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.
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...
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".
> 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"
> 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.
One does not necessitate the other.
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.
(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.)
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.
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.
She can continue to spend the amount you guys have agreed on from a joint account.
I guess this is a debit vs credit card thing?
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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).
Well, if these vows turn out to an issue, there do exist options to increase the probablity that one of the marriage partners dies ... ;-) ;-)
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.
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?
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.