I've heard this topic come up a couple of times around the internet but also in my circle of friends - do you keep separate bank accounts? Hell yes!

Personal finance is something not really taught at school where I come from and so a lot of the learnings were trial/error based. It's also a topic that is emotionally charged, many of us don't like to talk about money and how to best deal with it. For instance, I wish I had known about compound interest when I was in my teens. So I could have avoided blowing good money on useless stuff and actually starting to build for later much sooner. The approach my parents taught me e.g. "Hold on to every cent" wasn't really working with my interest in gadgetry.

We also read beautiful stories from r/wsb and Gamestop millionaires, Bitcoin tycoons and get rich quick masters on the internet on a daily basis. This is actually dangerous, I strongly believe that financial stability is a long game. I believe that if you get rich quick, you'll most likely get poor again real quick too.

Anyways, as an adult now (at least physically ;)) and having been married for 14 years, there is one thing that was important to get right: Family finances.

There is 3 steps to what has worked for me and I'd like to share them here

1) Separate bank accounts:
Initially, my wife and I had a common bank account with multiple cards. So when payday hit, this account would fill with a certain amount of $$$ and we'd then use that throughout the month as bills needed to be paid, family clothes needed to be bought, groceries, a new playstation, some online subscriptions, the car needs new tyres etc. 
You can probably already guess the issue with this approach. The type of payments are all over the place, some are family related, some are my hobbies, some are my wife's, some are ongoing bills, some are one offs. So how to solve for this?

Yes separate bank accounts! 

We did it quite straight forward

Why keep those separate accounts and why keep them invisible towards each other? Simple! Trust! I also don't check my wife's phone and she doesn't check mine (even though she knows my pin). Even in marriage, everybody should still have privacy and the right to keep some things to themselves. We believe that our personal finances are exactly that. 
If you are worried that your wife may secretly stash money, to then leave you one day... then you actually have a different set of problems. 

2) Giving every dollar a job:
If you are familiar with YNAB or the likes, you already know the concept. There are 2 sides, one one side money comes in (often through a paycheck) and on the other side money goes out (bills, groceries, fun money etc). The important thing is that one's job is to design our own life in a way that the income side is larger than the outgoing side.
But if that's not the case, don't worry. It's never really too late to build better habits when it comes to money.
In the simplest way, I'd recommend to create a budget which holds all the fixed and variable monthly costs and contrasts that with the pay. You may realise that after all your costs are accounted for that you have a surplus of money. That's fabulous! Now the important thing here is that even this surplus has a job, some of it may go to savings, some may go to fun money, some may be there to create/ grow a "rainy day fund".
The moment the money is budgeted for, it is much less likely that you accidentally end in debt because you actually control where the spend is going.
At first this may seem very daunting and scary, maybe even a bit embarrassing (definitely was for me) but once you realise that you will be in control, it will actually be a great feeling of relief. Even if you are in debt at the moment.
There is much to say about this topic, but I feel Dave Ramsey said it best in his book "The Total Money Makeover"
The most liberating feeling is to have a rainy day fund which can cover 6 months of my costs in case I lose my job. That feeling of being able to just survive for half a year and not having to rush into another job is absolute bliss. It took a while to build, but it was so worth it!

3) Paying myself:
Lastly but not less important, I pay myself every month. I also pay my wife every month. Seems weird, but it's quite natural. I earn a variable income based on some factors in my job and some months give me a small surplus, some months give me a little bigger surplus. I've made a simple rule to pay myself 10% and pay my wife 10% of the surplus, the rest goes into savings or investments or into the rainy day fund. 

Let's say Sony finally get their act together and makes some PS5 consoles available in my market, I can then tap into my own personal bank account and buy that damned thing without any impact on our financial situation as a family. There is no guilt, no drama and no worries. If I am suddenly into some item which I really want but don't have enough cash in my account yet, then I'll need to save a few months before I can afford it or sell something I am not using anymore. Makes sense. 

There are many more great tips out there, there are whole communities to figure out how to be financially independent and retire early. (e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/Fire/) 

I always happy to chat more about any of this, drop me a note behy@hey.com