The joint checking account

Last night, B and I decided to figure out one topic we haven't yet fully addressed--the joint checking account.

Both of us are like-minded in that we believe we ought to have 3 checking accounts--one for him, one for me, and one for both of us. The joint checking account will obviously be used for purchases for both of us, and the purpose of the personal accounts is to allow ourselves the freedom to purchase items that we might otherwise feel guilty about if we purchased the items with funds from the joint account.

Originally, when we decided upon this plan, it seemed like it would be easy to determine what was a joint purchase and what wasn't, but it wasn't as clear as we thought it might be.

Obviously, all household bills, including food expenses, will be paid for with the joint checking account. And we decided that any activities that we're both involved in, such as dinner out for both of us, would come out of the joint account.

But then there are a lot of expenses that fall into a gray area, such as B's dry cleaning, golf, and lunches and M's haircuts, shopping, and girls' nights out. We didn't want to have a long list of Dos and Do Nots for the joint account and decided we needed an easy-to-remember rule for when an expense should come out of personal accounts.

We decided that anything that could reasonably fall into the "maintenance" category, including haircuts and dry cleaning, should come out of the joint account. Anything that falls into the "fun" category, including going out with friends solo or golfing solo, would use our personal accounts. Lunch out was a gray area, but we decided that since we always have adequate food for lunch at home, lunch was a non-maintenance item and therefore needed to come out of the fun fund.

Now that I'm writing this, I'm realizing that some of these rules are kind of silly, but when two people have spent close to 30 years managing their own finances, you can't expect that a financial merger (not that marriage is a financial merger, but that is certainly one of the outcomes) will go smoothly without a little bit of planning.