I received some insightful feedback from Brady on how he manages his family money in light of the Simplicity Blog last week:
Sounds like a good idea to simplify. I will just caution you (this is the same route my spouse and I took initially) that with everything in one pool, it might make the “you spent money on what?” conversation more common.
Our primary account setup looks like this after the first 2 years of marriage:
1 Joint Checking account
1 Money Market fund (savings)
2 ING Direct accounts (one for me, one for her)
The ING accounts usually have a really small balance. We get a small automatic transfer from our Bank of America checking into those accounts twice a month to use however each of us wants to spend it. Christmas money gets split between us. We can either go in on something together or spend our fun money on something for ourselves.
This way I can still be frugal [cough: a tightwad] with the primary checking, but if my spouse wants a massage and she has saved up the money for it, she can get it and I don’t have to worry about where it goes in the budget. As far as the budget is concerned, that money was already spent the moment it was transferred out of the primary account.
You even get a different debit card to help you keep that money separate.
