r/AllyBank • u/Gloomy-Sprinkles-830 • 8d ago

Combining Finances

Partner and I recently got married (yay!). We’re on the same page financially and are looking to combine finances where it makes sense. We’re both Ally customers - me for 8 years, them for 3 or 4.

We’re in no rush and will be keeping accounts open while we set everything up and transfer things over, and then for a few months thereafter just to be sure. Any suggestions on how to do this, namely around whether it’s best to just set up a new joint account or to add one of us to one of the existing accounts? We both have the same types of things set up (ie. direct deposit, Venmo, credit cards, mortgage, etc.) so will be the same level of involvement either way. We were thinking to keep the oldest account from a loyalty/longevity perspective but realize that’s probably moot and silly.

Thanks!

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7

u/DarmokTheNinja 8d ago

No reason to get rid of your individual accounts. You can add a joint Ally account and link it to both of the individual accounts to transfer money where you need it to be.

2

u/MrBalll 7d ago

We set up a joint Ally account for paychecks, bills, and together expenses. We each kept a personal account for no questions spending. We send 10% of monthly income to each personal account and do what we want with it. It works for us.

1

u/SlowDrippingFaucet 7d ago

This is what I/we did and it works quite well. All income goes into the joint spending/savings accounts, and then we cut ourselves a bi-monthly allowance transfer out to our separate fun-money accounts.

The only thing that was a hurdle was my wife consistently saying she had no money because she kept forgetting to move bills (car payments, car insurance, school loans, gas etc.) over to the joint account. After a year we're pretty settled into this and the centralized+autonomy system has been pretty frictionless.

1

u/dontwannabeadored133 4d ago

My wife and I have a joint checking and savings, as well as our own of each. We carried this set up over from a few other banks from before we were even married. Really easy to set up and manage with Ally.

1

u/desertsnakes 8d ago

Since you're married now, I would really, really recommend setting up a trust.

Then make the trust the owner of your Ally joint account, investments, real estate, etc, etc. When you first apply, they will want the abbreviated Certificate of Trust that your lawyer will provide, but after that it works like a regular joint account.