Poll: Do You have Separate Accounts or Joint for ALL Assets?

[NW-Bound]

...The wife knows our NW (to the most significant digit level) but doesn't seem to care about individual account amounts.

My wife does better. She remembers the total investable amount to 3 digits.

Every day, when I run Quicken to sum up all account balances, I tell her the total number. She would say, "OK, so you lost these many $10K since last week." I would have to look up earlier dates to confirm that she was right.

 

[NW-Bound]

Come to think of it, it's only 1 digit, the $10K, that she has to remember.

The $M digit rarely changes . And my stocks are not so volatile that I lose or gain $100K from week to week. So, it's only the $10K digit that my wife has to remember.

 

[PandaBear]

Married 27 years. Both have our own checking and savings accounts, although we are signers in each others.

I was 29 and dh 32 when we married. We both had established ways of managing money and have used that to our benefit. Dh is orderly and methodical and great with paying monthly bills. I’m good at the saving for bigger ticket items. While we both have the same general ideas about money, our management is hugely different and neither of us are comfortable with the others style. Separate accounts solve that.

I inherited a small amount of money at age 33 (at the death of my grandmother). Dh inherited a larger sum 5 years ago. We keep those in our own names.

 

[Freedom56]

We have joint savings, checking, and taxable investment accounts. We also have joint tenancy on all three homes. We set it up this way after marriage. We pooled our income and paid our expenses and pooled our savings. That got us to where we are today. Divorce is extremely rare on both sides of the family and wasn't even a consideration.

 

[traineeinvestor]

All separate apart from 3 jointly owned properties and a singly joint bank account dealing with rent and expenses relating to those properties.

As the mortgages fall away, the surplus cash flow will be applied to .... probably DD1 and DD2's school costs.

We're both comfortable with this - we each manage our own money but make full disclosure and discuss investments regularly.

 

[tb001]

Big assets are jointly titled. We have a joint acct that we pay household bills from and then have separate checking accts. We met and married later in life—moved in together at 40 and 47 and married a few years after that.

We kept everything 100% separate for several years, but started merging/jointly titling assets after the kids were born. Planning a big move/life change which may mean things get even more merged as I become mostly retired/SAHM.

We’ve never really argued about money. We have areas we both realize we’re spending too much on and need to cut back. He tends to want to spend way more than I would on housing and ‘luxury’ stuff like a nice club. I spend more than he would like on hobbies and stuff for the house. That said, we don’t really argue about money, because in general we have ‘enough.’ It makes it so much easier. I’m sure if we had met when we were young, we would have argued far more...

 

[Bir48die]

90% are joint. However, we each have one account that is our own. This is our second marriage and it's just worked out that way.

 

[stepford]

3 account family here: Hers, mine and ours.

 

[Montecfo]

So it seems like a lot of folks keep accounts seperate.

So do you also have seperate paths to FI and retirement based on your seperate incomes, desired lifestyles, saving and investing?

If not are the "separate" accounts really joint assets?

Very curious.

 

[sengsational]

The separateness for us, and probably a lot of others, is just to "have our own space" in the personal spending space. And of course the separate by law stuff. When I do retirement planning everything goes into one big bucket and I optimize against the forces that would like to walk off with the assets, irrespective of who's name happens to be on the account.

since it's going on 30+ years now I think it's gonna work

 

[Cobra9777]

Everything is jointly titled and has been for 35 years of marriage. This includes bank accounts, taxable investment accounts, real estate, and vehicles. Of course, IRAs and HSAs are individually titled with each other as primary beneficiary. Everything is managed as a single pot of money, both for monthly income/spending and also as one investment portfolio. I do most of the tracking, paying bills, investment decisions, etc. DW is generally aware of how much is where but rarely gets involved in the details.

 

[NYEXPAT]

So it seems like a lot of folks keep accounts seperate.

So do you also have seperate paths to FI and retirement based on your seperate incomes, desired lifestyles, saving and investing?

If not are the "separate" accounts really joint assets?

Very curious.

Wife and I are almost 30 years apart and have all assets separated. I am retired for 31 years and so we have different paths to FI and retirement. Most everything is in YW name so I guess she is FI at this point and I am FD on her.

She funds my retirement lifestyle with her income and I have SS as well. If/when I hit 87 she will retire and her plan will kick in. She will take SS at 62 and then my survivor benefits at 70. Obviously, at 37 she does not know/care about any of this. One day in the distant future, she will read the file and go out and marry a rich Doctor!

 

[Montecfo]

Most everything is in YW name so I guess she is FI at this point and I am FD on her.

...Obviously, at 37 she does not know/care about any of this. One day in the distant future, she will read the file and go out and marry a rich Doctor!

Hopefully you are not underestimating her.

 

[PatrickA5]

Married 39 years. Everything that can be has always been joint. Fortunately, neither of us are "spenders" so there has been no reason to try to hide things from each other.

I handle everything financial. Once a month, I hand her a net worth statement with all of our accounts and an expense report. I started doing this because I wanted her to know what's going on in case I decide to depart early. She'll put her iPad down for about 30 seconds and look it over and thank me for doing it and then throw it away. She basically has no interest in anything financial even though she has been an Accountant for 40 years.

I imagine if either of us was to remarry late in life we would want to keep everything separate.

 

[W2R]

This is the 19th year that Frank and I have been together. We are not married, and we never mix our money on anything. We don't have any joint accounts and we choose to live next door to one another in our own houses (that we each pay for separately) instead of living together.

We were both married earlier in life, and we know very well how money issues can cause strife in a relationship. So, we just avoid that completely by not mixing our money. It works really well for us. No mutual decisions needed. We have BTDT and know the pitfalls and how nagging can sneak into that process. Not only that, we don't have to spend our precious time together talking about money. YMMV and obviously does.

So it seems like a lot of folks keep accounts seperate.

So do you also have seperate paths to FI and retirement based on your seperate incomes, desired lifestyles, saving and investing?

If not are the "separate" accounts really joint assets?

Very curious.

Nope, completely separate as stated. Why should anyone want to mislead you about something like this? I sure don't.

I retired on the first date when I was eligible for my mini-pension and retiree medical, as planned for years and years beforehand. He retired 2-3 months after I did, in conjunction with massive layoffs at his megacorps that gave him no choice in his timing for RE. We each define what FI is for us, personally, as individuals.

 

[NYEXPAT]

Hopefully you are not underestimating her.

Amazon may sell them, but they did not invent "Pink Furry Handcuffs"!

 

[Offgrid Organic Farmer]

We share a joint bank account that we both carry debit cards for.

Then we also have one bank account for each LLC that we operate. Each of those accounts have us with joint access.

Then my wife decided to run for our state legislature and I agreed to be her campaign treasurer. So her campaign has a bank account, in her name, but she is not allowed to be a signature on that account. Only I can access that money.

 

[rodi]

We married later in life (I was late 30's he was late 40's)... I'd observed friction between my parents over money and wanted to avoid that.... so for the first year we had separate everything. He moved into my house - and paid me rent. We split the bills. I added him to my checking account, and he did the same for me - but they were, mentally, separate and belonged to the individual. It worked ok. But a year later we relocated from PA to CA... At that point we had to open new accounts so we opened joint accounts. Never looked back.

That said - he has two accounts separate from me... for managing his mom's bills (he's guardian) and for emergency funds his mom gave him more than a decade ago for his less than solvent brother. I don't have any desire to be attached to either of those accounts.

House is jointly owned. For a while, when we had a mortgage, it was in my name only... because I had the more stable income... He laughed about that - 1/2 the equity, none of the debt... on paper at least.

Obviously IRAs are separate.

My bff had a lot of money issues with her ex. She has remarried to a totally frugal saver. For them, separate finances work best. So he doesn't freak out when she helps her parents financially. It works perfectly for them.

I'm of the mindset that whatever works for you is fine.

 

[ugeauxgirl]

To be strictly accurate, all of our non-IRA accounts are titled jointly. My checking is like: Joe Jones and Sara Jones. Hers is like Sara Jones and Joe Jones. This is just for convenience in the extremely rare occasion where we need to do something with the other's account. I can't remember the last time that happened, actually & I don't think either of us has ever written a check on the other's account.

We have an informal split of joint expenses, like she buys food and I the RE taxes, home maintenance, and most car maintenance.

Us too. We got married when we were 30 and 38 and used to having our own accounts. We are both extremely frugal, so I never worry about his spending and he doesn't worry about mine. Overflow from both our checking accounts goes into our joint brokerage account. We NEVER argue about money. Retirement, yes, investments, occasionally, but spending, not ever.

 

[Bamaman]

Our accounts are at FIDO for simplicity sake, and they have separate ownership with the other spouse as primary beneficiary. They are linked together in Fidelity's computer system so any withdrawal could go into our joint checking account.

 

[Bamaman]

My friend had joint accounts with his wife of 31 years. (We spent our honeymoons together on Maui.)
He was very successful and really didn't pay close attention to family business and finances.
After all these years, the wife essentially cleaned out the personal joint accounts to cover extreme debts she had secretly run up on show horses.
Needless to say, trust was.completely broken--and he divorced the wife.
The moral of the story is keep your eyes open and be vigilant to your finances.

 

[imoldernu]

DW handles all the money and pays all bills. I have one credit card and carry $100 in my wallet.

Been that way since 1958. happy go lucky.

 

[bingybear]

right now, individual. as soon as we update our estate planning they will be joint.

edit - sans qualified accounts.

 

[Scuba]

Ours have been joint since we got married, except for IRA’s/401K’s etc. I manage all the finances. We never fight about money. Works well for us.

 

[Milkman]

Interesting thread. DW and I have been married 15 years now, and we have both been married previously and have children from former spouses. Both of us have had former spouses that have not been careful or honest with joint funds. We both have separate checking accounts even though they are in both names we each balance our respective checking accounts. Each of us has separate IRA, Roth, and taxable investment accounts, plus money market accounts. I manage all investment accounts. If something were to happen to me, her investments would probably have to go into a trust because she would have no idea how to handle the investments. This has worked well for us and she is comfortable with the arrangements.