When you’re young, married, working and it’s just the two of you, here’s one way to look at your financial life regarding saving money.

Online Savings Account

I’ve explained this in Action One, both husband and wife should have their own online savings account paying 5.05% (2007) at HSBCDirect, EmigrantDirect.com or your choice of any fine, comparable online savings account.

There is another view and it’s having a third account called the “family” account. Where both individuals contribute to the “family” account for “family” oriented savings as well as their own accounts. If you can do all three savings accounts and that’s something that fits your saving style, then that’s just fine.

I do believe each person should have their own account. Sometimes when you’re young and in the early stages of love you do everything together, another view of the “family” account which is fine, but there is another view that involves taking care of one another. Which means, each person in the relationship makes sure the other has opened an online savings account and is contributing to it.

When you work hard, save money and both of you are contributing to a “family” or shared online savings account only, it only takes a wayward purchase made by a spouse to upset the other spouse. Like one spouse decides to buy a new drum set with the savings. This would NOT be a good thing to do if there was only one “family” or shared online savings account being used for “Rainy Day” money or building up emergency money.

I have also seen where the person in the relationship who is making significantly more money than the other contribute to the partner’s savings as well. Again, taking care of that person to make sure they feel secure with their own money.

Now, some of that leaves a lot of room for irresponsibility. These are the things to talk about that I mentioned in 7 Scenarios of Money in Marriage. Again, it sounds so simple but it’s very difficult to sit down and talk through what could happen or how each of you think of money that you’ve saved and how it should be spent.

You should hold savings, rainy day, emergency fund discussions at a minimum of once a year. Quarterly would be best. Ask, “How are we doing with our savings?”, “How much did we tell each other we’d save?”, “How much did we actually save?”, “How much of our savings did we need to use and why?”, etc., etc. I also like money discussions during tax season when everybody loves the mood that tax season puts you in.

If there are issues with saving and spending the savings on frivolous things then there’s no time like the present to put the kabosh on that in some way, communicating until it’s agreed upon and completely resolved. Sometimes this can lead to drastic decisions that should be thoroughly discussed with a marriage relationship counselor over a long period of time.