thank you, annadragon, for bringing this up...I myself am having mixed feelings about combining finances...
currenly, we have a joint savings and a joint checking account--the joint savings is exclusively for our honeymoon fund that we started before we got engaged...and the joint checking account--well, we don''t actually use it.
part of me really wants to pool all of our money together and combine all of our bills and pay from that pool...but here''s the thing:
right now, I''m barely making enough to make ends meet. FI is making almost $20k/year more than I am...but hopefully in the future I will be outearning him...
I also have 2-3x the amount of educational debt that he does...so, not only do I make less, but I also owe a lot more, which leaves me with little to no money left over each month to save. If we pooled our assets and our liabilities, we would be able to either jointly save the rest, or be able to both have savings accounts with something in them...as it stands, he contributes to his 401k and has a savings account that is growing slowly but I have very little, and whatever I do have will mostly go to pay for my portion of the wedding...
the other part of me, however, recognizes that I come from a family that is...well, my parents are far from wealthy, but they have a lot more than FI''s parents do. FI''s parents have never helped him with anything, whereas mine paid for my college (ohhhh I am SO appreciative of that, I can''t even tell you), they helped me during law school however they could, they paid for my bar fees, they are paying for more than 75% of the wedding, they gave us money for our honeymoon---etc., etc., etc. it is understood that (God forbid) if something happened to one or both of our jobs, or if (again, God forbid) FI and I ever split up, my parents would step in and help out as much as they could...whereas, FI would only have whatever savings he would be able to scrounge up. So, we''re not even in the sense that I have a lot more outside assistance (as in--ANY) than he does.
so...I don''t mean to make this about me--I really just wanted to say that I wanted to hear other people''s plans for the future and how they were going to deal with this, because I am still quite torn on the issue, and don''t really know how I feel...