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slash setup hello and welcome to the nerd wallet smart money podcast

where we answer your money questions in 15 minutes or less.

I'm your host, Sean Piles. And joining me is my new official co-host, Liz Weston.

Smart Money Superfans will remember her from past episodes, and I'm so excited that she's joining me full time on the show.

Liz is a certified financial planner, and she's been helping consumers tackle

their thorny money questions for decades. Hey, everybody. All right, let's dive in. This episode's

question is from John. He says, my husband and I have been happily married for a year, but have

reached a disagreement on how to handle our finances. I think that we should have a joint bank account

only to pay the

bills, with each of us putting in a percentage of our incomes while retaining separate accounts

for everything else. He thinks that we should have just a joint account. I'm the main breadwinner,

so it's primarily my money that would be going into the account, and I'm just not comfortable

having only a joint account. While I have no problem spotting my husband for things, I don't like the idea of his being able to spend my money without my saying so. I'm also concerned that if we have a shared account, we won't be able to surprise each other as we will both be able to see what purchases we have made. Finally, I'm worried that we will both make plans for the same money, and that will

cause transactions to bounce. What is your advice on how to handle this? Oh, wow, Sean. There's a lot in

here. Yeah, but I really love questions like this because it gets to the personal and personal finance.

And it's about balancing disparate incomes, managing household finances, but it's also

about communication and how you retain privacy in a relationship. In this episode of NerdWallet Smart

...