Combining finances with your spouse might be scary, but it’s not as scary as trying to pursue your goals alone. Today I’m going to share with you my experience combining finances with my wife, and why I would recommend it for all married couples.
Would you prefer to watch instead of read? You’re in luck! This video contains all of the information in this article.
Yay! We’re Married! Now What?
When I got married, my wife and I weren’t quite sure what to do with our finances. For a while, we tried to split things that were clearly shared responsibilities like rent, health insurance, and food. Every time she paid a bill, I’d use Venmo to transfer her my half, and vice versa.
One thing we didn’t split was each of our individual loan payments, and I had quite a bit more of those than she did.
Eventually I started to fall behind a little bit with paying my fair share, and adopted an “I owe you” approach to certain monthly expenses. That quickly turned into her just covering certain expenses when it became apparent that I simply couldn’t afford to pay her back.
Finally, a light bulb went off in my head – we’re married now, we’re in this together. Why not just combine all of our finances and operate from a single, joint bank account?
This idea seemed a little bit scary to both of us because we knew that once we did it, it would be really tough to untangle it all. Had we not been married and made that lifetime commitment to each other, we could tell this might have been a bad idea. Some internet searches told me this whole practice of completely combining finances after marriage was indeed a thing, and we both agreed it was something we should do.
And so, from that day forward, we started operating solely from a joint bank account. Here’s what our experience has been like so far after fully combining our finances.
The Benefits
First, there was the immediate benefit of life just being easier. Both of our paychecks were deposited to the same checking account, and all of our monthly bills were paid from that checking account as well. There was no longer any need to constantly be transferring money back and forth or requesting money from each other. This took care of a lot of the busy work we did on a regular basis. And it allowed us to have more of an open conversation about our finances.
Before making the switch, I was feeling somewhat guilty for having more debt. That guilt began to lessen as my debts became our shared debts. Now we’re working to pay them off together. She had some debt too, but it was just a fraction of what I brought to our marriage. On the income side, we no longer feel any guilt about how much income we bring home. It’s now a combined thing, rather than an individual thing. That means there are no more IOU’s in our relationship.
Shared Finances = Shared Financial Goals
The most important benefit we’ve experienced though, is the idea of having shared financial goals. A goal of ours is to become debt free and eventually purchase a home of our own. Every month, we get to strategize how to achieve those two goals when we make our monthly budget. Because we’ve combined our finances, we can leverage the power of our combined income, rather than two separate, smaller incomes, towards achieving each of those goals. And we are able to have open conversations each month about what we are willing to sacrifice in order to attain these shared goals.
If we hadn’t combined our finances, we would be living much different lives and spending money in radically different ways. Instead, we’re on the same page, working together as a team – and that has been a game changer.
Do you feel like it’s a good idea to combine your finances with your spouse? Do you have an experience to share? Let me know in the comments.