Should a Married Couple Combine Their Finances?
When you're up at the altar, you're making a real commitment to your spouse. You're making a commitment to share your entire life with them, to take care of them in sickness and in health. When you have separate finances, you're just a joint financial venture. You're not taking care of one another in the slightest. A very large part of your life is completely separate from that of your spouse, and that's just doesn't seem like a very good plan for you and your spouse to partake on.
The preacher says, "And now you are one." He (or she) does not say, "And now you're one...except for your checkbooks...those are separate, go ahead and do your own thing there." You and your spouse should be a united force in all parts of your life. Two people with shared common goals can accomplish a lot more than two spouses going off in their own direction.
If you and your spouse have separate finances, take a challenge and try to put them together. It's not going to be easy, but give it six months, I promise you'll like it. It'll dramatically increase your communication with your spouse, and it'll make sure that you two know what's going on in each other's financial lives. You'll discuss shared goals and ideas and work together to accomplish them.
If you want to take the plunge, it's going to require some work together. Both spouses have to agree that they want to do it for it to work. You'll want to sit down and discuss what your shared financial goals should be, who's going to prepare the monthly budget, what expenses that each of you have, who's going to do pay which bills and when, where they paychecks are going to go. The first couple of months might be a bit rough, but as the time passes, it'll be totally worth doing. All of the issues that happen in life show up in your money, you'll have the opportunity to discuss them because you're working together financially.
Published by Matthew Paulson
I am a very busy undergraduate, I'm involved with nine different campus organizations and work five different jobs. Most notably, I am the editor-in-chief of DSU's Trojan Times. View profile
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2 Comments
Post a CommentI believe without a doubt married couples should combine finances to one account. It isn't 'my' money anymore, its 'our' money, our bills, our expenses and our income. Couples should start appreciating what their significant other brings into the marriage instead of clinging to the idea of holding on to 'their' money. Its a recipe for disaster unless both people in the marriage agree 100% to have separate accounts.
Thank-you for writing this!