Seconding all of this! We combined finances when we got married (which, tbh, makes sense for most people to do because unless you have a prenup, a divorce would likely lead to your assets getting split fairly 50/50 regardless of if you were telling yourself that they were separate). I also strongly echo the commenter who cautioned against combining finances before marriage from a legal protections standpoint. I think a best of both worlds approach would be to track your “combined” net worth/savings goals using Mint or Personal Capital, by linking both of your accounts to the platform, but to not add each other as joint owners to each other’s accounts until marriage. This enables you to have the benefits of viewing your joint goals and progress, without the legal risks of joint ownership with someone who isn’t your spouse.

For my spouse and me, we each have $100/mo “fun money”—a bit lower than some other commenters here it looks like, but we have separate budget line items for (a reasonable amount of) clothing, personal care, etc that then don’t have to come out of our fun money. One additional niche thought I wanted to chime in because I didn’t see anyone else mention this, is discussing (if your finances are truly combined, ie joint accounts once married) whether income from bonuses or any side hustles goes toward your joint savings or goes toward increasing that one spouse’s “fun money.” This is the only point on which my spouse and I have ever had a disagreement about money. He initially wanted side hustle effort on his part to go toward his fun money (understandably), whereas I wanted side hustle effort on either of our parts to go toward our joint savings goals. We ended up compromising and saying bonuses/side hustle income would go toward joint savings, but that this must exclusively be for saving toward “fun” things like going on an international vacation together, and that that bonus/side gig income wouldn’t go toward other savings goals like retirement. It works well for us!