For married couples: How do you divide money?

Question

My husband and I both work, and we consider our earnings Our money, and all our accounts are joint accounts. My husband is assigned to pay the bills, and we pay current bills from the account which currently has more funds.. It doesn't really matter because it's all our money anyway.

Do other couples manage money this way? Or do you have his/her money?

The downside I see with our thinking, is that giving gifts to each other are sometimes corny because we're using money "from the same purse", so to speak, lol.

To clarify -- when I said my husband is assigned to pay the bills, I just meant that he writes the checks. He has access to my checks, so he can decide from which specific accounts the payments are deducted.

We manage 90% of our investments together. We divide the remaining 10% between ourselves and designated it as "play money", which is not as foolhardy as it sounds. We just take it mean that for our individual 5%, I don't have to get the other's agreement on how to invest it.

I don't think there's a best answer. Different strokes for different folks! I'll let you guys vote on it. Thanks!

Answer 1

You put money into your retirement accounts first.
You put money into an Emergency Fund 2nd
You put money into a Sink fund for large purchases.
You pay each person an allowance for personal needs and wants.

One person handles the checkbook for joint bills and purchases. The other handles it when the primary one is indisposed.

Anything left over goes into savings or other projects.

Answer 2

Whether we are both working or not, we each get a small "allowance" that we can spend on anything without having to get the other persons approval. The rest goes into checking, savings, retirement, donations, etc. according to a "budget" that we both agree on. This "budget" is very casual but we both agree beforehand and in addition, we both discuss and agree on major purchases before they are made. Generally, we have not purchased anything that we could not pay for when the charge bill came at the end of the month. BTW, we have never made even the average income for any area where we have lived (Penna) so not paying charge card interest has been a real help!
It has worked for us for many years.

Answer 3

No, This what my husband and I do....
We each take a certain percent of or paychecks and put it into our own separate accounts.
Then we take the majority of our paychecks and put it in our joint account.
All bills and savings are paid from the joint account.
Our separate accounts pay our personal credit cards and is used for spending money.
It works great. My husband loves to spend money, this way we each have an allowance that we can spend on anything we want.

Answer 4

my husband and I have a joint checking account, and separate checking and savings account. Every month we'll put the money to cover the bills in the joint checking account, and a little more for savings. Then the rest is used for our own savings (gifts, going out, etc) There is no secrets, we know each others passwords and transfer money to each other all the time. It works for us

Answer 5

We've tried it both ways, and it ends up being a matter of personal preference.

We have a joint account that both paychecks go into, but honestly, my husband is better with money than I am, so he pays all of the bills, manages our investments etc, and we each have a certain amount diverted into personal accounts for gift giving, and personal splurges etc.

It works very well for us. Our money is being managed for maximum interest, but we both maintain our autonomy with the private accounts.

I have friends who do well with just joint accounts and I have friends who do well with completely separate accounts. To each their own! Use what best suits you!

Answer 6

My husband and I do the same thing and always have. One account, both of our names on it. We both have access to it and use it as we need to. I pay the bills....but that doesn't really matter. The one down-side, as you mention, is that if my husband gets me a gift, I see how much it cost when I log-in to balance the account. The upside to this is that my husband rarely pays attention to our bank account or what I spend....which is helpful when I go on a shopping binge.

Now my best friend and her husband are opposite. They have separate things for everything and decide bill-by-bill who will pay what. That would drive me NUTS!

Answer 7

we both work and have joint accounts. she pays the bills and deals with most of the financial stuff, investmenst, RRSP's etc. I show up at meetings to sign forms now and then...lol.

Giving gifts is about the thought. Knowing what the other would like but not buy for themselves. Or giving of yourself. (and no...I don't mean one of those coupons for "Free Loving"...lol)

We actually haven't really done much gift exchange last few events though...we just buy for the house, if she want jewellery she gets it...if i want i power tool i get it.....anything over $1000 we would discuss first.

Answer 8

When we were both working his paycheck went as a direct deposit to the checking account where he worked. Both of our names were on the account. Also, my paycheck was directly deposited into a checking account close to where I worked and both of our names were on that checking account. We sat down and split the bills. My paycheck was smaller so the percentage I paid out was smaller from my checking account.Vice versa on his paycheck. This provided 2 options for us: a) We each had a checking account so if we were not together we could write a check out of our account b) We would withdraw from each paycheck what we felt we could and put into a seperate savings account to buy presents for B'days, Anniversaries, or Christmas.This way we were both responsible for balancing a check book (if something happened to one of us the other knew how to handle and balance a check book). It may sound like a lot of work, but it worked for us. Good Luck.

Answer 9

Joint accounts are the easiest to manage. Gift giving is the thought of the gift, not where the money came from.

Answer 10

We manage our money the exact same way....the gift giving becomes a surprise rather than were the money came from...it has worked for us for over 37 years....a formula that is created trust as well...