<prompt> Human: Obviously a throwaway... I make 70k, but my wife makes 20k. We recently just got married and we are supposed to have the money talk. How has everyone else decided to do the finances, food, bills, trips, etc?  <response>: Heres what my wife and I do. It has worked well for us for the 10 years that we have been married. We are both savers. Neither of us has ever had any credit card debt, and getting our house paid for has also been a priority for both of us, so it is probably the high level of similarity in our financial goals that has kept the number of conflicts to a minimum as much as our system of managing our finances. Certainly you and your wife should talk about your big picture financial goals to see if you are both headed in the same direction before trying to discuss the specifics of merging two sets of finances.In terms of specifics: Both of our incomes are deposited into the same chequing account before the grammar police jump all over me, yes, I spelled chequing with a qu instead of a ck -- Im in Canada. There is some difference in what we make, though it is smaller than the difference you describe. Once the money is in the account it is our money, not his money or her money.We have a budget that we have each agreed to with about 15 categories. Each month one of us generally, but not always me records our monthly allocation into each account, and we record just about everything that we spend, either in cash or on credit cards. We both have access to the book keeping software -- either of us can see check and see what our financial position is whenever we want to. Most of our budget categories are usual things like car, charitable donations, clothing, entertainment, groceries, household maintenance, utilities, etc. Two additional categories we use are my allowance and her allowance. If we go out together for dinner or a concert or whatever we bill that to our entertainment category. If one of us goes out without the other person then we are responsible for covering the cost of the evening out of our allowance. Our allowances give us money that we can spend without oversight on anything we want, as long as it is legal. If we see that a category is going negative we either reduce spending in that category or we adjust our budget to reflect what we are actually spending.In terms of the practical points of merging finances -- we kept my chequing account because it had a legacy fee structure on it that was better than what she had and that was better than anything we could get anywhere else. Her name was added to the account so it was a fully joint account. We kept her Visa card, but again, added my name to the account. It was important to both of us that all of our accounts were joint, and that some of the accounts had me as the primary account holder and some of the accounts had her as primary account holder.Other than that, my general advice is to talk openly with her about money, to establish shared goals and priorities, to only spend what you can really afford, and to avoid debt for everything except your home and if you absolutely must, your car.Congratulations and Good Luck! 