conversation: User (PM_ME_YOUR_CUTE_CAT): "Hi /r/personalfinance!\n\nMy husband and I have been married for about two years and we just recently bought a house together. We have not joined our finances at all, but it's starting to get to be a pain having to pay bills and then get a check from my husband for half, or the other way around. We keep talking about joining finances to make this easier, but we have a couple of hurdles we need to cross and I'm looking for some advice.\n\n1. I budget religiously using YNAB. I don't necessarily *stick* to the budget I make and frequently move stuff between categories, but I'm at least cognizant of where the money I have is set to go and I have several categories that I know can't be touched. My husband has tried but doesn't really have any interest in tracking his spending or using the budget program. I don't necessarily have a problem with us joining finances and me handling the budget/account reconciliation side of things (I actually enjoy budgeting!), but I don't want my husband to feel like he needs my permission to spend money, and I am worried about the possibility that it will end up being me just basically tracking his spending rather than really working toward making sure we're setting enough aside for savings, etc.\n2. I love my bank, but it has its drawbacks. I currently bank with Ally and have a 0.10% interest rate on my checking account and a 1.35% interest rate on my savings accounts. That's great, except I have no way to deposit cash. It's rare that I get cash, but usually I have to give it to my husband to deposit and have him cut me a check if I want to put it in my bank account. My husband banks with a credit union but they don't have interest checking and their savings rates are lower and they have minimum balance requirements. If we combine our accounts at my bank (my preference) we'll just have to deal with having cash on hand, but I hate that. Would it be a bad move to get a checking account with a local bank just to deposit cash in to transfer it to my Ally account?\n\nAre there any other issues anyone's come across with joining finances that we should look out for? I read through a few older threads on this topic but nothing really jumped out as being my situation so I figured I would make a post and see what pf has to say."
  Self: "My wife and I set up a joint checking account and 2 savings accounts.  Our direct deposits go into checking, one savings is emergency and one short term.  We both get paid on the 1st and 15th, so we wrote down our expenses and split them to know how much comes out of each paycheck (beginning or mid-month).  We then used automatic transfers to put money into both emergency and short term savings, max IRAs, and 401ks.  We try to adjust our automatic payments as close to the 1st and 15th as possible so that we don't have to worry as much about our spending money later in the pay period.  We still track how much we spend in each budget category, but it isn't as worrisome since we know that we wont' overdraw with an automatic transfer.\n\nWe also use a joint credit card, co-signed for our cars and house, and co-signed for all insurance.  Both have good credit &gt;750.  I think the biggest issue with finances are trust.  Some people don't want to combine because they are worried their SO will judge them on how they spend money."
  