We’ve been Married for 2 Years & Haven’t Combined Our Finances

I grew up in a household with parents who had combined finances. I just assumed that was how every married couple operated, and I fully planned to do the same. We had family friends who didn’t have combined finances, and I remember thinking it was really strange or potentially indicative of some sort of marital issue. (I drew some major conclusions as a 10-year-old, right? My gosh.)

Fast forward almost 20 years, and I’m happily married with uncombined finances. I’ll be totally honest - we fully intended to combine our finances. But we also intended to have a traditional wedding without a worldwide pandemic, but things don’t always go according to plan, do they?

The “Why”

I think there are multiple factors that explain why we haven’t combined our finances - the age we got married, the world we got married in, and the lack of necessity (this one is multi-fold, so stick with me).

Age

Bryan and I got engaged at 27 and married at 28. If my childhood friends from Mississippi are the benchmark, we got married on the later side. We had each earned independent salaries since we were 22 and had our own retirement accounts, investment portfolios, and checking accounts. I’m almost 30 at the time I’m writing this, and there is nary a child to be found.

Compare this to my parents: They also got engaged at 27 and married at 28, but they had their first child at 29. My mom quit her job to stay at home with my brother full time, and my dad kept his traditional 9-to-5 job. There wasn’t really a choice about whether or not they should combine their finances, right? So I was raised in a home with combined finances, and naturally, I thought whatever happened in our house was the standard.

Following that same logic, our family friends’ children probably think the standard is for parents to keep separate finances. I spell this out, because I want you to know that whatever you decide to do isn’t right or wrong, in general. The decision should be made about what is right for you and your spouse.

Ah, which brings me to my next point. Choice! (or lack thereof…)

World: Part 1

We got married on June 26, 2020. (You probably see where this is going.) We cancelled most of our wedding plans, downsized the event from 180 guests to 20, and had a small reception that included a choppy bluetooth speaker and the wrong cake, but that’s a story for another day.

Now that you understand our timeline, it’s probably no surprise that pretty much everything was closed when we got married. It took me 4 months to get an updated social security card that had my married name, since in person appointments were indefinitely cancelled. Without an updated social security card, you can’t legally update anything else. So I couldn’t get my new driver’s license for 5 months after we married, and a government issued ID is necessary to update all bank information. Oh, and you have to go in person to a bank to update the name on your accounts, and those appointments were booked out for weeks.

Am I painting a clear enough picture for you? The world wasn’t on our side to have a timely financial marriage, if you will, following our legal one.

World: Part 2

Now let’s forget about the pandemic and focus on the state of the world and workforce of today. Women are waiting longer to have children and are returning to work at a higher rate following childbirth than they were 30 years ago.

Compare this to my parents: My mom was pregnant within about a year of getting married, and we are now almost two years in with no adorable child. Don’t get me wrong - we’re excited to one day start a family, but we wanted a little time for “just us,” and we were both in a really great place career wise at the time we wed. Once we do have children, I fully intend to return to work, too.

Lack of Necessity

Since my husband and I both still bring in steady incomes, there’s no real need to have combined accounts since we both have unrestricted access to our own money and each other’s money, even though it’s not housed in one place.

Let’s call what I’ve outlined until this point logistical and situational reasons to explain why we haven’t combined our finances. I totally understand that people marrying today are no longer facing the same hurdles we did in the midst of the pandemic and some couples agree that having one spouse stay at home is what’s best for their family. Most of the reasons I’ve cited above may not apply to you at all. There are, however, two other factors that influenced our decision not to combine our finances that I do feel are more universal — knowledge and trust.

• Knowledge - Known Income & Spending Habits: Bryan and I had the exact same job when we met, so I knew his salary to the penny for the four years we dated before we got engaged. While we were dating, we also established that we were like-minded spenders. Money has never been a taboo topic for us, so even now that we both hold different jobs, we remain open about what we bring in annually and discuss all big purchases (and small, annoying purchases, ha!) with one another before we buy. Don’t underestimate the power of this knowledge and how important this is to understanding how you’ll approach finances as a married couple.

  • We also opted to do premarital counseling to learn more about each other and our quirks and tendencies before we got married. Of the four sessions, one was devoted entirely to finances. There’s a reason! Money is a contentious issue. While premarital counseling is optional, discussing money with your partner isn’t. There’s really no way to avoid the topic in a healthy relationship, and the more open you are about it all from the beginning, the easier it will be to have the conversations. Talk about it if you haven’t already!

• Knowledge - No Debt: We were both very fortunate to start our relationship debt-free, so our sole focus is on saving and we both do so aggressively. If you or your partner are bringing debt into a marriage, it’s wise to talk about this to. You both deserve to know the financial position you’re adopting once you legally marry. Being open about this from the beginning and figuring out the fastest way to pay off the debt can save you money in the long run by avoiding any unnecessary interest and fees.

• Trust - I had a full understanding of both Bryan’s character and spending habits before we got married, and I would trust him with my life (and vice versa.) That boy is honest to a fault, but I realize that’s not everyone’s reality!

  • TIP: At a minimum, come up with a dollar amount that you should agree to discuss before spending. This was a cool exercise we did in marriage counseling, and we settled, kind of arbitrarily, on $300. Regardless of the dollar amount you choose, this agreement helps you practice being open about money and your overall spending habits on a regular basis. In reality, I discuss a lot of discretionary purchases with Bryan that are well below $300, because I like a second opinion.

Okay, that makes sense. But do you share money at all?

I’m glad you asked! This is also where I want to make a VERY important distinction between physically separate and actually separate fund arrangements.

Physically Separate - Right now our funds are physically separated. I bank at a different institution than Bryan, and we feed our paychecks into separate accounts. We also have completely independent investment portfolios that, honestly, could be costly and really confusing to combine.

However, while our funds are physically separated, what’s mine is his and what’s his is mine. We’ve organically taken on the responsibilities of different necessary expenses. For example, Bryan pays our mortgage and does most grocery shopping, and I pay for all utilities, subscriptions, and routine things like pest control. If things don’t fall out exactly evenly each month, we aren’t in the business of venmo-ing each other back and forth for the difference. It just is what it is - equal dollar value or not. If Nash runs out of dog food, one of us just buys it when we notice. If one person goes grocery shopping one week, that same person may pay for dinner out a few days later. We just don’t care! In our minds, our finances are totally combined but physically they are not. (We are also authorized users on each other’s credit cards and know each other’s financial login information, too.)

Actually Separate — I would define this as funds that are physically separate and inaccessible to your partner. People with this arrangement may want the bills to be split evenly to the penny. For example, the wife is responsible for paying for the mortgage each month, and the husband has to Venmo her the difference between his household spending and the mortgage payment so their monthly expenses are equal. Our funds have never been actually separate.

Got it. Do you think it’ll be this way forever?

For the complicated things like investment accounts, I think yes. Again, he has access to everything, and there’s more pain than value involved in combining those accounts.

For our paychecks, I’m not sure. Once kids come along, I have a hunch we’ll open a joint bank account to streamline things, but we both agree that it won’t feel any different once that happens. Because of our united trust and understanding, our finances are as good as physically combined today.