@klnst3

i'm in agreement with retinasurgeon's views on money between married folks - where my money is my husband's and his is mine. seriously, I am really confused with married couples who do not have any sort of joint account(s). At least you have a joint savings account of sorts.

Since my husband and I both have completely different bank accounts from well before we met, we opened up a joint checking account once we were married. this also eventually led us to open up additonal joint savings accounts, too. we both deposit a portion of our paychecks into the joint checking account. He makes more than me, but we did an initial monthly budget assessment to determine how much we had in "joint expenses" - rent, groceries, eating out, stuff for the apartment, public transportation, cell phones, internet, downpayment on future apt, emergency fund, gifts fund, travel fund, etc. We did end up having to re-jigger the amounts, but ended up finding that 75% from each of our paychecks pretty much covered our monthly expenses with a slight cushion in the event that we spent a little more than our budget.

the other 25% we keep in our own separate accounts, but quite honestly, the only thing i use my 25% for is for a little shopping splurges here and there and bday or xmas gifts for my husband. for my husband, he uses the other 25% to cover work expenses (which he keeps tabs on by using a separate credit card) and gifts for me, too. this allowed us to keep our original bank accounts. the joint account is through a different bank entirely. with software like learnvest or mint, you can aggregate all your different accounts in one view, so it wasn't a big nightmare to open up accounts iwth a 3rd bank. also, my work allows me to direct deposit into both my personal and joint account. my husband's office doesn't work like that, so he automatically debits the 75% into the joint account the day after his paycheck lands in his personal account.

our 75% also gets allocated to various savings we have set-up. in addition, we have a joint credit card that we put on all of our joint expenses to collect points for cashback or airmiles or whatever. we use our joint checking to pay off our credit card in full. why would you want to be arguing over whose turn it is to pay for groceries? that's one of the perks of being married, not penny pinching each other or keeping tabs on who paid what.

since planning our wedding, we had set-up a "wedding" email account to handle vendor correspondence or rsvp's or wedding registry lists, etc, so that we wouldn't get bombarded constantly with emails during the planning phase. this also allowed either of us to access the accounts without having to constantly update the other person on every little detail. we have since used that wedding account on our joint bank accounts so that either of us can access information and pay bills when we please.

unless your husband is hiding something in his finances, it may be worth bringing up the joint expenses checking account where both of you put in a percentage of your paychecks into it and see how it goes. i think it took us about 4-5 months to realize we needed to put in 75% of each of our income to cover our joint expenses/savings and then some. I think initially we had put in like 65% of our paychecks, upped it to 70% and ended up at 75%. hope it works out for you. this has made paying bills and things much more stressfree and helped us both communicate better and define what expenses are necessary and what savings goals we want. good luck!

All of our accounts are combined - we added each other to all our credit cards/savings/etc. The only separate accounts are our retirement accounts.

But it was not easy at first. It was harder on my husband than it was on me.

I finally convinced him to merge by sitting him down with a glass of wine 4 months after the wedding and telling him that we were going into the bank tomorrow. I reminded him that we are team and we will work a lot more effectively if we are both working towards the same goals with pooled resources.

The best part is after the first few weeks of merging it's been awesome - it's really nice to not think about whose paying for what, and I am better able to plan for our future becuase I have the clear picture.