<prompt> Human: I have been married for 3.5 years now, and my wife and I have always kept separate finances with a joint account to pay the monthly shared bills from. x200B;Our incomes have become different enough that it is not really working anymore to maintain separate finances, so I am making a new family budget and plan to have completely combined finances. x200B;Do you have any suggestions? I am just getting started, but I can already tell it will be difficult to compare my saving progress before and after because I had everything calculated based on a percentage of MY gross salary, and now everything will be based on OUR gross incomes. What else should I watch for, consider, etc.? Assistant: it will be difficult to compare my saving progress before and afterSpoiler: your saving before was both of yours. If you are talking about retirement savings, you should be saving 15 of your gross household income i.e. if you make 70k and she makes 30k, save 15k. Also, you should read up on how to combine money behaviorally and mentally. Having the mindset of her spendingsaving part of your income will create issues trust me!. I know this sub has its issues with Dave Ramsey, but I think he is really good with getting out of debt and advocating strong marriages. Maybe read his book Total Money Makeover or More than Enough if you havent yet. Good luck!Human: I know what you mean by your spoiler, but that isnt quite my problem. When I say we kept separate finances, I mean Ive been tracking mine for years very meticulously, and she has not at all. So I know what percent of my salary we have been saving, but I do not know what percent of her salary we have been saving, so I cannot calculate a total for our before saving to make sure it is staying the same or increasing now that I will be tracking all of our money. Assistant: ok - I dont know you from Adam, but thats typically a sign that you need to sit down and talk about things besides money. Money arguments are the 1 cause for divorce. And again, while I dont know you, its rather rare to keep money that separate and not have some issues come to light. Best of luck.Human: I totally get what you are saying. It probably sounds worse than it is when I write it out like that, and it is also part of why we have decided to combine the finances. Shes not irresponsible, she just doesnt like to constantly think about and monitor her finances. She will talk about it when I want, and we make her a budget, but without a lot of help from me she doesnt do a great job tracking and following it; just an OK job. Since I track all mine anyway, just combining everything and tracking it all will be better for both of us I think. We will discuss and talk about the budget, decide together what our allowances will be, and hopefully it all goes smoothly. We do talk about finances regularly, and there are no secrets, we just have different styles to figure out.  <response>: You sound just like my husband and I when we first got married - he wasnt blowing money everywhere but he didnt have the same check-the-account-daily outlook I did. The more we communicated the more comfortable and diligent he became, and the more laidback I became! 