How do you and your partner handle money?

WE both do, and yes it goes into one account and big stuff we do talk to each other .

We both earn our money. It goes into joint accounts (checking and savings) for our use. We make big money decisions together. Anything over a couple of hundred dollars, both of us generally know about. Because we have the same saving and spending styles, we don’t have money conflicts.

I handle the bill paying online, but he has access to everything too. We talk about investment decisions, but I follow his lead because he is usually right.

Like @tedibear, we both earned money although he earned much more. We had joint accounts and everything big was decided together. We each were able to make small purchases on our own and in the later years, we each had a little mad money of our own from side jobs. He paid most of the bills online but I was always aware of where we were at. I generally was the one who talked to our financial planner and made the investment decisions.

Who earns it? When my husband and I first got married we both worked full time and made similar incomes. Two years later he was making about $10,000 US more than me. About three years after that I switched to only working part time, plus his salary had gone up even more, and so he became officially the significantly bigger bread winner. At this point we pretty much lived on his salary for all basic necessary expenses, and my income was for savings, vacation and extras.

There have been times in between then and now that I worked full time and again, then for a while I didn’t work, and then against part time. My husband made much more than me, but I have been the one to try to stay on top of tax law, and watch the savings accounts to keep them at decent rates of interest (although it’s all very low the last ten years). I have done some CD’s that panned out well, and I put money into our retirement accounts.

Do you share an account? We share all of our bank accounts except retirement accounts (retirement accounts can’t be in both names under the law) and also money I inherited from my aunt is separate. If I die my aunt’s money goes to my sister, so I kept it separate. My parents give me money sometimes and usually I put it in my joint account with my husband, but sometimes I put it in the account that has inheritance money, even though my parents are alive and just giving me a gift. The inheritance account totals $8,000 US I think, it’s not like it’s hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Who makes decisions about what to buy? We usually decide together.

Do you feel like you should talk to your partner before making big purchases? Absolutely.

I earn all the money and handle the budget. We have a joint account for bills and groceries with enough headroom to handle the misc items like vehicle maintenance or the occasional restaurant. We have a savings account for emergencies and two “play“accounts one for her and one for me. Every paycheck a set amount goes into those play accounts for us to do whatever we want with. No need to ask permission for anything coming out of those accounts. Anything above and beyond that we generally talk first.

We both earn, we have seperate accts, he pays his portion of bills to me as I’m the ‘paperwork Goddess” in our home.

Since we have seperate accounts, we are not obligated to discuss purchases.

Most of what I’ve seen is one person who saves, the other who spends in many marriages, that’s how we are. I’m the saver.

My wife and I both have jobs. We used to put 80% of our paychecks into a joint acct, then pay joint expenses from it. After a few bouts of unemployment for my wife, I started putting in about 95% of my paycheck to make ends meet. Now that she is employed again, she is putting in 95% too. Our personal accts have enough $ for our personal/fun expenses.

Thanks, everyone. I was just curious!

@RocketGuy Do you earn similar amounts of money, or does that 5% come out to different sums?

I earn more. That’s why we went with percentage.