Joint checking accounts.

Questions on how we spend our money and our time - consumer goods and services, home and vehicle, leisure and recreational activities
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glacierbob
Posts: 37
Joined: Thu Jul 05, 2018 10:38 pm

Joint checking accounts.

Post by glacierbob »

Just curious on people's thoughts as to how you painlessly manage your and your spouses paycheck

Each direct deposit to joint and also their own separate accts?

In the past I have had my wife keep a separate acct that received 20% of her after tax check for spending that she wanted but i found frivolous. Ignorance is bliss.
zrail
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Joined: Sun Jan 28, 2018 8:18 am

Re: Joint checking accounts.

Post by zrail »

All direct deposits go to our joint account and then we have small automatic transfers to individual accounts. Seems to work well.
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Doom&Gloom
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Re: Joint checking accounts.

Post by Doom&Gloom »

All direct deposits go to individual accounts. Then we combine as necessary for joint expenses. Seems to work well (for us).
TwstdSista
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Re: Joint checking accounts.

Post by TwstdSista »

We have separate accounts, but we are joint on them. His money goes into his account, and then I transfer it to his savings (which I am joint on). My money goes into my account and I pay all the bills and make the retirement/HSA contributions. It's how we work.
GoldStar
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Joined: Wed May 23, 2018 10:59 am

Re: Joint checking accounts.

Post by GoldStar »

All our accounts are joint - no separation of anything. We made all our accounts joint the day we got married.
For the most part it works well - I put the money in - she takes the money out :)
Broken Man 1999
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Re: Joint checking accounts.

Post by Broken Man 1999 »

GoldStar wrote: Sun Aug 12, 2018 9:05 am All our accounts are joint - no separation of anything. We made all our accounts joint the day we got married.
For the most part it works well - I put the money in - she takes the money out :)
Wife and I had a joint account for years, and it worked well when we had a mortgage, or a car loan. But in retirement, the account was seldom used. When our credit union changed the rules and made accounts more difficult to be free, the hassle wasn't worth it. So we closed the joint account and just kept our individual accounts.

Works well for us.

But to your point, for the last several years I was putting money in, and she wasn't, so it really was a joint account only in name.

Broken Man 1999
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NeverGiveUP
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Joined: Mon Nov 02, 2015 2:31 pm

Re: Joint checking accounts.

Post by NeverGiveUP »

Everything goes into a joint account. Bills are automatically paid from that. We have no problems with the way it works.
stan1
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Re: Joint checking accounts.

Post by stan1 »

Money goes into our respective individual accounts then we each transfer money once per month into a joint account for bills associated with household expenses.

We do not have kids. We don't squabble over minor things like who pays for groceries or meals out (we both do).

Some people believe their marriage is stronger or works better because they only have joint checking accounts. Whatever works. For us we are aligned on our financial objectives and if one of us wants to buy a new pair of shoes or an Apple watch out of our individual accounts we don't need to get permission from the other.
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runner3081
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Re: Joint checking accounts.

Post by runner3081 »

Joint everything for us. Since the day we married.
squirm
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Re: Joint checking accounts.

Post by squirm »

Wife and I have shared a joint checking account since the beginning. That's the way we like it, there is no her's and his with anything (except for clothes I guess). I manage our money, wife forgot her ATM PIN years ago.
Gnirk
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Re: Joint checking accounts.

Post by Gnirk »

We each have a Credit Union checking account on which we are the primary account holder, but they are both joint accounts. His income is directly deposited into his primary account, and my income into mine. The bills I’m responsible for are paid from my account, and his are paid from his account. Because they are joint accounts, we can easily and immediately transfer funds online between them, if and when needed.

Works for us.
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CardinalRule
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Re: Joint checking accounts.

Post by CardinalRule »

My wife and I both work and we have separate checking accounts to which direct payroll deposits go. Twice a month,we each transfer 50% of our take-home pay to our joint checking account.

I think what we do is sometimes called the "three pots" system.
LBTRS
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Re: Joint checking accounts.

Post by LBTRS »

Married for 31 years this October and we've had one joint account since the day we were married. My income and her income both go into our single joint account. I can't imagine trying to manage our finances if there were three accounts to worry about. Every dollar we earn belongs to the both of us.
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CardinalRule
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Re: Joint checking accounts.

Post by CardinalRule »

The same is true for us, and substantially all of our household expenses come out of our joint account. The three pots is just the way we have chosen to manage our finances and discretionary spending. We were both established professionals, and in our early 30s when we married. That may be part of why we went the three-pot route. To use the words of other posters, "works for us." :happy
LBTRS wrote: Sun Aug 12, 2018 3:19 pm I can't imagine trying to manage our finances if there were three accounts to worry about. Every dollar we earn belongs to the both of us.
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dm200
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Re: Joint checking accounts.

Post by dm200 »

Joint account most of married life. Right after we got married, a bill came in the mail. I opened it and got out the checkbook to pay it.

"Oh NO", said my wife. "You cannot do that! There has to be a 'system' where the bills get filed in order and then pay them just before they are due."

I then handed her the bill and the checkbook. :sharebeer
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RickBoglehead
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Re: Joint checking accounts.

Post by RickBoglehead »

100% joint for 38 years.
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e5116
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Re: Joint checking accounts.

Post by e5116 »

I think a lot of the philosophy on this stems from WHEN people get married. If you're both in your 40s and have had independent careers for a while, you're used to having your own account and may want to keep it that way for autonomy. If you get married young before careers and assets have been developed much, I think you're more likely to have a single joint account.

Personally, I have a joint checking/savings/brokerage with my wife (married at 25) and think if we had individual accounts it'd make things more complicated. So, I like the way we've done it but I can understand others prefer another method.

A "compromise" approach I've seen is having a joint checking but individual credit cards. That way, each spouse can purchase items as they see fit without somebody looking over their shoulder, but the other at least sees the total that gets taken out of the joint checking account the end of the month.
fourwheelcycle
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Re: Joint checking accounts.

Post by fourwheelcycle »

We have had joint accounts starting as soon as we were married - 42 years. One of our sons and his now wife lived together before they were married; they kept their paychecks going to their individual accounts and they paid equal amounts into a joint account they used to pay all household expenses.
Old Guy
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Re: Joint checking accounts.

Post by Old Guy »

Joint accounts for 43 years. My wife has some of her own credit cards.
Thegame14
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Re: Joint checking accounts.

Post by Thegame14 »

we each deposit 60% of our paycheck into our joint checking account to cover the joint monthly bills. The rest go into our individual savings accounts to pay for our individual costs. This way all the bills are paid and we each have our own money to manage without having to check in or be questioned by the other person.

Note* neither one of us is a spender so there really is never anyone questioning purchase, but it was endorsed by Suze Orman and it was something that we felt works best for us both. we also each contribute at least enough to get company matching 401K, I put in more than the match, my wife puts in for the match and puts in more in her HSA.
b4real
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Re: Joint checking accounts.

Post by b4real »

Retired, have had a joint account more than 40 years. When working, paychecks were deposited and bills paid from the joint account. Excess went to retirement savings. Now, pensions and SS are auto deposited and bills mostly auto paid from the JA. If more is needed, it’s transferred from Vanguard. We keep some cash on hand and we discuss any large purchases either of us wants to make. Works well for us.
Golf maniac
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Re: Joint checking accounts.

Post by Golf maniac »

Joint account also. Just much easier to manage budget if everything is together.
SDLinguist
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Re: Joint checking accounts.

Post by SDLinguist »

Joint here as well. We have been married now for almost two years and it took us a year to merge things and it really has been so much easier to deal with our finances since then.

Before we married we lived together for 4 years, we had a "system" where I payed the rent and she payed the utilities and internet and sort of split groceries and other things. Made it terrible to keep track of a budget or anything. We thought the system was fair enough given the difference in income.

We finally got everything merged about 3 months ago and I find it so much easier to track and budget. We realized we brought home almost 3k more a month than either of us thought. (Both of us thought the other brought home less than we actually did even though we theoretically knew how much each of us made) We also found out we spent almost 2k more per month than we thought. (We each thought the other spent less than we actually did)

It's great to find an extra 1k a month but also kind of scary to realize how off our assumptions were without clear oversight.

We could have done better while we did not have joint accounts but we just find joint so much easier now. Plus being in a community property state there really isn't a benefit to keeping them separate now.
H-Town
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Re: Joint checking accounts.

Post by H-Town »

glacierbob wrote: Sun Aug 12, 2018 8:09 am Just curious on people's thoughts as to how you painlessly manage your and your spouses paycheck

Each direct deposit to joint and also their own separate accts?

In the past I have had my wife keep a separate acct that received 20% of her after tax check for spending that she wanted but i found frivolous. Ignorance is bliss.
We have joint checking account but rarely use it. We use separate checking accounts for everything. But I do keep track of everything in and out of all of our financial accounts.
Time is the ultimate currency.
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22twain
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Re: Joint checking accounts.

Post by 22twain »

CardinalRule wrote: Sun Aug 12, 2018 3:58 pm We were both established professionals, and in our early 30s when we married. That may be part of why we went the three-pot route. To use the words of other posters, "works for us." :happy
Similarly with us, except that we were in our mid/late 30s when we married. We’ve also always had similar incomes, so we’ve always made equal contributions to the common pot.
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JBTX
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Re: Joint checking accounts.

Post by JBTX »

TwstdSista wrote: Sun Aug 12, 2018 9:05 am We have separate accounts, but we are joint on them. His money goes into his account, and then I transfer it to his savings (which I am joint on). My money goes into my account and I pay all the bills and make the retirement/HSA contributions. It's how we work.
Similar to ours. Two separate joint accounts.
squirm
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Joined: Sat Mar 19, 2011 11:53 am

Re: Joint checking accounts.

Post by squirm »

I signed my wife up a week ago for a Southwest credit card for the reward points, we'll use those reward points with the points I earned when I signed up. I guess I should tell her she has another credit card coming to her...But I'll end up using it to satisfy the required spending in the first three months.
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