<prompt> Human: My husband is a UK citizen while Im in the US, so weve not yet joined our finances. Now were looking at this summer as our goal to be living together and its time to start thinking about how to combine households. Any suggestions for how to go about this would be appreciated. In general we dont want to have his and hers money. There will be a period after he moves when hes unemployedlooking for work, but going forward well be sharing expenses equally. Im not sure if we should maintain separate checking and savings accounts while adding a joint accounts, or combine either or both of the existing. What has worked well for you?  <response>: When I got married I had some assets, house, retirement accounts and a good job. My wife was still in school with no money and school loans. I wanted to keep a separate account and make a joint account but my wife wanted to only have a joint account. Initially I was against it. I am 10 yes older and sacrified a lot to save. I hate to admit but she was right. Its much easier to share finances and joining finances is part of marriage. We use Mint so we can see everything each other spends without any secrets. Large purchases are always discussed and even small spending habits are discussed from time to time. We do have disagreements from time to time but eventually come to consensus. At times we have traded off the job of paying bills and budgeting. We talk about long and short term goals. I dont know if its because of our personalities, but I think it helps commingling money because we dont buy unnecessary stuff. We bought a house together and agree how much we save for retirement. Even though I still make more, we split retirement savings equally my Roth is still much larger since I had a head start. Probably helps that we both agree to live within our means and make more than than average. 