Should Married Couples Have Joint or Separate Bank Accounts?

We live together now and each have our own checking acct but have a joint savings acct. When we get married, we're going to open a joint checking acct but still keep individual checking accts

Both! Have joint savings for your goals, joint checking for your bills. But also have enough to save to splurge on your own things, and own checking to have a little fun.
You can't buy a birthday surprise if you both can see the checking account! 😜

View Quoted Comment My husband and I did the same thing.

View Quoted Comment Good point.

I think couples should do whatever works best for them. We’ve shared finances since we moved in together, but we still maintain our financial independence. We have a mutual checking and savings and our own separate accounts. Our mutual checking is for shared bills like the mortgage and utilities and the shared savings is for wedding things and the down payment for our next home. Other than that, the rest of our money is ours to spend how we please. I can see how this wouldn’t work for some.

We have separate and joint. We have one joint one to share expenses for stuff like vacations. We put equal amounts in it every month too.

We're going to do both!

We have one joint account for bills but each have separate individual accounts for day to day spending and nonshared debts. When we had all our money combined we fought over it a lot. Now we discuss finances but don't argue anymore.

View Quoted Comment My husband and I have a shared savings account, that's it. We pay bills from our independent accounts.

View Quoted Comment Ditto! We're saving for out house though.

View Quoted Comment Good idea!

View Quoted Comment I hate to fight over finances so having both accounts works best for my husband and I.

I think every couple is different. As long as a system works for both individuals and there is no financial coercion, then there is really no wrong answer.

As of right now, we maintain separate accounts and 1 joint checking we got when moving in together for joint bills. After we get married, we plan on closing the individual accounts and just merge everything. It makes the most sense for us, especially since for the time being I'm in a full time doctorate program and so he is primarily covering all the expenses anyway for the next few years.

View Quoted Comment I completely understand bwhy a joint account would work for your marriage.

We have both. Personal savings and checking, and joint savings and checking. We kept things separate for a while but it was stressful when we bought our house and our bills were higher and I felt bothered asking him for money because bills autodraft from my account but he makes the majority of the money. So now we both direct deposit into joint, transfer a certain percentage into our separate accounts and I manage our bills out of joint.

We decided to have both. We have a joint savings account and joint checking for our bills. However we decided to keep our separate accounts in case we want to buy each other surprise gifts

View Quoted Comment

That's a really great idea.

View Quoted Comment

I love buying surprise gifts!

I say joint accounts for savings and bills and separate for your own stuff. I already have 3 separate checking accounts for myself because I like being able to separate my spending money from my bill money. I find it easier to keep track of things that way. Once we are married, I can close some of my bill ones and just use the joint checking for them while still keeping my personal one.

View Quoted Comment Exactly. A certain percentage of our checks go into the joint account and we keep a certain percentage with free range to do whatever we want. So far so good and its working nicely for us