Comments on: Marriage finances: joint vs. separate checking accounts

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 01:26:59 +0000

When we first got married, we were both working and established an agreement of ‘yours mine and ours’. We established a budget and then put equal amounts of our salary into the ‘ours’ account to meet our bugetary expenses – this served us well for a number of years.

Unfortunately, at some point in time, my wife decided this was no longer acceptable – and I became the only one putting funds into the joint account. This was followed by her buying groceries (for our neighbor) out of the joint account then getting paid cash by the neighbor (but never putting money back into the joint account). In the corporate world, this would be called embezzlement.

It came as a suprise to her when I closed the joint account. I figure if I’m going to be responsible for payng all of our bills (even though she is still working), I don’t need to keep up with two accounts. She now funds the groceries from her pay and I pay for everything else. And now that we have teenagers, she’s grousing about how much groceries are — but that is her problem — she chose to abuse the system, I won’t reward her for this abuse of my trust.

By: Linda

Linda — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 22:55:51 +0000

well, in my case, it’s actually true! he he! : )

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Festival of Frugality: Singles Awareness Edition — Broke Grad Student — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 12:04:02 +0000

[...] tackles the issue of marriage finances: joint vs. separate checking accounts at Christian Personal Finance. Do you and your spouse have a joint account or separate [...]

By: Bankruptcy And Debt Carnival #23- Links Online Now

Bankruptcy And Debt Carnival #23- Links Online Now — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 14:45:53 +0000

[...] presents Marriage finances: joint vs. separate checking accounts posted at Money in the Bible | Christian Personal Finance Blog, saying, “Is it better for [...]

By: Julie

Julie — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 16:47:28 +0000

Linda that is my exact point! That is exactly why my husband did that. He’s so anal and meticulous when it comes to our finances. He has excel spreadsheets that he made for himself and he keeps into an account of every PENNY. So because I’m not like him, he did the separate personal account for that exact same reason! He was worried I’d spend our joint account away! Hahah.

By: Linda

Linda — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 15:51:52 +0000

What Bob’s not saying in this post is that he had to give me my own spending money because if it was all in one big pot I’d spend all of our money! LOL!

By: julie

julie — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 18:43:29 +0000

This is so funny. My husband who manages our accounts agreed that we should have 1 joint and he gave me a personal checking acct for biweekly allowances for my personal use and won’t question my spending. This has worked out so well for us!
Since we both work and contribute our paychecks go into a joint acct for everything else and he gives me an allowance every other week when my paycheck comes in. The great part of this is, if we go under budget for the week he occasional extra allowances for my personal use that he transfers to my personal checking. This definitely worked for us and – feel is fair without breaking our budget.

By: Carolyn

Carolyn — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 02:42:36 +0000

My husband is in heaven now, but we used to have all joint accounts and gave ourselves a monthly allowance. It was built into our budget. I was primarily responsible to pay our bills, but we went over our budget together each month and made decisions together on any discretionary spending. I miss the accountability, but enjoy being a part of this group to help me in that area. I still give myself an allowance each payday.

By: Ken

Ken — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 02:22:17 +0000

We have two separate checking accounts. She pays specific bills out of hers. I pay specific ones out of mine. We talk about upcoming expenses and try to work together on those. I do most of the planning and creating the budget.

By: Becky@FamilyandFinances

Becky@FamilyandFinances — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 23:28:09 +0000

My husband and I have one joint checking account. We use our credit card for most purchases (paid in full each month, of course!), and I pick cash up from the bank for him whenever he starts to run low.

The only problem we ever run into is when he wants to buy me something. He doesn’t want the hassle of a separate account, though, so I just keep extra cash in a safe spot at home and he uses that.