Do you have separate bank accounts?

DH and I have separate ones. But now that he's going to be an attending, whereas my salary from whatever job I get will be paltry, I'm not sure if this is the fairest option.

But at the same time, I want the independence of having my own money and pay my own credit card bills. It would bother me if I had to ask DH for money to buy something. We split rent down the middle and pay our own credit card bills.....and I really like this system. But now I won't be able to afford my half of the rent as we're moving to a bigger place.

What is your opinion on this topic?

That sounds like a good system. What do you use the joint account money for?

This year we decided we will be saving up for a down payment for a house....maybe we could set up something like that.

[Laker]

Heck no. We pool the money into 1 account and will continue to do so. DW will make more money than I, but we have decided that it is our money.

I don't have any problems with what she spends as we are on the same page when it comes to finances.

[Vanquisher]

Our money is in a joint account. All of it. It is all OUR money. None of it is his money. None of it is mine. My job working at home is not less important than his job. My working for pennies doing transcription work is not any less important. It's still money that I am earning to help pay for OUR bills and OUR groceries and OUR entertainment and OUR kids. We talk about all moderate to major purchases together.

I honestly really don't understand the your money, my money thing. Bullshit on that. I have worked just as hard as he has for his paycheck. I am the reason he is clothed, fed, and has two gorgeous children. If he even tried to pull "my money".... Heaven help him.

[Michele]

We have one account....and have since we were dating back in undergrad...it works for us.

but my sister and her husband have a "yours, mine and ours." They pay household bills (mortgage, utilities, groceries, dog care, etc) from the "ours" account....and they way they contribute is: she makes 60% of the total gross income, and he makes 40%...so each month they contribute a set amount and she contributes 60% of that amount and he contributes 40%. So if they gave $1000 to the account, she would chip in $600 and he would chip in $400.

[SuzySunshine]

Our accounts are also all joint. I don't ever have to worry about him finding out I bought him something because he has NO clue what it is in the accounts most of the time. And if its getting close to my birthday or an event where he would buy me a gift I don't look at the statements until I absolutely have to for paying bills, etc. We would never survive with seperate accounts because he just doesn't have time to pay attention to it and I'm much better at the numbers than he is.

[migirl]

We also have all joint accounts, but I oversee/manage all of them so he doesn't have any idea what goes on financially in our house (which is fine with me). It's to the point where he actually has to come and ask me for money when he needs it...

We have joint accounts. It's our money. Marriage is a partnership - it's not who can afford what, IMO.

We had separate accounts through med school and residency. It wasn't an issue about who spent what money, but more about worrying that we would overdraw if we were both pulling money from the same account. Things were pretty tight and there were many times when our bank accounts were nearly empty. We were worried that if we had one account, one of us might make a withdrawal and forget to tell the other and then we'd end up overdrawn.

Once out of residency, I quit my job and we transitioned over to all joint accounts. DH earns all of the money, but we both feel that I am just as much entitled to it as him. I have never had to ask DH if I could buy something.

I know one couple who, after 13 years of marriage, still have separate accounts. The wife is a SAHM and gets an allowance. I know money is a big issue in most marriages, but it seems like it has been a huge battle with this couple. Her allowance is enough to buy a few new outfits or shoes while her husband used his "allowance" to make several large purchases...BMW, boat, country club membership...in which she had no say. I don't know...it just seems very unfair to me...almost like she is being treated like an employee rather than a partner.

[Auspicious]

So far we still have separate accounts (married a year, together for five) but that's almost out of laziness. Our current system ain't broke, so we haven't gotten around to reorganizing it yet. We still consider it "our" money and discuss whether "we" can afford something. Money is one area where we have extremely similar philsophies and habits, though, so neither of us worries much about what the other one is off spending money on.

During med school when I made the majority of our money, I handled the big bills and he handled incidentals. Now that's reversed. We're working on not being too dependent on my income, in case I'm in and out of the workforce over the next few years.

So does joint account mean you each get a set of checks with both your names on it and one person just pays all the bills? Right now we each have our own checks with our own names on it and we each have our own bills to pay.

I guess our system has worked really well so far....the thing is our financial styles are so different that I can foresee more problems with making everything joint than by keeping things as they are, which has worked for us for these first years of marriage.

Hmmmm. This is interesting because I don't know any other married folks so I've never been able to ask others what they do.

So what is the cutoff amount where you have to ask your partner about whether to buy it....$100? I guess what I don't want to end up happening is if I'm out shopping, see something cute for over $100 and have to check with DH if I can get it....how do you avoid this problem?

I've been really happy with our system thus far......but starting in a couple of weeks I'll be making nothing (at least for awhile) while he brings it all in.....so I think our system probably needs to change.

On a related note, what about malpractice stuff....i.e. is everything the couple owns in the non-medical spouse's name? Such as car, house, etc. so that if the med spouse gets sued all the assets are in the non-medical spouse's name? Does that go for bank account money as well?

[spotty_dog]

Yes, we have checks with both our names. We also have checks with each of our names. All of our various monies are tracked in the same Quicken file, and there's no clear delineation of "yours and ours". If DH is paying the credit card bill and there's not enough money in the joint account, he'll say "Please write a check for $X from your credit union account." We have only one credit card.

Anything over about $20 is something worth shopping around for, so giving each other the heads up is no big deal. "By the way, I'm in the market for a new wheelset" DH might say, and I'll trust him that it's something he needs and that he'll get the best possible deal. Or I'll say, "I'm getting pretty desperate for some maternity pants, so I'm heading over to Target today." It's not that I'm asking permission, it's that I'm respecting the other person who's affected by our financial status. There's a tiny chance that he might respond, "You know, things are awfully tight until a couple of checks clear. Is this something that could wait even a week or two?" We need to be on the same page about all that stuff.

[PrincessFiona]

joint....

I guess one of my issues is...is that I feel weird about having a joint account at this stage of our lives since I am not contributing much (or anything) to the account while he brings in all the income (since I quit my last job a few weeks ago).

I guess I feel this is unfair (to him)....what am I doing to contribute....all through residency we both had jobs paying roughly equal, and I tolerated mine even though they sucked just so I could help out with our finances and help us have the lifestyle that we wanted and I felt really good about that. I felt like I was helping contribute to the household in a meaningful way even though I disliked those jobs.

Now, since we don't have kids, and thus I don't have a caregiver role yet, I feel that I should likewise be contributing a fair share to our joint monies.....but with him making an attending salary and me making what will most likely be a pitiful salary in whatever crappy job I end up in....I ask myself how am I contributing to the welfare of our household? Of course I will never be able to contribute as much as he does, but I wish I could contribute something tangible to our household (childcare, etc.)....and to not be able to do so makes me feel bad.

If he's out there working and making all the money, while it takes me 6 months to find a crappy-paying job (like it did before), during which time I'm not contributing to the household's health in any way.....this makes me feel bad about myself.

Should I feel this way or is this just plain dumb? How should I look at the situation differently? Please, tell me honestly.

A joint account with one checkbook. In the past, we have taken turns depending on who has time, to pay the bills using the checkbook. It really hasn't been a problem to have one checkbook between the two of us.

It took a little while to get this figured out, but we worked out a budget and both knew about how much there was to spend. It's sort of automatic now.

There were lots of years when I was the only one depositing money in the joint account and several more where I deposited more but we didn't split it up or prorate it or get dibs on how it was spent. My expectation is that will continue no matter who is working.

And even if he is the one doing all the earning now, all he knows is the bills are paid! Really, I could be siphoning it all to off-shore accounts or buying every knicknack on the Home Shopping Network and he wouldn't have a clue.