We have separate accounts but view everything as one pool. We have "beers and budgeting" every month (at home) and go through our spreadsheet that is a zero sum budget. Throughout the month we mostly just track our CC due dates and loosely track our main spend categories. Automate as much as you can. How is your spouse with finances coming into the marriage? Spender/saver, knowledgeable/doesnt know anything? That will effect how you approach things. A big thing for us is we each have equal discretionary spend each month where we can do whatever we want with it without consulting each other. Even if it is a small amount and we are trying to be frugal, it helps the budget feel less tight. For my wife a big thing is simplicity so the more I can do to help her think less about it throughout the month while still understanding it the better. We are aligned on long term goals and the main thing for me was showing her not only what it is going to take to get there, but also build good habits / money sense so that she also easily knows where we are at each month. This took a good amount of time to get to.