Joint/Personal Checking

[feistypants]

Those of you who have both joint and personal checking accounts, how do you determine what's deposited into the joint account? FI and I are trying to work on this whole finance thing, but this is stumping me.

Thanks!

[joenali]

Our bills get paid through our joint account. We just split down the middle since we make about the same salary.

[Deleted]

We each keep a certain amount (roughly) in our individual accounts, and the rest goes to the joint account.

Once a month we each deposit an amount into the joint account that will cover rent/utilities/joint credit card bill/an amount to be put in joint savings. But when I see that my personal account has more than I need in it, I'll transfer more over.

[Deleted]

Everything gets deposited in our joint account and we transfer our fun money.

Once in a blue moon, like when we get a $20 birthday check or something, we will put it in our individual account.

[isabel]

We just have joint accounts. Everything gets paid out of one checking account, the other is for gas, miscellaneous purchases, and fun stuff. I bring it back to a specific balance each week. We try not to go too crazy about extra purchases, so it's generally no big deal if one of us wants/needs something personal (clothes, a book, entertainment stuff, etc.)

[steph96]

Figure how much your bills will cost as a percentage of total joint income. Then each of you deposit that amount into the join account.

[pamela]

It depends. Do you think you each should pay bills as a percentage of your pay? Or is it joint money and you share equally? Different philosophies.

[SJ]

There are two main strategies that I think work well:

1) deposit everything into a joint account and transfer $x into each personal account as "fun money"

2) deposit checks into individual accounts. Add up all joint and household bills, divide the total up on an allocation basis (if you make 60% of the takehome income, you pay 60% of the household bills), and each person transfers their share to the joint account

[anna7602]

We only have a joint savings account and it's basically our emergency fund. We contributed a certain amount to it each month until it was at the level we wanted.

HH bills get paid for out of DH's checking account, fun stuff for DD and myself (toys, make-up, books, etc.) get paid for out of my checking account. DH and I have different philosophies on discretionary spending and it works out better this way.

[mbcdefg]

We have personal checking accounts and one joint savings account.

We each pay specific bills (I pay my SL and the car insurance, he pays for the utilities, we both pay our personal credit cards). We contribute a specific amount to savings each paycheck based on what's left after those regular bills are paid. If one of us has to contribute a little less one pay period or needs to take out a little bit from savings to cover something, we just run it by the other person.

[ohgillian]

All money is deposited into the joint, then once a month I transfer a set (equal dollar) amount into both his and my personal accounts for our fun money. We earn different incomes, but we believe that all money is shared and thus that we deserve equal amounts of fun money.

The only exception I can think of is, if someone sends me, say, a check for my bday, then that goes right into my personal account.

[dawnyp]

50% goes into joint account 50% goes into personal. Household bills, mortgage, groceries, vacations, savings are paid from joint account. Personal account is for personal credit cards , bills and savings.

[arch01]

Oct 7, 2012 17:42:30 GMT -5 cuadrado said:

Everything gets deposited in our joint account and we transfer our fun money.

Once in a blue moon, like when we get a $20 birthday check or something, we will put it in our individual account.

this.

[jenn248]

We've since combined accounts, but when we were keeping everything separate, we each had the same amount from each paycheck go into our personal accounts and the remainder went into our joint accounts. The personal accounts were essentially fun money or personal savings, and the joint account covered all of our household expenses.

[grey56]

We have 1 joint and we each have a personal checking account. We each get $50 per paycheck into our personal accounts, the rest goes to the joint. Everything gets paid out of the joint. We can do whatever we want with the $50 (I tend to save it then buy something big - like a plane ticket to visit my sister when my new niece is born....whereas my DH spends it as soon as he has it).

My DH makes slightly more than I do but we still both get $50.

We also use this $$ to buy gifts for each other (bday, Christmas, etc.).