I knew it was a trap, but I did it anyway.

12th year of marriage here, no snarkiness or jokes (for once), marriage is tough sometimes. Sharing your life with someone forever takes a lot of effort and sometimes people don't say what they mean or say what they think they mean and you hear it differently or we assume that someone understands what we meant vs. having to spell it out completely like two strangers, etc. etc.

But anyway, back to the topic at hand: We have one bank account, it's been that way forever and it totally works for us. We put away max 401k, IRA, backdoor IRA, shove a bunch of money in to 529s for the kids, have a healthy emergency account, and then we spend the rest on whatever we want with a cursory sanity check to each other to make sure it's ok. $100 dress or $300 cargo cover -- sure. $5k stage 5 suspension kit -- let's talk about that for a second...

Even when someone says "do whatever you want," if that person is your wife/husband, I think it's common sense to check in with them and say, hey, I'm going to spend a buttload of money on this because reasons A, B, C, that cool? And if they say no, then there should be a good reason for that.

 

Why it no longer pays to wife them up these days.

 

^^ this

Granted, I've been married less than a year but this is how my wife and I are doing it. She owns her own business (has for a few years) and I have a full time job...we both have our own finances and as long as each one of us pays the bills and contributes to the shared expenses *about* equally (we don't keep hard track of it, just try and do our best to take turns and what not) then what she decides to do with the rest of her money is her business and mine is mine.

I think having a child is going add a level of complication to that when the time comes, but I'm sure we'll work it out.

FWIW keeping the finances separate was her call, I wasn't 100% one way or the other...but my parents of course did it the "traditional" way where my dad worked every day all day and my mom took care of the kids, so that's what I was used to. It took me a short amount of time to wrap my head around a married couple having their own bank accounts but hearing some stories of joint accounts just makes me all the more glad we did it this way.

 

Ya'll picked some pretty petty females if they complain on this stuff. Married 14 years, known her for over 20. We have one account, joint. Her teacher pay and my engineering check (I make 5x her salary) goes into it, and from that we pay all the bills (mortgage, credit card, etc.). Shes great with $$, never complains about me buying stuff, and I don't need to whine about her buying stupid expensive stuff either. No secret accounts, no games.

I feel bad for so many people with such pesky whiny women that nickel and dime them to death.

 

She got big tits tho

 

Shoulda known better. When she says it is your money, it means you are suppose to go buy her the things she hasnt gotten yet with your money while you were at work.

 

Ask for a refund

 

What does that actually mean? So if your wife ended up saying, "actually, I think that money could be spent better on X" or, "hey we're running low on savings" that would have been worse? Because now you have some moral high ground of "hur hur you said I could so I did". That seems... healthy.

 

Makes sense if you marry young enough. If you get married/remarried later in life, it might be wise to keep finances separate especially if one has more money or more debt than the other.

 

Toyota says this is normal.

 

The very best advice. Will save a marriage.

 

My wife has always been the one to take care of the home front stuff, I've always been the breadwinner. We agreed to that from day one and we both knew what we were getting into. What’s mine is hers and whats hers is mine. Thats marriage. No need for seperate bank accounts, secret purchases, etc.

All this stuff people come up with nowadays, I just don't know about. But hey its a different world now.

At fifty six, I’m older than many of you here. Much of what was just considered common sense back in the day doesnt seem to apply anymore...

 

Getting married in a month and we've created a joint savings account. Every month we cut a check for x amount and keep the rest separate.

 

Married 15 years.
No kids.
We have static amounts each month that goes into long term savings and investments.
Separate accounts for spending for whatever we want each month.
If one of us wants a big item we talk about it and 99.9% of the time there is no argument.
Everything is transparent.

 

If you’re worried about that sort of thing why get married at all? Could always live together if you’re concerned about the risk.

 

Whos the man here?

 

This is why you are in the dog house.... if you didn't have the truck to spend it on? Where would the money be going? Even though it technically was extra..... there really is no extra money in a family environment. You will eventually need it for something that pops up unexpectedly.

 

I’m hearing a lot of immaturity in many of these posts...

Well now I’m going the other way on this and thinking you are the asshole here. There’s a huge difference between “Go ahead and treat yourself honey. You deserve it.” and “Fine! Get whatever the fuck you want!” Starting to sound to me like it was the latter.

Sensing some immaturity here...

 

He still stuck in 60's..

 

Probably the best option if one has significantly more money than the other since a prenup will do you no good in certain cases.