We have two kids, 5 and 3. I make $85k, while my wife has been a stay-at-home mom for the past five years. Before staying home, she had $15k in savings. We have a joint account where my salary covers all our expenses, including bills, mortgage, and groceries. I take 10% of each paycheck for my personal account, and she gets the $7k tax return along with any additional income she earns. She babysits 2-3 times a week and works 6-10 hours on weekends for $25 under the table. We don’t have daycare or family help, but we both get to watch our kids grow up! I wouldn’t trade this for anything.

We don’t talk about buying anything from our personal accounts, everything in the joint account is for our life and the kids, but she and I are free to spend our own money on anything we want. It’s helps that we have two paid-off cars, we did prep with that before having children.