If you go in to a marriage thinking “no joint accounts because maybe we’ll get divorced”, then you’re probably setting yourself up for that inevitability.

What’s the difference how you pay your bills if you pay them off each month? We have multiple reasons for charging everything possible on the credit card:

1. We have a rewards credit card that puts a flat 2% of all purchases in our daughter’s college fund. 2% of everything, no yearly cap. When we had our mortgage (we now own our house outright), I would have put the mortgage on the credit card had the bank allowed it without a fee. Our daughter gets between $1000 and $1200 a year for free. Multiply by 50 and you can see how much we’ll run through the credit card in a year.

2. It’s free money. Everyone knows about how banks and companies float money. While the money is floating, you essentially have free use of it at no cost. With all the people crying about how banks and financial institutions are so bad and take advantage of them, why don’t you do the same? You have a month of interest free money. Again, if you’re going to pay it off every month anyhow, why do you care how it is being paid?

3. The credit card statements provide you an easy way to keep track of your purchases. They get categorized (by many credit card companies) and you can easily see where your money is going.

As far as our marriage – coming up on 17 years thank you very much. As I mentioned, we have no mortgage and own our home. networthiq.com shows our net worth at about $1.7 million – which doesn’t include the $150,000 in the daughter’s prepaid college plan, the free credit card money going to the 529, or her $40,000 trust fund.

I say if you can’t do something as simple as use a credit card effectively between you and your spouse, I hope your marriage is better than your financial abilities.

“Still, the idea of putting recurring monthly expenses on revolving credit makes me very afraid. This sort of thing should be paid with real money!”

If you think that charging on a credit card is not “real money” then that’s a clear indication that maybe you shouldn’t be allowed to have one. It’s people like you who don’t understand what a credit card is or how to use it properly who are the biggest offenders.

Re: Jessc – using a credit card for fixed monthly charges is a perfectly reasonable and rational thing to do. I haven’t paid a penny in interest, and have enjoyed thousands of dollars worth of free vacations by putting any spending item that will let me pay by cc on a card. This is what bugs me when people get up in arms about using credit cards for everything. It’s only a bad thing if you can’t pay it off. The rest of us are enjoying the good life, ultimately on the backs of those who are irresponsible.

Regarding the checking account, we have one joint checking and one joint savings account, and all of our mutual fund accounts are held jointly.. As a married couple, we are not already planning our divorce. Someone who has the attitude that separate accounts are better because they will make your divorce easier is doomed to have an unsuccessful marriage. Joint accounts have the advantage that if one person becomes unable to act, the other person still has access and control over the finances. Or, if one person dies, the surviving joint owner automatically becomes owner, without having to go through probate.

Again, this type of arrange really only works if you have complete trust and faith in your spouse and marriage.. But if I didn’t have that trust in my spouse I wouldn’t have married in the first place.

We use the join checking account for groceries and so forth. We never use credit cards except for emergencies, so the joint card has never been a problem. In fact, it really saved us this week because my wife got her wisdom teeth removed (and our dental insurance is worthless). She just charged it to the joint card and I’ll pay it off when I get paid next week.

The joint accounts work very well for us, but I also think having our personal accounts prevents us from stepping on each other’s toes with overdraft fees.

My DH and I combined all finances and I managed all accounts (he’d never had a checking account before we were married). I was tired of maintaining a checkbook register with a bunch of his debit card reciepts missing, so switched him to a credit card.

Long story short, that was even harder to manage so he still keeps his pre-marriage cash plan, that worked for him and keeps me happy.

Still, the idea of putting recurring monthly expenses on revolving credit makes me very afraid. This sort of thing should be paid with real money!

My opinion only.