Couples with joint checking accounts are happier | Hacker News Reader

Couples with joint checking accounts are happier

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102 pointsits_ethan194 comments

My observation of couples with split finances (my wife and I merged ours long ago) is that it doesn’t seem to prevent the kind of problems it nominally solves, and adds extra stress to the mix.

If you are married to someone whose financial decisions you are incompatible with, there’s no escaping the fact that you’re going to be impacted by those decisions one way or another no matter what. Hiding them in a for-his/her-eyes-only account creates more stress because now you’re constantly worried about what invisible bad decisions they might be making that will impact you later.

It feels like a bandaid fix to the underlying problem of financial incompatibility, and that failing to address the root problem creates stress and challenges down the road.

Stated differently, it is a technical solution to a social problem.

I'd posit that it is plausible you could both be compatible with multiple accounts for different uses. Especially as you get fortunate enough to have enough income that you can split where it is deposited, there is no reason "joint account" means a single joint account.

that's a good point, we never formally merged our accounts, but my wife told me the pins to most of her debit cards. i don't know if i told her mine, but that's because the need to do that just never came up. so even though nominally the accounts are separate, in practice we treat all of them as shared.

split finances doesn’t seem to prevent the kind of problems it nominally solves

nor does it create them. my wife and i have separate bank accounts but we don't have a trust issue. payments are made by whoever is doing it from their account. if an account is low on money we just move some without any regards as to whose money it is or who earned it.

So you have two shared accounts instead of one?

pretty much, yes, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36766676

Same. My wife doesn't work but often sells goods or something and gets money via paypal. She likes one bank app, I like another, for starters.

We put all actual spending on credit cards, that I pay off each month from mine. So this isn't like an allowance based thing.

Sometimes she needs cash or to write a check, instant transfer. We don't go snooping through each others records, surprises are nice sometimes :).

I don't see at all what joint could add here. I'm very particular about checking accounts after getting overdraft scarred as a teen like most people my age. I also invest rather aggressively so don't want too much money sitting idle. It becomes much harder to do if we joined accounts, one surprise forgotten about check or draft could cause the house payment to fail, for example.

That doesn't sound like split finances. You're just using multiple bank accounts.

fair point. maybe split income and shared expenses. i don't know. other people here seem to consider any form of a personal account to be split finances. my personal expenses usually come from my account and hers come from her account. so in practice it's hard to tell the difference. what is different is the attitude towards money.

that said, i made sure that my personal expenses were covered by my own income. my wife used to earn more than me so she covered the main living expenses and i contributed a bit. but when i replaced my broken camera or my old computer, it all came from my account. i didn't even discuss those significant expenses with her because they were needed anyways, and not getting them was not an option. i would have had to discuss it if i didn't have enough money myself but urgently needed it (though in those two cases i would have waited until i saved up enough).

I think it’s great to have a healthy relationship with trust.

What if I told you that there was a strategy that had a 50% risk of what you think is trust is actually deceit. And that having separate finances helps immensely in the situation where this risk is realized.

I have friends who were comfortable and thought all was well for years or even decades. Then it wasn’t. And having commingled finances was unpleasant in that it made divorce and the financial mistakes that much harder to reconcile through years of trial.

Tl;dr; it’s hard to take marriage advice from someone who hasn’t been married for 70 years. It’s like someone saying “this architecture is the best, it’s run for six months without any problems.”

Separate checking accounts mean absolutely nothing during a divorce. It’s all considered marital property and is split. That along with “your” retirement savings, physical property etc.

If my wife and I got divorced, our joint checking accounts is the least of my complications.

I’ve got retirement accounts and two properties (our former primary home that’s rented out and our vacation property) and since we agreed for her to stop working in 2020, I would end up paying alimony.

I did get a divorce before when I had three properties and a 401K. Luckily none of the houses had any equity of note and I was a simple matter of giving my ex cash out of my 401K (a QDRO)

That is true at the end of a divorce, but in the beginning, possession is a very big deal. With a joint account, one partner can legally drain the entire account to a new personal one, and the other partner has no recourse other than court, which is slow.

This is a highly assymetric risk for a lot of couples. If one of the was the sole source of income, they are in a much better position to wait for the court to intervene.

This is assuming the money is still there at the end. The offending partner could attempt to hide it. Or they could have genuinely spent it.

> Separate checking accounts mean absolutely nothing during a divorce

This is not true. They mean a lot during the divorce. They mean little at resolution. But the first orders are for status quo and so using your own account and keeping it during the divorce means you have more control and visibility.

Yes, parties can file motions to access and compel payment. But divorce isn’t like on tv, family courts are slow.

With joint accounts it’s easy for one person to drain the cash and do something stupid like spend $75k on fake expenses that take two years to sort out.

With separate accounts, this is not possible.

The assets in accounts are split in community property states. But that’s at resolution and a lot of harm can happen during the course of drawn out disagreements.

Cash flow is important during a divorce (especially one that takes a few years) so feel free to consult with a divorce attorney or a prenup attorney. This is not an issue for illiquid assets and accounts like real estate and 401ks.

Is my experience so unique? I went from filing divorce to going to court and getting divorced in less than 4 months.

It was uncontested and no kids - well I had a step daughter - and we had only been married four years.

It is relatively unique, but not THAT unique. In my experience, kids matter a lot in this - as kids give leverage over one or both parties that is not easy to sort out and is long lasting. Both visitation/custody, legal (claims of abuse), and money (child support).

Divorces without kids are not guaranteed to be any picnic either, but kids often ramps it waaaay up.

What if I told you that there was a strategy that had a 50% risk of what you think is trust is actually deceit

can you explain that please? or give an example. i don't understand what you are trying to say here.

50% of marriages end in divorce. Note this varies wildly by income. So your "risk" goes down the richer you are.

sure, but i don't get how trust is actually deceit in those cases. people divorce for many reasons. deceit is not always the issue. and intuitively i'd think that deceit is more likely the richer you are.

Deceit is not always the reason, but it frequently is. It’s rather unpleasant to find out that years of seemingly trusting time together wasn’t.

i was going to argue about statistics, but i think that's pointless. i am guessing that you or someone you know were deceived by their partner, which understandably reflects in how you think about it. you, or they, have my sympathy.

but please allow me to ask for one more clarification:

i would only call something deceit if it was the intention to marry someone in order to take advantage of them from the beginning. is that what you mean? or do you count a change much later as well?

Sometimes it's clear that one or both parties were willfully deceiving themselves and/or the other party. Sometimes it's that they were unconsciously deceiving themselves or the other party.

I know some folks who are getting divorced because 2 years into the relationship, one of them realized they were trans.

Someone else, it was 18 years in and after having (and raising) a kid together.

I used to work with someone that realized they were a lesbian after being married 25 years and raising a child together with their (male) spouse.

For the other party, it can be a bit difficult to not see that as some kind of deception. It certainly changes 'the deal' pretty dramatically.

Knowing a bit about what was going on, I was also seeing signs of emotional abuse in one or both parties that was concerning, and may have played a part. It's not normal for someone to have PTSD type reactions to basic office human interaction, for instance. They insisted things were fine though.

Other times it's patterns of infidelity that come out much later, or actions that start once the 'ink is dry' that are deeply manipulative and destructive. Like 'oh honey, that's great that we're married now. Oh, I forgot to tell you about that $70k in credit card debt I just ran up.'.

Other times, it's things like 'marrying for love', then leaving once the green card arrives, or have their degree paid off, etc.

Or they're building multiple lives without anyone knowing - until someone finds out.

Or they get deeply controlling and abusive once they feel they get enough leverage.

Or they start screaming at their partner and stabbing the counter with a butcher knife because the other partner asked them if they were ok one too many times....

Or any number of things.

People are... messy.

If for some reason you have a reason to spend time in family court (if so, I'm deeply sorry), watch the other cases. It can be very informative. The reality is VERY different from how it is usually portrayed. Especially if you have EQ and can read between the lines a bit.

My recent 'favorite' being the Mom who had a valid restraining order against her (due to prior incidents) who decided to violate it to the point she physically stepped on and hurt the fathers mom in front of their daughter and disrupted their daughters school event to the point she had to be physically escorted out by security. She got scolded by the judge for violating said order - and receiving no other penalty.

Despite admitting to it in open court, TO THE JUDGE, and actually adding details that made it clear it was even worse. After the father hesitatingly brought it up.

Eye opening is one way of putting it.

I’ve been married for 53 years; we share our accounts and have never had any problems.

I think that split finances solve the incompatibility problem for the legal system and banks, and not the couple involved.

I don't understand couples that keep separate finances. When you get married its "we" and not "me". It seems like keeping one foot out the door. Note: I've been married for 23 years with everything tracked in joint accounts the entire time but we do have a small "fun money" monthly budget item for each of us that is a black box.

21 for us, same joint accounts. It probably helps that we both have financial niches we like to pay attention to. I’m the retirement and investments person while she’s the paychecks and credit card person (we don’t have a budget per se, but CC is a nice way for us to get a spending report without much effort).

It can make inheritance simpler in some cases. And if the other person develops into an asshole (not that anyone plans to) then it can also be simpler when it comes time to part ways.

Marriage is supposed to end when you die, remember your vows?

> Marriage is supposed to end when you die, remember your vows?

Well, if these vows turn out to an issue, there do exist options to increase the probablity that one of the marriage partners dies ... ;-) ;-)

That’s not true of all marriage vows. It’s not uncommon for self written vows to essentially be a long-winded way of saying “I promise to be a good partner as long as we’re married”.

What if one person has significantly more money than the other person? Prenups exist for a reason

In many places, you don't. Washington State all property is 50/50. Half my income is my wife's, even though I make 800k and she makes nothing.

I dunno, the idea that you are willing to make a commitment to someone for the rest of your life but also try to hold back money from them is so alien.

Even though Washington is a community property state, you can still have a prenup agreeing that your two incomes will be separate property, if you so wish and if you execute it correctly.

Sure, but why?

My rationale is that prenups are an acknowledgment that sometimes, people discover things don’t work out. Agreeing what each person has from the beginning confirms the commitment of marriage is beyond the money/wealth that existed before.

I’ve never been married yet but this perspective seems rare. So many people’s lives get destroyed or seriously damaged after a bad divorce. Why not do something that would ease the pain for both parties?

The alternative is to say, "knowing who we are now, we are going in together. Fifty fifty. Egalitarian. If someday in the future we split, we both walk away with half."

Holding on to the idea that somehow anything is "mine" or "yours" rather than "ours" is a waste, imo. You can try and protect "mine" with a prenup, or you can accept the "ours" nature and make peace with that. I find the latter to be simpler, more elegant.

In the states I'm familiar with, that's largely just gonna cover pre-existing assets, and you need to be talking about a large initial discrepancy (millions or more) probably to make it worthwhile. I've also been advised that it's easier to do something more like "the prenup will say you'd get 10%, but you revoke your claim to trying to get more" than some sort of "it's all mine!!" - it needs to be non-coercive and give both parties consideration and a reason to make the agreement. Lawyers told me that there's a often a big difference in that world between "what a lawyer might be willing to write up and get people to sign" and "what's gonna hold up in court."

I strongly disagree. Splitting finances allows each person to be responsible for their own money and avoids disputes over whether one person is spending more than their fair share.

For me doing the exact reverse works better, most of the funds are owned by the individual and a small joint account for fun activities.

Because joint accounts have always seemed weird and controlling to me? I don’t want my wife to have to “check in” when she wants to buy something. She can spend her money on whatever she wants. We split the bills according to our income (more or less) and discuss saving more when we know larger expenses like a trip or home improvements are on the horizon.

I don’t need access to her checking accounts or credit cards because I trust her to be financially responsible and I don’t want her to ever feel like she has to justify spending money on something she wants to me.

You're thinking all the money of both people has to go in the same join account, but that's not the case. You can have a "for the bills" join account, and then each person has their own separate account. Every month each person transfer a certain amount to the joint account to cover the bills (50/50, 70/30, whatever split works for them). Any other money is spent in the person's own account and has nothing to do with the other, no need for controlling or justifying.

> You're thinking all the money of both people has to go in the same join account, but that's not the case.

That’s quite literally what the study is suggesting. All money in one account results in the most satisfaction.

https://academic.oup.com/view-large/402916029?guestAccessKey...

> All money in one account results in the most satisfaction.

Does it though? It could also be seen the other way around as "If you're already satisfied and trust each other, you are more probable to use a join account".

The study thought of this:

> Procedure [of Study 1]: Once both partners completed the intake survey (month 0), we randomly assigned couples to one of three bank account structure conditions. We informed couples via e- mail and provided condition-specific instructions. In the Separate Condition, we instructed couples to continue using separate checking and savings accounts and to not open joint checking and savings accounts, for the duration of the 2-year experiment. In the Joint Condition, we instructed couples to open joint checking and/or savings account(s) (within 1 month of them receiving these instruc- tions), use those joint account(s), and discontinue using their separate account(s) for the duration of the 2-year experiment. In the No-Intervention Condition, we told couples that they could manage their money however they liked for the duration of the 2-year experiment.

* PDF: https://academic.oup.com/jcr/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jcr...

"randomly assigned couples to one of three bank account structure conditions"

> I don't understand couples that keep separate finances

> You can have a "for the bills" join account, and then each person has their own separate account.

If you keep your own separate account, in any way, shape, or form, you are keeping separate finances. Transferring money into a shared "staging" account to pay bills from is just a more convenient implementation of one person paying the bills and then requesting money from the other. Either way of doing this - shared account "pool", or transferring on a case-by-case basis - is fine. What people (including me) are reacting with suspicion to, is the structure of _fully_ joined finances, where neither party has sole control over any finances of their own whatsoever.

To add, I don't want only one person the relationship to know how to manage money. If I pass away, I don't want my partner to be unable to take care of our kids because I did all the budgeting and investing.

> I don’t want my wife to have to “check in” when she wants to buy something

One does not necessitate the other.

In theory, sure. In practice literally every person I know with singular checking accounts has to check in when making any purchase more expensive than a tank of gas and expect the same from their significant other.

Why is this necessary?

For most people it's because they live paycheck-to-paycheck, at least after things like 401(K) contributions.

Of course if you are lucky enough to have $30K+ coming in per month and your necessary monthly bills are closer to $5K then budgeting and tracking spending out of the checking account is wildly unnecessary.

But if you have say $5K-$6K coming in each month and $4K of that goes to necessary monthly bills then checking in for anything more expensive than a tank of gas ($60 or so) starts to become necessary.

Why would having separate accounts eliminate the need to communicate for larger purchases for couples in the latter situation. Sounds like that would lead to even bigger issues.

It doesn't in terms of agreement on purchases. But it makes the actual logistics of balancing the checkbook easier. You definitely know that you are or are not overdrawing.

(fwiw I use joint accounts, but I can see the benefit of separate accounts if both people are working or otherwise busy and there isn't time each night to balance the checkbook.)

Separate account transactions can't accidentally cause a critical bill payment to fail from the bills account (joint or individually managed). They de-risk the effect of small purchases, which it's fine for one person to keep to themselves, on the bill payments which affect all partners.

Purchases might cause insufficient funds for topping up the bills account later, but that's on a longer time cycle, and someone will know about it. So it doesn't eliminate the need to communicate about large purchases (or the sum total of many small ones), but it does eliminate the need to "check in" before individual purchase decisions, and eliminates showing each other the fine details of all your personal transactions when each of you sees the statements of your joint account(s).

E.g. some people are happier buying a bagel every day for lunch, or maybe an ice cream, or trying something else, when their partner is not posted an electronic trail that shows each bagel or ice cream purchase every day, exactly what time of day the transaction occurred, and price accurate enough to infer number of fillings.

So, it's not "weird and controlling" like the thread OP stated but rather "honey, can we afford this?" Well that's kind of a let down.

So you don't accidentally run out of money before the next paycheck arrives.

If you are lucky enough that you both have similar spending habits, then checking in isn't required.

Are you under the impression that joint accounts require both partners to consent to a transaction?

It does just for logistics. If we have $1000 in our joint account and we both spend $600 without talking to the other, it’s going to overdraft.

On the other hand, if we both have our “own” account even if they are really joint accounts, that’s not a problem.

My wife doesn’t work now. I put money into “her” account every pay period based on what we agreed on - and to make her whole once I “retired” her.

She has access to credit cards and our joint savings account if something comes up. She isn’t really a big spender and neither am I.

> I put money into “her” account every pay period based on what we agreed on

She can continue to spend the amount you guys have agreed on from a joint account.

It’s much easier just to open your bank app and know whatever is left in there you can spend until the next pay period.

I think sometimes people need a show of things to feel secure, even if there’s no functional benefit.

But in a shared account she could spend more than the agreed on amount.

How does this work? You have $1000, spend $600. You now have $400. How does the bank allow an overdraft here? Why isn't the transaction rejected?

I guess this is a debit vs credit card thing?

You can have your bank account set to allow overdrafts or reject them.

But even then, it works different if you’re using it at a point of sale with your debit card and a scheduled payment that doesn’t immediately show up as pending.

It’s just a hassle that can easily be avoided by separate joint accounts.

Of course we have a small savings account that takes care overdrafts automatically (with a $12 fee).

If you both spend more than half your liquidity without consulting your committed life partner, there's bigger issues at hand.

If your “liquidity” is in a checking account, there is an even bigger issue..

Interestingly enough, your reasoning is why we share accounts. I'm the sole income earner, so it would seem controlling to me if my wife had an "allowance". I'd presumably still feel that way if she worked outside the home but we had an income (or spending) disparity; it's all our money (both in how we treat it and, if it came down to it, how the law sees it) and we can both use our judgement on whether to buy something. We both have access to everything because we trust each other to be financially responsible.

We still generally talk to each other about anything over a few hundred dollars, but it's more like asking your friend to reassure you because you're not sure if it's worth it. You just want someone to say "dude you've been asking if you should buy X for months just buy it".

It does help that she hates clutter and I think everything is a ripoff so neither of us does much frivolous spending. Also I bring in far more than we need and it almost all goes to savings anyway.

> Interestingly enough, your reasoning is why we share accounts. I'm the sole income earner, so it would seem controlling to me if my wife had an "allowance".

I’m also the sole bread winner and my wife does have an “allowance”. It gets deposited into her account. I also have an “allowance” that’s slightly less than hers - what’s left over after all of the bills are paid and savings.

> I'd presumably still feel that way if she worked outside the home but we had an income (or spending) disparity; it's all our money and we can both use our judgement on whether to buy something. We both have access to everything because we trust each other to be financially responsible.

My wife and I also have access to everything.

> It does help that she hates clutter and I think everything is a ripoff so neither of us does much frivolous spending

Well, we don’t have to worry about buying stuff at all or creating clutter. Everything we own has to fit in four suitcases. :)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36306966

Our lives are really about experiences.

I see joint accounts as snooping into each other's affairs. People should be able to have a large degree of independence. Maybe this study says otherwise. I still think that it is prudent to keep separate accounts, even if we are "unhappier".

i don't know but i feel that if you are not comfortable to share your spending habits with your partner then you already have a trust issue that you need to resolve. of course the same is true when one partner demands to see, instead of both being relaxed and share these things when it's convenient or you are trying to figure out a budget or taxes or you need to track if/when certain payments were made or something else that requires taking a look.

I suppose the study could just as well be titled “couples that trust each other tend to be happier”.

It just sounds like so much extra work. Transfer $X on date Y for Z bill, repeat for both partners x each bill. Good grief!

Then, how do you avoid the strife over "personal" spending when one spouse makes much more than the other? I can buy a Porsche for myself because my salary is large, but my partner has to make do with a bicycle because she works at a non-profit? How do vacations and other shared things get paid for? Equally? proportionally? I could see a fight happening in each of those systems.

What if one spouse decides to stop working? You pretty much have to switch to a single, joint account at that point, right?

More power to ya if you've figured this out. It sounds exhausting and would never work in my family.

> Transfer $X on date Y for Z bill, repeat for both partners x each bill. Good grief!

This takes me approximately 10 minutes a month to total up and send over as a Zelle request. Hardly arduous.

> How do vacations and other shared things get paid for? Equally? proportionally? I could see a fight happening in each of those systems.

Sure, if you haven't discussed ahead of time what your strategy is going to be and people are blindsided. If you have (in our case - general vacations are shared, vacations to go see one of our family are covered by that person), then not necessarily, no.

> What if one spouse decides to stop working? You pretty much have to switch to a single, joint account at that point, right?

My partner's been out of work for a few months now, and...no, we haven't.

EDIT: wait, hang on, I'm even more confused now, because:

> I can buy a Porsche for myself because my salary is large, but my partner has to make do with a bicycle because she works at a non-profit?

Surely that's _more_ stressful if you have a shared account? With separate accounts, you just do your thing - it's your money, you do with it what you will. If your money's in a shared account, you either have to suppress your desires (not a healthy thing to do in life, especially in a relationship), or have the conversation about how _I_ want to spend _our_ money.

> Then, how do you avoid the strife over "personal" spending when one spouse makes much more than the other?

When I married my wife she was making $35K and I was making $90K in 2012. By 2020, at 46 and 44, I “retired her”. She was making $25K and I was making $200K+.

The entire time, it’s always been the same, we have separate joint accounts and her money goes into “her” account and “my” money goes into my account. They are all both joint accounts and I made sure she had enough to cover her expenses and spending money. Off and on throughout the years, she carried health insurance for the family that took a big chunk of her check and her car note came out of her check.

I only spend out of my account and the same for hers.

> Then, how do you avoid the strife over "personal" spending when one spouse makes much more than the other.

This is both of our second marriages. Neither one of us are extravagant spenders and we talk about all major decisions.

While we were 35 and 37 when we got married, we were both basically starting over. Her from a previous divorce and me from a previous divorce and being over leveraged with real estate post 2008.

> How do vacations and other shared things get paid for? Equally? proportionally? I could see a fight happening in each of those systems.

While we had separate accounts, everything went into one virtual “pot” on a spreadsheet and I made sure she had her agreed upon amount of spending money every pay period after “her” bills came out of her check. Vacations were subtracted from the pot.

> What if one spouse decides to stop working? You pretty much have to switch to a single, joint account at that point, right?

Nope see above

Be careful not to conflate the feelings of "I don't understand people who do X" and "I prefer not doing X".

These two are _pretty_ similar (though not the same) - neither has inherent judgement in them, they're just flavours of "eh - it's not for me". Much more important to avoid conflating "I don't understand people who do X" and "People who do X are wrong".

The issue I have with joint accounts is just logistics. Two people spending constantly out of one account seems like a nightmare.

My wife and I have all joint accounts so there aren’t any secrets. But I know what is in “my” account only changes based on what I spend and the same for hers.

Of course all of our savings accounts that can be joint are.

Well, are you posting together to Hacker News, or is it your personal hobby that you don't feel bad pursuing instead of doing another load of laundry. Shouldn't it be "I" and "We", with balancing shifting from couple to couple and over time? Personally if I like game on Steam, I just buy it rather than asking my spouse. So joint account is also kind of like my account, so long as I am reasonable. But for people with limited resources or big dreams, things may be more complicated. I would want to know if my Steam purchase still leaves money for the water bill.

Other couples think of ‘we’ differently than you do. Everybody deals with money differently.

It's all about where you set the boundaries, and yours is perfectly valid too. People can and do have a wide variety of arrangements in marriage, some sleep in different rooms, some never meet the other one's friends, some sign a prenup and some don't, and so on.

Replying to my own comment instead of editing it...

There seems to be a common statement of it would be a nightmare if two people are spending out of the same account. This is were a budget comes in. My wife and I have been monthly budgeting for most of our marriage and I think it is an essential tool for a few reasons:

1. Unless you plan what you are going to spend (even with one person) how do you know you'll have enough in your accounts to handle both mandatory and discretionary spending?

2. Spending it all on paper, together, before the month starts lets you have money discussions without the stress of already having or wanting to spend the money immediately.

3. It gives you an overall picture of your spending vs savings vs charity.

4. It helps you remember to pay those occasional bills, like property taxes (for those like us without mortgages where you pay them yourself instead of paying into escrow).

Not having a budget is just as strange to me as having separate finances.

> we do have a small "fun money" monthly budget item for each of us that is a black box.

This is what we have done, but it's been a gradual process (starting before we got married) of moving our shared expenses to a joint account, and that "fun money" is just kept in our own separate checking accounts. That way we can keep a tight eye on our joint spending and savings goals, but don't have to worry about each other's spending preferences (within agreed limits).

I think this strongly depends on the couple.

My wife and I have had separate checking accounts for 20 years, and a shared savings account, and a second shared checking account we use strictly for transferring money back and forth (we can’t use savings for that due to stupid banking rules).

We also have split the hills according to our relative incomes. I make a lot more so I have the mortgage and a few big ticket items, she has several of the other bills plus her own car payment.

We make joint decisions on big things like vacations, or more recently, private school for our kids.

I know other couples do it completely differently. Some have totally shared accounts. I know husbands on a strict allowance.

Do what works for you.

This sound like what I do. Wife originally wanted a shared account. Then didn't want to change banks (she'd moved and there was no nearby branch).

We have a shared account that we pay for the house and daycare with.

Very similar situation with my partner and I, except we use budgeting software - I manage my own personal budget and our "joint" budget separately. My partner isn't interested in using the software for her own expenses, which is fine.

We can both see how much money is allocated to everything, if there's anything one of us wants to spend money on that would be a shared thing - we budget for it.

Same for us. We both have our own checking and savings accounts, plus a joint checking and a joint savings one. We each put a certain amount every month to the joint account, based on our revenue (I earn more so I contribute more). Everything is then paid from the joint account. For big expenses, we both decide how to spread the money in different categories.

We both have money left on our own accounts to use however we want.

I would say this works quite well for us, and allow us to plan and budget for our expenses (I mainly do it, she doesn't really care about the software, but she can access it and see how much we have for each category).

This is what we do, minus the shared savings account. My partner has an app on her phone that she uses to track our expenses and we just share paying for things so we're 50/50, except for big ticket items like rent which we split based on income.

Worked for us for almost 15 years.

> Do what works for you.

This study is saying couples randomly chosen to merge finances had better relationships, which doesn’t really align with your advice.

Better relationships on average. What works best for you might not align with the average for your cohort. Adapting average-based advice to your individual characteristics often results in a better match to what's best for you than following the average ignoring your individual characteristics.

> Better relationships on average.

And exercising more and smoking less increases health, longevity, and well-being on average—unless you get hit by a truck.

There are no guarantees in life except that it will end, so you might as well try to stack the averages and odds in your favour whenever you can.

Smoking is never good for you, and exercising virtually always is. By contrast, "stacking the deck" on the specific issue of finances may or may not be helpful for a particular relationship and should be assessed case by case.

So, I don't think they're the best analogies.

Relationships are about trust, not blind trust but a good history of verifiable trust.

we have less than <1% of our wealth in checking account, rest is distributed amongst various accounts and investments.

“Do what works for you” is the pragmatic advice.

???

> I think this strongly depends on the couple

This is a study of macro level differences not what each individual is going through…

All of my personal experience with this points to the opposite. Both my parents kept separate bank accounts and had one joint one for bills. I decided to follow the articles advice and simplify to just one and it was the worst divorce my attorney had ever seen. YMMV.

Also, if you entangle your personal finances, I wouldn’t say “staying together” is what your doing, it’s more you are now trapped into supporting the other person (like I was) and they took advantage.

Was the joint account the cause or catalyst of divorce in your case?

I believe it was a catalyst. Trying to put a budget in place to reduce spending only works when both people follow said budget. When you finally have enough and split finances (keeping the joint account for bills, groceries, etc) it was deemed “financial abuse” in the Colorado courts. She claimed she was being abused and everyone bent over backwards to get her free legal services. It was awful. I’m never getting married again.

Joint accounts, yes. Only joint accounts, no way. Your parents were right. I wish I had done it that way.

How about each agreeing to contribute to a joint checking account per month. Like $5K each per month to the joint account.

For those of us who own our own business or are self-employed, my business account is mine, and my partner's business account is hers.

This might seem antagonist, I don’t mean it to be so, but does your proposal not assume both parties make well over 150k a year in salary to contribute such a large sum on a monthly basis with anything to spare?

From each according to their ability. If you make $50k and your spouse makes $150k, and your monthly expenses are $10k, then it seems quite reasonable for you to put in $2500 and your spouse to contribute $7500. The nice thing about the joint spending account is that you can set up this arrangement and then subsequently ignore it for everything else. All communal bills just get paid, and you are free to spend your excess how you like. If either person takes issue with how the money is spent, then you break it down into what they're missing. If it's nothing, then what's the problem? And if there is something missing, then you can agree to increase what counts as communal bills, including vacations, retirement, etc. All the way to everyone contributing 100% of their income, which is just a traditional joint account (but I would strongly recommend against that; 80-90% should be the max).

I do actually agree with the merit of this scheme, now that you’ve laid it out. I still thing the example values you use are extraordinarily high (“10k” / month) but I take your point. Cheers

Don’t you meant more like $80k a year?

$80k/yr wouldn’t now be enough for each spouse to contribute $5k a month, unless I’m misreading and GP meant a cumulative value of both partners combined.

Sorry, you’re saying that a salary of $150k ($12.5k/mo) works out out to only $5k/mo in take home pay? How does that math work?

You don’t put your entire take home pay into the joint account - is the point. You put in whatever is agreed upon and then keep the rest of your earned money to yourself.

When we first got married, we had the reverse of this. Both our incomes went into a joint operating account, and we each got an identical allowance paid out bi-weekly into our own separate accounts.

But after a few years of marriage we found it needlessly complicated and now we just have the operating account which we both can withdraw money from, along with various short and long term investment accounts which we both have to agree to pull money from. Perhaps it's because we've never really spent beyond our means that this hasn't caused any conflict in the past twenty years of marriage.

well in my understanding it is advisable to keep business accounts separate from personal accounts in any case. business expenses are made from the business account and personal expenses from the personal account. only income moves from the business account onto the personal account.

if you and your wife both have their own business, then those of course should be separate from each other. you can still have a shared personal account if you like or not. that's completely unrelated.

DO what's right for your relationship.

There are sooo many ways this can go wrong. Independent-minded types will have a problem with joint accounts, anxious types will have a problem with separate accounts.

Its all over the place. Think outside the box: resort to joint credit cards or open-book bank statements (but not joint bank accounts). Automated payments are your friend.

Any arrangement will tend to put an already strained relationship in the rocks. Unemployment, income disparity, etc will impact you.

Do what makes you and your partner happy. No grudges or resentments. Empathize with the other's needs but don't make yourself a floormat either.

Wouldn’t consider any other arrangement, personally. If you can’t trust each other around the money then there’s not much foundation there, IMO. We both know what the individual budget for non essential purchases is, why do we need top secret accounts? Anyway, whatever works for each couple and keeps them happiest is the best.

Your assumption is that the other person will never change. And the person you trust today will be the same person in 20, 30 years. It is not guaranteed to be true.

Wife and I have been together for 8+ years and finances is still the #1 area we struggle with (more than sex, more than children), an area we are actively working on improving. When we first had our hiccups, someone suggested we divide our finances as such:

- A shared account (shared expenses) - An account (for my eyes only; buy whatever - no questions asked) - An account (for her eyes only; buy whatever - no questions asked)

Far from perfect. We're now revisiting our setup and perhaps this article might nudge us in a different direction.

May I ask what specifically some of the issues have been? I know it's digging into a personal area so feel free to ignore this, but I'm curious what kind of issues can arise.

Issues can be categorized into three buckets: my challenges, her challenges, shared challenges. We're working through many of these with our couple's therapist but here's the gist:

  1. When wife would spend beyond our defined budget, I would get angry (stemming from fear) and let that boil inside without ever communicating it verbally

  2. When wife and I decided for her to quit her job to parent our first daughter full time, initially was elated and then I felt a financial pressure I've never experienced before

  3. Wife had a domestically violent partner before and interprets budgeting as controlling behavior

Full disclosure: lots of vulnerability factors for the both of us. I grew up poor and although I have money now, there's lots of emotions tied to finances.

I don’t understand how you can write (1) and not perceive it as an easily solved communication problem with your own wife

Lots of things about human emotion are dumb but understandable, especially re: money.

because of point 3. for example my wife didn't like me doing detailed accounting of all of our expenses do i had to stop that. she hasn't spent to much money so that issue didn't come up but i can imagine it being a problem to tell your partner they spend to much if the partner is sensitive about that.

That’s not an excuse to let things boil up without talking about it. If you fundamentally cannot communicate with someone you should not get married

that is not fair. it is easy to say, but sometimes very hard to do. things like these are not always predictable, and especially money handling often doesn't even come up as an issue until after you are married for some time.

But this is not only predictable but acknowledged. It’s not ideal to fail to communicate and not realize it. It’s not ok to identify as someone who just doesn’t communicate and bottles up their emotions until they’re problematic.

It might not be easy. But to do otherwise is a recipe for failure. And we’d be dumb to not acknowledge that. You shouldn’t marry someone you’re not comfortable talking to About difficult things. That’s like the whole point of having a trusted partner.

You shouldn’t marry someone you’re not comfortable talking to About difficult things.

you keep saying that, but generally you can't know how your partner reacts until the issue actually comes up and especially with finances it rarely comes up before you start living together which often doesn't happen until you get married.

it is impossible to vet your partner on every aspect. when you get married you start to build trust, and you find out your partners sensitive points and learn to avoid them. that's not even an issue of trust, but a question of how you communicate to keep a healthy relationship. in my case i simply stopped the detailed accounting and everything was fine. in the case here the person had difficulty dealing with that. we don't know why, or how they could resolve that, but telling them that they should have predicted that and not married this person is really unreasonable.

Albeit illegal in most places I've lived, I have never heard of anyone getting in trouble for living with someone they aren't married to.

i don't think it is actually illegal in many places, but that is not the point i am making. what matters is that many do not live together before they get married, and thus do not have the opportunity to get to know each other at that level, and, more importantly, can not be faulted for failing to know each other well enough to predict every possible problem that may come up in the future.

I’m not saying they should have predicted anything. I’m saying they should communicate. You don’t have to solve the problem. You do have to talk about your feelings.

they would have had to predict that communicating their financial concerns is not welcome. i am very open to talk about my feelings, but if a topic makes my wife angry, then i'll stop. the problem is not the ability of the sender but the reaction of the receiver. you can't control how your message is received, and therefore you can't blame the sender for failing to communicate in this case, much less suggest that they should not have married this person, because in order to avoid that they would have had to have known in advance that this issue would become a problem.

No, that’s bullshit. The wife can set her own boundaries on what she is willing to accept for finance but she can’t rule out talking about feelings about the issue.

Not talking about it is not a solution. That’s baked into the premise. You have to talk to your partner about things that are important to you, hard stop.

yes, but when a topic upsets your partner, then you first have to figure out why, and work on resolving whatever is causing that reaction before you can get to the actual problem that is bothering you. depending on the problem, and the partners willingness to listen, this can take years.

and i am arguing against the claim that if they can't communicate about every important issue, then they should not have married. which is where i want to call bullshit. because such things are just not easy to know in advance. especially you simply have no way of knowing what kind of issues might come up if you didn't experience them in your parents, your own previous relationships or your friends or others. but you can't experience everything, and even for those issues you do have experience with, you can't predict if they are going to be a serious problem or not.

if that is wrong please tell me how to know in advance what issues me and my partner are going to fight about in the future.

> yes, but when a topic upsets your partner, then you first have to figure out why, and work on resolving whatever is causing that reaction before you can get to the actual problem that is bothering you. depending on the problem, and the partners willingness to listen, this can take years.

Aka communicating

I don’t care about your argument. You don’t need to know in advance what will be hard. You just need to be able to talk about things. It’s not ok to actively acknowledge you are not talking about something that is bothering you that will boil up into anger. That’s unhealthy and toxic for both parties.

If you say “hey I’m feeling anxiety because of this, can we talk about it sometime?” And they say “no”… they’re not a good partner.

right, i agree with everything you say here, even, or especially the last point. what bothers me is your previous suggestion that "they should not have married". really, that's the only thing that i can't fit in, because the decision not to marry someone requires predicting problems.

You do realize that setting a budget is by definition controlling behavior? You are controlling the expenditure of the household. I'm not suggesting you are wrong for that, but it is controlling behavior. So your wife observed controlling behavior and then equated it to something in her past.

It isn't controlling behaviour if you both have equal input into designing the budget, and both agree to and support the idea of having a budget in the first place.

it can be intended to be not controlling, but perceived as such. i used to do accounting to track and understand my own behavior. and when i tried that after getting married on all our expenses, the point was not to control her but to understand our expenses and allow for self control or restraint if necessary (realizing that you spend $100 on coffee each month can help you change your behavior). but it made my wife uncomfortable.

If you read the post, it's clear that is not what happened here. OP set the budget. Wife did not follow it.

There’s a I’me assumptions that were made here. To clarify, we set the budget together.

Based on the account you provided, your wife only agreed to it as a matter of conversation. Not as a matter of practice.

1. You have to communicate otherwise the other party doesn't know. However, this would be a huge deal for me.

2. I felt this pressure when we were deciding if my wife would stay home or if we would do daycare. I told her I don't want a pressure of single income. In the end daycare has been great for our kid. The feeling of pressure is completely normal. Single income to support a family clearly is more riskier than two incomes.

3. Your wife needs therapy. Budgeting is not controlling, it is basic personal finance. She can contribute to the budgeting discussion.

4. You also may need therapy. I too grew up poor and know the feeling. I know people who took that feeling, budgeted and became millionaires but one does need a healthy balance of spending and saving.

We do as the above and I think it is the only thing that makes sense for us. The problem we have is too much is not enough for some. They don't need to spend they need to horde. It causes problems and I think it is actually some other need that is poorly expressed. Never underestimate the ability to have problems in relationships.

Don't merge your accounts together. You have the right setup - accounts-wise. Changing it to joint likely won't solve issues, and untangling from joint is difficult.

My wife and I use a pretty simple system which we picked up from some friends of ours:

80% of each of our post-tax income goes into a shared account for stuff which is unambiguously 'shared' costs - for example rent, utilities, groceries, savings, stuff for our son, eating out together, etc.

We each keep 20% of our income to do what we want with. This fixes almost all feelings of inequality (I make a bit more than my wife. Personally I'm not that bothered, but my wife feels very strongly that she does not want to be 'supported' by my income, and that her disposable income should be based on her income, not our net income).

Every now and then we agree to move a cost into the 'shared' category even if it's clearly not a shared cost (e.g., my wife's phone bill comes out of the shared account because my phone bill is paid by my employer).

Sometimes we also 'treat' each other, by taking a cost like a dinner out together as a personal expense (often on pay day, for example).

As an exception to the above, my wife is on maternity leave at the moment so we agreed we'd just sum up all our incomings and each of us gets 10%. This is also working pretty well so we might not change it back after she starts working again, but we'll see if she raises this inequality thing again.

Obviously YMMV, but this system suits us well

Or maybe it is happy couples that have joint accounts, uh?

That seems very much to be the case given the comments here, all the comments that think joint accounts are bad seem to be people that ended up being divorced so the marriage itself wasn't going well.

I can see how a bad relationship is going to get worse with mixed finances.

Read the abstract. It's a randomized study, not an observational one.

Doesn't show much?

- Is relationship quality THE ONLY thing that matters? Certainly it's very important, but individuals needs and wants, or desire to help other family members are not NOTHING. If drop in relationship quality was slight, but improvements to these other areas were pronounced, could be a trade off to consider?

- Couples were randomly assigned to each group and presumably ones who didn't adhere dropped out of study. Would the results be the same if decisions were made based on a heartfelt discussion, with agreement to try the other arrangement if the first one caused too much friction.

- Why is it an either/or? Is it a given that keeping a small "for personable hobbies" account while depositing most money in a family fund would hurt? Conversely, would rationally planning family needs and then keeping the rest of the money for personal enjoyment or treating each other with gifts/experiences be bad?

I am lucky enough to have inexpensive hobbies, so I can just spend of them as I wish and it's not going to move a needle on family finances. But if someone wants a family AND to climb Everest, I would not begrudge them not giving up on either dream.

My wife and I have always had “separate joint” accounts. We are both on all accounts.

We’ve been married since 2012. Her check went into “her” account and my check went into “my” account. I paid “my” bills out of my account and she paid “her” bills out of her account. I made so much more than her while she was working, I ended up putting money in her account to make up her spending money short fall.

We both have a zero based budget. After we pay our bills and put aside savings, we could each just look at our own accounts to see what we could spend until the next pay period.

She was mostly working for “her” spending money and provide stable health insurance working part time in the school system for the family while I job hopped rebuilding my career.

Then in 2020, I fell into my current $BigTech job and I didn’t want her to be in the school system because of a little world wide pandemic and I “retired” her.

Before that, we talked about how much she would need to be comfortable. That amount gets deposited into “her” account when I get paid.

While we talk about all of our long term goals and neither one of us make big purchases without talking to the other, what we do with our allowances there are no questions asked.

Seems obvious.

Though, I think a lot of people here think the takeaway is "if you're in a relationship and you do separate now, you'll be happier if you put them together" and NO NO NO that's not it at all.

It's "if y'all were already the type to put them together, you're probably happier than the types who didn't."

Correlation doesn’t imply causation and if there is correlation it doesn’t imply the direction.

This link is to a study that was a randomized trial, which means it can theoretically contribute to establishing causation:

> In a six-wave longitudinal experiment, we investigated whether randomly assigning engaged or newlywed couples to merge their money in a joint bank account increases relationship quality over time. Whereas couples assigned to keep their money in separate accounts or to a no-intervention condition exhibited the normative decline in relationship quality across the first 2 years of marriage, couples assigned to merge money in a joint account sustained strong relationship quality throughout.

No. The link is to an abstract of a study, and the abstract claims that it was a randomized trial.

A reasonable person may, of course, decide to trust the authors and assume they executed the randomization correctly. However, without being able to read the methodology of the study (which is paywalled), it is just that: an assumption.

This is a reasonable nitpick, but I'm responding to someone who said "correlation does not imply causation", which pretty clearly communicates that they didn't even read the abstract.

Note that I said it can theoretically contribute to causation—I'm not saying the study came to the correct conclusion, just that people should actually follow the link rather than critiquing the study based on the title alone.

Sure. I was speaking in generalities.

It sounds like they specifically attempted to avoid that reasoning by taking the decision away from the couples: "In a six-wave longitudinal experiment, we investigated whether randomly assigning engaged or newlywed couples to merge their money in a joint bank account increases relationship quality over time."

I would like to see more of this by income level, though, which isn't mentioned in the abstract. If you don't have much, and you have separate accounts, I certainly see how it results in more resentment, feeling that one of you is having to sacrifice or do more. That lines up with their findings of joint account promoting feelings of cohesiveness. If you are making more, it seems like it would be less of a significant factor in the relationship.

oh god, I just realized this study is based off self reporting isn't it? In other words couples are happier when they perceive they have a joint checking account with no separate accounts.

I think just seeing double the balance (or much more for high income disparity households) on bank statements due to being assigned to the joint-account cohort seems likely to make a lot of people feel more psychologically secure by itself, regardless of how their relationship is going.

But that does count as happier.

They try to get at that causation problem with the random assignments: they randomly assigned the couples into three groups: no intervention, must do joint finances, and continue their separate finances (all 230 couples in the study started with separate finances). After two years the joint finance groups were happier in their relationship and less likely to have broken up.

So, if you had RTFM'd, you'd have seen that they are trying to get at causation by doing a randomized controlled trial, the gold-standard for proving causation.

As others have said, they did a randomized trial. "Whereas couples assigned to keep their money in separate accounts or to a no-intervention condition exhibited the normative decline in relationship quality across the first 2 years of marriage, couples assigned to merge money in a joint account sustained strong relationship quality throughout."

Sadly, I don't have access to the paper. May try and find a link to it later. I'm curious to know if they split the "no-intervention" cohort to look at the idea you are mentioning. That is, mayhap the cohort that got to do what they want was dominated by the separate accounts group? More strangely, it would be really weird if the no-intervention group saw an inverse result. That is, if given the choice and you keep joint accounts, you are unhappier than if you had kept separate.

The study thought of this:

* PDF: https://academic.oup.com/jcr/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jcr...

"randomly assigned couples to one of three bank account structure conditions"

Co-author supplied link to the PDF:

* https://academic.oup.com/jcr/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jcr...

* Via: https://twitter.com/JennyGin18/status/1636732475375321089

Something I've seen frequently in the business world is the husband and wife maintaining separate financial identities so that if one side's business goes bankrupt, a large chunk of the family wealth will be protected.

this is what limited liability corporations are for, no?

I can't read the article, but it seems like the legal concept of community property (Spanish civil law) vs. separate property should somehow factor into this discussion. About one third of the U.S. married persons are domiciled in community property states (CA & TX being the two largest by population).

Commingling separate funds in a joint account can transnmute them to community property.

https://www.irs.gov/irm/part25/irm_25-018-001

For people who will not get divorced this is a good idea (as long as each has some slush money).

For people who will get divorced this is a bad idea.

For people who might go either way, if you come into the relationship with similar amounts of wealth and no kids, then this is a good idea as everything you make going forward is a result of your partnership, no longer just you yourself.

For people who might go either way and who come into a relationship with a wide disparity in wealth or existing kids it is more complex.

I have a question regarding a prenup. Maybe people here have good ideas. I know someone (she) who inherited a house in a hcol area. When getting married they made a prenup so that she would keep ownership of the house. They also had separate accounts but lived together and spit the bills, an otherwise happy marriage. Then came a time, after both of them earned some money that they wanted to renovate the house. That caused some issues, because if the house is completely her's, should he chip in for renovations? Together they have enough money for renovations, but she herself doesn't. They will obviously both benefit from the renovations, and he is willing to chip in. But I don't know what would be a good solution. Obviously this is someone else, so I won't get too involved, but I'm going to get married soon, and things like this make a prenup look like it doesn't solve problems, rather replaces problems with other problems.

IANAL, but if the prenup doesn’t already cover this, then they could always draw up a new contract amending it.

Prenups can say (almost) whatever you want, so the short answer is to cover maintenance expenses in the same document that gives you a stake in the property in the first place even if that stake is just a residence one. Of course that's much more obvious in hindsight but there's also postnups which can amend the prenup.

If I were pitching in to renovate a property I'd want equity in it. You can do that with or without the inheritance or the prenup: figure out the value of the property before and after the renovations and assign that percentage to the person that covered them.

That's what I'd do in a non-romantic housemate situation but of course a marriage is way more complicated and there are lots of pieces that aren't purely legal or equity in nature. A prenup isn't going to absolve you of that.

We use a joint account and joint credit cards for most things. We each take a $250 monthly allowance to personal accounts. Most of our personal purchases still come from the joint account but every once in awhile you want something big without running it past the other person or you want to buy a gift for them and need the privacy. We budget and pay off our credit cards every week.

This arrangement works well for us. We are both financially responsible though. I think my wife prefers the joint account because I do the weekly budgeting and it allows her to get a clear view of her own expenses with charts. It also prevents all conversation of the sort, “who is paying for this,” that I’ve seen some of our friends get into.

I don’t really care if my wife spends more than I do. I don’t think she cares if I spend more than her. What we care for is that we can get a clear overview of everything to understand how our team is doing.

Our situation is the same. I think it works well because we are both quite restrictive by nature, so whenever one of us wants to buy something the other often encourages them.

Not sure how it would work with a couple that tends to spend more each month or a situation where one has an expensive hobby and the other doesn't.

I think even if you fully pool finances, it is best to each take an agreed "allowance" out of that for personal consumption. I don't think its healthy to be a position where any and every purchase you make could be questioned and/or criticised. Some things should be your own private decision.

I couldn't be happier with a hybrid setup. My gf and I have an account that we both contribute mortgage and utility money into. Our finances are otherwise completely separate. We buy whatever we want and trust each other to pay our share. It is extremely easy and has not once resulted in any arguments.

Same here. It has been educational to see the various viewpoints in the comments and how complex this can get.

My wife and I recently started sharing an Apple Card with combined lines of credit and it makes tracking monthly expenses so much easier than having two independent cards. We also share a bank account and mortgage, but have our own investment accounts

I was so “never again” from my first marriage that I literally just pay for everything* but I refuse to do a joint account. It’s just extra bureaucratic headache (in our case) and I’m going to occasionally splurge when I want to. I went overboard setting up a shop during Covid and yeah it led to some strife. We worked through it.

* My wife’s a teacher and rather than argue about money, I let her keep her income as our savings, vacations, whatever she wants otherwise; I use my much higher tech income and pay all the recurring bills, handle retirement savings, restaurants, etc.

Yeah, no, sorry. Been burned on that one. Ex couldn’t control herself and spent every last penny that came in. I have more money at the end of the day even with alimony and child support.

From reading some comments I'm surprised joint account doesn't just mean money for rent/mortgage, bills, groceries, repairs, house stuff. Share the money that's meant to be shared and don't share the money that isn't. I don't want to spend my partner's money on things that exclusively will be used by me, it just doesn't make sense.

in marriage all money is to be shared. you can give yourselves an allowance, but the money you earn is just as much your partners, as the money your partner earns is yours.

Probably my favorite line in P.G. Wodehouse is "The saddest words of tongue or pen are not 'It might have been', they are 'joint checking account'."

In practice, it is not that tragic. Joint finances do mean that surprise birthday or Christmas presents must be paid for in cash, or if that is not possible I have to have my son make the purchase and then reimburse him.

Maybe I’m in a bubble, and this doesn’t take away from the value of researching the question, but whom does this surprise?

The question of the purpose, value, and content of marriage is certainly in flux at the moment, but to me, a relatively cosmopolitan (currently) single young man, there is no topic the traditionally included are more correct about than marriage.

I once heard sociology research described as the field that proves with statistics what everyone knows with common sense

Well that depends on what counts as your “common sense”. When you consider the wildly different political beliefs people have, there is simply no way that statement is true. A software developer from Silicon Valley is probably going to think about things differently than a farmer from Louisiana for example.

Applying Hank's razor:

Couples who are happier are much more likely to agree to open a joint checking account, skewing the stats

The study thought of this:

* PDF: https://academic.oup.com/jcr/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jcr...

"randomly assigned couples to"

I can see the abstract but can't access the article. PDF?

Anyways, my wife and I have been happy with contributing to a joint account for expenses but keeping our checking accounts separate.

Also couples with joint social media are notably not happier according to my very unscientific observations.

In South Korea where I live, joint accounts are illegal. You can share cards and PIN numbers with your spouse, and that practice is at least informally accepted. But it’s not a true joint account and doesn’t have the benefit of survivorship.

Does the no survivorship benefit also apply to retirement and investment accounts ? What happens to the money when someone passes away then ?

The money / property passes through normal probate process. It’s not automatic like would be in a joint account.

you can have a bank account only in one persons name, but that doesn't mean you can't treat the account as a joint account.

Practically speaking, yes. I am not sure it’s completely legal. For example, my wife made such an account in her name and the reason she said was for our savings. A week later the bank shut down the account be side they said an account can’t be shared. It that’s just one anecdotal story.

They should study polycule finances. Every family should frankly have a CPA.

This is such a weird study.

People that choose to keep separate finances seem like the exception rather than the norm. So you'd find way more people in the shared bucket than not.

Personally, I grew up watching my parents relationship crumble over finances and long since had a very sour taste to it. So I always vowed to keep mine separate. We do keep a shared account together that we pool money into it so that when either of us retire or get sick, we'd have this to fall back on later in life. We have an agreement on putting the same amount of money into this shared account and then have whatever is left over to do as we please. Worst cast we end our relationship and can then easily take our half back out without feeling cheated.

This is a randomized trial, not an observational study.

As a young couple we use Splitwise to track all our shared expenses, bills and what-nots. It creates this self-balancing mechanic where whoever owes is the one paying for the thing.

We’re probably going to be doing the whole combined finances soon, but if you have any financial relationship with any person or group, Splitwise is great for keeping the score.

Or they say they are happier because they don't want to upset the other person with withdrawal ability on their checking account.

expressing love .. with money? mmh.

or trust over those? maybe that's closer..

Rich millennials (hacker news core demo) will strongly disagree with this I imagine and justify why this doesn’t apply to them. Boomers and millennials have much in common when it comes to discarding wisdom of the past.

What about divorcing couples w/ joint accounts? Are they happier?

I think a couple's happiness is largely dictated by the specific people in the couple...

If your partner has adult ADHD separating finances save a ton of stress.

Maybe happy couples with aligned spending and lifestyle expectations end up joining their accounts as an outcome. Rather than joining accounts make you happy

[Ignore this and see the reply to my comment. I can't open the site for some reason.]

I don't think it's the joint account that makes them happy. It's their happiness and trust as a couple that makes them have a joint account.

Did you read the abstract, or just the title? This is a randomized trial, with couples assigned to do one or the other over the first two years of marriage.

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