Bank Accounts, Joint or Separate?

Introduction

The topic I chose to discuss is if couples have separate bank accounts and if they have arrived at this solution after trying to use a single account or if this was their first attempt at martial checking. I chose this topic because I always had the notion that a married couple should have a joint bank account, meaning that their finances just like them were intertwined and inseparable. After I was married to the love of my life, I noticed the concepts and methods we practiced regarding the monthly budget and our finances were vastly different and at times conflicting.

She was brought up in a household where her parents never discussed budgets or savings, they just spent their money on whatever they wanted and when the money ran out, they would barrow to continue spending. I was brought up in a poor household where we had to scrimp and save to make ends meat. I’m sure you can figure that this was the source of a lot of conflict and hard ship in the first years of our marriage.

We had tried many different techniques to settle things, but no matter what we tried conflict still arose on how the money was spent and when it was spent. Finally after researching the topic and talking to mother married couples who I knew and respected, I came to the conclusion that no matter what my personal opinion on how the finances should be, my wife and I were never going to agree on this and that I should look for another solution instead of trying to indoctrinate her with my philosophy. One of piece of advice I was given was to split up the family budget in whatever ratio is necessary and allocate the money accordingly. This resulted in my wife being put over the groceries, clothing, and school needs for the family and I was put over the rest of the bills (mortgage, insurance, phone, etc.). I also tried to find a way to tuck a little money away each month into a savings account. Since the inception of this solution we had two separate bank accounts which has resulted in my less conflict and we have been able to put money away for the future for the first time in our marital history.

I wanted to research if this problem was common or not given the diversity of financial backgrounds now in society.