What are you and FI/DH doing about your finances?

[BBtoB]

I was surprised I didn't see a thread on this topic...but could have been a user error.

 

If you are already married, did you and DH combine your finances in a joint account? Or keep them separate?

 

If engaged, what are your plans once you are married or currently if already living together?

 

I would love to hear your feedback on your stance and what most people are doing these days.

 

We will be combining our incomes. Still talking this one over.It is such a pain transfering money back and forth. I will be so excited to get our joint account so I don't have to transfer money all the time.

[itsfinallyhere]

We have a household account (joint account), that we use for almost everything. But I did keep a separate account for emergencies. He knows it is there and that every now and then I am making a deposit. I use thisfor extras. When its somehting for him and I don't want him to know the exact cost. I have also used this money for a vacation for us. It provides us with a tiny bit of cushioning. And also helps with the unexpected expenses.

[Jamaica0619]

We have both a joint account and separarte accounts. Bills are divided up and paid out of our separate accounts. But we have the joint account for major household purchases and for the wedding planning, etc. We both contribute to the joint account. We have been doing this for 9 years, so we really don't plan on changing our approach - it works for us.

[Ana]

my FI and I kept our finances separate for the majority of our relationship. We opened a joint account for gifts for the wedding, and then slowly we started using it for things like buying our first car etc... Now, a month after the wedding we are starting to combine our finances as well. We are consolidating everything, and hopefully by the end of this week we can officially close our separate accounts We have two accounts that are joined, one for savings and one for our expenses, and we also are closing down his credit card and we ordered a card linked to mine, so we will only have one credit card account as well.

[boscobel]

Before we were married, we created a joint account for checking and savings that we both contributed to monthly, but we retained our own accounts for bills and spending money. We were just discussing the other day that there is no need for all these different accounts, (I have 3 bank accounts, he has 2) so we will be combining more of our money, we just haven't done it yet.

[Alyssa]

We have 100% our finances combined - we combined everything about 3 years into our relationship, before we were even engaged. we used to have 2 seperate checking accounts for misc. spending and gifts for eachother but we haven't been using them at all.

[Banana11]

Our finances are completely combined. We both have individual accounts with like $20 in each. Probably time to close them!

[foxytv]

We have separate accounts. I pay the utilities and DH pays the mortgage, and basically everything else.

 

I am still tryng to pay off old debt and my student loans - and make significantly less money than DH. I wish that we at least had one joint account, especially since I struggle to make ends meet some months, since I am 100% commission ... but so far, no dice. DH pays for everything when we go out/go on trips/ etc (I'll pick up the check for drinks/dinner/etc whenever I can) ... so I guess it does work out, though.

 

I do have a savings account through a credit union that I've had since I was little - and DH is going to start givin me money to deposit into that account to use for vacations etc.

[sunset78]

We have one joint account and our own accounts as well. The joint account is used to pay the mortgage, truck payments, and whatever other bills we share together.

[GracieBebe]

We have been living together over 4 years and so when we moved in together, we created a joint account together while still keeping our separate accounts. We pay all of our bills and living expenses out of our joint account and put about $100 each into our personal accounts every paycheck (so about twice a month) so that if we buy each other anniversary gifts or birthday gifts or xmas gifts, we have our own accounts to use so that the other doesn't know how much we spent on each other. We also buy our own friends' gifts (those that are not mutual friends) out of our personal accounts.

 

We are paying for the wedding by credit cards so that we can accrue the points and then we use the joint account to pay off the credit cards.

 

FH handles all the bills and expenses because I suck at keeping track of those things. He's automated practically all of our bills so that he doesn't have to think about it. If anything were to happen to either of us (God forbid), our bills will still be paid as long as there's money in the account.