How are yall addressing the issue of finances?  Are you going 50/50? Using separate accounts?  Joint accounts?  How do you address the bills that were once individual but are now apart of the household expenses?

For example: I would like to have a joint checking and savings account.  In addition, I thinkwe should also then have individual savings and/or MADD money accounts for each of us.  FI thinks it will work if we just do the "separate" thing and then the both of us just contribute a certain amount of money each month to take care of the bills.  I think the majority of the money should go into the joint accounts and we can take out what we need to put in our separate accounts -- not the other way around.  What is someone decided not to contribute that month.  My mother divorced my dad after 35 years because for some strange reason she started thinking that HE was hiding money from her (which he wasn't).  So come to find out, she started separating all her money from him thinking he was somehow "saving up" for some reason (like another woman) unbeknownst to her. Romance without Finance ain't s**t but a damn nuisance. 

I just think that when you have things separated that you leave too much room for assumptions.  If you love and trust one another then you should be able to trust each other when it comes to something HUGE like finances.  If you don't trust your spouse when it comes to money, then why in the world would you want to marry them?  Seems ass backwards to me.

As soon as we bought the house (2 years before the wedding)  we opened a joint account ..... both of our paychecks go in ,  the bills get paid , and we split whatever is left for our personal "spending money"

FI and I went to the bank right before we got engaged to put him on my checking account. Well we ended up walking out with another account and a savings account, which are joint accounts. My intentions were to close my personal account and have everything switched over to the joint account. Well a huge problem arose and I decided to keep my account open. I have a few things that are automatically withdrawn from my account every month. I pay all the utility bills plus my own bills with my check. His check usually covers the house note and groceries. Now we discuss major purchases, but small things we just go ahead and buy. He's bad about giving receipts so I'm constantly checking the accounts to make sure there is money in there. Unfortunately we had to take a pay cut and really can not afford to put money into our savings. So I cover each checking account by transferring money back and forth if I need to.

we are joint. since i am the spender, we both agreed that he should handle the bills but..i am still very much involved. FI is big on the whole 'if something ever happens to me' you need to be able to take care of things and he's right. we each have our own play money account but we have one main account for bills that both of our direct deposits go into every month. we have designated the joint account for all of our bills, groceries and gas. we take money out to go into various savings accounts for emergencies, Christmas, vacations etc;

i have a 2nd job and FI does private lessons on the side so we both use that money as our play money if we don't have any other unexpected bills or obligations to satisfy.

yeah, Oreo..there was alot of financial 'infidelity' in my parent's marriage and it never turned out good at all!

We have 4 accounts: Joint checking and savings and separate checking.  Our paychecks go into the joint checking where we pay our bills from.  Whats left over is split in half.  Half goes into savings and the other half is split between us.  Our separate accounts are used to purchase frivolous stuff ie. the really cute pair of shoes I HAD TO HAVE, or the hat he HAD to have.  If we spend what's in our separate accounts then that's that.  Since planning this wedding, we've put all of our "extra" into savings.

See, Kim, that's a perfect example of why married people should have joint finances -- what IF something were to happen to the other person? I mean, wouldn't you want your spouse to be able to get to the money?  That's a good example.

Another twist on this thread though:  I hear everything you guys are saying about the joint accounts (and I agree 100%) but what happens when somebody -- especially if its the woman -- makes more money than the other?  Do you still contribute equally and just split everything "down the middle"?

Example #1:  Man makes $32,000 a year.  Woman makes $68,000 a year. 

So she's putting in $5600 a month to his $2600.00 ($8200 total).

The bills are $3500.00. 

So $8200-3500=4700.00. 

Subtract another $2000 in savings and that leaves (4700-2000) $2700.00. 

Split what's left and they each get $1350.00 equally to spend.  Which means he essentially is only contributting half of his check on bills and gets to spend the other half, while SHE is contributing like what, close to 75% to bills?

How would yall TRULY and HONESTLY feel about that situation?

exactly...and since i am dealing with all of this now i know first hand. my dad passed way first and it was hell for me and my mom to find out what accounts he had out there, most of which were in his name only...then the same thing with my mom. it's a HUGE HUGE hassle and you have to go through the court probate system. very stressful and no one wants to deal with that in addition to dealing with the death or illness of a spouse or parent!

The Saturday after we got married, we added me to his account. I HATED the bank I was with. ALL of our money goes into our joint account. I work at a credit union and in order to have direct deposit, I have to have it deposited into an account at the CU first, than it can be distributed to our other bank. So I think I have like $100 spend money left over from my distribution...

I make more than FI, but it all equal to us :) Although if I want a cute pair of $100+ shoes, they are mine :)