Si­mone Sant Ghu­ran

Most of my pre­vi­ous ar­ti­cles have cen­tred main­ly on wed­ding plan­ning, but this week, folks, it's time for us to start talk­ing mon­ey. Very of­ten, I get this ques­tion from brides: "Si­mone, do you think it's a good idea to have sep­a­rate bank ac­counts or a joint ac­count?

My an­swer to this is that it re­al­ly de­pends on each spouse's spend­ing habits, bud­get­ing style, and, more­over, the cou­ple's fi­nan­cial goals. When you get mar­ried, you set the ground­work not on­ly for com­pan­ion­ship, but for a busi­ness part­ner­ship as well. Your fi­nan­cial life ceas­es to be sole­ly your own. Ide­al­ly, you should de­cide how fi­nan­cial af­fairs will be han­dled even be­fore you tie the knot. This de­ci­sion is far more cru­cial than de­cid­ing on wed­ding colours, venue or at­tire. Your part­ner needs to know all about your fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion and even debts (Yes, this in­cludes cred­it card debt), be­cause now you both must share fi­nan­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

This in­cludes bill-pay­ing, in­vest­ments, es­tab­lish­ing a sav­ings plan, de­cid­ing on fur­ther ed­u­ca­tion choic­es, start­ing a fam­i­ly and the ac­com­pa­ny­ing ex­pens­es, and, per­haps, even the fu­ture na­ture of your job whether full-time, part-time, or if you're an en­tre­pre­neur).�Hav­ing a joint bank ac­count, which serves the dual func­tion of set­tling house­hold bills and sat­is­fy­ing each per­son's spend­ing needs, does not have to be the ul­ti­mate so­lu­tion. I know of many cou­ples who have opt­ed for any one of the fol­low­ing so­lu­tions:

�2 Main­te­nance of sep­a­rate bank ac­counts and each spouse con­tribut­ing to par­tic­u­lar house­hold and util­i­ty bills.�

�2 Open­ing a joint house­hold chequing ac­count for house­hold bills, but main­tain­ing sep­a­rate ac­counts for per­son­al spend­ing.�

This can be done by hav­ing pay cheques de­posit­ed in­to a joint ac­count and then trans­fer­ring spend­ing mon­ey via stand­ing or­der, to sep­a­rate per­son­al chequing ac­counts.�

�2 Hav­ing sep­a­rate bank ac­counts plus a joint sav­ings ac­count that can be used for long-term goals, such as down pay­ment on a house, chil­dren's ed­u­ca­tion ex­pens­es, ve­hi­cle or va­ca­tion, etc.�

Any of these op­tions can work quite well, de­pend­ing on the needs of the cou­ple.

How­ev­er, if your part­ner has a ten­den­cy to squan­der mon­ey, or has a his­to­ry of fi­nan­cial mis­man­age­ment, then hav­ing a joint ac­count can lead to fur­ther con­flict. Oth­er is­sues that may im­pact on how you and your fu­ture spouse set up your fi­nances are:

�2 Sup­port pay­ments from a pre­vi­ous mar­riage or com­mon-law re­la­tion­ship;

�2 Any fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions to his or her im­me­di­ate fam­i­ly;

�2 The ex­is­tence of pre-mar­riage debts.