There are many ways to manage your finances as a married couple, and the most common is to combine finances. With divorce rates higher in recent years than they were in the past, there are many people who now say not to combine finances.
However, this doesn’t mean it isn’t something you should consider. Combining finances makes married life much easier, and there are ways to still have your own control and autonomy.
When you’re married to someone, the idea is that you are combining your life with theirs. That means everything you have is linked together, and it only makes sense that finances are linked as well.
This doesn’t mean that every single account that you have is a joint one. There’s nothing wrong with having your own individual accounts. However, you need to be open about what’s going on with those accounts and your money.
The idea is that you have a joint account for both of your paychecks to go into. Then you can pay for household expenses, joint expenses, and more directly from that account. You can discuss your own fun money that you have available.
By everything going into one pot, it helps to cut back on the nickel-and-diming of individuals in the marriage.
When you’re married, you’re going to be making joint decisions. There will be some sacrificing and compromising that needs doing, but for the most part, you’ll have the same goals for retirement, home buying, family planning, and more.
It’s much easier to go about those shared goals when you combine finances. You can both see where money is going, how the savings goals are working out, and whether there is somewhere you can cut back in the budget.
This creates more of a team-oriented mission. You can both discuss anything that does not seem to quite work out.
There needs to be a lot of trust in a marriage, and that can be hard for some people to have. If you can’t see where one person is spending their money, it’s going to bring up conversations about goals, the future, and more.
With combined finances, it’s much easier to have that trust and transparency. You can see where the money is going. If the joint account suddenly dips, it opens up the conversation about what’s going on.
No, it doesn’t fix all issues with trust. There can be hidden accounts and some shady decisions that are made, but it makes it a little easier to be open with each other.
And yes, it can open up the marriage to financial abuse, but so can having separate accounts. In fact, having joint accounts can help to equalize the power, especially if one in the marriage is the stay-at-home parent.
Combining finances isn’t going to work for everyone. I’m not going to do it in full ever again (I’m also not going to get married again), but I will do a compromised version of it. When you’re in a marriage, you’re meant to be combining your lives together anyway.
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