I Now Pronounce You One Bank Account

I confess to a morbid fascination in reading the very good Slate series, by my sometime antagonist Jessica Grose, on whether couples do, or should, merge their finances. I won't summarize her findings, based on an admittedly unscientific survey of Slate readers, except to say that a lot more couples keep separate finances than I had realized. But do go read the series to learn what she found, and to read lots of provocative anecdotes about how separate, or merged, or partly merged finances, work.

For my part, just three comments:

1) I realize that financial life is difference for couples who are gay, and so lack certain legal protections because they cannot (it is terrible to say) marry in most places. And financial life is different for people who are on second marriages, especially if they have children or other responsibilities from the first marriage. So the next two comments are about couples who can, and do, marry, or couples who commit to a long-term partnership that they believe and hope will last forever.

Read Points 2 and 3, plus thrilling conclusion