Combining finances

The approach we landed on, and the one I’d personally recommend, is very similar to the “what’s mine is yours” approach detailed above with one small twist: each person gets a monthly allocation, or “fun money salary,” for their own personal pleasure. You can agree on your own set of customs for how you use the money, but my wife and I have agreed that the only expenses we spend our fun money on are:

The allocations can easily be adjusted to account for how similar your spending styles are: if you and your partner have similar approaches to money or lead strongly overlapping lives, the fun money salary can be very low; if you and your partner have dissimilar approaches to money or lead independent lives, you can give yourselves a larger fun money salary. Both partners have equal access to it, and both partners will continue to receive the same monthly allocation for fun money no matter how much each person makes.

Source: blog.mitchjlee.com