How do you and your SO handle money and savings?

[Thereturn]

The other day my SO, my mom and me had a discussion about handling money and savings.

We currently have a situation where we have a joint savings account where a set ammount is deposited into each month. This account is for stuff like extra deposits on mortgage, new kitchen, furnishing, etc.

Besides that we have personal savingsaccounts in which a set sum is deposited each month (equal for both, as our wages are about equal).
From which we can purchase whatever we want.

And we have a joint account from which we pay everything like groceries and mortgage and utilities.

To my mom and her so, which imo are rather old fashion its ‘weird’ to have 2 personal accounts as ‘whats mine is yours’ in a relationship. Im however somewhat reserved and split all costs 50/50 in case shit hits the fan.

How do you handle these things with your SO and why?

[melodramocracy]

My SO and I keep our money completely separate, and don't answer to each other for much of anything, though we will make suggestions to each other. Household repairs and events are typically split, as are groceries etc.

It makes life far less stressful.

[Doctor Amadeus]

I have my account, she has her account and the rest of the accounts for bills and everything else except business are shared.

Honestly my wife is awesome with money. As for spending neither of us need permission on anything but purchases of $1000 Or more we discuss. In general

[Fencers]

Personal checking, joint savings.

[Machismo]

We have shared savings accounts, as well as checking. We also have individual accounts for each of us and our kids. We have our own separate 401k accounts, and separate investment accounts, along with two shared investment accounts.

[callipygoustp]

I put everything in her mom's name.

[PACOX]

We ask her step-dad for money.

[Ghostpanther]

My wife has her own account which she maintains ( it does have my name on the account too ) and I have no idea how much it contains or do I care. All the rest, savings, checking accounts, etc, is shared. Even the last vehicle we bought in 2015, has both of our names on it for the registration.

[Witchblade77]

joint everything. large purchases get discussed (not in "should you or should you not have it" but rather "is it within our budget right now or do we need to save for it first"), small purchases (under $100) are up to individual discretion. both of us are fairly cautious with money so there is no worries about random overspending. we tried separate accounts thing early in our marriage and it was just too much of a hassle. we found it much easier for us to just pool all the resources.

to each their own though, every relationship has their own dynamic that works best for them.

[anveena]

Personal accounts.

[BeepBoo]

My SO and I keep our money completely separate, and don't answer to each other for much of anything, though we will make suggestions to each other. Household repairs and events are typically split, as are groceries etc.

It makes life far less stressful.

^

Pretty much exactly how we do it. We both have careers and both make more than enough to cover all bills with one of our incomes, but we split all of them down the middle.
We each invest in our own retirements as needed, and we both have our own separate savings, etc. She can spend her disposable income on whatever she wants and I get to buy all the dumb stuff I want with mine. It's great.

[Saltysquidoon]

My wife and I have personal accounts for day-to-day stuff like lunch. We keep an account for liquid assets (calling it savings based on current interest rates is a joke) in the event of an emergency. We keep all of our significant assets (such as divvie stocks/property) in a trust for tax reasons. I also have a fun account for buying meme stocks when I feel like it.

[Sunseeker]

Separate funds, but with the understanding that some portion of those funds go to the common good (bills, rent, food, etc...) so blowing them recklessly on bullshit earns a frowney face. So, basically the honor system that while yes its your money, you're not going to be a complete twat with it.

[Daedius]

Joint accounts, never ever do them.

[Seirith]

Our money all goes into one account and out of one account. We have no kids, we both work and we don't spend a ton of money on junk so when someone wants something they buy it. To me having separate accounts and trying to 50/50 on bills is just too much work and hassle.

- - - Updated - - -

Joint accounts, never ever do them.

My husband and I have done joint accounts since moving other together 15 years ago, have never had any issues with it.

[Brubear]

Wife and I have a shared checking account our checks get deposited into that we use to pay for most things. We also each have a personal checking account we can move money into so that we can make surprise purchases or buy things we might want for ourselves without having to discuss/budget for it. If it's a large personal item that's more than the amount in our personal accounts then we talk about and plan for it. We're planning on opening a joint savings account as well. We each have personal retirement accounts through our jobs.

Even when we first started dating we've both pitched in as best we could financially and never really viewed it as my/your money and always treated it as our money. We just used our checks to pay the bills we could and never bothered with the whole "splitting it 50/50 so it's fair".

[Thereturn]

^

Pretty much exactly how we do it. We both have careers and both make more than enough to cover all bills with one of our incomes, but we split all of them down the middle.
We each invest in our own retirements as needed, and we both have our own separate savings, etc. She can spend her disposable income on whatever she wants and I get to buy all the dumb stuff I want with mine. It's great.

This is what we did too and it works. Upto the point where you need a new kitchen and one person saved 20k and the other only has 2 in the bank.

[StayTuned]

We share an account. Smaller things we don't care about. We are smart, we keep it fair. If she wants to blast 500€ on a new purse, I'll be the last person to stop her. And in return she keeps our finances safe by keeping my retarded brain in check, otherwise I'd spend thousands on stupid stuff.

But we try to balance it so that we continue to always have at least 5 digits on our account for safety reasons.

Personally I don't value money too much. I prefer exchanging it for things that are more fun. She is the opposite. We fit well together.

[BeepBoo]

This is what we did too and it works. Upto the point where you need a new kitchen and one person saved 20k and the other only has 2 in the bank.

Obviously there are special considerations that come up, such as big-ticket items, etc. We try to balance as much as possible and keep everything separate, but we're capable of coming to agreements on stuff like this as well.

[PC2]

Based on all these threads i'm starting to get the feeling that significant other(SO) has just become a code word for the overly noncommital who won't get married...