How to use shared account (Husband & Wife), yet exclude certain information like gifts?

KDC1996 · March 26

Hello all,

I’m getting married in about 6 months. My fiancée has used Simplifi in the past (though not as extensively as I have). We recently purchased a home, and I know we’ll both want to view finances together and stay aligned on budgeting, etc.

I haven’t tested this yet or made any changes, but I’m looking for suggestions on how to handle a few things in Simplifi. Here are some of my thoughts/concerns:

Shared account vs. separate accounts
-Should we use one shared account with a single login, or keep separate accounts and share our spaces?

-We already have shared bank accounts, so if we used a shared space, would that double-count balances when tracking net worth? (I’ve never used a shared space, so I’m not sure how that works.)

-Or would it be better to just have one account that we both log into and manage together?

Handling surprise expenses (gifts, etc.)
One thing I’ve been thinking about—more of a question than a concern—is how to handle transactions we don’t want the other person to see yet.

To be clear, I’m not talking about hiding anything—just things like surprise gifts. I personally add notes to every transaction so I can easily search and understand what each expense was later. I don’t want to stop doing that, since it’s really helpful.

But if I buy something for a surprise gift and include a note, it would obviously spoil it if she can see everything. How do people typically handle this?

These are my main concerns, but I’d appreciate any additional feedback or tips from others who fully share accounts in Simplifi.

Thanks!

SRC54 · March 26

Hi, and congratulations on getting married.

I am old fashioned about this so I think you should have one Simplifi account and share it. Besides it's cheaper!

There are myriad ways to keep surprises from each other.

A lot depends on who is going to be the main accountant in the family. If that's you, it is easier to hide something for a while.

You can pay cash, make the purchase late., or write a check. Those take a while to clear. My wife goes to ATM periodically. When she needs extra cash for something; she just gets it. I put it down as Spending Money or Sundries. Later if she buys me something, I can change the category to presents or a device or whatever it turns out to be.

You can always have a manual account that you don't share. For me, that is my cash account. I sometimes can give her money from it. My wife earns tutoring money on the side and that's hers. No questions asked.

It's pretty hard to hide from your spouse how much you spent. Besides once we get the gift we usually know. 😀. I admit that we have been married 40 years so mostly we don't have surprises, so a younger person may give you some better ideas.

Couples learn not to ask too many questions around birthdays, anniversaries and Christmas. You can always record a gift as a transfer or just plain out lie and say you bought something else. She probably will figure it out anyhow. LOL

Good luck and best wishes.

DryHeat · March 26

@KDC1996

I don't have a perfect answer for you, but I can tell you how my wife and I do it. It may not be the cheapest way, because we each have a subscription with a separate Quicken login, but it works for us.

We have separate checking accounts (although we are joint owners) and a shared savings account at one bank, a shared HYSA at another bank, a shared brokerage account, and multiple individual credit cards (that are either hers or mine). We each have direct access using individual logins to all the accounts through the bank or brokerage websites, so each of us can see everything if we really want to.

— I access my checking, my credit cards, our joint savings accounts, and our joint brokerage account through my Quicken.

— She accesses her checking, her credit cards, and one of our joint savings accounts through her Quicken. She could of course add other joint accounts to Quicken, but she chooses not to.

Some points about this arrangement:

— If something were to happen to one of us, the other can easily access all financial accounts directly and can even add them to their own Quicken if they want to.

— We don't watch over each other's individual transactions, so gifts and so forth remain private.

— Accessing the same account with different Quicken logins has not proved to be a problem. But that may be because we access them with different credentials at the bank.

— For those accounts we both access, like joint savings, each of us has to download and categorize in our own way as the datasets are separate and work done in one is not replicated in the other.

These are just some ideas for you to think about.

Flopbot · March 27

@KDC1996

Congratulations! Like @DryHeat , I don't have a great solution for this either, although I do like @SRC54 's suggestion of just using cash. In our family, I'm the one who maintains Simplifi and around Christmas, I find myself using this category for anything I suspect is mine. The "Confirm AFTER Christmas" means log into my wife's Amazon account and re-categorize it based on reality. By and large, my wife doesn't use Simplifi, so this is the best solution I've found that doesn't ruin the surprise come Christmas Day. I too am old-fashioned and recommend just having one account; trying to hide things doesn't usually end well.

KDC1996 · March 28

@SRC54 @DryHeat @Flopbot

Thank you all for your suggestions so far! Very helpful to have what you do to work off and get ideas, so we can formulate our own system based off those ideas! We will have to discuss more on if she wants to consolidate to one account or stay separate (It may evolve over time as well!).

I will keep an eye on here for additional suggestions / ideas from other users. Hopefully, this will help others as well in the future

How to use shared account (Husband & Wife), yet exclude certain information like gifts?

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