My parents were divorced growing up and I have never had an example of how people manage finances in a relationship. I take care of my finances well, but how does that scale in a relationship? I have been asking a lot of friends who are married or asking my friends how their parents manage finances. In general, I see 3 models.
Model 1)
Separate accounts with 1 shared for communal expenses.
Model 2)
Breadwinner brings home money and stay-at-home-partner will manage the finances.
Model 3)
Breadwinner handles all finances and gives money to the other partner.
Most of my getting-by-decently-married friends seem to be in Model 1) or 2). In general, Model 1) seems to be common amongst couples when 1 of the 2 people is not well educated in personal finance. Of my higher-income married friends, they usually fall into Model 3).
I am interested in different frameworks for decision making in relationships especially with investments, debt, and long term planning. I am also interested in dynamic frameworks that account for asymmetrical incomes between partners. Ex, each partner contributes 10% to a savings account to prepare for a 6-month emergency fund, 10% into an investment account, etc...
I know this is quite a personal subject, but I am just looking to educate myself and prepare myself. I appreciate all answers and insight.
Thank you in advance.
One thing I have learned is despite all having our own quirks, we all respond to pain similarly.
If you disconnect the pain of bad behavior from actions, you will break a framework/model with potential.
We built a system which has relatively quick feedback with a high level of automation.
The key thing was open communication, collaboration, and a willingness to feel pain...you will adapt and make better choices because of it.
I get you are looking for more of the dynamics of an entire framework. I felt that key point was the crux of it all. Apply that to any of your models and I would argue that is a good starting point. The other note would be, if it requires more than an hour per week of planning, prep, etc. there is a high(er) potential of failure.
Automate, automate, automate!
We do have a framework that is a hybrid of your models where all money enters a single account and it flows out to pre-defined systems. We integrated a couple systems together creating an envelope system with cards that have no credit.
We have regular conversations on monthly expenses over dinner (exercises such as calculating cost of dinner, projects, restaurants for the week), much like you might have at work trying to understand operating expenses and we adjust.