Author: Angela Rozmyn / Source: Get Rich Slowly
In the world of personal finance, the subject of how couples share (or don’t share) their money comes up time and time again. It’s no surprise. After all, money problems are a leading cause of divorce.
But for some reason, the concept that “personal finance is personal” doesn’t always factor into people’s opinions about combining finances — especially within a marriage.
Often, people argue that in order to be a team, couples must combine finances fully. Or that separate accounts mean there’s some lack of trust within the relationship. Or that you aren’t truly committed to each other. Or that you must not be on the same page about long-term hopes and dreams.
None of these things are true. Plenty of committed couples keep separate finances. These couples are teams. They trust each other. They share the same hopes and dreams. But for a variety of reasons, separate finances work well for them.
Today, I want to share an alternative to these two dominant modes of money management. I want to share how couples can both keep their finances separate — and combine them. Confused? Let me explain.
Separate But Combined Finances
My husband and I have been married nine years, and we’ve never fully shared our finances. Nor do we ever intend to. We’ve also never had a major disagreement about money.
This isn’t to say that we haven’t had our fair share of arguments, because any couple that has been together for nine years certainly has. But for us, money has never been a serious source of contention, which seems to put us in the minority. Perhaps that doesn’t have anything to do with whether we’ve combined our finances, but I think it does.
This past fall, my husband went on a week-long hunting trip. In preparation, he purchased a new camp mat, a new jacket, and a $300 tree stand.
We do a lot of camping and hiking as a family, so we already had plenty of gear. Most of it gets used frequently. The $300 tree stand, on the other hand, has so far collected dust in our garage.
My husband’s plans for hunting changed after wildfires spread through our state before his trip. The stand was no longer helpful for the location he intended to go. Did he return it? No. Will he use it in the future? I sure hope so! But if he doesn’t, it ultimately doesn’t matter to me.
This is because, for as long as we’ve been married, my husband and I have carried significant savings in our own individual accounts that the other doesn’t see or have access to. This is a policy we plan to always maintain.
We were just 21 years old when we got married. I’d just graduated college and he was a corporal in the Marine Corps. Unsurprisingly, we didn’t have any real money to our names. Plus, I was $24,000 in debt thanks to student loans. Fortunately, my husband did have a small nest egg and a slowly growing Thrift Savings Plan retirement fund.
We did, however, open joint checking and savings accounts while still on our honeymoon. (How romantic!) We deposited all of the cash we’d received from our wedding in order to start a nest egg that might serve as a down payment on a future home. Not long after, we opened a joint credit card — the first credit card that either of us ever had — in order to build a solid credit rating for when we’d eventually buy that house.
Coming into a marriage so young and so broke would have been the perfect time to fully combine our finances, had we been so inclined. We both owned our cars outright, and the only debt we had was my student loans. We were fully invested to the marriage, and my military-dependent ID card even showed his social security number, not mine. In the eyes of the military, we were certainly one. And in all ways other than finances, we have been ever since.
All the same, I still had significant student loans to my name.
Student Loan Repayment
To make ends meet, I was earning $750 a month at my first post college internship, plus $8.50 an hour at a second job. My $24,000 of student loans at 8.5% was daunting debt! But it was mine, not my husband’s.
Even after we were married, I didn’t feel like it was his responsibility — nor did I ever want it to be. I accepted the loans as part of my college education. I’ve never regretted the debt (in part because the payoff process is what introduced me to the financial independence community).
I…
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