[whateveracct]

All money in joint accounts.

We are always each other's beneficiary.

I make enough that we don't have to think about small-medium purchases too much.

We are frugal in the big areas (e.g. 16yo Honda Civic).

But we do periodic spending temperature checks and as we have gotten older, we have become more mindful of that. Leisure spending over like a hundred or so we always tell each other about it beforehand and try to sleep on it.

I have a spreadsheet where I track weekly account balances + all activity on the main checking account (we rarely pay directly from it, so it's mostly bulk payments for credit cards or bills. Useful for predicting future balances so we can know how much to safely transfer to savings/investments.) On the activity sheet, I annotate each credit card statement with anything "exceptional" or above $250 or so.

[ryandrake]

Same here, except I use Quicken instead of a spreadsheet. The only accounts we keep separate are the ones where you literally cannot have a joint account, like IRAs. Everything else is joint--it simplifies so much. We don't have to worry about those "I can afford this, but you can only afford that, what do we do?" conversations. One joint checking account with a credit union that has physical branches, for cash in/out, one joint checking account with Schwab for the "normal" banking. We don't have a traditional savings account anymore--I just buy short term treasuries now which are currently paying over 5%. Single joint credit card, and we just make sure we have enough in the checking every month to pay it off, and that's it. Pretty simple setup.

[JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B]

Unless one is or becomes not frugal at all and that can create problems. I have a joint account because my wife doesn’t work, but it would be different if she had a job.

[Hayvok]

This is the way.