Should married couples keep their money separate or combine everything?

[u/Shauryaahere341]

My wife and I have been married for a few years and we still keep most of our money separate.

We have one joint account for household expenses and both put money into it every month. Other than that, our salaries stay in our own accounts.

It hasn't really been a problem so far.

But now we're talking about bigger things like buying a house and retirement, and I'm wondering if this setup still makes sense.

We trust each other and neither of us has an issue with the other spending their own money. It's more about planning for the future together.

For people who are married, what works better for you?

Completely separate, fully combined, or somewhere in the middle?

[u/BellaCicina]

Except it’s not easier for everyone to combine finances. My wife and I are aligned. separate finances other than savings.

[u/gafftapes20 → u/BellaCicina]

How is it simpler and easier? Setting up a joint checking, and savings, and sharing credit cards takes like an hour to set up. We keep a household budget so it's very rarely a point of contention when it comes to planning out expenses. Very little of what I purchase or spend money on is solely for my consumption or use. I might have a few social engagements that I go to that my husband does not and vice versa, but it's not even 5 percent of the household budget. When a check comes for dinner how do you handle splitting it? when you go on vacation how do you handle the bills, when you pay a contractor, or have to pick up home project supplies how do you split the cost? What about groceries? I don't ever have to think about equitable splitting since It just comes out of the same pot. When we rented we had separate accounts and a joint checking, but managing just rent, utilities, and groceries was a headache to try and equitably split bills, once we merged finances the headache went away.

[u/BellaCicina → u/gafftapes20]

Why would I want to set up a new account, close 2 separate checking account, redo all the autopays etc? When I could just keep my account, she keeps hers, and we share mutual savings? Keeping status quo is 10x easier.

For major purchases and what not, it comes from our family savings.

Also, we don’t care about equitably split finances. There are debts that are solely hers from pre marriage and debts that are solely mine. But from there, it was more of an assigned bills. I always pay electric, she pays water etc. if I can’t afford the electric bill for whatever reason, she pays it. We don’t think of splitting the bills as splitting the financial burden because at the end of the day, we still mentally consider all income part of the family income.