Combining Finances After Marriage: A Complete Guide & Checklist

Combining your finances after marriage can often bring feelings of stress, anxiety, and arguments. But it doesn’t have to be that way!

Discussing finances with your spouse is a form of intimacy. Talking about your goals and dreams for the future is an exciting way to become closer as couple. However, it is hard to dream about a future without discussing the financial road map to get there.

Early retirement? Lake house? Want to travel the world? Start a business? All of that requires money!

Combing finances after marriage can bring you closer together because it forces both of you to discuss your values and priorities.

Disclaimer: I have a very strong opinion that married couples should completely combine finances. From my point of view, it is difficult to be completely united as a couple when you’re running different bank accounts. I know there are a ton of opinions about this, but this post will be written from the point of view of having joint accounts and shared finances.

I believe that if you can share a bed, you can share a bank account!

As someone who recently got married, I’m showing you exactly what we did to combine our finances after marriage.

A Complete Guide to Combining Finances After Marriage

Create a Combined Household Budget

The first and most obvious step to combining finances after marriage is to create a budget. List both spouses’ incomes at the top, and run down a list of your recurring monthly expenses.

Include your fixed expenses (expenses that are the same every month) such as rent, subscriptions, insurance, your cell phone bill, etc.

You’ll also want to discuss how much to allocate to your variable expense categories. Groceries, gas, restaurants, and entertainment are all variable expenses that fluctuate from month to month. Make sure to be realistic with the amounts and give yourself a few months to tweak and adjust your budget over time. This may be something new for both of you, so take time to adjust.

Don’t forget a miscellaneous category!

If you’re looking for a budget template to help you get started, check out my Etsy shop for my monthly budget template! It is an Excel/Google Sheets digital download with all formulas included and a .pdf with instructions on how to get set up.

Related: How to Create a Zero Based Budget (And Actually Stick to It!)

Calculate Your Net Worth (Assets – Liabilities)

Your net worth is the sum of all your assets minus the sum of all your liabilities. You may or may not know this number for yourself as an individual, but you and your spouse are now a unit and need to calculate your combined net worth.

Assets are what you own (cash, retirement accounts, vehicles, your home, etc) and liabilities are what you owe (student loans, car loans, credit card debt, etc). Net worth = what you own minus what you owe.

I also have a net worth tracker on my Etsy shop as well, if you want more help getting started.

This is where combining finances after marriage can get a bit vulnerable, especially if you have never discussed your finances in depth yet.

Have each spouse make a list of their assets. How much cash do each of you have? What are the balances on your 401k’s or Roth IRAs? How much is your car worth? If you own a home, what is it worth?

Add up all of these numbers and you’ll have the total value of your assets as a married couple.

Next, list out each of your debts. List the loan balance, interest rate, and minimum monthly payments. Add up all the balances on each of your debts and you now have your total combined liabilities.

It is super important to not be judgmental or refer to each person’s debt as “his debt” or “her debt.” When you said your marriage vows, it became “our debt.”

Everyone has made mistakes with money in the past, so be sure to discuss any shame, embarrassment, or guilt that may come up. If you’re the partner with less debt, don’t make your spouse feel bad. Instead, make a plan to tackle that debt as a couple and work through it! You’ll both come out stronger on the other side.

Getting everything out in the open will help you see the big picture and create a plan.

Related: How to Track Your Net Worth: What It Is and Why It Matters

Combining Finances After Marriage Means Discussing Financial Goals

This is where the real fun begins! Now that you have a household budget and have laid out your net worth, it’s time to create a plan and set financial goals together as a couple!

What do each of you value? Where do you see yourselves in the next 5-10 years? Do you want to own a home in the near future, become debt-free, move across the country, or make plan to retire early?

I have an entire post about how to set yearly financial goals, so check it out if you need some help getting started.

Isn’t it fun to dream about the future with your favorite person?

Open a Joint Checking Account

Here’s where things get a little more pragmatic. The first thing you probably think of when combining finances after marriage is opening a joint bank account.

Open up a joint checking account and re-route your direct deposits from work into the new account.

Make sure to edit your payment method on your credit card accounts, utilities, and other bills that are on auto-pay to pull from your new account. For my husband and I, this included my credit card, Venmo account, cell phone bill, and rent.

Open a Joint Savings Account

You’ll also want to go ahead and open a joint high-yield savings account as well. “High-yield” simply means that the account pays a higher interest rate than a typical bank. These are usually offered by online banks, which is nothing to worry about as long as they’re FDIC insured and have no monthly fees.

You can also open a checking account with an online bank too! An advantage of having your checking and savings with the same bank is instantaneous money transfers. No more waiting 3-5 business days for your money to show up in your account!

My husband and I personally use Ally bank for our checking and savings. We have a separate savings account just for our emergency fund, and another savings account for all of our sinking funds.

It only took a few minutes to open up our joint accounts, which made combining finances after marriage super easy.

Add Your Spouse as an Authorized User on Your Credit Card

I’m a huge fan of credit cards! That might sound counter-intuitive coming from a personal finance blogger, but hear me out.

If you are responsible with your credit card usage (meaning it doesn’t tempt you to overspend AND you pay off the balance in full every month), credit cards can be a great way to earn some cash back, travel rewards, and build your credit.

Now that you have joint finances, it is way easier to have 2 cards that link to the same account. Call your credit card company and request your new spouse to be added to your account as an authorized user. They’ll get a new card with their name on it and all of the charges on it will go to your account!

Protip: Also ask for a credit limit increase! It helps to keep your credit utilization low, which will raise your credit score over time.

I recommend routing as many bills as possible to one credit card to simplify things while earning cash back. Make sure that there are no additional fees and remember to PAY IT OFF IN FULL EVERY MONTH to avoid paying interest.

Personal Spending Money

Something that is super important when combining finances with your spouse is personal spending money. This is a set amount of money that each of you get to spend on whatever you want, without needing to talk to your spouse about it ahead of time.

Personal spending money allows each person a level of autonomy, which is crucial if you want a sustainable, realistic budget that actually works.

Sit down with your spouse and discuss the amounts that feel right to both of you. You can even have the money roll over into a sinking fund if you don’t spend it all each month!

Assign a Household CFO

By “household CFO” I do not mean that one person handles all the finances. Each spouse should have an equal say in the budget and know what is going on with the finances!

However, if one of you enjoys the ins and outs of budgeting more than the other, consider appointing them the family CFO. The CFO will track spending, update the budget, and make sure that you’re staying on track each month.

You’ll also need to figure out how often you and your spouse want to have budget meetings. Budget meetings aren’t always fun (unless you’re a nerd, like me!), but they are necessary to make sure you’re on track to meet your financial goals.

Consider meeting over a glass of wine or snacks to make it more fun!

Get Health Insurance

Review the health insurance options available to you and figure out what makes the most sense for you both. If you’re still on your parents’ health insurance, it’s probably time to cut the cord.

Call HR at you and your spouse’s workplaces and ask for a health insurance benefits summary. You’ll have to decide which plan is best for your situation. Think about things like your deductible, co-pays, HSA employer-matching contributions, and yearly out-of-pocket costs.

If you’re young and relatively healthy, I’m biased toward a high-deductible plan with an HSA. An HSA allows you to build wealth tax-free and might make sense if your overall yearly medical costs are low.

Related: How to Use an HSA to Build Wealth for Retirement

Add Each Other as Beneficiaries on Retirement Accounts

One or both of you likely has job with a workplace retirement plan, insurance, or other benefits. You probably listed your parents as the beneficiaries when you signed up as a single person (at least that’s what I did).

It’s time to remove your parents and add your spouse as the primary beneficiary to all of your accounts. These accounts may include your 401k, Roth IRA, brokerage account, HSA, or other workplace benefits.

This is definitely the less sexy part of combining finances after marriage, but it is absolutely necessary in case something were to happen to you.

Get a Will and Term Life Insurance

As soon as someone depends on your income, it’s time to get life insurance! I only recommend a term policy because its cheap and gives you lots of coverage if something happens to one of you.

The purpose of life insurance is to replace your and/or your spouse’s income in case one of you were to pass away before you become financially independent. It’s not fun to think about, but you’ll want to make sure your family is taken care of financially if the unimaginable happens.

Avoid whole life insurance like the plague. I won’t go into detail about it here, but this article does a great job of summarizing term vs. whole life insurance. Get a term policy for you and your spouse for at least 10x your gross annual income.

You should also sit down with an attorney and get a will. Even if you rent an apartment and don’t own much, you can still do a DIY will online relatively inexpensively.

A will guarantees that you control who benefits from your estate instead of a court. I for sure do not want a court deciding who will benefit from my assets if/when I pass away.

I hope this post helped you get an idea of everything that goes into combining finances after marriage.

Talking about money isn’t the most exciting part of marriage, but it is so important to be on the same page with your spouse. Try to view combining your finances as joining lives, dreaming about the future, and creating a life you love- together!

This post was all about combining finances after marriage.

-Megan