[telman17]

I am currently the main provider and my wife works part time while in school. All money is our money no matter who earned it. It’s never been a point of debate or emotions other than “oh we got more money this month, cool!” in the event of a bonus or extra income. We have a budget and try to stick to it and have occasional vacations or upgrade something in the house. When it comes to finances we are a single unit and we will remain that once she earns a full time salary as well.

If I get a big raise or promotion my wife is excited not jealous and I have never felt like she was using “my” money.

[downut]

42 years in and it is still one pot of money. My wife makes the money now, and has for 15 years. But we have swapped a half dozen times over the years. For instance when the child was born and she took 3 years off, or I got a relocation and she took a few years off. I can cook and clean and do all the work around the house and whatever meta overhead needs to be done, so it has worked out fine.

Right now she is sick of her job, and FINALLY, I have got a FAANG free idea that I feel confident about launching as a business. Oh christ have they crowded out so many things. As soon as this idea is break-even, with upward trajectory, she's quitting and becoming the support person. Hard agree from me.

Everybody we have ever known over those 42 years who partitioned the pot: divorce. It's just money. Why would you do that? Why is money more important than your spouse?

(I'm replying in complete agreement, if it's not clear.)

[citizenpaul]

I think you are understating the value of having a similar mindset. If I gave my SO full access to my money we would be broke in a week. She is utterly incapable of controlling her spending. Oh that $6000 couch we bought two years ago got a scuff so I got a new one. Its cool they gave me a $500 credit on the $8000 couch I replaced it with so it was basically free... Long term planning is not even possible for her, she spends ever dime she makes. Every lump of money has a list of earmarks that are already spent before she gets it saved.

I guess my point is perhaps it is less the separate bank accounts and more the incompatible mindsets that lead to the divorce.

[tstrimple]

I am the sole income earner in our household, but my wife and I have separate checking accounts. It’s not a matter of whether it’s my money or hers, but just a convenient way to isolate spending to reduce lines of communication. Early in my career I wasn’t earning a lot, and having to coordinate spending around a shared account led to more than one overdraft charge. Yes, this could be solved with careful communication and planning but that’s overhead we didn’t need or want to deal with for day to day spending. Larger purchases we have to coordinate on, but the communication is important there and less so on whether me splurging on a nice lunch with friends is going to impact her paying for school clothes.

Technically both accounts are joint accounts so it’s definitely not about hiding purchases or income. It’s just a logical partition around our daily spending habits.

We have been married for 16 years and together for 23. We don’t ever fight about money.

[jotato]

We do the same thing. We have a main account for bills and any essential items. Then we each have an account (still joint, but separate) and we put money in both every pay. Think of it as an allowance :)

I don't care what she spends hers on, and she no longer comments when I buy a new tool. Win/win/win

[futureshock]

I am bristling a bit at the suggestion that split finances lead to divorce. I honestly don’t think it changes anything fundamental. You either agree on your priorities and approach to life and finances, and therefore spend your money in a roughly compatible way automatically, or you don’t. Keeping money in one pot does not automatically align or keep you aligned. It’s either a problem or it’s not. Doesn’t matter where you put it.

In my relationship, we avoid force or ways to control the other person. It’s a voluntary relationship. Love is the glue, not a shared bank account or financial dependence.

[ericmay]

I bet split finances is a risk factor leading toward a divorce though. This is probably a higher risk factor if your incomes significantly diverge. If one spouse is making 2.5x the other one and they’re splitting their budget (if they budget… lack of one is probably another risk factor) like college roommates that screams “problem” to me. One spouse is basically living a whole different life. It just isn’t going to work most of the time.

[schwartzworld]

Having split finances doesn't necessarily mean going Dutch on everything. When my wife made more than me, she carried more of the bills. Now that I earn more, I carry a bigger percentage of the necessities. We're still a team, but we have our own bank accounts.

[ericmay]

I interpreted split finances as each person pays "their half". If your spouse who presumably makes more than you (not you specifically) pays a lot more and backstops purchases, having your own bank accounts is more of a habit than a practical necessity right? We used to have our own bank accounts too, but then I or my wife would transfer money to one another and we eventually just asked "what's the point of that?" if no matter what happens we're sharing our expenses... Obviously that's what works for us and doesn't apply to everyone, but just wanted to shed some context on what I thought split finances meant.

[dougmwne]

Half is basically impossible. That’s not what people mean at all when they say split finances. It means that people retain their own personal money in some form instead of it fully being community property. I would consider having a joint account that’s only used for regular expenses to also be split finances if people have their own savings and investments.

The ratio of the split floats around for us, usually depending on income and desire to pay. The important part is that my money is mine and in my name. If I want to spend it on caviar or video games, good for me. If he wants to spend his on a new car, cool. If he wants money for that car he knows he can ask and probably get it, but then I get an opinion too.

[em-bee]

exactly this.

we didn't create a joint account because we never even bothered to think about it. it would have just been an extra hassle without any practical benefit. things were paid by whoever was doing the payment. if one account was running low but a payment from that account needed to be made, money was moved.

more of a concern was that i was used to meticulously tracking my expenses, while my wife hated the idea. so we didn't do it as a family, and only did rough budget calculations to see if we spent more than we earned as a compromise.

[royaltjames]

Split finances leading to divorce sounds more like a symptom of incompatibility rather than causation.

Staggering that I have newlywed friends who still haven't - even after 4 years - decided on kids or not, finances, everything big. AND NOW WE WAIT...

[readthenotes1]

We split the money because my now ex would have squandered it all otherwise

[downut]

Exactly: partition => divorce. The arrow symbol '=>' is not causal; the partition did not cause the divorce, but where there was a partition, the divorce, in our experience, inevitably happened.

I don't even want to elevate our lengthy relationship as something superior. Hardly anyone, including us, started out in their teens understanding what makes a good relationship. We probably stumbled into the single pot model because each of us had so little, then.

[tonyarkles]

We may be the exception, although it’s only been 13 years so far. Her and I didn’t ever combine our finances other than to open a joint savings account, so it’s never been a discussion of “we need to partition our finances”, it’s just never been a discussion of “we need to collapse our finances into a single pot”.

We do have a significant income disparity (on our taxes I believe it was about 3:1 for me this year), and navigate it mostly by just having an asymmetric set of financial responsibilities. We’re both responsible for our own individual expenses (e.g. cell phone bill, car insurance, credit card debt). She covers the mortgage for our modest house, I cover pretty much everything else (house and cabin insurance, property tax, car insurance for our shared POS construction-hauler van, natural gas, electricity, water/sewer, charitable donations, etc). I know what the mortgage costs, she probably doesn’t know exactly what most of the stuff I pay for costs but I’d be open with her if she was curious.

After all of the expenses are covered, we’re pretty much free to do what we want with what’s left over without consulting with the other person. We’re both also, I guess, sufficiently responsible that it’s a rare situation to run low. We’ve had a few unexpected expenses over the years that left the joint account in a bit of an ugly place but refilled it over the next few months and lived a little lean to make sure the emergency fund was there.

For COVID, her monthly income was reduced to almost zero. We’re in Canada, so she had CERB ($2k monthly). I topped up the joint account and told her she was welcome to take what she needed. She did transfer maybe $1k a few times to cover a few things, but mostly was self sufficient.

I dunno! Maybe it’s not a situation for everyone but it’s been super smooth. When we first started dating and moved in together, I was a grad student with a paltry scholarship, but our expenses were quite low as well. She got by and covered a few more things than I did, and now it’s going the opposite way and there’s no resentment or anything as far as I can tell. We’re both pretty good about sharing when we’re feeling something’s out of balance, so I suspect I’d know about it if she didn’t feel like I was pulling my weight.

[scarface74]

My parents are 78 and 80 years old. They have been married 53 years and my dad took my mom to his high school prom. They retired at 55 and 57. They have always had separate accounts and coordinated spending. It’s not because of lack of trust. They’ve been on the same page financially since day one. Neither of them had anything but their own cars when they first got married.

[Kon-Peki]

My parents celebrate 50 in a few months. Having separate accounts is a major factor in them staying together. But! It was horrible growing up in such a family situation. I hated it.

[scarface74]

It is about coordination. When you have two people constantly withdrawing from the same account - especially before the days when you could just look at your account online - it’s easy to overdraw. You know exactly what’s in your account when you’re the only person withdrawing from it.

Especially with my dad doing shift work where he was working different hours every week

[silisili]

Add me as a data point. Wife kept overdrawing account, split finances, divorce. All within like 3 years.

[professoretc]

That's the missing ingredient that can make merged finances work: both partners have to have the same respect for money and not spending it unnecessarily. My wife grew up in a wealthy household where the attitude was something like "Who cares if you break/lose it, you can always buy a new one/pay someone to fix it." Whereas my family was fairly frugal, always tried to make do with what we had before buying anything, etc. This has caused some friction since she's been staying home while I've been working.

[telman17]

Congrats on 42 years! I look forward to being able to say the same.

[ryandrake]

That's the simplest way.

Honestly the whole "my money, your money" thing, with separate accounts, and you pay for this, and I pay for that, and oh i can't buy groceries with your money and vice versa, it just seems so... unnecessarily exhausting. When we got married, that's basically entering into an agreement that says we're one entity. So we just treat everything we own as owning it together. If we were ever to divorce, the State of California would treat everything we own as owning it together, so why complicate things with three bank accounts and negotiating and borrowing and who pays for what?

And before you say, oh that's easy if you make equal salaries, ours is a single income household, and it still works fine.

[scarface74]

I’ve been married for 10 years we manage our separate accounts. But they are all joint accounts. She has “her” bills and I have “my” bills. Those are just bills we take responsibility for.

When she was working, I transferred money to “her” account when needed to pay “her” bills. We also have a separate account for “household” spending like groceries. I deposited money into that account when I got paid. But she manages it.

If she wants me to pick up groceries out of the account. She would give me a list and either she or I would transfer the money to “my” account.

[capableweb]

Instead of transferring money back and forward, why not have one account that is "our" money that both of you spend from?

[scarface74]

That defeats the whole purpose of separate accounts. I know exactly how much I can spend at any given time just by looking at my account. It’s the lack of needing to coordinate anything. I know that the only way that money will leave that account is if I spend it. We see each other’s accounts so it isn’t secret.

[kyawzazaw]

Doesn't a credit card with authorized users do exactly this?

[scarface74]

Then it’s the issue of overcharging. You know when your checking account is $0 that you can’t spend. Besides, many bills can’t be paid with credit cards.

[countfalafel]

This seems like the healthiest approach I've seen so far in the thread. Honestly surprised hearing about managing incentives, and accounting for this and that. My wife and I also just have one big pot of money. We budget and spend from shared accounts and financial services. We talk through major financial moves (investments/purchases) before either executes. I cannot imagine having my life this intimately entwined with someone else, but then carving out our finances as something to keep separate and negotiate over.

[willio58]

Love this in concept, but life turns out to be complicated over the long term. It's easy to say it's "our" money when you both agree on the same goals and life trajectory, but people have a propensity for change. In 10 years, what if your life goals start diverging? Will it still be "our" money?

This isn't a personal question for you, but more something to consider even for myself. I love simplicity and I love trust. But through the years I've experienced relationships that transform from pure love and admiration to pure confusion and being on completely different pages. This may be because I'm young, and maybe relationships become more straightforward later in life. But something tells me people never become less complicated, maybe they just become more complacent.

That all being said, I recognize that sometimes overthinking or planning for the worst can be a form of self-sabotage. By you trusting your partner with the things most important to you, including money, you are creating a stronger bond by laying it all out on the table and working as a single unit towards your life goals.

[tremon]

To me it doesn't look like you're describing money problems specifically, but marriage problems in general. If you and your partner no longer agree on the same goals and life trajectory, it's time to re-evaluate the relationship. When you start squabbling over details such as who owns what or who earns what, that's probably a symptom that there's deeper issues at play.

That's not to say that every re-evaluation should lead to a breakup. But I think not acknowledging that drift and fighting over the symptoms probably leads to worse outcomes than openly addressing the bigger issue.

[countfalafel]

Consider that even if a married couple maintain strictly separate accounts, negotiate with one another about how much of each partners' money should be spent on this or that expenditure, and live separate financial lives, in a lot of places it's still all marital property. So in the event of the (very real and frequent) diverging life goals you raise, all the hardball they played with each other doesn't even matter. I don't have the password to your bank account where you keep "your" cash, but just wait until I call my lawyer to claw back my half of our marital property!

[Youden]

> But through the years I've experienced relationships that transform from pure love and admiration to pure confusion and being on completely different pages. This may be because I'm young, and maybe relationships become more straightforward later in life. But something tells me people never become less complicated, maybe they just become more complacent.

I know everybody is different but the key for my relationship with my wife has been open communication. There's a clear pattern for us: when we don't talk about a problem, we end up getting upset with each other, but when we do talk about the problem, we come to an understanding and everything is fine.

Another key is that we love each other and if we disagree on something, we're both willing to find compromise.

There are a few big issues where a compromise might not be viable, like having kids or where to live (we're from two very distant countries), but we made sure we agreed on those pretty early on.

My point here is that I don't think age is the solution. Relationships are work. It can't all just be fun and games, you need to talk each other about stuff, build up trust that doing so is safe and be willing to compromise for each other. This is work and without it, the relationship might very well fall apart.

[0xbadc0de5]

We're also one pot. Similar situation to the OP - I'm making what most would consider a very respectable income yet my wife still earns 2x my total comp (she didn't get the memo about the glass ceiling either). Although I've had previous windfalls that level the field a bit. Jealousy and territorial attitudes have never entered our minds. We're a team and support each other - my success is her success and vice-versa. We have the same financial priorities and similar spending habits - we live well within our means and consult each other on large purchases. There is no 'my money', there is only 'our money.'

[andrewl-hn]

Similar situation in our household. The only potential issue that could have come up is if one of us would have to relocate due to a potential career move and the other would have to follow and potentially hurt their own career. But due to the rise of remote work in recent years I doubt this would ever come up.

[KingOfCoders]

15 years with one pot of money. I've earned much more when I was an executive and my wife was working in PR, then she founded a startup and sold it to a competitor, so she earned a lot more, now I'm a CTO coach and she writes books, so I earn more. I struggled the first two weeks with the decision because before I could do whatever I wanted with my money, but never regretted it, very happy, never was an issue since.

When we go to diner with friends, who have a discussion who is paying, I always feel glad we don't have that.

[EtienneK]

Yup, same here. Pool all your money and don’t care who it came from.

[bradknowles]

I met the woman who is now my wife back when I was working at AOL in the mid-90s. She was working as a lawyer at the Securities and Exchange Commission. One year I got a big payout from cashing in stock options, and that ended up going to pay off her student loans. But except for that year, she has always made more money than I have -- for most of that time, if you compare her worst year against my best one, she still made like 3x what I made.

We have one main account we both use, and we make sure it's always got enough money in it that we don't have to worry about accidentally bouncing a check. We have set limits on how much either of us can spend without talking to the other person. And we don't really fight over money.

[KronisLV]

> I am currently the main provider and my wife works part time while in school. All money is our money no matter who earned it. It’s never been a point of debate or emotions other than “oh we got more money this month, cool!” in the event of a bonus or extra income.

This probably works nicely if you find the right person - someone who has both spending habits that are reasonably similar to yours and when the relationship itself is stable.

But what about situations where:

  - one of the people is more frugal than the other, quite possibly with the other person spending money lavishly on wants, not needs?
  - the relationship may fall apart (breaking up or divorce), either due to different personalities, life circumstances or other factors?

Personally I think that joint finances are rather risky in all but the more stable and long term relationships.

[aprdm]

What difference would it make in case of a divorce? hint: None

And about the first one.. I don't see how people could decide to have a life together with that sort of difference. IMO seems pretty hard to be aligned on world views when someone is more frugal and the others love fancy stuff.

[KronisLV]

> What difference would it make in case of a divorce? hint: None

Depends on the country and local laws, I'd wager. Regardless, it's probably a good idea especially before a marriage has happened, though lots of people rush into getting married nowadays.

> I don't see how people could decide to have a life together with that sort of difference.

The fact of the matter is that some things can reveal themselves later in the relationship and having joined finances too quickly is probably a mistake. The hard part is that you can't really gauge when you have the other person figured out, e.g. the whole "rose tinted glasses" period that may drag on long into the relationship.

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

My wife is my wife and every dollar I earn is 50% hers (same the other way).

If divorce has to come my way, reality is we always lived with the assumption that everything is split by 50%.

We talk to each other when spending money on lavish things,which is actually a good sanity check

[XorNot]

This is what we do too. Once we bought a house and functionally drained our bank accounts we took that as the moment to open all new joint accounts to make tracking our income and spending easier and make the common pool explicit.

[giaour]

How does this work for "specialty" savings accounts like 401Ks and HSAs (which are typically set up for an individual by their employer)? Does each one of you list the other as the sole beneficiary of each account, or have you been able to make those joint accounts as well?

[aprdm]

Yeah similar situation here... it was just never an issue or a conversation really.

[giantg2]

That system really only works well if you have similar views and habits related to how the money is spent. Or if you have so much that inefficient spending isn't a concern.

[wkdneidbwf]

this is the way. a couple is a team, not a contest.