[raydev]

First, I'll share my experience.

My wife and I have one bank account, and 2 credit cards each under our name to ensure credit score activity happens. I was a secondary on her credit card for years assuming it was building my credit too, but turns out I wasn't building a credit score at all.

We have one bank account. When we started she was already out of university, and she was the primary income while I went to school, then I graduated and lucked into a high-paying software engineering career, and we had a kid, and she effectively stopped working, only taking small part time jobs.

We've always had one bank account. I was always the big spender, so any disagreements have been about my purchases, especially in my early career when I wasn't making much. Now I make so much money that it's never an issue.

We've been together for nearly 20 years. I know her habits, she knows mine, the only time we have discussions about finances is when one of us inevitably forgets to pay some outstanding bill.

> she was worried that I was taking advantage of the situation

This seems like a reasonable attitude at the beginning, maybe even the first couple years of your marriage. Perhaps this is too harsh, but IMO it's completely inappropriate to feel this way or have concerns like this 12 years in.

[scarface74]

My wife and I could never do the one bank account. The coordination would take too much mental energy. We are both on all of our accounts. But we spend out of our own accounts.

[raydev]

What are you coordinating?

[scarface74]

When I look at “my” checking account and see $300 in my account. I know I can spend $300 without over drafting. If we are both spending out of the same account, we would have to constantly be coordinating what we have to spend.

I said in another comment that I “retired” my wife when I got my job at a BigTech. I have “her” allowance direct deposited in “her” account. She can spend it however she wants to and she knows what she has until the next pay period. It’s the same with “my” account.

We talk about what’s going on for the next two weeks. If she has something she needs/wants to do that she can’t from “her” account. I transfer money to her after we discuss it.

We share a Google sheet with the budget so she knows what’s going on.

On that sheet I also have a column that at the top is a real time calculation of how much my next RSU grant is going to be based on the current stock price * the number of shares * (1 - tax rate). We then subtract what we want to do out of that.