Why I Opened a Joint Bank Account Before I Got Married

Before my husband and I got married, we actually had both a joint checking account and a joint savings account in our names. While it may seem odd to make this decision and combine finances in this way before we were committed for life, there are a few key reasons why this made sense for us.

We were working toward shared goals

The biggest reason that we opened a shared account was because we wanted to work toward joint goals. Specifically, we were hoping to buy a home and needed to save up a down payment to get a mortgage loan.

It was easier for us to both take part in contributing to the purchase of the home if we had a shared account we could deposit money into. That way, we could track our progress and monitor our combined efforts to accomplish our goal.

We had a shared home

My husband and I actually moved into our shared home before getting married since we wanted our wedding to be at the house we bought. Since we bought a house together prior to tying the knot, we also had shared expenses related to the house that we had to cover -- like property taxes, insurance, home maintenance, utility bills, and of course our regular monthly mortgage payments.

We wanted an easy way to share the costs of these expenses, and using a joint account enabled us to do that. We could both put money into it and then either one of us could write checks out of it when it came time to pay the bills.

If we needed stuff for the house, like furniture, we were also able to purchase it together out of our shared account rather than having to decide who would pay for it or how we would split the money for the specific purchase.

We wanted to see if we could manage money together successfully

Finally, the last big motivation -- and perhaps the most important reason of all -- was that we wanted to see how we would manage money together in practice.

Financial conflicts contribute to around 20% to 40% of all divorces. We absolutely did not want to get married, only to find out that there was no way we could be happy sharing our financial lives. And, the best way for us to figure that out was to see how we actually did in the real world with having a joint account.

While it might have been a little bit of a hassle to untangle our shared finances after opening the account, it would have been a much bigger problem to get married, find out we couldn't handle each other's financial habits, and have to divorce. So we figured we'd give it a try and see how we did.

Fortunately, everything worked out. We found out we are mostly on the same page about money and we still have that joint bank account opened over a decade later, so it turned out in the end that we made the right choice.