How do you and the one(s) you love Do Money? Together? Separately? Do you have joint accounts AND individual accounts? Do you venmo and splitwise and cashapp each other til your eyes cross? Do you and your partner/spouse/otherwise-significant-other share the same money philosophies or goals? How do you DO IT!?
A place to share ideas & solutions, soundboard for issues, philosophical chats, etc.
Gonna start us off with an article that got me thinking about this topic. What’s your take?
Oh, I love to talk LOL
Okay so Partner and I are NOT married and are completely financially separate.
That said, we contribute to things as a household.
I pay her 650$ in “rent” which covers a portion of her mortgage (the house is hers). She covers utilities, internet, and major house issues (like replacing the hot water heater, etc.); I pay for our groceries and the lion’s share of the cat costs, which evens out to what utilities and internet are, on the whole. If there’s a big cat expense or a Costco trip, I sometimes pay a little less in rent, but we don’t really calculate it. It’s kinda a gut check situation. Neither of us track the micro details.
When we go out, sometimes we trade off paying for meals and drinks. And sometimes we split it.
As long as both of us feel like we’re being fairly treated, we don’t sweat it.
I manage my finances and she manages hers and it seems to work out pretty well. 
She foots larger things like home repairs, but since she is getting equity in the home and I’m not (as a renter) we figure that makes sense. For “wants” rather than needs, I plan on chipping in. Example: we eventually someday want to deal with the wild jungle of a backyard we have and put in a gazebo. I’ll help with the cost of that.
We started off splitting things much more carefully, but have gotten pretty freeform with it.
I think the key thing is that everyone thinks it’s fair. How you get to what “fair” is can be a very unique journey, I think.
ETA:
This requires a complete trust that your partner will handle their shit and an acceptance that if they don’t, it’s their problem.
If Partner spends too long being funemployed and runs into issues? Obviously I won’t let her starve or let the house go into default, but I trust her to deal with the situation.
Both of us prefer it that way.
I only read the headline and I’m about to leave to pick up burritos but my quick thought: I used to be like that (except I wanted a shared credit card and bank account for shared expenses like rent and groceries) but after 5 years married and 9 living together we’re starting to close our separate bank accounts because it’s annoying to keep transferring money between them.
They’re all linked up to the same YNAB though. And we’re each keeping an individual checking account at the very least.
Please report back about the most important thing: the ritos.
Nb4r: I have a feeling DH and I will slide into this mode after a few years of some shared some not
I am nodding my head real hard at this part. I love hearing how different folks manage this. It seems like you and partner have really excellent communication lines open and long term trust built up and I admire it a lot!
OH I didn’t mention this in my initial post but I am dying to know if anyone has a prenup or postnup or any nup at all
Sometimes better than others. It’s a lot of trust, I think? And mutual respect of one another as grown up adults who are quite independent.
We’re not saints and we’ve def had communication hiccups. Getting to this point has been a process.
Money can do a lot of things but it cannot buy mutual respect.
I know some friends who meant to have a prenup but it ended up being a postnup just because they signed their marriage certificate too fast
They both felt it was helpful, just in figuring some things out! Not just a “cover your ass” but also learning priorities between them and dealing with concerns upfront.
Here is where DH and I stand today, and where I’d like us to be by baby time:
Separate:
Joint:
Currently I will pay off the Discover card each month by splitting it in half between his checking and mine
Once my name change is finalized and I have all the ID forms needed, we plan to open shared Ally checking and savings accounts where we can pool rent and the amount needed to pay off the Discover
Also need a 529 for babe.
I doubt it but does anyone here have an S.O. with no college debt (no debt at all) and you yourself have 6 figures of student loans? He doesnt own anything except a car so he’s p much “broke” (using this mostly as a joke but for This Forum, yeah). He knows I have college debt but no concept of the amount. Help lol.
Edit for clarity: we dont live together but as to this date I pretend the above situation doesnt exist
Are you considering joining your finances or getting married?
If no to both, it’s none of his business unless you share. If you think either financial entanglement or marriage are in your future, it’s def a conversation you need to have at some point.
I want a pre nup so bad even though I have no assets so I cant get married until it warrants a pre nup
You can get one and dictate who gets custody of your prized jointly-owned potted plant.
when the Shadowy One came to Canada (on a one year working holiday visa), we didn’t bother to set them up with a separate account because it seemed like too much effort. At the time I maybe had 5k, I don’t remember how much they had, but it was all in NZD. I was in my final year of university/just starting to work. (Annual income 33k? Shadowy one was probably 30k)
We opened up a joint account, I put them as a second user on my credit card, and just had all income going into the chequing account from the start. I had a separate HISA pretty early on, probably set up in the time between the shadowy one went back after the 1 year holiday visa and actually immigrating. We considered a prenup, but neither of us had any assets (ETA: also, no debt for either of us).
And that is basically how we’ve run ever since. We opened up a separate credit card for them because at a certain point we found out they had no Canadian credit history. It is paid through the shared chequing account. If it seems higher than I expected I ask what was on it. We have a joint HISA account for the bucket drawdown strategy. We each have an individual HISAs for sinking funds (mine is earmarked for home repairs, theirs is property tax and travel). And of course our investments are separate, but when we rebalance, we look at them as a whole.
Credit cards, the shadowy one asks if they can be paid from chequing, and I say if money needs to be moved from a sinking fund. The shadowy one takes care of paying property tax (because that used to be done in person and their office was close to the city office), and the internet bill because the password is on that machine. I take care of paying all other bills, but it’s all out of the same account.
I am responsible for the investment strategy. They are responsible for actually buying ETFs (because otherwise it is hard to press the big red button for either of us).
I was the one who said FIRE and made the larger income. They are the one who made sure to make a cheese sandwich for work 4 times out of 5, and find us good travel deals.
AMA
We are completely combined. We see it as being part of a team and being fully committed partners. Before we were married we kept everything separate but he lived with me and paid our phone bill and out eating out, and I paid for everything else. Once we got married we closed my checking and savings accounts and switched his to joint ones and combined it all. Technically we aren’t on each other’s credit cards but the we just use whatever card is the most convenient and they are all listed in mint/YNAB for tracking and paying purposes.
I think it’s impossible to have a stay at home spouse or a disabled spouse without having completely combined finances. I also think it’s doable to be separate without kids but gets almost impossible once you have kids.
ETA: no prenups here. We also had an interesting situation when we got married. I had a high-ish paying job and $100k+ in student loans, plus a decent amount of cash because I just sold my house. He had no income except ssdi, no real income potential due to being disabled, and $30k in credit card debt from being a para athlete. We used my house proceeds to pay off his debt.
Mr Pancakes and I got together when we were both studying and working casual shifts at a supermarket. We have never worried too much about who pays what. We are very privileged though that even though we were both under 18 at the time we started dating, we both came into the relationship with savings, have similar spending habits, and have always both had money in the bank.
We did keep separate accounts until we purchased our house and now we keep almost everything in the mortgage. At various times we have both been the only person employed and have adjusted so whoever is earning pays the bills.
Edit: even when we had separate accounts we kept a spreadsheet that we both have access to that we update every month. At first it was because we were both studying and living off a small income and that helped us know how much we had to work with, then when we were saving for our house we could keep track of how we were going. Now we use to to track how we are going with the mortgage.
Weirdly even though I think of myself as super independent, I do think it is his business lol. Like if he had that much debt himself I’d expect an explanation and the way he handled it would affect how I saw him. To be fair to myself, I mostly handle my money shit so I dont think he has any idea. Also, i know all of us agree with the personal finance of previous sentence but in the gen pop dating pool that is NOT happening so thats why I feel this way.
The part of the article that freaks me out:
We share a home, and I’ve taken his name, which had been a tremendous identity shift for me— a sacrifice, even (since changing my name, I’ve not been able to secure a new credit card as institutions refuse to recognize me, despite my extensive credit history under my previous name and my near-perfect credit score).
Has anyone else experienced this???