Married Couple - Open investment account Separate or Joined?
"I don't believe it makes a difference at the federal level -- if you file taxes jointly, gains, losses, and dividends appear on the joint tax account.  If you file separately, I assume the tax implications only appear on the owner's tax return.  Then the benefits might outweigh the costs, but only if you correctly predict market behavior and the behavior of your positions. For example, lets say you lose 30k in the market in one year, and your spouse makes 30k.  If you're filing jointly, the loss washes out the gain, and you have no net taxes on the investment.  If you're filing separately, you can claim 3k in loss (the remaining 27k in loss is banked to future tax years), but your spouse pays taxes on 30k in gain. Where things get more interesting is at the state level.  I live in a ""community property state,"" where it doesn't matter whether you have separate accounts or not.  If I use ""community money"" to purchase a stock and make a million bucks, that million bucks is shared by the two of us, whether the account is in my name our in our name.  income during the marriage is considered community property.  However property you bring into the marriage is not.  And inheritances are not community property -- until co-mingled. Not sure how it works in other states.  I grew up in what's called an ""equitable property state."""
"Wow. It's clear I'm outnumbered.  When I'm approached with the question (and keep in mind, it's usually a couple data points and little else) ""I am getting started, with no other money do I fund a retirement or emergency account?"" I often suggest they put the funds into a Roth, in a money market fund, and treat it like an emergency account. If there's in fact an emergency, there's no penalty to withdraw the deposit and we're talking peanuts for interest today.  With no emergency, two things could happen: A) As the account grows beyond what's needed for emergencies, the excess can be invested long term. B) As the investor earns more money and saves up enough to have a true emergency account separate from the IRA, the Roth can be fully invested long term. The 'Bad idea' stems from the view that one is using their Roth as an emergency account, which of course is bad. The subtle difference is one has no retirement savings and puts their Emergency account into the otherwise unused Roth. As time passes, they've protected more funds to grow tax free.  In the end, the most important thing is whether the person is saving and not tapping for simple non-emergency things. I'd rather see a guy with $25K in his Roth and no other funds than to have $5000 in his bank account because every time it gets larger he feels compelled to spend it.  My answer to Matt is to treat it for now as you intended, low risk, CD or cash (money market)." "When I was in this situation, I always did Married Filing Separately. In the space for spouse you just write ""non resident alien"". I'm assuming you don't make more than the Foreign Earned Income exclusion (about $100k), so the fact that you don't qualify for certain exemptions is probably irrelevant for you.  As a side note, now that you are married you have ""a financial interest in"" all her bank accounts so if her and your foreign bank accounts had an aggregate value of over $10k at any point in 2015 you have until June 30th to file an FBAR, listing both her and your accounts. If you have a decent amount of assets you might need to fill out form 8938 with your tax return too. Here is a link with the reporting thresholds. https://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Corporations/Summary-of-FATCA-Reporting-for-U.S.-Taxpayers" If you are married filing separately, you need to choose the same type of deduction (standard or itemized) as your spouse. Since you checked the box on line 23b, you indicated that your spouse chose the standard deduction, so you must use the standard deduction also.  The standard deduction for married filing separately this year is $6300, but because you checked one of the boxes for yourself in 23a, you get to add another $1250 to your standard deduction, for a total deduction of $7550. This number belongs in line 24. "The $1K in funds are by default your emergency fund. If absolutely necessary, emergency funds may need to come from debt, a credit capacity, focus on building credit to leverage lower rates for living expenses eventually needed. Profitable organizations & proprietors, borrow at a lower cost of capital than their return. Join your local credit union, you're welcome to join mine online, the current rates for the first $500 in both your checking and savings is 4.07%, it's currently the fourth largest in the U.S. by assets. You may join as a ""family member"" to me (Karl Erdmann), not sure what their definition of ""family"" is, I'd be happy to trace our ancestry if need be or consider other options. Their current incentive program, like many institutions have often, will give you $100 for going through the hassle to join and establish a checking and savings. Some institutions, such as this credit union, have a lower threshold to risk, applicants may be turned down for an account if there is any negative history or a low credit score, shooting for a score of 600 before applying seems safest.  The web services, as you mentioned, have significantly improved the layman's ability to cost effectively invest funds and provide liquidity. Robinhood currently seems to be providing the most affordable access to the market. It goes without saying, stay objective with your trust of any platform, as you may have noticed, there is a detailed explanation of how Robinhood makes their money on this stack exchange community, they are largely backed by venture funding, hopefully the organization is able to maintain a low enough overhead to keep the organization sustainable in the long run. The services that power this service such as Plaid, seem promising and underrated, but i digress. The platform gives access for users to learn how investing works, it seems safest to plan a diversified portfolio utilizing a mix of securities,such as low Beta stocks or ""blue chip"" companies with clear dividend policies. One intriguing feature, if you invest in equities is casting votes on decisions in shareholder meetings.  Another popular investment asset class that is less liquid and perhaps something to work toward is real estate. Google the economist ""Matthew Rognlie"" for his work on income equality on this type of investment. There are many incentives for first time homeowners, saving up for a down payment is the first step. Consider adding to your portfolio a Real Estate Investment Trust (REITs) to gain a market position. Another noteworthy approach to this idea is an investment commercial property cooperative organization, currently the first and only one is called NorthEast Investment Cooperative, one stock of class A is $1K.  If you are interested and plan to focus on equities, consider dropping into your college's Accounting Capstone course to learn more about the the details of fundamental and technical analysis of an organization. The complexities of investing involve cyclical risk, macro and micro economic factors,  understanding financial statements and their notes, cash flow forecasting - discounting, market timing, and a host of other details Wikipedia is much more helpful at detailing. It's safe to assume initial investment decisions by unsophisticated investors are mostly whimsical, and likely will only add up to learning opportunities, however risk is inherit in all things, including sitting on cash that pays a price of inflation. A promising mindset in long term investments are in organizations that focus on conscious business practices. Another way to think of investing is that you are already somewhat of a ""sophisticated investor"" and could beat the market by what you know given your background, catching wind of certain information first, or acting on a new trends or technology quickly. Move carefully with any perhaps biased ""bullish"" or ""bearish"" mindset. Thinking independently is helpful, constantly becoming familiar with different ideas from professions in a diverse set of backgrounds, and simulating decisions in portfolio's. Here is an extremely limited set of authors and outlets that may have ideas worth digging more into, MIT Tech Reviews (Informative), Bloomberg TV (it's free, informative), John Mackey (businessman), Paul Mason (provocative journalist). Google finance is a simple and free go-to application, use the ""cost basis"" feature for ""paper"" or real trades, it's easy to import transactions from a .csv.   This seems sufficient to start off with. Enjoy the journey, aim for real value with your resources." I am currently a non-voluntary member of four different retirement plans in two different countries. There are a few aspects to this (Caveat: this may be different for each country and change over time) I would consider the following strategy Other than the two answers (both of which recommend waiting until marriage to actually combine finances, and which I agree with), there's the general question:  how does a couple choose to manage finances? In our marriage, it's me.  I'm more numbers-minded than my spousal-unit.  I'm also more a sticker for time.  I work and spousal-unit does not. We had some good friends -- upon marriage, spouse1 felt like he should take on the role.  He went on a several-week trip (leaving spouse2 at home), and upon returning home asked spouse2 about the late fees.  Spouse2 was appalled.  Spouse2 ended up keeping the job of managing household finances. There's enough pieces to the puzzle that it can be divided any way you choose -- any way that works for you and your spouse/virtual-spouse. One other point:  talk about how to manage your money, before you marry.  Dave Ramsey recommends a strict monthly budget.  I like listening to Dave Ramsey, but we've never had a budget.  Instead, we agreed during marriage counseling two things: "I hear you (and those answering) use the words ""my money"" (or ""me to pay for stuff"") The sooner that ends, the better off you'll both be. My wife and I do have our own checking accounts that we maintain so she can write a check without notifying me, or I can buy her a birthday/mother's day/ etc gift without it showing in the joint account, but nearly all money flows through our joint account. Before we were married, the joint bank accounts were opened as was the joint brokerage account.  You need to work on the budget as a single project and without judging. It's good that your incomes are similar, it makes the dynamics of pooling seem more fair, but for those where one spouse is making far more than the other, the impulse to 'chip in' equally towards bills leaves the lower earner with nothing.  Will your wife go back to work after a maternity leave? Once she's back, and working for a time, things will settle down a bit. There's a postpartum time that's difficult. Women who have been through it will tell you that it can be pretty bad, and the best a guy can do is be understanding and supportive. As long as you are talking ""we"" with your wife, she'll see that you are both in it together. At the risk of sounding sexist, Women's clothing needs are different than men's. I could get away with owning 5 suits which could be replaced at the rate of one per year. If not for my wife, I can see in my own daughter how clothing makes her feel good about herself, and while I'm frugal with most of our budget, my clothing questions are 2 - Will it last? & Will it match other pieces you have? Therefore, clothing gets a line item all its own in the budget.  There are a number of financial things to consider, but I see you are in the UK, so I'll generalize. In the States, there are pretax benefits to help care for a child under 13 (called a dependent care account) and for medical expenses not covered by insurance (called flexible spending account). These let you take money from your pay pretax to use for specific expenses. If UK offers similar, I invite a user to edit the detail into my answer.  Last - once the kid comes into our lives, there's little room for many of the late teen/early 20's spending. Comics? DVDs? Those are the low hanging fruit of wasted money. Saving for retirement, and for University for the kid take priority.  I'm not one to quote cliches but a friend once offered this observation - ""If you are not happy but your wife is happy, you are still far happier than if you were happy but your wife is not happy.""" In my view you are going through quite a bit of logistics to achieve this. Best is drop this idea. If all of you are paying equally, then there is virtually no gain. A better pact is not to gift each other on wedding. We want to open a joint fixed deposit account in name of each one of us which should be locked-in till 2020 Yes it is possible to have Joint Account with multiple names. Ideally all should be present or a Power of Attorney can be created to include names of people who are not present. We want our money to be risk free and secured. Risk free and secured will mean Fixed Deposits.