My husband and I have joint accounts. For one thing, it’s less to keep up with. (Even if you have a separate account, you still need some level of accessibility in case of an emergency with your partner.)

For us, the biggest reason to have a joint account is due to the fact that my husband is terrible with money. The month before we were married, he had 4 bounced checks. :O

I decided at that moment that I needed to help him get organized. So while doing that, he made the comment that I should just “do the finances”. 5 years in and I’m still doing them on a day to day basis. Altho he knows what is going on. I show him how the money was spent that week.

His father is very sneaky with money, and would never tell his wife what he had where (usually had a few hundred dollars in his wallet, but admitted to his wife he only had $50). In the past, any time my husband would ask about our checking account, his father would belittle him saying that it was like he was asking for permission. The fact of the matter is, we focused very much on paying our bills each month, and had very little left over at the end of the month, but his dad kept getting their lights cut off, and cars repossessed. So the reason for Kalvin asking is because he had been kept in the loop all month knowing that money was tight for bills, and when time came for a purchase, to reaffirm the fact that we did or did not have the money, he asked me. His dad never got that. It’s about communication (something they didn’t have a lot of).

If the money is there, he spends it. If not, he doesn’t.

We aren’t the type of people to say – “You spent X amount, now I get to spend X amount too.” We just get what we need/want, when we can.

And finally, as mentioned before, in case of an emergency, it just makes it easier so that the other person already has access to the accounts.

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My girlfriend and I have lived together for the past few years. So while we are not married, it practically works out the same.

We each cover our share of expenses and bills. We use a shared credit card to pay for things that we do together or things that we both benefit from. We also have a joint savings account we use occasionally.

However, we both have separate financial systems. We both maintain separate balance sheets with our individual deposit accounts, credit cards, 401ks, etc.

This system allows us to be individually responsible while at the same time mutually responsible. I can save for my own hobbies and goals while at the same time we can save together for our mutual goals. We can track our individual expenses while monitoring our shared expenses with the joint credit card. This helps each of us be financially responsible. We both update our own weekly balance sheet to track our financial progress, and we prorate the shared accounts (50% each) on our balance sheets.

The system has worked great for the past few years.

My wife and I have what I would seperajoint accounts. We both have our own checking account used for spending our BLOW money.

We have a main joint account which is used to pay all of our bills, except 1, and funds our savings accounts. The separate accounts are still joint accounts we both have access to them and they are OUR accounts it is just a way of separating out our discretionary spending. I think you should do whatever you think is going to work for your situation. I think at the least ALL bills should be paid jointly. There really shouldn’t be a yours and hers when it comes to the bills. Once you are married they are both of your problems.

The Wife and I have two separate checking accounts which receive our paychecks. Then we each put into a joint checking account the necessary amount to pay joint bills. I even made a picture of it for The Wife!

http://www.myjourneytomillions.com/articles/the-wife-and-i-finally-implement-a-plan/

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I have no real views.

I love your picture at the end tho!

Jetson’s =D

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I see the joint account idea as kind of a throw back to the days when the husband brought home all the money. With only one source of income, there wasn’t much reason to have multiple accounts.

Today, there’s more room for… angst. You’ve got two people who are both working but chances are their earnings aren’t identical. The “whose money goes for what?” and “should we contribute equal amounts?” questions are almost set up to cause squabbles.

I’m not a huge Suze Orman fan, but I do agree with her advice when it comes to bank accounts. Separate accounts for each person and a joint account for household expenses with equal percentages (not equal amounts) going into the household one.

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Separate all they way! My wife and I have separate accounts and love it. We get along much better because we don’t fight a bout money. We each contribute evenly to a joint checking account that pays all of our mutual bills like mortgage and utilities.
Check out the link above for a more detailed explaination.

-Dan Malone-

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