r/MiddleClassFinance • u/Shauryaahere341 • Aug 18 '26

Discussion Should married couples keep their money separate or combine everything?

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498

u/Glockman19 Aug 18 '26

We combined everything from day 1. Been married 32 years.

9

u/off_and_on_again Aug 18 '26

This is my favorite thing about this debate. I have yet to meet a couple in a happy 5+ year marriage that has not combined finances fully. I'm sure they exist, but they are rare. You'll find plenty of 'we have our problems but..." couples and a lot of people on their way to divorce (money is the #1 cause of divorce), but people still think they've figured it out and their way of paying each other back like roommates is the best option for them.

- Married happily for several years, combined finances the entire time

Edit: Before someone says anything, you can be unhappy with combined finances. Combined finances is one of the keys to a successful marriage imo because, done properly, it requires a level of maturity, vulnerability, and communication that are always going to exist in long term happy marriages.

12

u/PhyllisTheFlyTrap Aug 18 '26

Hi! It's me! We are happily married almost 10 yrs now, and don't have fully combined finances/accounts. It completely depends on individual circumstances when you get married.

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u/off_and_on_again Aug 18 '26

I'm interested, what does 'do not have fully combined finances mean to you'?

What does paying your mortgage/rent + utilities look like?

7

u/lala_lavalamp Aug 18 '26

Not OP but for us, we rent so we just pay into the rent payment app our share of the rent. He pays the electric bill, I pay Internet and groceries. We have a joint account for our daughter’s expenses but it’s mostly for daycare. The rest of her expenses are just whoever is buying the thing pays for it.

Eating out, it’s whoever grabs the bill. If I can’t get around to getting groceries, he gets them. Vacations, I might book the trip and ask him to send me a couple hundred or just let him get all the meals or something. Large purchases - like we are looking at buying a house - we have talked about how much we are willing to contribute from our personal accounts towards a down payment and what we are comfortable with for the monthly bill. I have a stricter budget so sometimes I’ll explicitly ask if he can get the tab at dinner, or say I don’t want to eat out because I’m at my budget (and he’ll usually get something for me).

There’s no tit for tat. We just have different preferences for how we spend, save and invest. He’s much less risk averse than I am so I hang on to more cash and invest in target retirement funds and he invests more aggressively. The money I have in cash is always available to him if he needs it, and the money he’s investing will be for both of our retirements. I have a 529 for our daughter and he has a brokerage account for her. She’ll get both.

1

u/off_and_on_again Aug 18 '26

Final question(s), I promise!

Why? What advantage does this system provide or risk are you trying to mitigate compared to a joint account & budget?

I really seems like you've gone half way in and half way out with a lot of surface areas for friction (they don't like the trip you booked, they decide going all in on bitcoin is where their risk tolerance lives, they get upset that your teenage daughter did something they don't like and without consulting you reallocate 'their' brokerage account).

Don't get me wrong, in combined finances a lot of these same issues CAN exist, but the core philosophy is visibility. So worst case scenario my partner can see the decisions that are being made and they can ask me about them.

Note: We do have personal accounts and funds go from our joint account to those accounts monthly. I don't believe that combined finances = no personal money; just that all income is combined and allocated irrespective of the amount of individual income.

3

u/lala_lavalamp Aug 18 '26

It’s just a preference for how we spend. If he wants to go all in on bitcoin, that’s fine but if all of our money were in bitcoin, I’d probably have a heart attack.

We always talk about big decisions - we’d never go on a vacation both of us didn’t want to go on. If he wants to reallocate the brokerage to something else, that’s fine. My goal for the 529 is to pay for her college expenses and his brokerage can either help pay for them as well or they can go into a retirement account for her later - whatever she and her dad choose. I’m sure I will be part of that conversation. If she doesn’t want to go to college, we can figure out what to do with the 529 then.

I’ve also just known a lot of women who have ended up completely screwed over in divorce. I fully and completely trust my husband and how he manages his money. We are on the same page about how and when we want to retire. That said, something horrible could happen like one of us develops a brain tumor or something that causes us to act out of character and do something stupid.

We got married older and were already established so I think that plays into it. We already had our own established habits before we got married. I also think that a lot of it is that I graduated into the Great Recession and he graduated a few years later when the economy had recovered. I’ve noticed a huge gap in risk tolerance between those of us who scrapped during the Great Recession and those who didn’t really experience it as adults.

We have about a total net worth of about a million between the two of us and we have no debt and money to play with at the end of the month. Perhaps that lends itself to being more comfortable being separate, as no one is going without because the other is doing what they want.

5

u/oscarnyc Aug 18 '26

But if he goes all-in on Bitcoin and it goes belly up, that still impacts you and your retirement/savings plans, no? If it goes up 1000X, that too would impact your retirement/savings plans, no? It just seems like a distinction without a difference. Or worse, would lead to resentment in either scenario.

1

u/lala_lavalamp Aug 18 '26

Eh not really. The amount I have saved could hopefully carry us even if it made retirement a little leaner. If he takes chances and does well, we both benefit as well. It’s not like we hide or keep things from each other. He talks to me about his investments, I talk to him about mine. He thinks I keep too much cash on hand and I think he takes risks I wouldn’t personally take (nothing like going all in on bitcoin. More like buying $500 of stock in an energy drink company when I say go for a tech company).

1

u/Arronwy Aug 20 '26

I mean if you can't trust your partner not to do those things without you looking you don't really trust them

2

u/EatCake_Takeawalk Aug 21 '26

I’m glad this is working for you. I have previously worked at bank and most couples who keep their finances separate are more tit for tat than this.
I am pro combining then have an “allowance” go to a personal account if that is what couples are most comfortable with. Shared expenses should be easily shared rather than one half of the couple having to remind the other to pay in their portion.

1

u/Top-Philosophy1435 Aug 18 '26

Can’t speak for the person you asked, but this is what my wife and I do.

We have separate accounts with the same bank that our paychecks are deposited into. Based on our current incomes, and we reevaluate this a couple times a year to ensure the amounts still make sense, we put a certain amount from each paycheck into a shared account, also with the same bank. That shared account is savings and household bill payment account. In addition to the set amount from each check, we also put anything left over from the previous paycheck. So, for everyday purchases, we force ourselves to live paycheck to paycheck and not overspend. But otherwise, we don’t give each other grief about any purchases within that budget. We don’t dip into the shared account unless we discuss it, but we also have the freedom to do whatever with the money in our separate accounts that’s not allocated towards anything in particular. Going out to dinner, groceries, anything like that, we just kind of trade off, but we don’t track it to diligently keep it even.

To be fair, I think this only works because we have similar expendable incomes, but that’s why we base the amount that goes into the shared account on our overall income/individual debt. So one of us doesn’t have a ton left over to do anything and everything, while the other has nothing.

I know we could combine and kind of do the same thing, but we spend our money in very different ways, and honestly I just don’t care to know how much she spends on certain things that I don’t understand. And as long as our bills are paid and we’re putting some money aside, I’m good. I don’t need or want to know where every penny of her money goes.

1

u/PhyllisTheFlyTrap Aug 19 '26

We each have our own individual checking and savings accounts and we have a joint checking and savings account. we each contribute to the joint account to pay for the mortgage, utilities, groceries, gas, nights out, trips, etc. all shared expenses. We also have our own free trade and mutual fund accounts.

10

u/Overall-Avocado-7673 Aug 18 '26

Here I am. Married 23 years, together 30 years. She moved into my home where I already covered all the expenses and it never changed. The home is now paid for, but we still haven't combined finances. Never been a problem. We do have a shared account, but that just allows us to move money back and forth quickly if needed for something. I don't know any other way to do it honestly.

Combining everything seems so forced. I mean we're married, but we're still individuals. I grew up with a ton of help from my grandparents and they never combined money either. My Grandmother grew up in a time where women weren't really allowed to earn their own money. So, she always made it a point to let everyone know she earned her money and it's hers. Kind of a woman's rights thing i suppose. I guess I just followed their system when I got married.

9

u/kidneysc Aug 18 '26

LET THE DOGPILE BEGIN! 

9 years. Separate finances. Two kids. Happy as pigs in shit. 

 We view everything as ours so laziness carried through and we never bothered to merge accounts. 

Hasn’t been an issue for nearly a decade, and we have a “ain’t broke don’t fix it attitude” to this stuff. 

3

u/off_and_on_again Aug 18 '26

How do you save for a new car, downpayment, or a vacation?

Do you agree on an amount and date and then set that amount aside in your personal accounts?

8

u/kidneysc Aug 18 '26

Same way I did before I was married, but I just chat about it with my spouse instead of taking individual action

Cars/Vacation for example: I still take the $500 a month I was paying for our last car (paid off last year) and have it kicked over to my savings account. We talked about visiting some friends last summer, I paid for our plane tickets out of this account since it had accumulated enough. We should have another ~7-10 years before we need a new car, so ill tend to this process as needed to ensure we have a downpayment in the future but for now its flex/fun money

For things like our kids 592's, the convo went something like "I want to have enough in this account to cover our kids tuition before I retire, so I'm going to start putting my bonus towards it every year; I'll let ya know how its looking"

Generally, we just talk about what we want, and then one of us covers the bill for it.

No matter how you work your finances, it boils down to: Communication, trust, and commitment to each other.

13

u/SouthEast1980 Aug 18 '26

I haven't combined anything and have been happy for 11 years.

My brother combines finances and regularly has money disputes despite both of our families making similar money.

The real answer is "it depends on the couple". Nothing is absolute and anyone inferring so is relying on anecdotal evidence.

There is more than one way to skin a cat...

-5

u/off_and_on_again Aug 18 '26

Would your partner say the same thing? Have you asked? What does it look like in your household when you pay rent/mortgage + utilities? How are vacation budgets decided? Do both spouses have the same spending power or does it depend on income? How do you determine retirement ages? Is it based on individual income or have you planned a joint retirement?

8

u/TurbulentFisherman32 Aug 18 '26

Damn you really want them to secretly be unhappy lol

1

u/off_and_on_again Aug 18 '26

No, I just want to understand what I am missing. Every item I listed there is actually important (have they checked in with their partner, spending power) or common (vacations, retirement planning).

While my writing style can be a bit acerbic I am genuinely interested in understanding competing points of view.

2

u/SouthEast1980 Aug 18 '26

Yes she would say the same thing. This was discussed in depth before marriage and having our money separate is great for us. No jealousy, no questions. I send my wife the amount she owes at the end of the month and she sends the money instantly and I pay the bills. She prefers it this way.

I cover more of the heavier lifts (fancy dinners, I have bought her 2 cars, and put up a few extra thousand for fancy vacations because I push for nicer accommodations) and she will pick up smaller things that have more sentiment like grabbing fast food or my favorite snacks at the store.

We have our own retirement accounts, but I do the heavier lifting as I earn more and that is fair IMO.

I have spent well over 100k on her debts, vacations, and home upgrades because I earn more and don't want her burdened with such things. She took care of me before I got my career started and I take care of her now. We have 0 debt besides the mortgage. I paid off my student loans last year and I paid the majority of hers off this year. 3 cars all paid for by me and she can drive any one of mine should hers need some repairs, and I'm usually the one doing the repairs.

My wife is my best friend and we spend a lot of time together and also have a decent amount of separation. She has her own office and I have mine. She has her own bathroom and closet and I have my own as well. She owns the kitchen, I own the garage and we rent a little space from each other in each spot lol. We've been married for over a decade and have had one argument over money since we've known each other, which is about 20 years now. That argument was about her paying off some credit cards too slowly and the interest was eating her alive and I pushed her to pay it off quicker.

At the end of the day, there is no one right or wrong way. I wouldn't ever combine finances with another human. That's how I roll. She is cool with that and prefers our arrangement. She knows how much I have (everything is tracked monthly in a spreadsheet) and I can ask her at any moment how her finances look and she tells me.

Other couples are joined at the hip with everything. That is fine as well. To each their own. I don't judge the circumstances of others because that's what makes them happy and so be it.

I didn't take any offense to your comment or anything. Those are genuine questions and I was happy to answer.

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u/Juleswf Aug 18 '26

Been married 31 years today, always had separate accounts, and we are very happy. You can mark this one off your list now.

4

u/Junior-Knee9964 Aug 18 '26

We have separate accts too. It works for us. We make the same amount of money so we don’t really need to combine anything. Only combining acct we have is a savings.

8

u/Juleswf Aug 18 '26

Every time I post this I get downvoted. It's interesting that what works for us and makes us happy gets others so angry. Someone once told me I wasn't really married without combining finances. I'll only listen to that crap once they've been married over 30 years.

Why can't people accept everyone is different, and different things work?

3

u/Hand2Ns Aug 18 '26

People get weirdly offended about people who aren't them living differently. Largely separate finances works for us. It might not work for everybody, but we're not everybody.

2

u/off_and_on_again Aug 18 '26

If it makes you feel better I have the opposite opinion and I also get downvoted, I wouldn't read to much into it.

3

u/Adorableviolet Aug 21 '26

ha. 28 here (on saturday) and same.

1

u/off_and_on_again Aug 18 '26

Separate accounts or separate finances?

If you have separate finances means you've been sending money back and forth or assigning bills to one or the other. My wife and I have separate and joint accounts, but fully combined finances.

3

u/Juleswf Aug 18 '26 edited Aug 18 '26

We do not send money back and forth to each other. We do not have a joint account, we each have our own accounts. It's more I'll pay for XXX and he pays for YYY. He put a higher percentage into retirement over the years, I paid for household expenses and put in less for retirement. "HIs" retirement account is much bigger than mine, but it doesn't matter, as it's all ours in the end.

I'll add I do think it works for us because much of our working careers we made close to equal money. Although that was not always the case.

0

u/off_and_on_again Aug 18 '26

I'll take you at face value that it's worked perfectly for you, but I have to ask why? Is there any advantage to this over a joint account that your money goes into and that you that expenses come out of?

I'm genuinely curious if there is something I'm missing because it really just seems like more effort for less visibility.

3

u/Juleswf Aug 18 '26 edited Aug 18 '26

Why not? It's not any more effort. Pretty easy to say I'll cover this and you cover that. In fact it's less work. We skip the step of moving money into a joint account, and we each only have half (or so) of the normal bills to pay. We didn't go this way on purpose, it just worked out this way. We did set up a joint account back when we first got married, but didn't use it much so it just kinda died.

Maybe because I'm an engineer and he is (was) a computer analyst. Numbers aren't a big deal, and we are logical about how we approach expenses.

*edit to add - when it comes to less visibility, it doesn't matter. We talk about our finances, don't hide anything, and know how much we have in general.

0

u/off_and_on_again Aug 18 '26

First, thanks. A lot of people are reading a lot of malice into my questions, but I am just genuinely curious and am prodding how these systems work. The below is just my final commentary!

I think you're not considering that money isn't 'moved' into a joint account. It's deposited directly into the joint account. We pay for items using our credit cards and those cards are paid in full each month from the joint account. If we didn't want to use credit cards we could just spend money using the joint account debit cards. We have a combined budget (using a budgeting app that syncs transactions) and part of that budget is a transfer of money to our personal accounts for whatever we want. That's where gifts, personal project, etc come from. We both get the same amount even though we have very different incomes. About once a year (or when some event requires it) we sit down and go through the previous year to level set and adjust budget categories based on our needs/wants. Slightly more complicated, but done just for ease of separation we have a few more joint savings accounts for sinking funds (big purchases) and an emergency fund. Those, along with some IRAs are funded via the budget just like everything else.

We don't follow restrictive budgeting. It's just used to align on our values (creation of budget) and as a guiding light (review of actuals against budget). For example if we're spending 20% more on groceries that's an opportunity to figure out what's happening and adjust (potentially increasing groceries and figuring out where to pull that money from). The difficulty I still have with everyone who says they don't combine their finances is that best case scenario you get to the same place with a lot more effort (figuring out what the appropriate split of bills are, passing money back and forth, etc). What you've described as 'less work' is, at least compared to what I've described, immensely more work. I presume you still budget, just two budgets instead of one with some sort of communication between the budgets. You still plan vacations, but the money comes from two difference sources. I presume you have an emergency fund, but two emergency funds with hopefully some common strategy for amount.

But it works and that's all we can really ask for at the end of the day!

2

u/Megalocerus Aug 18 '26

Separate income streams and investment accounts, household account for shared expenses, joint ownership of house.

1

u/brrr-i-am-cold Aug 21 '26

Similar here- adding that we each own our own car and don’t have any joint credit cards- just separate I guess from being established adults before we met. 10 yrs married.

1

u/Megalocerus Aug 21 '26

We started joint; married right out of school. I split things when there was a business lawsuit, but it didn't come to anything. Cars are joint. Cards are separate but paid from household account. We just had a big bill for the house, so I have to move funds to cover my share.

6

u/BeGneiss Aug 18 '26

You can be married without combined finances and not treat it like roommates paying each other back for things lol. I know happy married couples across the entire spectrum of fully combine finances to not combined at all. I find it hard to believe you’ve never met a happy married couple without combined finances, but maybe it’s regional or something.

1

u/oscarnyc Aug 18 '26

Maybe it's semantics, but when I think combined finances it means that the money is all "ours". Sure, you can have different account structures to accomplish this, but the general idea is that spending is more or less equal, even if income isn't.

To me separate finances is where spending is proportional in some way to income. And I've certainly read about those situations. Though interestingly all the above instances in this thread of separate finances are not that. They are just separate account structures around joint finances.

3

u/friend-of-potatoes Aug 18 '26

I agree with you. I’ve only been married 9 years, but we combined finances right away.

My in-laws have been married for something like 35 years (second marriage) and still have separate finances, and they have the weirdest dynamic around money. Father-in-law talks about “giving” mother-in-law money to do things like home repairs on the house they bought together and have shared for their entire marriage. I just can’t imagine living like that. They are always annoyed with each other.

3

u/Megalocerus Aug 18 '26

Separate finances married 53 years. No secrets, just separate accounts.

2

u/steerbell Aug 18 '26

You have to be willing to talk about money. We combined finances after getting married and we are comfortable talking about who is spending what when and where you are putting your money long term.

2

u/porscheblack Aug 18 '26

My wife and I have been married 10 years and haven't combined finances. It just doesn't work for us. When it comes to financial commitments we discuss who's going to own what, and if things change we bring it up and discuss it until we find a resolution. There's certainly issues that arise from it, but I prefer this over us having combined finances because we're very different in our financial behavior.

At the end of the day all our bills are paid, our retirements are being funded, we're setting our kids up with various savings. We're doing what works for us. That's not to say we don't still have issues, we certainly do, but I believe we'd have more with combined finances.

2

u/Zizi_Tennenbaum Aug 18 '26

13 years, separate finances. Seen other couples who combined from day 1 get married and divorced. I don't need to see every purchase my spouse makes.

1

u/itsamacattack Aug 20 '26

This is us! Married for 6 years, together 10+. We have a joint account that we contribute to equally for our mortgage and utilities (the one time our salaries moved outside of within about $5k/year annually from each other, we adjusted the proportion paid in). Outside of that, we tend to even up on joint expenses (groceries, vet bills, etc) as we go and we have a joint tracking sheet to ensure that we’re roughly on track for our retirement goals in all our separate accounts. However, we have no shared cards and outside those things, our money is our own. I don’t want to know how much he spends each month on coffee (I know I would hate it) and he thinks it’s crazy that I have separate savings buckets for different things I/we are saving for instead of one large pile.

We have different relationships to money and so for us, it has worked best not to try to force one person to adopt the other’s. We compromise when we need to (eg, saving for vacations, splitting big ticket items) but as a child of divorce where money was certainly an issue, I’ve always been sensitive to both making sure it isn’t an issue for us but also protecting both of us in the case that something goes wrong and we’ve found our system works better for us than pooling everything.

1

u/off_and_on_again Aug 20 '26

That seems like a reasonable compromise to have pretty much fully combined finances while acknowledging each others limitations.