<prompt> Human: Alright, so I 34m and my fiance 24f have been in a long distance relationship for the last 14 months. I asked her to marry me 4 months into our relationship, and the original plan was once she finished her masters in MFT, shed move here and wed start our married life together. That didnt happen, and she decided to pursue her PhD, putting us into a minimum 3-year LDR. This came about because she is an international student, and was worried about getting a visa after our marriage.I suggested we merge our finances together so we can show we can handle our finances together, good for proving our marriage is legit but it is providing to be difficult for our relationship as it has caused a number of different issues relating to, you guessed it, Money. We had an incident where we severely overdrew our joint account together, and it forced us to adopt a together but separate approach where we use the same account but keep track of our finances separately on a joint spreadsheet we each update regularly.Currently, she pulls in 1500mo, and I pull in 3800mo in income. So theres a pretty huge discrepancy in our financial picture. I pick up almost all of our travel expenses, and am working hard to pay off 5k in CC debt that I earned during a long stint of unemployment. Its hard to say we are joint when we have two separate households to manage finances for, each of us living in our own place and two hugely disparate incomes. The problems crop up when we discuss large purchases. I feel that her purchases are going to be a burden on her budget, and she feels like we are always going to be separate even though my most measures, we really are pretty separate. Most recently it was her toying with the idea of buying. 720 phone, and thinking she could afford 30 a month for the next two years. I am more than willing to help her with necessary expenses like food, medical, and that sort of thing if it comes unexpectedly and she needs help. She had an 800 endoscopy bill from a surprise ulcer recently, and I shouldered that because it was important to her health. But when it comes to luxury purchases, I feel that she should have to cover those within her own monthly income. This usually turns into threats of her pulling out of the join account and feeling like well always be separate. Shes not prone to emotional manipulation as far as I know.Has anyone been in this kind of a situation?TL;DRLDR, 2 households, Joint Finances proving to be a hassle, what have you done?  <response>: Uhm, yeah, this is an rrelationships problem. Its a horrendous idea to join your finances 4 months into a 3 year LDR. That makes absolutely 0 sense whatsoever. Its not even really a great idea to do it before youre married. Keep your finances separate until you move in together. 