<prompt> Human: My boyfriend and I are in a serious, long term relationship. We live together and are planning on having children in the near future. We have spoken about our finances and agree that ifwhen we start a family, I would be responsible for bill payments etc as I am better at managing money, although we have similar financial goals.We each have a similar priced house and mortgage in our name and have around 20K in our respective offset accounts. We also both have credit cards, but are pretty good with these so we dont have any debt in this area.What is the best way to go about combining our finances? I feel like the best location for our money at the moment is in our offset accounts. Can we combine these somehow? Is there any benefit in creating a new joint account?Also is there anything else I need to consider?  <response>: I dont know anything about how to combine finances - but i do know that i would never want to do that :S.I believe it creates too much co-dependency in a relationship and ultimately one person always feels the lesser because of it usually the one earning less. Whereas in a relationship without combined finances, where both people have their independent incomes and accounts, gifts can go both ways regardless of value and without any resentment regarding the money side of things.Especially appropriate when things go south, as they tend to do go sometimes, it is so much cleaner and simpler. I am not talking about planning to fail here but a healthy appreciation of the risks, challenges and realities of real-world-life cant be a bad thing pre nuptials do exist and arent really bad IMO.I am not trying to convince you not to share your finances, that is a decision you want to make, so sure who am i to say it is wrong : i am just saying in my experience life has been so much better when they have remained separate.My SO and I have 3 kids - we live in a house i own, even though she owns her own property elsewhere. We decided very specifically not to sell up and combine - not because we plan to be apartseparate but because of all the muddy water that creates. We both feel that having independent financial lives, but paying for whatever we can together, gives each of us greater agency and a higher respect for each other without having anyone feel the lesser, disadvantaged or being taken care of or manipulated or taken advantage of.Wow how complex human lives and emotions are. 