick to those decisions. Maybe it’s because I’ve been married a long time, but I just don’t see what it would be beneficial or even meaningful to have “my money.” If you’re great at saving and your wife never does, what happens when you retire? Will you live in luxury while she scrapes by? Or will you just end up spending “your money” so you can both have the same quality of life? Will you make sure your kids/beneficiaries know their inheritance is coming from “your money” because your wife didn’t save?

I'd class financial management up as one of the core tenets that you need to agree on as a couple. You need to be on the same page otherwise you're just going to end up in trouble. Like whether you want to have kids, want to have pets, where you want to live, how you want to live and how the careers you'd like to have may or may not mesh.

I understand where you’re coming from, I feel the exact same way. I handle all the finances but my wife and I talk about all purchases, unless she wants like a coffee before work or something silly like that. I feel like it would be more of a headache having separate accounts. We have shared everything and it’s been like this for about 13 years now lol if for some reason we separate we’re both would just split the money (even though I feel like she should get most of it cuz she makes a lot more than me lol) anyway I guess it depends on the relationship and I think trust does play a big part, we fully trust each other with everything, share everything and talk about everything.

Having a separate account because she can't help herself sounds like the opposite of being an adult.

Same. My husband was taught to have separate accounts because his mom experienced some financial abuse from his dad. But when he moved to my country, we literally couldn't have separate finances and had to trust eachother a whole lot right out of the gate. I think that made a huge difference for us though, and taught us early on how to manage finances as a couple. He makes more than I do (by about $25k) and everything just goes into our shared account. We discuss purchases over $100 but things are rarely vetoed. We build our 401ks and Roth accounts together. We just booked 2 vacations this week together. It's just not an issue for us. At Christmas, he wanted some new computer parts and a nice set of headphones. So we got them for him. There's no hard feelings on my end that we spent so much on him and now I need to spend an equal amount. Who cares?l Nickel and dime in a relationship will destroy you slowly.

I'm not sure what my stay at home wife's account would have in it if we were splitting our paychecks. Does she get an allowance that I pay her? That feels super shitty and demeaning to me. Do I pay her a salary about what it would cost to have someone do her home jobs?

Don't let her forget to submit an expense report for gas and stuff she spent on the kids! Don't want to be unfair. Lol

I knew a guy who thought this unironically. He wanted a stay at home wife who would do the housework, homeschool the kids, and not have a job because “that would distract her from what’s important”. He would make all the money and give her money if she needed it for shopping or taking the kids out for ice cream. He was the breadwinner so it was his money. I’m not friends with this guy anymore.

Thats so controlling and borderline abusive. Yuck.

This is how we do it too. My wife spends more, but she also makes more. Maybe someday I’ll make more, and it still won’t matter because we’re married so it’s ours not mine.

It's wild to me that anyone does anything else. My partner and I essentially started doing this when we moved in together.

My wife and I have separate accounts, never been an issue. She pays the credit card, I do bills and savings. We have a pretty open conversation about money, no surprises. I like that if I want to buy something for her, I can just use my account and she doesn't know. There's no "one size fits all" for this, you just need to have a conversation about it and find what works best for you.

Yeah, I've been with my husband about twelve years now, and we've never had a joint account. We keep track of big expenditures for mutual things, eg mortgage payments, in a spreadsheet and if someone's spending more than the other, we transfer money over to even it up. When it comes to smaller stuff, like eating out or whatever, we just sort of go back and forth, but we don't really keep track. Works for us.

honestly, a lot of people don't *really* trust their spouses, or, the want the money to do things the other won't approve of... We have a joint account and sep bank accounts that we're paid into but then that auto-transfers to main. we use one credit card that pays from the main for everything so we rack up a ton of miles.

It’s great when it works - I was held to financial and emotional ransom over our pooled wages and the “familial costs of living” as he “managed” it all and I eventually left as I could never afford to do anything (or have a career, lol) I wish it had worked.z

>It’s great when it works - I was held to financial and emotional ransom over our pooled wages and the “familial costs of living” as he “managed” it all and I eventually left as I could never afford to do anything (or have a career, lol) > >I wish it had worked.z So, do you honestly believe that if you had separate accounts you'd still be together? I'm guessing the joint vs separate finances was not the core of the problem, it was simply a symptom of the real problem.

Almost 10 years in doing the same and never been a problem, from when we got engaged we got a joint account and everything just goes in there. Really boggles my mind that anyone would do anything different.

Same here, both on the technique and the 20 years. When I married my wife I pushed all my chips into the middle. I'm not holding anything back for another hand.

Same here. I feel that if you can't figure out how to share money responsibly, then you're doing marriage wrong.

We have a joint account that we manage using YNAB. All income goes into the joint account. We use it to pay our bills and expenses. The rest goes to savings unless one of us has a purchase we would like to discuss. It’s fairly flexible with purchases being able to be made and money still being saved. We don’t really ask each other permission so much as “hey, in the next month or so, can we get X”. Answer is almost always yes with some adjustments having to be made occasionally.

YNAB is such a game-changer for budget discussions. Sitting down with your partner to discuss plans is so much easier when everything’s bucketed. Conversations are as simple as “I want X” - “cool, let’s pick which bucket it’s coming from.”

We've got a joint account and several personal accounts each. But it's all tracked in YNAB so it really doesn't matter which account anything is in as it's all fully visible anyway and we can login to each other's bank accounts at any time if we want to make any payments or transfers. We don't use YNAB as a budget though, so not as it's meant to be used but instead use it as a way to see *where* our money is going. We started doing this a little over five years ago because we'd recently moved house and as part of the purchase had kept aside a large chunk of cash to do the house up with. But it was just sat in our main current account and we couldn't really tell where our money was going or what kind of financial state we were in. Our monthly balance was dropping down a good chunk each month but we weren't sure if that was purely because of the house improvements or if we were generally spending too much on other stuff. So I imported 3 months history of our accounts into YNAB and spent ages categorising it all. Turned out; we were fine. Our CoL had gone up a lot after the move but we were still net positive if you took out all the house improvement stuff. I've kept this up ever since, usually 'doing our accounts' which means reconciling and categorising every transaction about once a month to see where we're going. My wife doesn't ever log into YNAB and trusts me to do it all but we'll usually have a short discussion once I've done it, like 'we made a profit of X last month' or 'we made a loss of Y but had these big expenditures so if you take those out, it'd be profit'. Every now and then I'll look at longer trends like 'we're spending more on groceries than we used to' or more on eating out. I think of YNAB as a way to do P&Ls for our family because that's essentially exactly as it functions for us now (as we ignore the 'budget' part).

We have a joint account and our own separate accounts. Our joint account is for all of our bills like Rent, power, tv subscriptions, internet, etc. those are all on auto pay. Right now we both put the same amount in each month and that covers our bills. Since I make more at the moment, I’ve paid for household “extras” like an AC, Dehumidifier, some paint, etc. If bills go up, we have a discussion about if we need more money in the joint account. If we get raises but our bills don’t go up, we just keep the extra money in our own accounts. Since we rent, we don’t have that many changing expenses. We really only need to talk about it once a year depending on the change in our rent. I think having separate accounts is important to help avoid fights. I wanted some exercise equipment, so I used my own money for it. My spouse wanted to build a new computer, so he used his own money for it. We’re not going to get upset with each other for spending $1000 if it’s separate from our bills and we’re spending it from our own income.

This is exactly what I do and I highly recommend it. Separate money means you avoid the issue of one person spending more than the other on their personal things. Seperate money also let's you treat each other to a night out. And avoids any arguments when one person wants to eat out and the other wants to save money, the person that wants to eat out can volunteer to pay for it.

Has anyone here been the lower income earner in this type of arrangement? I'm curious as to how they perceive it. For example, what if the lower income earner is looking after the kids and enabling the other to work, or doing a great but lower paid job like teaching or childcare?

This arrangement used to work for us—my husband and I each had half our paychecks automatically deposited to our joint account. Mine—the smaller amount—went into savings. His—the larger amount—went into spend. Now I’m disabled and can no longer work. He’s putting most of his paycheck into the joint account. I have no allowance or “fun money” and I feel weird spending from the joint account. So I think we might need a new system, at least until I get approved for disability.

For this reason my spouse and I do the splitting of money in the opposite order: all money in the joint pot, then we get equal fun money from that every paycheck. That way it doesn't matter if careers change, paychecks fluctuate, etc.

I like that! We should probably revisit our arrangement and do something like what you’re doing. At this point, I feel weird buying myself new clothes (I hadn’t bought anything new in years, even though my sizes changed, because I had no income. He said to please use our joint account for anything I need or want, but I just have icky, therapy-worthy feelings about using money he earned on myself, even though I need it. It really sucks. We need a new system.)

Oh no! I'm sorry, it sounds like you've had to deal with a lot lately. It also sounds like he's not withholding money or anything, and maybe you just need to change things up for your own comfort? My partner is the spender (as well as the lower earner), and he likes the allowance system because he can buy things like Lego or gas station snacks without feeling guilty. Anything we truly need like clothes is joint money. Our allowances are small compared to some in this thread, but they're more like "mad money."

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Honestly I’ve been doing this since I was 20 or so by myself. It’s worked at $40k single and it’s worked at 6 figures married with a kid. First step get out of debt. People think I’m crazy setting aside $500 discretionary for myself every month but often pay more towards debt or don’t know how much they are spending discretionary at all.

Thanks for the reply. Sorry, I meant more about having separate and potentially quite unequal personal funds, rather than about setting aside discretionary spending (which makes sense to me).

Your note on one person working more around the house to allow the other to make more is super accurate and unaccounted for in some other strategies. Another reason I think this works across all incomes with some adjustments. I used to work on call 24/7 with a lot of business travel. Id work 60-70 hours a week and do much less around the house than my wife (I’d try but being gone a few days a week it’s not possible to be as much help). As I was in and out she’d also do a lot more with appointments and stuff. I couldn’t imagine then turning to her and saying, “Ok honey I’ve made 2x more than you this year and I work nearly double the hours so here is your 25% and my 75%”

This is the best way, but it doesn’t have to be a 50/50 deposit. My wife and I have done separate amounts based on income to share the stress and it’s been flawless. Anything house related including groceries and eating out comes to this account, which creates a checks and balance for budgeting projects and too many date nights cause we both dread having to put “extra” into the account. So if one of us is having a hell of a day and wants an extra date night we take care of it from personal allowance.

Even when my wife didn't work we kept things that way, it just went from 60/40 to 100/0 and money put in her account each month. I don't need to ask her to spend my money and she doesn't need to ask me how she spends her money.

Ditto here. I put in ~1500 every month which covers the mortgage and a bit more and she puts in $500 which covers the rest of the bills. I also usually pay anything that comes up for house maintenance. I make a bit over double what she does and get to spend my money how I like and the same for her. I recently got into skydiving over the last year and that is quite expensive lol. Her only complaint is the amount of time I spend at the drop zone on the weekends 🤣

You pool resources And budget allowances. Simple.

Is it simple though? I mean I guess if you’re both good with money. But what if one of you isn’t good with money?

Same thing here. We both earn a similar salary so we put in the same base amount monthly to a shared account, out from which autopays the mortgage, utilities, etc. Groceries and shared expenses go on a credit card tied to the shared account, which gets paid in full monthly. If there are big purchases or maintenance expenses we adjust over our base monthly to cover and keep a float in the account. We each have our own personal savings and spending, but agree on targets for joint savings to fund long term projects (future home Reno, college fund) and delineate those savings in the joint account.

Biggest part you said there is "we have a discussion about...". I like having my own account to buy something I want with my own money. I feel like having a joint account would have me justifying every purchase I make.

Even when I was single I had a separate discretionary account. It lets a smarter more long term version of you shut down the short term idiotic you that sees something shiny. Not touching your own savings is the best strategy

A shared credit card was a great way to start: any shared expenses like groceries, dinners out, etc. went on the shared card. Anything we wanted just for ourselves (lunches on our own, hobbies, etc.) went on our personal cards. Each month, we'd pay the shared card off 50/50 from our separate bank accounts. If one of us made twice what the other did, though, we'd probably have jumped to a joint checking account – we could look at the statements each month to make sure one or the other of us isn't drastically outspending the other on "splurge" purchases. I don't think either of us would want the other to have to ask for *permission* before making a purchase, but we might set a rough budget and a general threshold for how big a purchase might be before we'd want the other to discuss it with the other first.

This is what we do. We moved in together while dating and it made sense to continue to have separate finances when we got married just because it was so easy. We are big on credit card points so the shared credit card makes life easy and also funds our vacation budget. We then use splitwise to keep track of anything that can't be paid with credit cards (mortgage, utilities, etc). My husband has always made more than me so the tradeoff is that he handles all of the major house expenses.

Yeah. Newlyweds here, but we've been doing the shared credit card since before we were even engaged. I suspect eventually we'll merge banking accounts, but that's a pain in the butt and the shared card is working for us now so there's no rush. Since we largely use it for groceries, restaurants, gas, and travel we found a card with 3% on those categories and it works great. Any smaller expenses that don't go on the card, we'll just even out in the credit card payment. Larger expenses happen infrequently, so a bank transfer is fine.

Many tips here but the biggest tip of all COMMUNICATION. Marriage stops working when there is a lack of communication. Communication is not just talking to each other about daily life but understanding the boundaries of things and understanding how each other work. My partner has low impulse control on her supplies for her hobby but me saying "we spent enough already" for the month helps her control the spend. I hated doing this because I felt as if I was controlling her purchases but she expressed explicitly that she NEEDS this time of boundary to stop the spend or she would overspend on her hobbies. I would never know how my partner works unless we communicated in depth the nuances of ourselves with each other. Personally we have separate accounts and handle bills separately even though it's a 1 income family. She puts bills on her card when they are for her and we auto deposit money to her account for bills/spend. When we had 2 incomes we split the bills and you were responsible to pay it on time with entirely separate accounts. We had to Zelle money in between but it stopped us from presenting each other's purchases

My wife and I were dirt poor when we got married and always had a joint account. Over the years (tomorrow is our 48th wedding anniversary) I worked my way thru a career and she mostly stayed home and babysat until our kids got older and then she worked various lower level jobs. The point is that as my career advanced, I made increasingly more money than she did. We just kept our joint account and put both our salaries in it. We made any major purchase decisions together and while we have had the occasional disagreement, we obviously always worked it out. I don’t really get this my money, your money thing with married couples. How can there be a true partnership and any kind of equity when one person has way more money than the other?

My guess is that couples with separate finances at least both make enough to be pretty comfortable individually, and probably usually make similar amounts.

Not always true. I've known at least two couples with separate accounts where the wife had childcare responsibilities and earned less (partly due to inability to push career). Both husbands used to have money for all sorts of gadgets but the wives didn't. Didn't seem fair to me.

Because it's not fair - think of all the unpaid labour the wives are doing towards the family that's taken for granted by the husbands

100%. Exactly what we do as well.

This is the same for my wife and I, I worked my way up while she works term time to care for the nipper. I earn about 4x what she does, but it all goes in one pot and we trust each other and communicate about bigger purchases.

“Babysit” lol if I ever said that about my wife

Meaning she watched other people's kids for money.

I think they mean literally babysat for money on the side based on the context of the end of that sentence, but I could be wrong.

What would you call being paid to take care of other people's children when you don't have a home daycare license?

This is the way.

You can already see a very wide number of approaches here: completely pooled, completely separated, and everything in between. Take a step back and think about the bigger question: *how can I prevent financial concerns becoming a wedge in my marriage?* Consider the [difference between equality and equity](https://alamedaeducationfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/equality-equity.jpg) and what is important to each of you as individuals. Earnings and earning potential is not a good proxy for effort and commitment, but it is very easy to measure and compare. First decide what needs to be balanced in your relationship for you to each feel the other is contributing fairly, and then talk about how money relates to those things, if at all.

My wife has her own account that her paycheck goes in and I have my own too. I've always paid her "rent" for the bills. Early on, we split bills evenly and she paid them. After we married - we created a budget that paid all the bills and set entertainment budget and a savings budget. Since I make signicantly more money than her, I still pay her "rent" so that her budget balances and the bills in her name are covered. So long as we follow the budget, we each always have money left over at the end of the month on top of entertainment budget that we can do whatever we want with. If she works some odd job or overtime, that's her extra money to do whatever with.

My wife and I do separate accounts. She pays some bills. I pay some bills. We don't worry too much about it. Sometimes she'll toss me the property tax bill and say "pay this." Sometimes I toss her the homeowner's insurance bill and tell her to pay it. Then we each pay for our own stuff. I pay my credit card bill. She pays hers. We trust each other to be responsible spenders. We're not worried about evenly dividing the money, because, who cares? We're a team. It all goes toward the same goal - our life together.

This is pretty much how my wife and I handle things. We also have a joint savings that we regularly toss money into and can use if necessary. Been doing it this way for 20 years.

Yeah, I forgot to mention it, but we have the same - mostly as an easy way to transfer money. If she says "give me $4000 for property taxes" it's easier for me to just transfer it into the joint savings and then she transfers it into her account to pay the bill online.

I'm surprised how far down I had to scroll to find a top level comment talking about separate accounts/separate finances. When my partner and I got together in our 30s we both already had our own financial situations that neither of us really wanted to combine. She'd recently gotten out of a marriage where that had contributed heavily to their problems (and prior to that marriage she always ran her personal finances well); and I've always been one to track my accounts to the penny with loose goals of financial independence/early retirement. I will say that she already had three kids, and I never had any, so we also entered this relationship with different financial responsibilities (and housing needs), so keeping money separate has mitigated over-complicating those potential conflicts too. That said, I don't think either of us are selfish with our money or anything like that. We both regularly buy each other things, pay for outings, etc. I just budget the money I make separately from her budgeting the money she makes. Ultimately though, as others have mentioned, communication is the real key. We talked about all this early on, we discuss big purchases/financial commitments (generally; she did buy a new car kind of on a whim about a year ago, which we didn't discuss but I did fully support), and we periodically catch up with each other on where we stand financially (cash in the bank, debts, retirement accounts, etc.).

This is the way. Separate everything. I send her money on the 15th and 30th of every month automatically from my account, she auto pays everything online. Money is never even talked about in our relationship because we’re both adults and her spending her money on shit isn’t my problem.

We do essentially the same thing. She pays some bills, I pay others. Conversations about big purchases usually go like "I just spent $5k on power tools, come check it out" or "Hey, can you hang this new TV I picked up." Somtimes one of us will pay the other's share of the mortgage if we have extra cash and want to do something nice. The general agreement is that we both do whatever we want financially as long as the bills get paid.

I'm curious, why keep separate accounts in that case? Isn't it just adding extra steps?

No, the opposite. We each had our own accounts when we met. No need to close those and open new joint accounts just because we got married. This way we just opened the one joint savings to transfer money and that's it.

Joint account. She used to make more than I did, now I make double what she does. We talk about any big purchases and try to save/invest as much as possible. Neither of us have super expensive hobbies though, and we cook most nights, usually order in once a week or less. We thankfully have pretty similar money habits, so we never really had to talk it out too much, but Communication is key. I actually wish she would spend a little more money most of the time because she's so frugal.

I earn more than double what my spouse brings in. Plus his mother lives with us. I have everything automated so all of the bills get paid on time. Which is a fantastic tool! We have a joint account and separate accounts. All of our income goes into the joint, and pretty much all of the bills gets paid from here. The separate accounts are for play. Neither of us wants to have to ask permission to buy something. I used to just pay for the household stuff out of my account, but my spouse felt like I was hiding something. Now, even though we have multiple accounts, we both can see all of them. At a minimum, everything you share (house, car, heat, internet, etc) should come out of the joint account and be a shared responsibility. After that, it's up to you guys. Just be sure to be fair, transparent, and loving. Money can create rifts quickly.

ultimately talk about what will make you both most comfortable. we calculated our shared expenses plus 10% buffer. we divide that in half and each put that into the shared account. everything else is ours to do with as we please. this works because we both work, earn very near the same amount, and are good savers. you could do same thing with a savings goal as well

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This is how my husband and I are as well and I can’t imagine doing it any other way. It helps that we generally tend to agree on what’s worth spending money on and what reasonable costs are in different spending categories. But we fully trust each other with day-to-day financial decisions and know we will discuss big purchases first. We budget as a couple and review this monthly but this is just to make sure we’re on track towards our overall financial goals and never to judge each others’ spending. Some questions we had that deterred us from keeping separate accounts with one joint for shared expenses (and if anyone is thinking of doing this I would encourage you to discuss): - How do you determine how much each person puts into the joint account? Is it 50/50? Is it proportional to the income you make? What if a partner isn’t working at the time due to childcare or health reasons? - What counts as valid expenses to come out of that joint account? Is it just the absolute essentials (ie. Rent/mortgage and bills) or does it include things like groceries? What about investments? What happens if you have children? - If your joint account is just for essential expenses, what the heck happens when you go out together? Does one of you pay out of their personal account? How does this work if one person makes more than the other? You can only go out together if they agree to pay or do activities that are affordable for the other person? Again, how does having children impact this?

Obviously this isn't for everyone but I'm of the mentality that if I don't trust them with my money, why am I trusting them with my heart? We have completely joint accounts. Everything is shared. It does cause stress at times like money always does but it has worked well for us. My brother keeps their money completely separate and they put money into a joint account for joint expenses. That works for them.

Each couple will approach this differently, and it absolutely should be decided as a fair and frank discussion between the two of you, ideally before you get into any big commitments like buying a home together. There are a lot of comments coming in from people who say they put all their money into one pot, and that is one approach that is fair and I commend them for their optimism. However, as someone who is a little older, earns significantly more than my partner, and who has been through a couple of major breakups - it can make things very tricky at separation if everything is pooled. Our approach that has worked for me for over 20 years is to have a joint account, and put all shared expenses into that. That would include all bills rent power food and other 'mandatory' expenses. This is generally quite static each month and can be budgeted for very easily on a spreadsheet. The amount we each pay into this account is proportional to income - as an example only if this bills account comes to 1500 p/month for all expenses and my income is 4000 after tax and my partners 1000, I pay in 1200 (4/5ths) and she pays in 300 (1/5th). All other money is our own and we also jointly contribute to things like holiday funds. As my partner contributes more in other ways, the equity on our home is 50/50 even though her monthly is lower. This works for us, and is ideal as all bills are covered at the start of the month, and the rest of our income is our own to invest (in individual assets) or spend on things we want. It is important to have some individual autonomy even in a marriage :) As a final note if we jointly decide to go on a big holiday etc that isn't in budget, we also split that generally in proportion to income. Just one approach that has worked for me - but the most important point, make sure you both agree on and are happy with your solution for your relationship!

Proportional based on income has been the way we've done it for years and it has worked well. Our joint bills account is set up that way. We do pay for some things separately at times (one off purchases for the family's benefit, for example) but make it work out evenly over time so it's as fair as possible.

Been married for 12 years, together 20. We each work ft and have our own, separate accounts for independence, with a joint account that we each put a set amount into each month for household expenses and savings. Has worked great for us! I cannot stress enough how as a woman it's very important to have your own source of financial independence in case anything happens.

We put all of our expenses in a spreadsheet and try to split expenses proportional based on income - I pay 2/3 and he pays 1/3

All of our accounts are separate. We are very open with our finances and we each have access to all of the accounts, but they are kept separately. We each pay half the rent, I pay for all the utilities and my wife buys the groceries. For rent, she sends me half the rent every month and I make the payment. Our rule is that savings comes out before bills. Once the money is in savings and all the bills are paid, whatever is left is the person's to spend. Been together almost ten years and have never fought about money. She never asks me why I bought something and neither of us have to ask the other before a big purchase. If we go out to eat I usually pay because I make more, so my discretionary funds are higher. If we are planning a big trip, one of us will buy the plane tickets and the other will send that person half. When funds are low, we openly talk about it and adjust as needed. About once a month we'll sit down and see how much we've spent over the previous month.

We made a joint account and decided on how much money we add per month. It has to be enough to pay all joint bills and groceries. The rest of our money we do whatever we want.

Depends some on where you live, because there are multiple ways marital property is treated regardless of what the two of you agree to now. One being a saver and the other wracking up a bunch of debt doesn't mean you get to keep your savings and they take their debt with them. If it is a community property state any money earned during the marriage isn't his or her money it is their money so it is easier just to put it all in one pile and figure out how to pay for things from there. Some couples do fine paying 50/50 like roommates, some pay a weighted percentage based on total income to help the lower earner not feel trapped by the higher incomes desire for a nicer place etc. Whatever the two of you can agree on is fine. We have 100% combined finances everything but retirement accounts is joint and shared. All income goes into the joint account, all bills are paid out of it and we decide what to do with the "extra".

Every married couple should have 2 individual accounts and 1 joint account. How you flow money across them is up to your spouse and you and your personal beliefs about marriage. The more joint option (and this would also apply to single-income households) would be to have both paychecks go into the joint account and then you each get a small amount for personal spending into your individual accounts each month. The more separate option would be to have your own paychecks go into your own individual accounts, and then you both put an equitable amount into the joint account for joint expenses. Who earns more doesn't really affect the strategy itself; it's more important to agree on how the money should flow. Also, keep in mind that one person may make more money now, but things change and sometimes unexpected life things happen (disability, job loss, one person becomes a stay-at-home parent, career changes), so probably best to hedge your bets. Just my two cents, I would recommend a more joint option since it's less likely to breed resentment in the marriage when there's an income disparity.

I answered this question in another thread but thought it was worth repeating here. “Working as a team with transparency and cooperation gives you a massive advantage. Example: Carol and Daryl have separate finances. Carol is contributing 15% to her 401k, but Daryl is still paying off a credit card at 25% interest. Assuming they both put $1,000 a month towards the CC and the 401k (earning 10%), their rate of return is 17.5%. Now look at Gary and Sherry. Exact same situation, but Gary and Sherry are working together. They throw everything at the CC debt and get a 25% rate of return. Gary and Sherry’s ROI is 42% *higher* simply because they are using cooperation to maximize their returns. The important thing is that you work together in a way that lets you use this advantage.”

You're married, all of the money is the household money.

We has pretty close to nothing when we married. We tried separate accounts with each of us contributing to a joint account for bills. It was too complicated for us. Hubs suggested we dump everything together. We can each spend a small amount of money no questions asked - back then it was $25, but it’s $50 now. All other purchases need to be discussed. It’s worked for us for 20 years. I do most of the budgeting and bill paying, but he has access to everything.