Joint accounts versus separate accounts?

[Craigy]

Joint brah.  IMO it's nicer, warmer and fuzzier that all of the money is all "hers mine and ours."  Of course now after medschool and residency is finally done, that's real easy to say since my wife earns more than me.   :lol:  I still have to scold my wife when she asks permission to buy something.  Don't gotta ax me to spend your own money.

Neither of us has a spending problem so it works out.

The friends and family we know with separate accounts, seems a little cold.  Sometimes icky.  Usually one or both have a spending problem, or one is terribly meiserly, or both.  Not passing judgment on anyone here but just reporting my anecdotal observations.

[Wiscoblue]

Joint everything. Same credit card. We have salary going to different accounts. We spend from her salary and mine goes mostly to the linked Schwab account. I pay the bills and I make the investment choices. I give her an annual report of net worth, expenses and future direction. We are quite frugal. We work out together, we go out together. In fact when we are not working, we are usually together. Now that we are empty nesters, our expenses are very much lower and we save even more.

i can see how having separate accounts can lead to higher spending and less trust and, unhappiness.

[q-school]

to expand a little more than just joint, everything we have is joint but we do have multiple accounts.

one account is for expenses.  because my wife was getting driven crazy by my attentiveness to outflows, so we have a separate account for required savings towards FI that automatically draws $x (to be invested by me) per year and then a separate account for vacations that automatically pulls $y per year to be used soley at wife's discretion without any comments from me, and then in a roundabout fashion, anything left in the original expense account can be spent by either of us without discussion.  there is usually a lot of communication because all bills come out of there but most of those are recurring fixed costs.  generally there is a lot left over in the original expense account though, so that gets invested or more recently donated to charity.

I know I could be more efficient but the system has remarkably reduced stress between me and the wife.  unfortunately currently (you guys are causing me) stomaches because of the questions about credit card optimization.  that's going to cause some system shakeup if we start trying to strategically accumulate points.  I'm terrible at using points.  I think I have close to 5,000 of amazon credit and I know I have 200k+ miles on delta and 200k+ miles on American and close to 70,000 on southwest.  we don't have a good system when she does all the travel arrangements for the family and everyone has different miles accumulated, and blockouts and stuff.  someday when we are retired and more flexible hopefully all those points will be put to good use.

except amazon, I do know how to use that, but those guys make me mad because I can't use the credit on purchase of kindle ebooks.  why won't they let us.  they make me go through some song and dance about buying a gift card and then using the gift card.  maybe I need to switch to this chase sapphire thing but the reviews for help when you need travel assistance are terrible  so then I was thinking about the amex platinum but I don't use uber ever and I'm not sure I would get the value from the 550 fee.  I'm not sure how to value hotel upgrades at starwood and Marriott.

I hear there's this thing called $20 handshake.  supposedly if you hand the person at the hotel $20 as you introduce yourself, they do their best to give you an unused upgrade?  anyone confirm this?

 



 

[Humilem]

Non physicians. Joint account. Wife totally in charge of everything. She would caution me when I exceed my limit on certain remittances abroad. My international calls and remittances push me over the limit sometimes. My wife is very understanding realizing our financial commitments to our extended families overseas. Other than that we are OK.

[Dr. Mom]

Joint.  I run everything in personal finance which leaves Dr. Dad free to focus on business finance.  He runs his own office.  He tried to do personal years ago when I was in internship.  Took about a month before we were bouncing checks, lol.  The secretarial aspect of personal finance plays to my strengths.

[nachos31]

Dual physicians. Currently separate but looking to consolidate to main joint account. I find that my spouse worries more about our overall financial picture since she only sees an account with her inflows (we talk and share our inflows) and knows the outflows and ends up comparing her inflow with the overall outflows. I think it would be helpful to her to have the overall inflows and outflows in one area.

We would still have separate play money subaccounts and still have separate credit cards since we each did Chase Sapphire Reserve and each have cards with our parents (our oldest accounts that we want to keep open)!

Is there greater malpractice risk with joint accounts compared to separate as stated above?

[jfoxcpacfp]

nachos31 wrote:

Is there greater malpractice risk with joint accounts compared to separate as stated above?

Click to expand...

Certainly, an account that you jointly own is at risk if either of you lose a malpractice suit. But a joint checking account is not the same as a joint taxable investment account. The purpose of a joint checking account is convenience and efficiency, not to build up hundreds of thousands of dollars. Even then, the risk of loss is very minimal.

You should have a plan to keep it at $X,XXX (or add a digit) and transfer any excess not needed in the short term to a more suitable vehicle.

[nachos31]

Yeah in my mind it seemed odd to go after a checking account for that reason--I get why with the large joint taxable acct.

[Craigy]

q-school wrote:

 

I know I could be more efficient but the system has remarkably reduced stress between me and the wife.  unfortunately currently (you guys are causing me) stomaches because of the questions about credit card optimization.  that’s going to cause some system shakeup if we start trying to strategically accumulate points.  I’m terrible at using points.  I think I have close to 5,000 of amazon credit and I know I have 200k+ miles on delta and 200k+ miles on American and close to 70,000 on southwest.  we don’t have a good system when she does all the travel arrangements for the family and everyone has different miles accumulated, and blockouts and stuff.  someday when we are retired and more flexible hopefully all those points will be put to good use.

except amazon, I do know how to use that, but those guys make me mad because I can’t use the credit on purchase of kindle ebooks.  why won’t they let us.  they make me go through some song and dance about buying a gift card and then using the gift card.  maybe I need to switch to this chase sapphire thing but the reviews for help when you need travel assistance are terrible  so then I was thinking about the amex platinum but I don’t use uber ever and I’m not sure I would get the value from the 550 fee.  I’m not sure how to value hotel upgrades at starwood and Marriott.

 

 

Click to expand...

Me too.  I feel like the people who are good at points/miles are people who travel a lot and deal with it a lot.  It seems like whenever I go to book a flight, either I can't use points, some other airline has a better route, my airline's tickets are too expensive, or using the points is just not a great deal.  I usually end up cashing them in on a gift card or something.  IMO, unless you travel a lot and know the ins and outs, it's just one more thing to deal with, waste of my time, much easier to use a pure cash-back card.

For amazon, if you truly want to get the most value out of the card, you should never use the points for purchases, and always opt for the cash back.  To illustrate: if you buy an ebook for $10.00, you can spend $10.00 on your amazon card, and also get a 5% rebate in points (worth $0.50), for a net $9.50, OR, you spend $10.00 of your amazon points, with no further discount.  That amazon points are essentially cash since you can convert them to cash with a statement credit or mailed check.  So, to keep things simple, never spend your amazon points (convert them to cash), and always buy with the amazon card to get the 3% or 5% back.

[q-school]

Craigy wrote:

q-school wrote:

 

I know I could be more efficient but the system has remarkably reduced stress between me and the wife.  unfortunately currently (you guys are causing me) stomaches because of the questions about credit card optimization.  that’s going to cause some system shakeup if we start trying to strategically accumulate points.  I’m terrible at using points.  I think I have close to 5,000 of amazon credit and I know I have 200k+ miles on delta and 200k+ miles on American and close to 70,000 on southwest.  we don’t have a good system when she does all the travel arrangements for the family and everyone has different miles accumulated, and blockouts and stuff.  someday when we are retired and more flexible hopefully all those points will be put to good use.

except amazon, I do know how to use that, but those guys make me mad because I can’t use the credit on purchase of kindle ebooks.  why won’t they let us.  they make me go through some song and dance about buying a gift card and then using the gift card.  maybe I need to switch to this chase sapphire thing but the reviews for help when you need travel assistance are terrible  so then I was thinking about the amex platinum but I don’t use uber ever and I’m not sure I would get the value from the 550 fee.  I’m not sure how to value hotel upgrades at starwood and Marriott.

 

 

Click to expand…

Me too.  I feel like the people who are good at points/miles are people who travel a lot and deal with it a lot.  It seems like whenever I go to book a flight, either I can’t use points, some other airline has a better route, my airline’s tickets are too expensive, or using the points is just not a great deal.  I usually end up cashing them in on a gift card or something.  IMO, unless you travel a lot and know the ins and outs, it’s just one more thing to deal with, waste of my time, much easier to use a pure cash-back card.

For amazon, if you truly want to get the most value out of the card, you should never use the points for purchases, and always opt for the cash back.  To illustrate: if you buy an ebook for $10.00, you can spend $10.00 on your amazon card, and also get a 5% rebate in points (worth $0.50), for a net $9.50, OR, you spend $10.00 of your amazon points, with no further discount.  That amazon points are essentially cash since you can convert them to cash with a statement credit or mailed check.  So, to keep things simple, never spend your amazon points (convert them to cash), and always buy with the amazon card to get the 3% or 5% back.

Click to expand...

so if i understand you correctly, i don't really even know how to use the amazon points.



 

[LizOB]

Craigy wrote:

q-school wrote:

 

I know I could be more efficient but the system has remarkably reduced stress between me and the wife.  unfortunately currently (you guys are causing me) stomaches because of the questions about credit card optimization.  that’s going to cause some system shakeup if we start trying to strategically accumulate points.  I’m terrible at using points.  I think I have close to 5,000 of amazon credit and I know I have 200k+ miles on delta and 200k+ miles on American and close to 70,000 on southwest.  we don’t have a good system when she does all the travel arrangements for the family and everyone has different miles accumulated, and blockouts and stuff.  someday when we are retired and more flexible hopefully all those points will be put to good use.

except amazon, I do know how to use that, but those guys make me mad because I can’t use the credit on purchase of kindle ebooks.  why won’t they let us.  they make me go through some song and dance about buying a gift card and then using the gift card.  maybe I need to switch to this chase sapphire thing but the reviews for help when you need travel assistance are terrible  so then I was thinking about the amex platinum but I don’t use uber ever and I’m not sure I would get the value from the 550 fee.  I’m not sure how to value hotel upgrades at starwood and Marriott.

 

 

Click to expand…

Me too.  I feel like the people who are good at points/miles are people who travel a lot and deal with it a lot.  It seems like whenever I go to book a flight, either I can’t use points, some other airline has a better route, my airline’s tickets are too expensive, or using the points is just not a great deal.  I usually end up cashing them in on a gift card or something.  IMO, unless you travel a lot and know the ins and outs, it’s just one more thing to deal with, waste of my time, much easier to use a pure cash-back card.

For amazon, if you truly want to get the most value out of the card, you should never use the points for purchases, and always opt for the cash back.  To illustrate: if you buy an ebook for $10.00, you can spend $10.00 on your amazon card, and also get a 5% rebate in points (worth $0.50), for a net $9.50, OR, you spend $10.00 of your amazon points, with no further discount.  That amazon points are essentially cash since you can convert them to cash with a statement credit or mailed check.  So, to keep things simple, never spend your amazon points (convert them to cash), and always buy with the amazon card to get the 3% or 5% back.

Click to expand...

Same with my Discover card (amazon is frequently a 5% cash back category). It's linked to amazon so I could pay for things directly with my points/cash back, but if I put it on the card I get more points.

I currently have 2 cards, both cash back and I'm letting them accumulate until my next maternity leave at which time they will be used to pay the credit card balances. This will make my lack of income feel less painful.

I don't travel all that much currently, so I feel like a card with miles would either go to waste, or waste too much of my time figuring out how to convert the miles to something else