One of the most frequent questions I’ve heard since we got married is “How do you manage your money now that you’re married?”
Truly, it’s been the second-most-asked question after “How much did you spend on the wedding?” because on both counts, there aren’t many people who are willing to be completely open about it.
So while the answer to how much we spent on the wedding is easy—about $17,000, all in—how we manage our money and why we do it this way needs a bit more of a breakdown.
Without further ado, here’s a full pulled-back curtain on what combining our money after marriage has meant for us. (And PS. The links to services we use are affiliate links, so if you sign up via them I’ll earn a small commission at no cost to you!)
We have a joint account
The first thing everyone tends to ask is whether or not we have a joint account, because this is like, The Big Kahuna of Sharing Finances. Joint account or bust!
I hate to disappoint you, but we actually got our joint account well before we were married—we signed up for a joint account with Tangerine, where we both do our day-to-day banking, as soon as we started handling shared expenses when we bought our house.
It turns out, having a joint account is not the end-all, be-all of sharing finances.Click To TweetHere’s the real trick to making “get a joint account” seem like no big deal, a la us: You can actually use a joint account for whatever you want. Just because you get one doesn’t mean it’s automatically the default account, or that you need to use it to pay for everything. You can use it to handle the shared grocery budget if that’s where you’re at!
We also have separate chequing accounts
That’s why when we signed up for our joint account, we both kept our separate chequing accounts completely intact in our respective Tangerine accounts. We didn’t bother switching where our paycheques get deposited, or doing anything beyond adding an extra account we could both access.
Since we get paid into our individual chequing accounts, they’re really the centre of gravity for our finances. That’s where our savings, RRSP contributions, and personal spending comes out of—but crucially, it’s also the account from which we fund our joint account every time we get paid.
We have shared goals, priorities, and a budget
When it comes to figuring out how much we each send to our joint account, we rely on the one key tool that makes the rest of the system work: our shared budget.
Before we started this system, we sat down and looked at our expenses. How much did we need to cover our housing expenses, since that was the primary reason we got the joint account? That’s everything from our mortgage to our hydro bill to a line item for “essentials” to cover stuff like light bulbs and dish soap.
At that point, we were also sharing grocery expenses, so we added in a line for food—and it opened up a great conversation about what we considered a joint expense as a home-owning, (at the time) engaged couple. From there, we built out a budget to account for those shared costs, including new lines like “restaurants” and “the dog,” both of which had previously been handled separately.
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Once we had a monthly total—including monthly amounts to cover annual expenses—we knew how much needed to go into the joint account to cover all of the joint expenses. From there, we decided on what percentage split made the most sense for us based on our respective incomes, and accounted for our different pay schedules. He gets paid biweekly, and I get paid twice a month, so on a per-paycheque schedule he contributes a bit less, and contributes twice more per year.
If anything major changes, like an additional expense, or a drastic change in income, all we need to do is update the “budget” tab in our joint spreadsheet to figure out how it impacts our contributions to the joint account—and update our automated transfers in Tangerine to reflect the changes.
We have a joint spreadsheet
Our joint spreadsheet is the nerve centre of our day-to-day money management, second only to the joint budget (which uhhhhh lives in the spreadsheet, so let’s ignore that chicken-and-egg problem).
See, we don’t have a shared credit card or debit cards for our joint account, so with the exception of payments that come directly out of that account, most of our purchases are made from our individual accounts and cards.
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To keep track of our joint spending, every few days we’ll pop open the joint spreadsheet and our personal credit cards and chequing accounts in a different tab. We’ll record the spending we did in joint categories in the spreadsheet with a few details, so we each have full visibility into what’s already been spent each month, and on what.
Additionally, when it’s time to pay off our credit cards (every month, like clockwork!) all we have to do is look at the joint spreadsheet to figure out how much we’re “owed” from the joint account. Because our joint account and credit cards are with Tangerine, we can pay our cards directly from the joint account, and we make a note in the spreadsheet about how much we’ve reimbursed ourselves each time.
We keep separate savings accounts
The one moderately tricky part of our financial setup is that we use and love our digital tools—and many of them don’t yet offer joint accounts for saving.
We keep all of our bigger savings with EQ Bank, because they pay 2.3% interest, but since we can’t set up joint savings accounts, we just update each other periodically on what we have saved for each goal. Since we’re aligned on how much we’re each saving per month for the goals, it’s only important to check in when we’re coming up to spending money out of those accounts.
We also keep our investments separate, since we each have a Wealthsimple and a Questrade account. Combining them is just frankly far more work than we need to tackle, and since we do monthly net worth updates in a tab of our shared spreadsheet, we can see roughly what’s in each account anyways.
This is just one system
I wrote this out to share how we manage our money, because while it might sound a bit complicated at first glance, it feels so easy for us—and honestly, it’s been one of the most frequent questions I get asked since we got married. There aren’t many people who are willing to be this open about how they do their money stuff, and since my husband married me knowing full well I’d eventually write something like this, we are those people!
However, the one thing I want you to take away as a recommendation here is that it is entirely possible to start small when you’re combining your finances—and you can stop at whatever point feels comfortable to you. You don’t need to uproot your entire financial life in one fell swoop, and you can start baby-stepping into sharing just specific expenses whenever you feel ready.
I don’t think there is a one-size-fits-all-couples way to share money in terms of where it’s kept. But I do think that systems like this–where both couples are honest and communicate regularly–is as close to perfect as it gets.
We’ve combined virtually everything except our retirement accounts (which could also double as separate e-funds if poop really hits the fan!)…and we also each have one separate credit card for the same reason.
I’ve been waiting for this blog post!
Thanks girl. Super good information. I’m going to take a peek at that joint spreadsheet now. I’ve finally convinced Reid we need one and have been using one for the past couple weeks, but I don’t really love it so maybe yours will be a better fit for us!
This is great to see how it works for you! My fiance and I decided after living together for 7 years, that since we are engaged we should finally join our money and just opened our first joint savings account with an online bank last week. It’s interesting and exciting to navigate the sharing of finances!
Happy birthday! :]
I think this is the route we are going to go too. Right now we both currently have our own checking/savings account, but we have three joint accounts – travel, house, and wedding (which we are not quite sure what we are going to do with once we finally get married).
A lot of people keep thinking it’s weird that we aren’t planning on completely merging, but both of us are responsible and when an impulse buy comes along, there’s less judgement when it comes out of your personal account vs the household money. lol
My husband and I recently opened a no-fee joint account at Coast Capital – they have some budget tracker tools that automatically pull in your expenditures from other banks (hard to find an app in Canada that does this) and allow you set out your budget goals so you can compare what you’ve planned to what you’ve spent. You can even edit the categories. I haven’t fully started using the tools yet but once I set my categories I think I’ll be able to stop manually adding my expenses to my tracker app. On top of that, they gave us $200 EACH to open the account! Besides that we also use EQ Bank and Wealthsimple (love them both). I hear the KOHO card will have a joint account option soon – curious about that.
Happy (slightly early) birthday and have a great trip south!
I love reading this… and realizing that we do it ALMOST the same way as a superhero-money-managing-couple :D.
We do all the same things in terms of having a single joint account but separate credit cards, chequing and savings accounts (with periodic updates to make sure we won’t be super duper lopsided when we retire).
The only difference is that we also keep a joint credit card. Because we [are bad and] don’t really keep to a specific budget on a monthly basis, we basically both put “family” expenses on the joint credit card (groceries, joint trips, doggo things, etc.) and keep our fun/personal expenses on our own (so I don’t feel guilty about spending fam money on new boots, of course :P). Then at the end of the month, I tally all our expenses in a spreadsheet (includes fixed costs like mortgage and property taxes + variable costs like the joint credit card) and tell the hubby how much we both owe to the joint account.
We find this works really well because we don’t have to track our spending TOO closely to a budget – we just make the decision of whether it’s a joint expense at the time of purchase. Plus, our joint card is a cash-back card so whenever we have $ built up we just shift it right back to the balance 🙂
Just another idea that has worked well for us!
Thank you!! For being so open about this (and many other!) subjects. My husband and I have been married for almost a year and still haven’t totally figured out how we’re managing jointly. It’s a work in progress, for sure; very helpful to get an insiders’ look into how another couple is doing it!
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Thanks for sharing your financial arangements. We also decided to keep our investments separate. One of the reasons we did is that it seemed like one more thing we would have to ‘coordinate’ on that we didn’t really need to.
This was a really interesting post – I especially like the emphasis on communication. One of the biggest things I have learned over the last couple years is that, in marriage, SO much comes down to communication. Generally speaking, the more open and honest you can be with your spouse, the better off you’ll be.
We have combined just about everything. A few things are in my name only (like the RRSP we contribute to right now – in my name, hubby is the beneficiary – as well as a couple credit cards) but it is largely understood that they belong to both of us. We discussed finances extensively through our pre-marital counseling and decided pretty early on that all money would be our money (and all debt would be our debt haha). I manage our money, but hubby has access to it all and can be as involved as he wants to be in where it goes – although he often leaves it to me, because that is my area of strength.
One thing to consider is that joint accounts have right of survivorship. This means that if one of you were to die the other has immediate access the the funds without waiting for probate (which could take a year or more). We’ve been married 15 years now and have slowly moved everything to joint…All accounts, all investments, house, cars, etc. You can still have accounts that you separately manage, but you may wish to have them actually in joint names. This will also save you from having to pay probate fees on these assets when one person dies.
Bit of a morbid thing to think about but imagine being in grief, having half your family funds tied up for a year, and maybe not being able to drive your car because you don’t own it…
A great article, Desirae!
Couples money is always a tricky subject, but it’s nice to read about people finding ways that really work for them. My husband and I have always had a joint account where we put in our monthly rent cost, plus $200 extra to build an emergency fund and pay for utilities, internet, etc. One area that we are looking to improve upon is groceries: we always have a “it’s your turn, I went last week” discussion and I feel it would be way easier simply to add that in to either the joint account or a separate account.
Personally, we each have our own chequing, savings, and RRSP accounts (thank goodness, because otherwise I might end up stressing out until al my hair turned grey). I am far more into frugality and saving for the future, while my husband enjoys putting some aside and then spending the rest. It works for both of us, but it only works because we have that space between our financials. I think it’s important for every one to realize where they are comfortable being and stick to it, otherwise there could be pain and heartbreak in the future.
Our goal this year is to sit down every month and have a look at what we’ve saved, what we’ve spent, and where we can improve. We may fire up a spreadsheet to help us do so! God I love spreadsheets.
Thanks again, it’s great reading a Canadian perspective :).
Nice post, Des!
I have a joint saving account with my partner that we use for trips, house renovated or repair, home appliance, etc. So, at the beginning of the year, we make our plans and determine an amount to save each month.
Besides that, every month we organize our budget and share the bills that we have paid over the month. So, if someone pays more than other, at the end of the month we share the amounts and who is “in debt” send money to the other account.
But, despite we keep most of our money separate we talk openly about how much money we earn and what we are doing to save more and more. Thus, we can support and give advice to each other.