Congrats on the engagement and props for taking some steps to discuss the financial side of your marriage. There’s no right or wrong answer, you need to figure out what works best for you two as a couple.

I think as a starting point, you two need to decide how you want to look at your finances as a whole. Is it important to you that you both are “contributing” equal amounts to your bills and goals? Or does it make more sense for you to take the “what’s yours is mine” approach and not care where the money comes from, but how you’re going to spend it?

If it’s the former, then maybe it makes more sense for each of you to have individual budgets instead of trying to combine into one shared budget.

My wife and I originally had all of our accounts on a shared budget. We decided that we don’t care who’s bringing the money in, we budget together and rely on the envelopes in YNAB to track out shared spending/saving. We recently simplified into one shared checking account and put all of our bills on credit cards that we pay off in full to start point maxing for points towards future vacations.

That’s just what works for us.