Having 1, 2 or 3 bank accounts?

Glad to hear we’re not totally freaky with this setup :blush:

1 Like

We have a joint account for all joint expenses, which are nearly all expenses we have, apart from personal spending. We pay in according to a pre-defined split, based on our salaries, roughly 2:1. Works really well.

We both have personal accounts on the side for various reasons. I think too many, but that’s a separate discussion.

My understanding here is, standard is 50:50 of the net savings since marriage. Both partners get back 100% of what they brought into the marriage (if the net savings hence are positive, otherwise things get hairy) . As long as you can clearly define what’s pre-marriage and what has been saved afterwards it should be transparent enough?

This would need to be verified by a legal professional though. Just if things get ugly

Gf and I have each our accounts and cards and whoever spends money for both will put the stub/invoice/bill in a box. 4 times a year I compile everything, including cash spent abroad, do the fx calculations and then rebalance, so it is shared according to our ratio. This paper exercise takes about 1 hour each quarter. Old school, I know. Should I try the Splitwise app?

1 Like

DINK here. No joint account. Joint credit card which we use to pay for everything shared. I pay the rest (eBills, etc) and reconcile at the end of the month using Wallet by Budgetmakers (automated import+classification). Process takes ~30’/mo.

We split according to our income 65/35 and each one can spend our own money as we wish.

1 Like

I am not sure you are right. Actually I think you are wrong. Once you marry without any contract, everything will be divided.
edit: I can’t find a good source. It is not 100% clear to me what says the law. It is not clear if the savings made before the marriage are part of the estate. I’ve read only simple examples like those on divorzio.ch

Speaking about joint account, PF has a nice article:

Myfirstme is right. If you marry without explicitely choosing an other regime, then what you have before the marriage won’t be split (at least the value they had at the time of the wedding). Art 181 CC/ZGB

1 Like

The Swiss stadard marriage contract is the “Errungenschaftsbeteiligung”. Whatever P&L has accrued during marriage will be split 50:50 during divorce. If one partner decided to start a business during marriage, the other is automatically participating, even if no effort has been spent (think Amazon). On the other hand, a non-gambling partner also participates in any gambling debt. But I am disgressing - we were discussing bank accounts :slight_smile:

3 Likes

What about capital gains / dividends on stocks / ETFs during marriage that were taken into marriage? What about inheritance? Might be a good time to split the topic :sweat_smile:

Dividends are clearly split. If you inherit from someone during the marriage, it is yours, but not the future income.

in my case, it doesn’t really matter, both of us were 0 before married 12 years ago. So a clear and easy 50/50 split

With that said, my goal is that we, both, have transparency on the finance.

After several different arrangements over the years, we’ve settled on each having our own bank accounts and having a joint credit card. Almost all expenses besides rent and health insurance get paid from this card. My wife has an automatic transfer set up to the card for a fixed amount each month and I take care of the rest (she only works part-time so a large salary difference). This amount was calculated based on:

(avg. household monthly spending)*(her avg. monthly salary)/(our combined avg. monthly salaries).

This is the “equitable” approach, I think.

We have a joint account and personal accounts in our names only.

Salary comes into personal accounts, and we wire a fixed amount every month into the common account for paying groceries, rent, and other fun expenditures like that. The amount we pay in is proportional to our share of income so if one earns 60% and the other 40% of the total couple income then that’s also how much each pays of common expenditures.

Health insurance is paid on our individual accounts.

For some reason our banks gives us two credit cards each (one visa and one MC) so we made one card pay from the common account and one for the personal account. This way, we pay common expenses with our personal card that is paid from the joint account.

The only PITA is for purchases in other currencies because we then have to use our own TransferWise cards and that takes manual reconciliation every month (amazon charges in EUR, aliexpress charges in whatever currency they’ve decided I’m using today, ebay charges in the sellers currency)

It works well, mostly just works without spending hours reconciling amounts monthly, and makes us both feel like we’re not dependent financially on the other so there are no barriers keeping us from speaking up if one or the other isn’t happy.

1 Like

I revive this topic as I’m having the same issue. I did open the PF account a few years ago as a personal account where my wife has a delegation (signature, personal debit card). My wife was not working at the time. This was our one and only bank account. Since then she got employed → her salary was paid on this account and we did contribute to her 3A from the same account.

Now, PF’s compliance department knocked at my door saying that I’m not allowed to do this (I would need a joint account) but the joint account would be a completely new account (different IBAN) which I don’t want as I have everything set up (salary, e-bill etc etc) on this account and I’d prefer to avoid the hassle…

As an emergency step I did open a CSX account in my wife’s name and from now onwards her salary will land there. Nevertheless my plan for the next future is to continue to use our PF account as main account for the daily administration (expenses etc).

I’m requested from PF to fill an A2 form in which I have to declare the “wirtschaftlich Berechtigte(n)” and I’m a bit lost… I would think that this is both (me&wife) but of course it is a single pot with many ins & outs so it is not possible to define how much would “belong” to each… on the other hand I think that if I write it’s only me this would not be correct and on the form is stated that I’ll go to jail if I provide an unfaithful declaration… :cold_face:

Any advice on this ?

1 Like

Thank you @Patron. I see the issue. This is now solved with the second individual account in her name.
I’ll declare both as “beneficiary” on the A2 form, I hope PF compliance will not ask for a split (it is not required in the form but I fear they might come with additional requests once they receive it).
In the long term I will probably open a new (joint) PF account, migrate everything (salary, e-bills etc) to the new one and later on close the PF individual account.