Married and totally separate accounts here, mostly out of laziness, but if it ain’t broke, why fix it? Granted, it’s been just two years, but we haven’t found that “every joint transaction will be a mess of invoices, calculations, and difficult discussions.” We basically just take turns paying for things and roughly divvy up recurring payments; it’s not like we’re nickel-and-diming every dinner and grocery store outing. We figure it all comes out in the wash. We’re lucky in that we both make good livings and have good savings. This started when we were dating, because he would always insist on buying dinners and I would want things to be EQUAL so I’d insist on picking up the check sometimes, or would even it up (just for my own peace of mind — he didn’t care) by paying for hotel or flights if we went on vacation (I tend to be the trip planner of the two) or that sort of thing.

That’s continued into our marriage. Mortgage gets taken out of his savings; I auto-deposit my share each month into his account minus his share of maintenance, which I handle. We have the bills roughly split up. We buy what we want and talk about big expenditures and goals, so there’s plenty of chance for discussion, like at tax time, booking travel, and making large purchases (like our home or furniture for it). We both trust each other and know each other to be fiscally responsible (having done taxes together now and bought the house we’ve read each other’s financial statements for all accounts and investments many, many times now). Our incentive for complete financial transparency and communication is that transparency and communication are foundations of our relationship, and we both want us as a couple to be financially strong and healthy. His attitude is that his money is mine and vice versa, so I guess we treat it like one big joint account. (If it were left up to me I’d probably be more calculating but given that we have both proven ourselves to be fairly financially compatible and responsible, I’m okay with it.) Certainly this may change when we have kids, but it works great for now.