Splitting finances with your partner is one of the trickiest things to navigate in a relationship. Not only are bills and debt unsexy topics, but your approach won’t be the same when you first start dating as it will after a year together or five years after that. Things get even more complicated when one person has a completely different financial situation than the other, like way more debt or a much higher income.
What I love about this topic, though, is that every couple splits finances differently. I’ve talked about it with a few friends and I don’t think anyone has had the exact same approach. Some share all their money and pay every bill from a joint account. Others keep their accounts totally separate and split all the bills 50/50. Some friends each pay certain bills, like one partner pays the mortgage while the other pays utilities and groceries. There’s no right answer, so that means you can feel good about figuring out what works for you and doing it your way.
One thing I don’t love about this topic is that financial experts have lots of strong opinions about how splitting finances in a couple should be done, and I don’t necessarily agree with all of them. So before I tell you how Johnny and I have split our finances through the years, I’m going to touch on a few pieces of “expert” advice so you can see the different perspectives.
What the Experts Say
Most experts agree that married partners should have a joint checking account. According to a TD Bank survey, 82% of couples share a joint account for household expenses. I resisted this idea for a long time, not necessarily because I didn’t want to share an account, but because managing everything from our own separate checking accounts was working fine for us. Why fix something that isn’t broken? When we got married, though, I found that having at least one joint account was basically inevitable (more on this below) and now we have one.
Experts also say that when you get married, one person’s debt becomes the couple’s debt. Dave Ramsey is a particular stickler about this point, but this is one I strongly disagree with. My debt is spending that I racked up independent of my husband, some of it before we got married. I didn’t consult with him before I spent the money. His name wasn’t on any of the cards. Therefore I feel it would create a totally unfair situation to expect him to share in paying off the debt. I would expect the same if the reverse were true.
Though I don’t agree with splitting debt in my own situation, I do understand why experts advocate for debt to be shared. Finances should be a joint effort—our money rather than my money and their money. If you don’t do it this way, that’s when problems arise. But I don’t think it should apply across the board to all of the money in a relationship.
Finally, experts say that for a relationship to work long term, each partner needs to be on the same page with their approach to money. If one of you is a spender and one is a saver and you don’t meet somewhere in the middle, it’s not going to work. Money is one of the top two reasons for divorce, second only to infidelity.
I fully agree that couples should have a shared approach to money. It’s why I recently roped my husband into having a budget meeting where we talked through the highlights of our spending and savings. Though we don’t have major differences when it comes to our thoughts on money, it was still good to have a check in. I think it will be a good thing for us to do every couple months moving forward.
Splitting Finances Before We Were Married
Now that you’ve heard the “expert” advice, let’s talk about the good stuff: how we actually split our finances.
For the majority of the time we were dating, Johnny and I kept our money completely separate. We had our own accounts. Each month I’d total up our rent and utilities, split it in half, and tell him how much to transfer to me. When we ate out or bought groceries, we would use two cards and split it down the middle. I guess you could say we were very into a 50/50 approach.
For many years this worked perfectly for us. We were making about the same amount of money and our finances were uncomplicated. We already owned a house together and weren’t thinking about any other big savings goals at the time. Some people thought it was strange that we hadn’t merged our finances, but it was what worked for us.
Then we moved to a new state, started planning a wedding and everything got a little more complicated.
My best financial advice when planning a wedding: get a joint checking account
Splitting Finances Around A Wedding
As wedding planning kicked into high gear and the transactions started adding up, it became clear we needed a pool of money that was truly ours—shared between us for this huge thing we were working toward together.
One big factor that led us to finally combine our money was that our lovely friends and family started giving us gifts. Specifically, they were writing checks that said ‘Tami and John Dzenitis.’ If you’ve ever given a newly married couple money, you’ve probably done this without even thinking about it. But this presented two problems.
First off, we didn’t have any accounts with both our names on them. When a check has two names, it can’t be deposited via a mobile app. Both people have to physically go to the bank and sign and deposit the check. When you’re dealing with lots of checks coming in and going out, going to the bank that often becomes maddening.
Second, I hadn’t changed my last name yet, which meant I couldn’t deposit those checks into my bank account anyway. They all had to go through Johnny’s account, which made it twice as tough since I was the one managing the majority of the wedding accounting.
We needed a joint account.
My best financial advice if you’re about to get married: open a joint checking account in both your names as soon as possible. It will save you a lot of hassle when making wedding payments and depositing those awesome wedding checks.
Now we use a points credit card for all our joint expenses, like co*cktails on the beach in Mexico
Splitting Finances After We Got Married
Shortly after we got married, we did something else that totally changed how we split our finances: we signed up for a credit card that both of us can use. If you’re not using a points credit card for your regular monthly purchases, you’re missing out on free money.
A points card can be used to get cash back (like 1-2% of your total spending), earn points you can use to buy flights, and a ton more. This is a credit card we pay off in full every single month so it never carries a balance and never accrues interest. We use it for our bills and things like dining out, pay the whole thing off at the end of the month, and rack up the points.
I like this method for sharing our spending because when it’s time to pay the credit card bill, it forces me to take a look at our total overall spending every month. You don’t get that same big picture view when you’re paying for things one at a time with a debit card. It makes it very easy to compare month to month and see if our spending has ballooned, like it did in December around the holidays, so we can reel it back in the next month.
We use the American Express Blue Sky Miles card, which has no annual fee. We earn one point for every dollar we spend and two points for every dollar spent at restaurants. The points add up faster than you might think! Since we opened this card about two years ago, we’ve used the resulting points to pay for two sets of flights and we’re close to using it on a third set. If you sign up using this link, we’ll both get a mileage bonus.
We still have our own individual checking accounts for things we want to buy on our own. We haven’t yet opened up any joint savings or investment accounts, but we have started saving for some shared goals (right now I keep the money in my savings account). Starting some joint savings accounts is next on my list of financial to-do’s after I get my own debt paid off.
So that’s how my husband and I split our finances before and after marriage. I’m curious to hear what others do! Leave a comment and tell me or send me a message on Instagram.
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