We had a joint account where all our income was deposited even before we were married, now we have shared access to basically everything. I mostly manage our money because she hates dealing with it. There’s not really been any drawbacks, it makes life a lot easier having a single primary account that all our cash flows through.

We each have our own checking account. We also have a joint account. Each of us receives our paychecks in our personal account. We each keep a small portion in our personal accounts for each month for personal expenses, gifts, etc. The rest goes into the joint account.

We set up credit cards the same way. This gives us the means to buy gifts for each other without the other knowing. It also provides redundancy for lost cards.

We can both see the joint accounts. We cannot see each other’s personal accounts. Our bank has it set up so I can see everything I have access to on a single online account.

This arrangement has been working well for years.

Have two shared accounts, an instant access one for both of our credit cards and a savings account for… Err savings and interest. Works very well for us. Basically keep a certain level with instant access one and any overflow goes to savings account. Pretty simple system. On personal current accounts we keep just a few hundreds for emergencies.

Been together 20 years and we’ve never shared an account. I works really well for us. I’d say, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Married 30 years. His check goes into one account. Mine goes into another. We both have access to all accounts. I handle all the bills. We used to put both into one checking account - once our debit card was stolen and they spent so much money that we were still negative after both checks went in. Then we split them so there’salways a backup just in case.

There was an interesting experiment that suggests that couples who have similar objectives regarding money are fine with using a joint account (or even using only one spouse’s account rather than using two individual accounts), but people who have a spouse who has a very different attitude towards money will avoid using a joint account (and will avoid depositing money to their spouse’s individual account) even if their individual account has a lower interest rate.

More information is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5ro4x1r16Q&list=PLUl4u3cNGP620R91K4KP_fO4l3eeK5lDn&index=19&t=3707s

In general, I think that asking your spouse to use a joint account for income and a joint account for expenses is a good idea since it provides transparency: that gives both partners a record of what the income of the partnership was, and makes it equally easy for both partners to check whether bills have been paid. As long as that happens, it’s probably okay if you want to split up the income to individual accounts when the money isn’t needed to pay bills and later redirect it to the account(s) used to pay bills when it’s needed.

We have a shared credit card for groceries, vacations and bills. She manages it, she tells me what half of it is at the end of the month. We’re fortunate to have very similar salaries, but if we didn’t, you adjust the split to your version of fair.