The Importance of Separate Accounts in Marriage

Posted by: Henry B. | Apr 28,2008


A confession.  My marriage hit a rough patch several years ago.  It’s not exactly easy to admit on this blog, but applies to how married couples can manage their finances together.  Raising a child is hard work, and that’s an understatement.  It’s difficult to not lose your identity in becoming a parent – i.e. lose what made you you before you had a kid.  The same goes for a marriage.  It’s not uncommon for married couples with children to lose their personal identities as a part of a family unit.  

Of course, that’s the glass-half-empty way to look at parenting and marriage.  There are many obvious ways that parenting is enormously fulfilling – really the most fulfilling thing you’ll do in your life. I’m talking about the difficulty.  Because if you think marriage and parenting doesn’t come with some problems along the way, you’re being more than a little quixotic.  

OK, so let’s get to the financial solution to some of those personal identity problems I’m talking about.  Round about the time my daughter was five, my wife and I decided to open up separate bank accounts.  We saw this as a way of increasing our own personal space.  We could deposit our own earnings into our bank accounts so we could see just how much we were bringing in personally.  The same went for our credit cards.  We started using both joint credit card accounts and separate card accounts.  It was a little taste back of our individuality.  It was a nice buffer and it really did lighten up the air in our marriage.  

There’s no reason to think that having a separate bank account or separate credit card means that your marriage is not a true union.  I’m not a professional marriage counselor, but I would say that marriage is a case of two individuals coming together, it’s not just about two becoming one, as romantic as that sounds.  Finding ways to enhance that individuality is a good idea.  

One extra bonus is that my wife and I found that it was both easier to save money and to not spend as wildly on credit.  Because we were accountable to our own money entirely, we were more careful with it.  Some might have the exact opposite reaction – they’d be more careful with spending someone else’s money.  But because our individual accounts were smaller than if they were combined from both our salaries, we were less risky about how we spent money.  

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