What are some of the ways a couple handles bills and expenses?

There are varying approaches to sharing bills and setting up your accounts to make it easy to track where you are. One way is to open a joint account which pays bills, with each of you contributing to the joint account. The amount you put in a joint account could be equal or prorated to your respective salaries. Another way of organizing your finances is to open a joint account and have all earnings go into the joint account. If all salaries flow into a joint account, we highly recommend that you each retain a personal account which will hold money that is your personal money to spend in any way you choose. The joint account would transfer a certain amount monthly that becomes your personal discretionary money. A third possibility is that you each retain your personal accounts and just allocate who will pay which bills, doing a reconciliation of the budget by the end of each month.

Read more about the approaches to sharing expenses and creating a household budget in our book Financial Essentials for couples available on Amazon. The link and a description can be found on our website at https://parentsfin.wixsite.com/website/books