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If you’re married or in a long term relationship, have you merged finances? What factors made you decide whether to share financial accounts or keep separate accounts?
We haven’t talked about this too long, and The New York Times just had an interesting story noting that although most people think sharing a financial account will lead to increased conflict, a recent study found that was the opposite.
We haven’t talked about this in way too long, so I thought it might make an interesting discussion here.
What Research Shows about Sharing Accounts with Your Spouse
As The New York Times (gift link) recently noted,
Although nearly one in three people in a 2024 survey by WalletHub believed that sharing a financial account led to increased conflict, research finds the opposite is true. A recent study published in The Journal of Consumer Research found that couples with joint accounts tended to be happier and more committed than those without. Merging finances helps align a couple’s financial goals and encourages them to create a tighter bond as they work together on saving for a house or retirement, the research showed.
Interesting! One of the couples quoted in the article explained further: “I feel like it’s a lot easier to hit your financial goals when you’re all working in the same direction and you both have all of the information.”
Different Ways to Split Expenses
There are a number of different methods that I’ve heard about through the years, and I’m curious to hear from you guys (particularly those of you who are the breadwinners): what is your family’s method for sharing money? There was a great series in Slate many years ago (now available as a Kindle book) that defined these main types:
- Common Potters – people who combine all of their money
- Sometime Sharers – people who have both separate and joint accounts (usually with an automatic percentage going into the joint account)
- Independent Operators – people who have completely separate accounts
How My Husband and I Share Finances
As I’ve mentioned before, I never wanted to feel like I was “chasing” my husband for “his share” of the bills, so when we first got married we tried to be Sometime Sharers (with 80% of each person’s income going to a joint account based on some old Suze Orman advice), but it got complicated quickly:
…if I bought him a sweater, was that our money? Or my money? (What if it was a really, really good sale that I totally couldn’t pass up?) If he went out for drinks with our best man (who is my husband’s friend, but is now like family to both of us) and bought him a round or two of drinks, was that his money? Or our money? It felt like the questions were never ending.
After a few months of marriage we decided to just keep all of the money in a joint account (Common Potters), and we haven’t looked back since. (It probably helps matters here that I am both the primary spender in the family, as well as the person who manages our finances.) That said, I do still have separate investment accounts that I opened before we got married […] but all new investments have gone to jointly held accounts.
We are still Common Potters, and I have no regrets — but I recognize that there are LOTS of ways to do this! I think things got a bit complicated for some friends after kids came along — people who had been Independent Operators became Sometime Sharers or Common Potters in order to pay for childcare, as well as “family” type things like vacations.
(For what it’s worth I did keep an investment account that I had before we got married that is separate from our joint finances, although I haven’t really added to it since we’ve been married. Also, obviously, our retirement accounts are separate.)
The Pros to Merging Finances with Your Husband
I tend to agree with the woman quoted in the article — having shared finances means all of our money is going to shared financial goals.
Another benefit: if one partner is savvier with money than the other, the second partner doesn’t have to worry about money issues quite so much. In my marriage this tends to be me, so I’m the one in charge of saving, investing, and so forth.
I do think it’s important to note that everything should be very transparent to both partners. Over the years, I’ve given my husband a “state of the union” where I’d basically go over how much we had in each account, or how much we’d saved toward a specific goal. And he of course has full access to all of the accounts.
Readers, how about you — have you merged finances? What factors made you decide whether to share financial accounts or keep separate accounts?
{related: who manages the money in your house?}
Stock photo via Deposit Photos / AndrewLozovyi.