<prompt> Human: My husband and I have been together ten years, and have maintained separate bank accounts at separate banks. Were really starting to crack down on our finances, but it gets a little annoying having to switch money between accounts to cover different bills.What are the pros and cons of us opening a joint bank account in lieu of the separate accounts we manage at the moment?Update:Thanks everyone! I think the general feeling Im getting is that there is not really any downside to getting a joint bank account. I appreciate the input!Assistant: The pros are it would be a lot easier to track and you wouldnt have to transfer money. The only con would be if you didnt trust the other person.Human: Second con: It makes it a bit hard to surprise SO with gifts at Christmas if they see the accounts regularly. Of course, if this is the biggest problem in your life, youre doing OK. I mostly bring this up to point out that there really are no downsides. Once youre married, youre responsible for SOs financial screw-ups and debts even if its just in their name, so maintaining separate accounts doesnt really protect you, anyway.EDIT: There are clearly ways around the gift issue. If you use Mint or something similar to keep track of all accounts in the family, credit cards dont solve the issue. But a generic gift card probably does. Assistant: This has been one of my holdups. Gift giving is my husbands love language. I worry that hell get a little disappointed when Im following charges in the joint account on a day to day basis.  <response>: My wife and I have a set of joint accounts that we deposit our paychecks into. Each month, we have an auto transfer out to our personal accounts. From a budgeting perspective, that allowance is just treated as an expense and assumed its spentso no need to further track.It works well to cover the exact situation youre worried about, but also prevents arguments about how much she wants to spend on shoes or I want to spend on video games. What we do with our allowance is our choice to make. 