Love Me, Love My Money

How an independent girl found herself married … with a joint bank account.

It’s hard enough to figure out how we want to handle our money when it’s just us who is handling it.  But throw a romantic partner into the equation and the question of how to spend/share/save gets even more confusing.

I know at least as many variations on finances in coupledom as there are variations in couples.  So when I coupled up myself I had a lot of examples to use to research ways to deal with money when you’re in love. 

This was one of my favorites: an old boss of mine has a pretty intense comic book habit that he didn’t want to inflict on his wife’s finances.  Their solution was that she and he would keep separate accounts, but put 80% of each of their take-home into a join account for household and family stuff.  The remaining 20% was theirs to spend how they wish, be it on comic books or other swag. 

I like this percentage based solution because both partners contribute equally according to their ability.  Even though the lower-earning spouse will have less money in his/her 20% discretionary fund, the communal family fund benefits from the combined income of the spouses and results in a higher standard of living for all involved.  And as an added bonus it makes it super easy to buy a gift for your partner and to actually keep it a surprise.

This system seemed so reasonable that I fully expected I would adopt it, or a variation on the theme, when I went in for some money sharing with my husband.  We both used and were happy with the same bank, so we opened a joint account figuring we’d throw some but not all of our money in there and use that to pay for “joint” stuff.  And we kept our separate accounts for ourselves.

Thing is, it got sort of murky figuring out what is a “joint” thing and what is a “separate” thing.  Groceries for the house are obviously a “joint” thing, but if we run out of stuff to take to work for lunch and I need to grab a turkey wrap from the deli across the street, is that on me or is that a “joint” cost?  When I walk through the soles of my favorite pumps (again), is the shoe repair bill a joint cost? How about holiday presents for family members, and what happens if there is something that I routinely pay for out of my “separate” cash, but he buys a similar thing (such as a daily coffee, or a cab home at night) using “joint” money? Is that fair? How do we address it? 

And those are just the small things. 

In the end, it just seemed like too much bean counting for me.  So we did what I honestly didn’t think I’d ever do.  

We combined EVERYTHING.

I’m proud to report I only panicked slightly.

I learned that combining finances was about more than just money when, a few days after I used our newly shared credit card to buy lunch out with a friend, my husband and co-spender asked me out of the blue how I liked “X” restaurant.  I hardly remembered the name of where I’d been but I knew for certain I hadn’t been there with him. It turns out he'd been wanting to try the place for a while, and since he saw that I’d been there after glancing at the credit card bill, he asked about it.  I confess, I was slightly wigged out when I realized that our combined financial plan now meant that he could tell where I’d been for lunch last week.

It was a lesson in trust and vulnerability I hadn’t expected to get from a credit card of all places.  Of course it wasn’t a big deal that I had gone to lunch with a friend or that I had spent $20 doing it.  And the fact that my partner in life had an eye on the credit card bill was comforting rather than creepy – better that than ignore it and blow the spending limit.  Ultimately, I realized that having equal access to all our money gives us more of a reason to talk about big purchases, to trust each other to not have to mention the smaller ones, and to know we’re on the same page with our money.

Fast forward about a year, and at this point we have equal access to all bank accounts, share a credit card, have both names on our brokerage accounts and make joint decisions about where to invest our dough. Basically the only things that are still separate are our retirement accounts, and we made each other the beneficiaries of those so we pretty much share those also.

Thing is, I feel 100% at peace with this system.  It turns out that combining our finances doesn’t make me feel like I’ve given up my independence.  It has helped create the type of teamwork and trust we wanted in our marriage anyway.  

I’m not saying it’s for everyone. I’m just saying that for now, it’s working for us.  

What works for you?