For the last decade or so, my SO and I have been more or less dividing our expenses, and Venmo/ PayPal-ing the other as needed (rent, etc).
I know a lot of couples use a shared account that they both contribute to via direct deposit. How many of you do this? Any drawbacks or other options I haven’t mentioned?
All of our accounts are joint and I manage most of it because she isn’t interested. Trade offs? Joint accounts simplify management (no transferring funds or coordinating expense management), but makes it easier for someone in the relationship to check out and have no knowledge or understanding of your financial arrangements. Separate accounts require some engagement in financial affairs from both, if that’s not happening you can run into problems.
Something to consider is that a common issue (particularly for women, but it can go either way) is that if one partner manages all of the household finances and they die first (or even in case of separation), the other partner can be completely unprepared to take over and manage things. For example, not knowing where money is deposited, not knowing what bills need to be paid or which can be canceled, etc.
Yup, this is us. I’ve been trying to get my SO involved for years, but they just aren’t interested. So I consolidated our accounts into a brokerage with a debit card, checks, etc, and I’m moving all my investments there as well. They get their own login as well, and I’ll probably move their investments as well (I set up an IRA for them).
Hopefully nothing happens to me, but if something does, my accounts should magically show up in their login now, so they just need to hire a financial advisor to help them understand what to do.
I’m going to keep trying to get them involved, but at least consolidating everything should make that transition easier.
That’s a great approach! I’ve been thinking I need to write a cheat sheet for how to take over everything, but consolidating it all would simplify an unplanned transition.
The key here is that they already have a login, so they can do the normal “forgot password” or whatever if there’s any kind of complications. Since they’re joint owners, nothing changes with account numbers and whatnot if I die, whereas if they were simply a beneficiary, they’d get a new account number and have to go set everything up again.
I wrote a cheat sheet years ago, and this should dramatically simplify it. I’ll just point out what the purpose of each account is and what automatic transactions are there and that should resolve most of the questions my SO might have, at least financially.
The rest of my schenanigans however… may god have mercy on their soul…
lol
Here’s an excellent list of things to prepare for in case of sudden passing. A lot of it focuses on tech, but finance has a good portion.
I’ve been dreading filling it out myself due to the security risk it can represent…
Wow, that’s awesome! I sometimes forget just how much unique tech crap I have.
My SO is somewhat tech literate, but there’s no way they’d want to maintain all the stuff I have, from my Ubuiti APs to our Jellyfin server. So yeah, good thing to think about.