Why? That’s sounds like the worst possible situation for mutual trust in a relationship, with financial dependency but no shared responsibility.
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@Twoin18 did I say they don’t share what is IN these accounts with one another? Or that they don’t share in paying bills, etc. I never said this should be some secret thing.
Very simple for us. What is mine is ours. What is hers is hers. 
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And that is the way it should be😀
You did say financial planner. I don’t know why I said attorney other than the fact that my D2 is an attorney!
Much of our stuff is in my name only (cars, many bank accounts) due to me being the person available to go in person to the bank, the DMV, the car dealer, etc.
I used to be able to open a joint account at the bank and bring the “signature card” home for my husband to sign and then bring it back. Thanks to increased security rules you cannot do that any more.
We have played with our bank titling over the years to keep up with FDIC laws. So in one bank we may have accounts just in my name, just in my husband’s name, and joint. (this ups your FDIC coverage to $1 million - $250K for each single and $500K for the joint account). Yes, I know this is a first world type issue, but with fewer and fewer banks to spread your deposits in this makes sense.
We have always considered everything to be ours together, from they day we got married. In those almost 40 years, there were times I made more, times he made more, times I made nothing, times he made nothing, it didn’t matter at all.
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Is that right? I thought $250k per person per bank so if you have joint account with $500k your $250k in individual account at the same bank is not FDIC insured
Not even kidding, this is our arrangement! 
We married at 24 and have been married 28 years. We’ve always had separate checking accounts. My husband pays the big bills, I pay for all the stuff he doesn’t want to know the cost of: sneakers, prom dresses, birthday gifts, dance classes, housekeepers, sports gear, Christmas, home decor, dorm shopping, etc… We are on each others accounts, I use the joint a account for things like medical or groceries, but all the incidentals that add up in life I pay for. Gives him peace of mind not to see all that spending. He balances my accounts, so he knows what goes out, but he doesn’t have to keep track of it day to day. This has always worked for us. I don’t think we are less committed or less happy. I think we respect the other’s relationship with money.
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I’ll add this. A sample of one, me (or me and H). We have done joint bank accounts for 40+ years. Back in the day starting with a joint checking/savings, over the years adding other accounts at different banks, joint accounts. Somewhere along the line early in marriage, H was the bill payer and really handled all the $$$ stuff. To be honest, I hate banking, paying bills - all the routine and process that goes along with it. So I just wiped my hands of all that. I do plenty of other home life tasks.
BUT, I do sort of regret just handing that all over to him and not being more involved/aware. The joint account was sort of an excuse for me to walk away from a lot of the account “care”. More recently, the last several years, I do have one separate account because it’s through my work credit union. I KNOW what is going on with that account. H is listed on it too but it’s sort of “mine” to take care of.
Having some separate accounts can give more experience, know-how, etc. to the whole saving/spending/balancing $$$ process.
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Wife and I have a rule that there’s no money secrets, so we have joint everything and we share one bank login. Credit cards, I have her login and she has mine, and we’re both setup as authorized users respectively. That’s getting complicated to keep track of cards, so life got better when we started using a joint Apple card.
What we did in the beginning …
Lived in a way we could both afford and split all the bills. Saving, IMO, was a non-negotiable, and I made more than dh so we both saved 10% but 10% of what each of us made. So, if I made $100k and he made $50k, he saved half of what I did but still had the same percentage of skin in the game. The amount wasn’t important; it was having the same core value that saving for our future was important. The separate pot was so that I didn’t have to see how much he was spending on Star Trek toys, and he didn’t have to see how much I was spending on running shoes.
Over the years, how we’ve handled things has changed some – I put him through grad school and a career change, and he was the sole breadwinner when I became a SAHM. Now, most of our money is co-mingled, though we do each still have a small pot of our own funds.
Here are the FDIC rules: FDIC: Your Insured Deposits (pick one of the formats to read the brochure that describes the various types of ownership categories for FDIC insurance purposes).
So a married couple could have a lot of FDIC insurance by having accounts owned as:
- A
- B
- A + B joint
- A, pay B on death of A
- B, pay A on death of B
- A’s IRA
- B’s IRA
- … and more, like corporation accounts for incorporated small businesses that they own
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We’ve bee kinda the opposite. We’ve had joint and separate accounts from the start (we did get married later in our career paths). I managed all the accounts while we were both working, and after we moved and DH telecommuted. I was responsible for our taxes every year. Now that we’re both retired, and I received inheritances from my parents, DH is now looking after a credit card (first in their name) and the retirement plans in their name, and will do a “shadow” tax return next year.
My motivation for pushing for this is to allow me to “retire” a bit of my CFO, or minister of finance hat; but also to have DH have a better handle on what’s involved in all of this. If a time comes when I’m unable to manage these things, it will be less of a learning curve, on top of everything else going on.
Regarding the couple that has separate accounts, and files married separate, as their lives continue, they may find that their needs change. MFS is most often the worst way to file, if one does it correctly, and many credits are disallowed.
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We met in college at 18/19, married at 23/24 and have always had one bank account and one credit card. Two years after our only child was born, I left my job and took over all childcare, house care, and money management so DH could concentrate 100% on his travel job. Even after I went back to work, I continued all money management. When we retired, DH continued consulting to one of his corporate clients, so I suggested he open a separate account for that income which I dubbed his “hookers and beer” money. He may spend that on anything he wants, I don’t ever need to see that account, know its balance, or know what he does with it, I just don’t want it commingled with our house account and mess up my accounting. Because I never smell beer on his breath, I have to assume he’s enjoying the proceeds otherwise. 
No clue how our newly married son is handling his banking and have no need to know. It’s their business.
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Yours, mine and ours. Always keep enough of your own money for a bus ride home as my mom always said.
Not wishing anyone bad luck…but remember, if all of your accounts are joint, and the marriage does go south, one of the spouses could withdraw every penny in those joint accounts. I think it is always wise to have some money in an account that is just yours. My opinion.
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Back in the old days, emergency money was usually cash on hand. We would always keep a few hundred in cash somewhere in the house where we could get to it easy if you needed that bus ride or had to pay a tow company or other emergency. Today nobody keeps cash for anything.
I did meet a guy on a flight from London to NYC who showed me his emergency stash of gold and platinum bars in his briefcase. He said he was based in Bermuda. and he helped people with their money – so I am thinking, lovely sitting next to a money launderer!
I certainly do.
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I probably should keep more cash around. (US cash - ha, we do have euros and pesos from travels, anticipated return trips).
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