If that’s not enough to convince you, consider the fact that there can be financial benefits to having joint accounts. “They frequently told us they felt more like they were ‘in this together.’” The couples with merged accounts “reported higher levels of communality within their marriage compared to people with separate accounts, or even those who partially merged their finances,” said study co-author Jenny Olson, an assistant professor of marketing at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. “With separate accounts, you really get into score-keeping: ‘Well I paid this, and you paid that.’ You want to get away from ‘his’ money and ‘her’ money and you want to get into ‘our money.’” “You want to get away from score-keeping, which couples can fall into: ‘I did this yesterday, so it’s your turn today,’” he added. They started to see things more eye to eye.” “Part of that is because the joint couples got on the same page in terms of money matters, it prompted some discussions. “By the end of two years, the joint couples looked a lot better than the ‘separate’ couples and the ‘do what you want’ couples,” Rick said. The couples who kept separate accounts or did whatever they wanted (most of whom kept separate accounts) saw the “typical decline” in relationship satisfaction, where they were happiest at the start of their marriage and satisfaction dropped after that honeymoon phase, Rick said.īut the joint couples stayed at the initial level of happiness, and if anything, their relationship satisfaction “seemed to increase a tiny, tiny bit over time,” he told MarketWatch. Researchers checked in with the couples every few months to ask them how their relationships were going. One group of couples had to open a joint account, one had to keep their accounts separate, and a third could do whatever they wanted. Rick and his co-authors tracked 230 newlywed couples for two years. He co-authored a new study that is the first to find a causal relationship between joint accounts and happier marriages. There’s been research suggesting that couples who share their accounts are happier than those who don’t, but the link was only correlational, so it wasn’t clear whether “joint accounts make you happy or if happiness makes you open a joint account,” said Scott Rick, a University of Michigan associate professor of marketing. That lessens your chances of divorce, which can be financially devastating. 1 reason to share your money is that joint accounts appear to lead to a happier marriage. And if you’re not on the same page about your values, then why are you in this relationship? The verdict Money and how we spend it is also an expression of our values.
Discussions about money can get fraught fast and sometimes become proxy battles for bigger issues in the relationship, like who wields more power, whose career is more important, and who does more domestic labor. How couples manage their money isn’t just about making sure the water bill gets paid on time.
One big decision couples face when they form a household: Should they merge their money into joint accounts, or keep separate accounts? Why it matters It can also mean unpleasant shocks - surprise, your soulmate has a 530 credit score - that stand in the way of those dreams you cooked up together when you were just two crazy kids in love. Not being open and honest about money can be a sign that you don’t trust your partner, a relationship killer if there ever was one.
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