ray

I'm not going to go into great deal about this in this thread, but I would just like to point out that one of the most important, if not the most important, aspect of any marriage is trusting your partner. If one person can't trust the other to budget properly, then perhaps marriage wasn't the right choice to make at the time.

avlena

Pemolis, you have a good point about the other person approving/disapproving of certain purchases, which is why the hubby and I have seperate "for fun" accounts, which hold a small portion of our income(equal on both sides, so salary descrepencies don't matter). I have a hard time understanding why he'd spend so much on a video game, and he doesn't understand my purse obsession, so we use our private funds in such cases.

However, 95% of our spending still comes out of the joint account. When we set up the account, we discussed our spending philosophies, and agreed to discuss any large purchases together. Otherwise, we trust each other to watch the CC bill. Sometimes we have disagreements, but meh, that's marriage.

__________________
Have a groovy day!

Pemolis

As long as its discussed and tracked and you are both equal fare people..

JLemonjello

See... I am again on Avlena's side here. My wife and I have one account that buys everything. I don't buy things that she is vehemently against and vice-versa. I'm sure there are things I buy that she would rather me not but we each know when to pick our battles and we love each other and want to see each other happy and we allow ourselves to splurge on some things.

Marriage is all give and take and maybe we are young and naive but we allow each other to buy some things we don't need but at the same time we don't want to fritter all of our money away (her and I are both rather frugal). So... in retrospect, I am totally about joint accounts and I think with the right people it can work just fine.

__________________
===========
Jason Lemonjello

"Insert witty signature quote here."

SpeedEng

keeping tabs on your partner is not a way to live imo

it's like your anticipating the relationship to fail.
your partner is not a buddy that has a get rich quick plan and needs some $.. she's/he's there for life (or one would hope)

how annoying would it be to ask my wife every month for half the car payment
and half the insurance
and half the morgage
and so on... (lol I would feel like im in debt collection every month calling her up for this)

my .00002 peso

Mommypooh

I disagree, I think Joint makes life easier. I have no pproblem with BigJon buying something as long as we talk about it, I do the same as well. If I want to buy the kids new outfits I ask him if he minds me using X amount of money, if he wants comics he tells me he is going to buy some, and if he is not sure how much he will use, I will give him a ball park figure on how much we can spare for it. We communicate about everything. Now granted I no longer work, but we had joint when I was still working. I can tell you for fact that we could not have done 2 separate accounts and paid the bills on time. If I write him a check I have to wait til I get jpaid and then we have to wait the 3-4 days for it to clear, and by that time the bill is late.

I think complete separtae accounts is setting up a relationship like you are always ready to devorce. Now I will say that I do like the way Avalena does her accounts, but as I don't work a joint is all we need.

I would never have considered doing it any differently. Nor would Bigjon.

__________________
Married to my High School sweetheart and Best Friend BigJon
Mommy to Gabby (03/03), Cameron (01/05), and Magnus (09/07)