How do you and your husband/fiance handle finances?

We have a joint account and also separate accounts. I split my income 80/20 with 80 going into the joint account. We consult with each other if we use it for something other than bills. He pays his student loans through his personal account. We plan to switch everything to one account once we get married.

We have a joint bank account and pay for everything together. It's all our money and our expenses as far as I am concerned.

We have a joined account for things we're both responsible for, but our own accounts for personal things. We both work and make around the same salary so we just split the cost of most things.

We have separate accounts and aren't interested in a joint (I work for a financial firm and he just doesn't like the idea of one due to parents. We like our money separate.). We're both aware of paycheck days/amounts and balances in each other's accounts, as we're both transparent. Bills are split a little weird? I pay utilities, he pays for internet. Utilities ends up being a bit more, but I make more, so I don't mind. Rent is 50/50 and comes out of my account, he Venmo's me his half. I get it the following business day after I request it.

Our debts we pay separately unless one of us is really struggling that month (unpaid sick day or unexpected car repair/medical bill/etc). Then we'll pick up any slack. Rent and groceries are the main thing we split. We took turns paying for dinner when we used to eat out.

My FH and I have shared an account since we were only dating. We both have a separate account that we use as personal savings (but it’s really a checking so we can have debit cards attached) that we budget so much of our income goes into them after our normal expenses are paid for every pay day.

We split 50/50 and Venmo each other We will get a joint account once we are married

My fiancé has a good income but doesn’t know how to manage his finances, so we have a joint account that both our paychecks go into and I handle all the bill paying and such. After all our bills are paid we just kind of use whatever we need 🤷🏻‍♀️ We don’t really split things up or anything, we just use whatever’s there and it doesn’t matter who’s money it is. We share the money

We have our own accounts, but have a combined budget in YNAB - I assign my income to only my budget categories, and my fiance assigns their income to their categories, but having our separate categories in a combined budget allows us to see our financial picture on a combined basis much more easily. We make about the same amount, but I pay a bigger portion of the bills/saving more for the wedding - we determined the bills/general amount (one of the bills I pay for is a variable bill) when I first moved in, and we decided it felt fair for me to pay a bigger portion of the bills because they have a bunch of debt they are working to pay off. The bills (other than rent) are only in my fiance's name so I just Zelle him the amount I owe for bills each month. We both budget our own grocery category so we generally just trade off on who pays for groceries based on how much of us has available for groceries. The rest of our money we save/spend as we see fit - but the joint budget means that I can see their spending/account balances, and they can see mine. We might open a joint account after we're married to dump our house downpayment savings in, but otherwise we are both happy with keeping our separate accounts.

We have separate accounts and just pay our bills separately. He gives me money for his part of the mortgage.

We have a joint account (originally mine and I added him) and that's our main one. It technically is two checking accounts linked together but we use the one as a short term savings (like for our wedding). We use the none savings account for rent and bills and groceries and trips and everything really.
And then we have his account. His account is a long term savings and a checking. A very small amount is kept in the checking so he can pay his student loans. It was easier to have him keep using that account than to switch everything over and close an account. I don't have access to his account because I don't need to haha.

We each have our own separate accounts from one another, but at the same time, we have a main account we use to pay for our car bills and rent. For the most part, we try to do 50/50, for example, he's in charge for most of the groceries, and the car payment. While I'm in charge of entertainment (Netflix, Hulu, etc.) and PG&E (since it's relatively cheap)

We have a joint account. We each have individual accounts. *Money for joint bills gets transferred into the joint account by each of us for those bills only. So his credit card he pays. I pay my student loans. Anything left we each keep in our accounts.


*We calculated monthly bills so we know how much is needed in the joint account. Then we split that amount based on income ratio. For example, if he makes 20% more than me we'd split the amount so he deposits 20% more too.

We've been using the Splitwise app to balance joint expenses since we moved in together. You enter expenses as you incur them, and designate who paid it and how much (either $ or %) each person owes. There's a "settle up" option that we use on the same day we pay rent each month so we balance out the previous month's spending - the app will connect you right to Venmo or PayPal, or you can record a cash payment made separately. To get to who pays how much of each expense, we added together both of our salaries to come up with our household income, and the % of that we each bring in is the % we're each responsible for. We revisit that formula each time one of our salaries changes to be sure it stays balanced.

To give an example: Say my salary was $70K and FH's was $50K. Our household income would be $120K, making me responsible for 58.3% of every expense and him responsible for 41.7%. If I buy $150 in groceries, I enter it into Splitwise and designate those %s, so it calculates that he owes me $62.55 of that expense. The app tracks who owes what to whom until you "settle up," so you're not stuck doing those calculations yourself.

We also try to keep who pays for what relatively balanced - he pays rent, I pay utilities and buy the majority of groceries and household goods. If we see in the app that one of us is starting to owe the other a significant amount for the month, we can make a point of having the other person buy more for the remainder of the month to help balance things out. The whole system has been working pretty well for almost two years now!

We're planning to open joint accounts once we get married, but it will basically be this same system, just with a bank account instead of an app. Some majority of each of our incomes will go into the joint account, based on our salaries, and all of our joint expenses will be paid from that account, so we'll each be paying for the same % of things we are now. The remainder of each of our incomes will go into our individual accounts for discretionary spending/saving.

In terms of debt, since we each have individual debt incurred before we met but no joint debt at this point, we discussed how to factor it in before we moved in together. We're both paying off student debt, so we subtracted each of our monthly payments before we calculated our household income - so that we're each able to pay what we need to without it essentially coming out of our discretionary income. Same with retirement contributions. I have a car loan and FH doesn't, so we didn't factor that in and my payment essentially comes out of my discretionary income each month.

Talking through all of this really helped bring our communication skills to a new level, and helped each of us better understand how the other thinks, both about money and in general. Now that we have a general plan for how we want to handle our finances, it can actually be kind of fun to talk about!