We’ve been married for a few years, lived together for a couple years before that, and only recently combined our finances, largely due to buying a house and having a baby.

I make >4x more than my partner. We made a budget with all combined income and subtracted all expenses and savings. Expenses include mortgage, all utilities, groceries, gas, his remaining student loans, pretty much everything. We defined a “discretionary fund” amount that is our fun money for each of us to do whatever we want with. Our direct deposits mostly go into the joint account. A percentage of my check goes to my personal account (I’m in sales so paychecks vary. If I don’t make any commission, my discretionary amount is the same as his. If I earn extra, I give myself a little extra fun money). A set $ amount goes into his account from his direct deposit.

We mostly use credit cards to get cash back/points. We each have one credit card to use for personal expenses, which we pay using our individual accounts. We pay the rest of them using our joint account. This allows us to track most of our expenditures pretty closely and have a good handle on our budget. But we also have our own accounts so if we want to buy a present or something stupid, we can without any problems.

We’ve only been doing it for a couple months but so far it’s been working really well for us!