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My wife and I are recently married, both of us are working hard. At the moment we currently have the same system as prior to our marriage. Which simply put is that both of have our own bank accounts and we split the costs between us.
We will soon be taking out a mortgage for a house. Any recommendations how to arrange our bank accounts in an intelligent system so that we can put our money together?
There are essentially three ways to do this:
There are different approaches, but here is what we do and what I recommend. Now that you are officially a married couple, open a joint bank account, and eliminate your individual accounts. There are several reasons for this.
Having a joint account promotes unity and teamwork. When you only have a joint account, you do not have "your income" and "her income," or "your expenses" and "her expenses." You work together in everything. You discuss your goals and set your household budget together. If one of you makes more money than the other, that person is no longer "worth more," because your incomes are pooled together. If one person with a higher income has more in their account than the other person does, it can lead to envy, which you do not want in your marriage.
Having a joint account is more efficient and makes more sense. With separate accounts, who pays the rent/mortgage? Who pays the utilities, or buys the food? If you have separate accounts, it takes a lot of work to worry about what is "fair" when deciding how to divide up the expenses. With a single household budget and a joint account, you decide together what the household expenses are, and they get paid from one account. If one of you has debt, you both have debt. You work together to get it paid off and strengthen your financial situation in the process.
Having a joint account forces you to discuss your finances together. Working toward common financial goals together is crucial in a strong marriage, but if you maintain your separate accounts, you might be tempted to put off these discussions until you are forced to by life circumstances. It is better to work together from the start, and joining your finances facilitates that.
You are intending your marriage to last. Live your financial life like you believe that you are a team for life. If you live in a community property state, separate accounts are a fiction anyway; everything is treated as if it was pooled together in the event of a divorce.
I understand that if you are used to having your own money, it can be difficult to give up that sole control over your income, but in my opinion, it is worth it. You will certainly hear of examples from couples who maintain separate accounts and make it work. In my humble opinion, combining your finances completely is easier to do right.
My wife and I set up a shared bank account. We knew the monthly costs of the mortgage and estimated the cost of utilities. Each month, we transferred enough to cover these, plus about 20% so we could make an extra mortgage payment each year and build up an emergency fund, and did so using automatic transactions.
Other shared expenses such as groceries, we handled on an ad-hoc basis, settling up every month or three. We initially just split everything 50-50 because we both earned roughly the same income. When that changed, we ended up going with a 60-40 split.
We maintained our separate bank accounts, though this may have changed in the future.
A system like this may work for you, or may at least provide a starting point for a discussion. And I do strongly advise having a frank and open discussion on these points. Dealing with money can be tricky in the bounds of a marriage.
I agree with Option 3 from the accepted answer (His/Hers/Joint), but with one caveat (that my wife and I are finding out).
Once you have children, if your income is in the mid-range where you are not paycheck to paycheck, but are not floating in excess money either (ie, you can have a vacation, but you have to plan for it and save up for a few months to do so), the child-relative expenses begin to be a huge factor in your overall budget, such that (particularly if one partner does more of the child-related buying) it can be hard to really keep up the 3 account separation, because those child-related expenses may end up being all of one earner's paycheck.
We originally did the 3 way split, where we took rent, car, and utilities from joint (ie, each transferred a reasonable portion to the joint account to cover), and just bought groceries each occasionally such that it was generally a reasonable split (as we both shopped for groceries and both earned close enough to each other that it worked out). But once we had kids, it ended up being very different, and we eventually had to more properly budget all of our funds as if they were basically joint funds. While we still do have separate accounts (and, largely, separate credit cards/etc., except for one joint card), it's almost pro forma now due to the kids.
Option three is our preferred method, and we never argue about money. First we did a budget to work out ALL monthly joint out-goings (mortgage, bills, grocery etc). Then we each agreed who would pay what into the joint or household account - at the moment, I earn more than my wife, so I pay more, but we sit down every three or four months, to see if it needs adjusting. This way, we each keep our own individual accounts private, but pay what is necessary into the household account. We also set up a joint savings account; often at the end of the month, we'll have a little extra left in the household acount, and we siphon that off into joint savings to cover future unexpected costs - looks like our tumble dryer is on its last spin cycle at the moment, for example, and the joint savings account will be able to cover the cost of replacement. it all takes a bit of administration - but, as I say, we've never had a cross word about money, so the system seems to work.
My wife and I chose to share all bank accounts and credit cards. We did so because we realized that, over the course of a marriage, the pendulum of who is the primary breadwinner may shift repeatedly. Having one account gets us in the habit of thinking about our needs and wants together and eases any transitions that may come as one or the other of us quits a job/returns to school/reduces hours.
I should also say that this system would likely not work well if either partner has semi-compulsive spending/consumption habits. I'd recommend separate bank accounts with a joint account for your mortgage in that situation.
All of these answers are great but I wanted to add one piece of advice from someone who has been married 8 years and been in various financial "situations." Have one of you (whoever the two of you feel is more organized and more financially responsible) be solely in charge of paying the monthly bills, but keep a spreadsheet or some other tracking mechanism so that the other can monitor this as well. That way if you guys ever decide to switch roles there won't be much of a learning curve.
Also, don't do three bank accounts. One or two is enough, more than that starts becoming more difficult to keep track of and if you have any sort of monthly fees on the accounts it also wastes money. My wife and I each have our own account and we get money for each other if necessary. She handles paying the bills but keeps a monthly spreadsheet that has all pertinent info. We have a number and color coding system to determine which paycheck (1st or 2nd of the month) the bill is paid in and whether it has been paid, not paid, or past due (green, yellow, red). Hopefully you don't ever have to see the red color :P
Primary acct. Receive and distribute money to all other accts. For security do not permit debit cards to touch or payment pull from this account. All joint bills paid here. Attach a savings acct and credit card to this account for accruing taxes vacation money blah blah. This will facilitate managing instead of storing your funds.
Push distributions to one or two other individual accounts on whatever basis works. Cash groceries incidentals. Debit cards here.
Use 1 joint credit card for cash back that is paid in full monthly.
