Joint Finances

So E and I have been having the most dreaded talk in all of marriage . . . joint finances. We settled into unfortunately predictable roles. She wants to combine finances entirely. So all bank accounts in both names. All credit cards in both names. All bills in both names. All monogrammed underwear in both names. Okay, not that last one. And who says I have monogrammed underwear?

Anyway, I'm a little older than her and have been on my own before. I graduated college and moved to Boston to begin a career before she even got to college. I made my own living and then went back to Penn for law school, where I obviously lived on my own and managed my own finances. Only then did I meet E. We graduated together -- her from college and me from law school -- and promptly moved in together. In other words, I've had several years of making my own money and managing it my own way. She's never really had that; we've been together since her career's inception so it's natural for her to think of finances as a purely joint thing.

Now I will concede that marriage, if it's to work, should involve heavy commingling of finances. I say that even despite the fact that my income is larger and, when I return to a law firm, will dwarf hers (this is just because I'm a lawyer and have a graduate degree -- she intends to eventually get a graduate degree also). Regardless of income disparity, I agree that for the most part our respective incomes are, well, our income.

But at the same time, I also think that we have individual ideas about what is worth spending money on, what we need money for, etc. For example, she knits (and exceptionally well, too). So she gets all excited about deals on yarn (yes, yarn) and will drop hundreds of dollars on her hobby. Do I think yarn could ever really be worth spending hundreds on? Heck no. But that is her hobby and her choice; she deserves to be able to do that provided it's within reason (i.e., I don't care HOW great a deal it is, we are not blowing $5000 on yarn -- and I suspect she'd agree with me). By the same token, I should be able to spend on things that she thinks are a waste of time if I find it valuable and worthwhile, again within reason.

Now that is not the source of controversy. The controversy arises from my proposal that, while we have a joint account, we also have our own personal accounts. Our paychecks go into the joint account. Joint expenses, like bills and gas, come out of the joint account. And monthly savings also gets factored in there. But, we also have personal accounts so that if we want to do some discretionary spending on yarn or, say, an iPhone, we can. So if I want to splurge on an iPhone, I transfer some money into my personal account and use it on an iPhone. Perhaps I transfer a little more than I need and use the rest for surprise flowers on Valentine's Day and a fancy lunch for my coworkers and I after we finish a big project. And she does the same. So long as the overall amount spent is reasonable and within our budget, I think this would work.

The problem for her is, why don't I just spend it directly out of the joint account? Well, to be frank, it's because she tends to nag a bit about some of the things I spend money on. Whether she thinks I'm buying lunch too often, or that I don't NEED a new laptop right now (even though the old one is physically disintegrating and missing six keys), she lets me hear it. And I fear -- understandably, I think -- that the friction caused by those arguments would only multiply.

Unfortunately, E is being told by her (female) friends and by various websites that this is a bad idea. That nothing short of total unification of finances leads to disaster; distrust, fighting, infidelity, divorce, plagues, locusts, fire from the sky, the end of the world. Well, if anyone out there -- husband or wife -- is in my position, here's at least one corner of the Internet that agrees with you.