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My fiance and I are getting married in October and we're looking to join up our accounts next week. The plan is to establish a single account where both our direct deposits are sent, then each person gets a monthly discretionary amount moved into another account that they personally hold. This is for personal 'want' things, eating out at work, etc.. The main account will cover the bills and normal living expenses. She is a wizard with YNAB (You Need a Budget) and has everything detailed out very nicely. We also have two rental properties which will continue to have separate accounts for their income and expenses, for easier book keeping. We intend to set up an LLC for each rental property next year in order to provide a legal shield between properties and our personal assets. We'll be meeting with a real estate attorney and a tax accountant this winter to discuss how we should set up the LLCs and what we should be doing from an accounting perspective. We both have several (paid off) credit cards. Our goal is to utilize one personal card each, and then have a single card that we use for shared expenses. Naturally, all of these would be paid in full each month. They are just being used to accumulate points and such. The biggest problem we're running into right now is that the card that we want to use for our shared expenses (Chase Amazon) no longer allows for joint account holders on a single card, only a single account holder with another authorized user. We'd rather have it established that we are jointly responsible for it. How does everyone else do this?
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Jul 27, 2015 15:38
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 07:16 |
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If you are joining your accounts as one just use the one account. Especially if you budget and she is a ynab wizard. If you are joining up accounts it is just money that is both of yours, there is no her or your money at this point. As far as I know chase completely did away with joint credit cards and all they have is primary and authorized users. It makes no difference though, not sure why it is a concern. Also why so many credit cards... Seems like you are combining everything and then thinking maybe not. Just go one way or the other.
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Jul 27, 2015 18:53
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Everyone else doesn't try to not be married when they are married. Married means you are one legal entity with a single set of assets that works as one. If you don't want that you should just stay shacked up.
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Jul 27, 2015 18:57
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My wife and I did this a few months before we got married. You make a joint checking and joint savings account. We kept our personal accounts, but they are used only when we want to mask the exact purchase price of a gift to one another. I think the balance on mine has been $0.01 for the last 2 years or so. If you're going to successfully join finances, you have to trust each other and actually commit to it. Otherwise, don't bother. Just pay her to pay the bills monthly.
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Jul 27, 2015 19:13
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I feel like maybe this didn't come across the way I meant it to. There's no trust issue in play, we both have fairly BFC-approved spending habits. The personal accounts are literally just so we don't have to clear day-to-day personal purchases with each other like going out without the other or the odd Steam sale and so we can buy gifts for each other without the giftee knowing about it. Probably a few hundred each a month. The personal credit cards are just convenience/conduit through which to spend said personal funds to take advantage of rewards. The lion's share will go straight to the joint checking account where the shared budget is handled. Pays bills, contributes to savings, any household costs, car maintenance/gas, going out together, really anything that is an actual cost of living. Extra in this account not otherwise budgeted will go to paying off the property loans, starting with the highest interest. I'm more annoyed about the lack of a joint credit card piece specifically because it can't legally be ours, instead of yours & mine. While it is functionally the same to have a primary and authorized account holder, it's not actually joint.
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Jul 27, 2015 21:45
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solution: have two credit cards where you are the primary on one and she is the primary on the other
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Jul 27, 2015 21:52
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Like I said I am fairly positive that credit card companies do not do joint cards anymore. I guess I don't quite understand the issues with it though.
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Jul 27, 2015 22:03
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Dragyn posted:I'm more annoyed about the lack of a joint credit card piece specifically because it can't legally be ours, instead of yours & mine. While it is functionally the same to have a primary and authorized account holder, it's not actually joint. If you live in a community property state, just wait until after you're married. It's assumed to be community debt then.
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Jul 27, 2015 22:47
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I just did this and the most irritating part was having to go back through everything and change my name. If she's changing her name, I'd wait to open accounts just so you don't have to go through that hassle. Also LLCs don't really protect you against anything if that's the only layer of protection you have.
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Jul 27, 2015 23:27
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moana posted:I just did this and the most irritating part was having to go back through everything and change my name. If she's changing her name, I'd wait to open accounts just so you don't have to go through that hassle. It only took a few minutes for me to change my name on all my bank accounts. I just went to the bank with the marriage certificate copy and my new photo ID and they typed in a few boxes and everything switched over and they automatically mailed me new cards for every account, including our joint account. I double checked that checks with my maiden name on them would still go through and they do.
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Jul 28, 2015 02:28
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Dragyn posted:The personal accounts are literally just so we don't have to clear day-to-day personal purchases with each other like going out without the other or the odd Steam sale Surely common sense will prevail here? My wife and I have 1 joint everyday account, and 1 joint savings account and 1 joint home loan. She doesn't have to check with me before she goes out for a dinner with her friends, and the same I don't have to check with her when I buy a game on Steam. Just because it's a joint account doesn't mean you have to get each others permission to buy a $10 lunch with the money in the account.
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Jul 28, 2015 02:37
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My boyfriend and I have a joint credit card with US Bank that has worked well for us for the past three years. It made life SO much easier in terms of splitting shared expenses. What you and your fiancee are planning sounds fine. The right way for a couple to handle their money is the way that works best for them. What's important is that your goals are similar, you trust each other, and both people feel like they're being treated fairly. Propaniac fucked around with this message at 03:11 on Jul 28, 2015 |
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Jul 28, 2015 03:08
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My wife and I have a similar setup - most of our money goes into a joint account for bills/debt repayment/savings, while a bit gets split off into my account and a bit into her account. Her chunk pays for her gas and her fun money, and my chunk pays for my gas, my fun money, and our weekly food bills (I do the grocery store trips, plan the meals, and cook). We also each have a credit card from before we were married. It sounds complicated I guess, but in practice it works with how we think. If I decide to go a little crazy with dinners one week I just use my fun money to cover the difference. My wife can think about her fun money better when she can see her number in her account. We have everything but an emergency credit card at one bank, so when I do my weekly reconciling and bill paying session things are pretty simple. The important thing is to put each other as authorized users on all of the accounts. This makes life easy on the budgeting person, and if one of you gets in an accident or something the other one will already have access to everything.
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Jul 28, 2015 03:33
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A GIANT PARSNIP posted:My wife and I have a similar setup - most of our money goes into a joint account for bills/debt repayment/savings, while a bit gets split off into my account and a bit into her account. Her chunk pays for her gas and her fun money, and my chunk pays for my gas, my fun money, and our weekly food bills (I do the grocery store trips, plan the meals, and cook). We also each have a credit card from before we were married. I think you hit the nail on the head. My parents have always had a joint account but with every paycheck they put a chunk of money in their wallets. My grandparents always did the same thing and anything extra went in their sock drawers. Having a second set of checking accounts and credit cars for individual use is just the modern version of a wallet since most transactions are now digital. It avoids the hassle of analyzing small purchases as long as both partners agree on the broad strokes of the budget. It's also analogous to a cash envelope system often advocated for bad budgeters, just with a smaller number of envelopes. As a side benefit it simplifies looking for fraudulent transactions, since you should know exactly what transactions are on your personal cards and there shouldn't be much traffic on the joint account. I don't need to know whether my fiancé bought a soda at the gas station or a scammer tested our number to start running up lots of transactions.
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Jul 28, 2015 16:37
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I can't imagine trying to collect every little receipt or analyzing every little transaction dealing with my wife's fun money.
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Jul 28, 2015 17:10
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Elephanthead posted:Everyone else doesn't try to not be married when they are married. Married means you are one legal entity with a single set of assets that works as one. If you don't want that you should just stay shacked up. The plural of anecdote is not data, but I know three couples who kept premarital assets separate and have been married more or less happily for over 25 years. e: I suppose it's worth noting that all three married in their 30s, so they had premarital assets to speak of. Eugene V. Dubstep fucked around with this message at 14:56 on Jul 31, 2015 |
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Jul 31, 2015 14:52
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My other half and I were married 3 weeks ago and we discussed the joint account thing but I just didn't see any benefit so we just didn't bother.
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Aug 3, 2015 18:59
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Happily married for 10 years, wife and I have everything separate in addition to a joint checking, savings, and investment account. We each pay into the joint account to cover bills and joint savings. All other assets are separate. Everything else is our personal spending or we split. I've heard from people for 10+ years how weird this is, but you know what, money is the #1 reason for divorce and fights so you've got to figure out what works for you and just do it. Then again, we both work and have assets to speak of. It'd be different if one of us stayed home and the other supported them. EDIT: We're also pretty independent people. We generally don't understand married people who seem to have to be joined at the hip in every thing. So it makes sense that we'd treat our money the same way.
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Aug 3, 2015 21:39
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FunOne posted:Happily married for 10 years, wife and I have everything separate in addition to a joint checking, savings, and investment account. We each pay into the joint account to cover bills and joint savings. All other assets are separate. We're the same way. We have one joint account we opened solely for wedding poo poo and depositing checks people write to both of us that's been repurposed as a general emergency and/or house downpayment fund. Our bills are split by whoever happened to sign up for them (he pays for TV/internet and I pay our cell phone bill for example). When we're out together whoever happens to be closer to the card machine pays. I usually buy all of our groceries since I'm usually the one who goes to the store but if we go out to eat he pays for it. However in our case we make nearly dead-on even salaries, neither of us has any debt, we're living below our means and socking money away into savings, and we live in military housing so rent and utilities are "free" out of my husband's salary. If one of us made significantly more than the other or if we actually had to pay rent/utilities we'd shift our finances and use our joint account more. When we eventually buy a house or if we ever have kids we'll probably re-arrange our finances to match our new lifestyle but for now this works.
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Aug 3, 2015 23:52
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I make over twice as much as my wife so the way we handle it is I pay for everything and she just sends me some amount to help out that she can afford after her student loans.
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Aug 4, 2015 13:22
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My wife and I keep separate accounts but each have access to the others accounts and credit cards. We make nearly the same amount of money and contribute roughly the same amount to the mortgage and bills. I take out $100 cash for each of us every payday for no questions asked spending money. We give ourselves another $200 or so each month for credit card purchases that don't need to be discussed. Even though I'm the primary account holder on some cards and she's primary on others we look at the money we use to pay off our credit cards as communalPropaniac posted:What you and your fiancee are planning sounds fine. The right way for a couple to handle their money is the way that works best for them. What's important is that your goals are similar, you trust each other, and both people feel like they're being treated fairly. Basically this. We handle our finances the way we do because it's what we agreed to 7 years ago. We pay our bills, save money and have enough for ourselves so we haven't had a need to change it very much. Communication and trust are the keys.
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Aug 4, 2015 18:35
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 07:16 |
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we were going to do all the bullshit in the OP - have a joint account with separate savings accounts, and some arbitrary amount gets transferred every month to each of our savings accounts for our personal hobbies / fun money / buying eachother gifts without eachother knowing. I too was annoyed by not being able to have a "joint" credit card. Our joint CC is in my wife's name, with me as the authorized. We have another CC in my name, with her as the authorized. reality : post marriage we're far too loving busy for any of that nonsense. we just trust eachother and ask if there's a major "fun" purchase / home repair / whatever that needs to be talked about. we have one joint bank account, and two joint credit cards (to maximize cashback). we review monthly spend on our various spending categories to make sure nothing looks insane. takes about 5 minutes every month. if one of us goes overboard in some respect, we reign it in the following month. I think it's better than having an 'entitled' amount per person - we rarely ever spend as much as we were talking about when discussing how much we'd both get to spend on personal expenses, so that would have just been money we'd be guaranteed not to save. mindphlux fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Sep 10, 2015 |
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Sep 10, 2015 06:18
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