The end of each month heralds a recurring, rapid-fire duet between my husband and me as we whip out our checkbooks and start dividing our empire: there are the separate checks for rent, my payment to Time Warner, his to ConEd, and our down-the-middle split of the AT&T bill for my iPhone and his Android. We separately take care of our credit card bills—he’s an American Express; I’m a MasterCard.
Every three months, we pony up an extra $100 for a maid service to get our apartment deep cleaned and keep my intense dust allergies at bay. And, as I write this in a tryptophan-laced, post-Thanksgiving haze, we’ve also started in on our annual Chrismukkah lists (his parents, sister, and brother-in-law; my big, fat, Syrian-Quebecois family with a much longer list of close aunts, uncles, cousins, and siblings).
Coupling up also means pairing off budgets, creating a fiscal Noah’s Ark of mortgages, loans, utilities, and necessities both low and high on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. When my parents ended their marriage in 1987, a chief component of it had to do with my mother, then just getting her bearings as an OB/GYN, pulling in most of the money while my bartender-slash-restaurant manager father bounced from job to job while still insisting on dictating what got spent where. When I moved in with my husband four years ago, I made clear to him my financial trepidations when it comes to romantic entanglements.
So far it’s been clear waters—but with just over a year of marriage under our belts and talks of those Next Stages in life (kids, buying an apartment, grad school), the idea of merging finances has made a few waves. As children of feminist parents who came of age with women’s lib, we’re raised to believe that while partners may be joined even tighter by marital bonds, there’s no reason that their bank accounts can’t keep separate houses. But is it worth not having to justify every trip to Starbucks in order to pay the landlord with just one check? And can my freelance, catch-as-catch-can salary peacefully cohabitate with my husband’s 40-hour-week paycheck? It’s a question many of my singer friends (especially those coupled with so-called “civilians”) frequently ask, and one that I’m investigating in this month’s $50 Week.
The Sopranos
Stereotypically and historically speaking, the greatest cat fights in classical vocal music come from the highest Fach. At this point, my and my husband’s bank accounts are like Tebaldi and Callas, equal in importance but kept separated like oil and water. We bring them together for the occasional monthly recital, but apart from that, when one’s at La Scala, the other is in New York.
Why it works: For couples who have jobs that pay on vastly different scales, sometimes it’s nice to not know what the left hand is doing. I careen between periodic highs and more average middles and the occasional low, while my husband counts on a regular paycheck that rises only with the occasional raise. As such, my bonuses are my own to squirrel away for leaner periods or to sink into a trip to see a world premiere for an article. For my partner’s part, he may not have any financial interest in traveling cross-country to break even on an article commission, but he is happier to put his profits toward more regular expenses like nesting and takeout. In both instances, there’s no question as to whose money is covering what.
Why it doesn’t work: When we do travel together, there’s always the question of how to split airfare, hotels, dinners, and admission fares. Oftentimes, the big-ticket purchases even each other out (one of us gets the airfare; the other covers the hotel), but that’s not something you can totally count on. And should we ever want to invest in property, a car, or a child, the comforts of separate-but-equal may pale in comparison to the increasingly complicated mathematics of the Dutch treat.
The Mezzos
Half-and-half is becoming an increasingly popular compromise among my friends. Just as a mezzo-soprano can fluctuate between Zerlina and Donna Elvira or Mignon and Mélisande, there is a happy medium that allows your Amazon and Trader Joe’s cash to be used on whichever Harmonia Mundi releases or chocolate-covered power berries you please, but also keeps some of your nest egg in a communal pool.
Why it works: It reduces the moral conundrum of pulling from “your” nest egg for an individual Metro Card, but also makes sense when you’re in the market for a new fridge or bed. For singers, this especially helps mitigate startup costs like launching a website or self-producing a recital album, particularly if these are expenses that will never end up on your partner’s wish list. The Mad Men era of wives receiving weekly allowances out of their husband’s pockets may be over, but there are still reasons for shacking up your shekels.
Why it doesn’t work: The challenge of maintaining multiple accounts in any situation—from checking and savings to personal and business to yours, mine, and ours—is making sure that they are fed and watered regularly. Open your individual and joint accounts with the same bank and set up an automatic transfer each week to ensure that you have enough spread around each month. Also discuss with your partner how the account should be divided. If you’re in separate tax brackets, splitting the rent evenly is going to be convenient for one half and less so for another, so look at paying in proportion—that may be 50/50, or that may be 30/70.
The Basses
A bass friend of mine once described his circle of comrades as a commune of sorts—among their level of recognition and experience, they often trade off in roles like Mephistopheles, Dulcamara, Sparafucile, and Gremin without a sense of competition. A true and truly talented low voice is hot enough as a commodity, he reasoned to me, that there is less competition for work. I like to think of communal bank accounts in a similar sense. Your funds may be King Marke and your spouse’s may be Tsar Boris Godunov, but they cohabitate rather peacefully.
Why it works: Sharing means not having to worry about maintaining multiple checking accounts, dictating what’s singular and plural or worrying about coming together at the end of each month. Disparate incomes become equal and the stress of making percentages for each shared expense disappears. And while you may still view your expenses as separate even though you’re married, the government won’t necessarily feel the same way. When I applied for New York’s low-income health insurance, I was denied. Despite meeting the income requirements myself, my husband’s salary and the fact that we were legally wed meant that I was viewed as making “too much.” If the government views you as a pair with no loophole and your partner doesn’t begrudge supplementing your non-sliding-scale co-pays, is that really a battle worth fighting?
Why it doesn’t work: I have no problem if my husband puts in money on perfecting our temple of television, Wii, and sound system—but as someone who doesn’t really care about those luxuries as opposed to replacing our bed sheets or upgrading our bargain-priced IKEA furniture, I’m not sure I want my money to go toward speaker cables. There’s a great deal of micromanaging that comes with the joint-account territory. If you’re the type of couple that’s willing to go in depth with spreadsheets, track your spending by category, and stick religiously to your budget, this system can work. But emotions can quickly overtake rationale, especially when it comes to your bottom line.
Conducting Business
In the end, is there a “right” answer for spending as both individuals and one couple? I wish there were. The key is finding what works best for your individual personalities. And what you decide at 25 may not be what continues to work at 35 or 45. While I’m more ready to have a puppy than a baby right now, in five or six years that latter priority may be more pressing.
Just as family and friends will bombard you with questions about marriage and babies as soon as you move in together or get engaged, so too will your financial institutions ask if you want to include your partner on your checking account. Take the time when you do decide to make that next step to fully investigate your options. My husband’s HSBC account seems to carry more perks than my situation with Wells Fargo, but we’ve also found that there are further incentives for joining up with TD Bank or Ally. Like dating, we’re still keeping our options open, but we’re definitely in the market for the One.
And then there are times when logic will still go out the window. While we give presents jointly, the general rule in our house is to each spend on the presents for our separate family and friends to avoid the constant splitting of gift tags. Yet this last Christmas, when my sisters and I decided to pool our funds together to replace our mother’s stolen ring with all of our birthstones, my husband happily helped us cover the funds. No financial guidebook will explain how to handle that situation, but your gut will tell you instantly.
