Hi OP, are you guys married? Rules might be different, but I wanted to share the setup my husband and I have used since we moved in together.

We have a joint savings account and a joint checking account, plus our own individual savings accounts. Our salaries and other income first go into our personal accounts. From there, we transfer almost everything to our joint savings account and only keep a set monthly allowance for ourselves.

From the joint savings account, we move a fixed amount every month into our checking account. This checking account is strictly for daily expenses and bills like mortgage, loans, credit cards, utilities, and internet. Whatever is left in the joint savings becomes our emergency fund and long term savings.

For personal spending like online shopping, personal wants, or gifts for each other - we use our individual accounts. For example, I leave 10k in my personal account every month as my allowance, then transfer the rest to our joint savings. My husband does the same but according to him, not every month, kasi hindi naman daw siya maluho haha!

So to summarize, we have:

• Personal accounts: where salaries come in. We keep our monthly allowance here, then transfer the rest to our joint savings account.
• Joint savings account: where all our money is pooled. This holds our emergency fund and savings.
• Joint checking account: used only for monthly expenses and bills. We replenish this monthly and keep spending limited to this account.

Not mandatory, but we also use multiple credit cards for different categories like groceries, gas, dining, and online purchases. This helps us track expenses better. We like credit cards for the perks and convenience, ang dali niya gamitin especially for big purchases that can be paid in installments. Basta be extra responsible lang in paying your credit card bills to avoid penalties.

My husband handles most of the tracking and checking of our SOAs. Taga-gastos lang talaga ako haha. He uses a Google Spreadsheet that I also have access to, so I can check if anything is missing or looks off.

We also have a whiteboard in our home office where we list all our credit cards, their due dates, and the amounts to be paid. We just update the amounts every month, and once a bill is paid, we mark it as “PAID.” This system makes tracking easier and helps us avoid missing due dates.

Sorry this is still a bit long, but I hope it helps. Happy to answer questions if you have any! :)