Women Who Travel

Planning a Honeymoon Brings Up a Big Question: Should We Merge Our Finances?

In our monthly advice column, we're tackling the most commonly asked questions from our Women Who Travel community.
woman holding wallet. dollar bills. flowers. purple backdrop
Jennelle Fong

Every traveler knows the feeling of desperately needing someone to turn to. In our Women Who Travel advice column, we'll be answering questions from our Facebook group members, readers, podcast listeners, newsletter subscribers, and travelers. Have a question? We'd love to hear from you. Email us at womenwhotravel@cntraveler.com.

Dear Women Who Travel,

After many pandemic delays, my fiancé and I are finally getting married this summer. Which also means we’re planning our honeymoon!

As someone who loves to travel, that’s the thing I’m most excited about. However, as we discuss our budget and where we want (or can) go, it’s brought up a big question we’ve sort of danced around until now. How much should we merge our finances?

We currently live together, and we tend to split things down the middle. Our bank accounts are separate. We Venmo each other like we do with our friends, and we’ve taken a similar approach with our wedding (which is on the smaller side), by just dividing costs. The honeymoon will actually be our biggest expenditure this far as a couple, and my fiancé has brought up the idea of setting up a joint bank account—we could use it to pay for everything on the trip, and transition to it for other things going forward.

I’m feeling nervous, though. I love my financial independence and never having to explain what I’m spending to someone. Is it silly to be Splitwise-ing my husband for dinners on our honeymoon, though? What do other people do? I need advice!

—Confused about money

Dear Confused Traveler, 

First off, congratulations! You've got a lot to look forward to in the months ahead, so whenever these stressors rise up, take a moment to pause and remember that. Then, with a deep breath, roll up your sleeves and knock these challenges out of the way so you can get back to the fun stuff. 

You raise such an interesting question, and I'd like to start by answering the last bit of it: What do other people do? 

I'm sure you realize, even in asking this question, that there are a million ways to manage money in a relationship, just as there are a million ways to be in a romantic relationship. But figuring out your finances can be incredibly stressful because so few people speak openly about it. To give you a sense of how wide-ranging approaches to money and honeymoons are, I posed your question to our Women Who Travel community on Instagram

One traveler, @captain_emilyg, said she and her husband struggled with how to split costs for their honeymoon in 2019, before they had joint accounts. They alternated paying for things during their road trip through Europe: He covered flights and a rental car, she covered accommodations and tours, and they took turns on everything else. Traveler @bridgetmorton1, on the other hand, said she and her significant other are merging finances ahead of their June '22 wedding. Another follower @deeinaus, suggested something in the middle: Creating a joint account through which you can pay for things upfront, like hotels and flights, then having your own cash for things you want to buy yourself. Of course, we also heard from women like @dinard, who is currently planning her own honeymoon and “not merging accounts anytime soon :).”

Suffice to say, there's no one right way to do it. But there are smart ways to tackle this challenge. Starting with the fact that, by asking this question, you're already on the right track. 

Writer Paulette Perhach, known for her viral essay about the importance of women having a “F*ck Off Fund,” agrees. “You need to be able to sit with [this] and look each other in the eye and talk about your finances,” Perhach says. “There are so many different ways to create a financial structure around your life, and if you sit and talk about it, you'll be able to find a way that works for you.” 

Part of that sit-and-talk approach means verbally expressing your values around money, like independence, while also outlining your financial goals as a couple. Being independent doesn't have to mean doing things in a silo.

“Being protective over what you’ve worked for is a natural response,” says Priya Malani, the founder and CEO of financial planning firm Stash Wealth. “But as both you and your partner are no longer thinking of things as ‘mine’ or ‘yours’ and instead, ‘ours,’ there’s an easy way to keep that autonomy you’re looking for while also working as a team for the goals you’ve set together—a honeymoon being the first.” Just like you will, at some point, probably sit down and discuss goals of buying a house, or maybe paying for a child to go to college, this honeymoon is a goal that requires money, and you need to be intentional about making a budget, and a plan for financing it, that outlines the roles and expectations you have of one another.

Brianna Glenn, the founder and owner of Milk + Honey, a travel company that specializes in honeymoon planning, says that budgets are a huge part of the consultation process with her clients. While there are a variety of ways that people finance these trips, she says that saving up, together, can be a way to share the costs whether or not you choose to merge the rest of your accounts. “I do like the idea of a joint fund for something like a honeymoon, especially if this is something you are saving towards and don't just already have that money sitting around,” says Glenn. “It allows you to be on the same page as you start to plan the honeymoon and think about the type of experience you want to have, and what kind of investment you are comfortable with.” Ultimately, the money you can both put aside will also determine, as you mention, where you can even go—especially if one of you, can easily afford to fly first class to the Maldives, while the other is isn't used to, or able to make, splurges like that. 

“Creating a team mindset is the most important reason to consider combining finances,” says says Priya Malani, the founder and CEO of financial planning firm Stash Wealth.

Jennelle Fong

Practically, saving together could look like a new joint account specifically for this honeymoon. If you make a new account, you can decide to both put a certain percent of your salary in each month, and then can watch it grow together while keeping the rest of your finances separate. When the trip rolls around, you can take out that money or use the debit card tied to it to pay for on-trip expenses. Of course, a credit card with rewards can make your money go further, Malani adds, and opening a joint card could be useful for future shared expenses (you'll want to weigh any fees against how often you plan to use it though).

This approach, of having one joint account for shared expenses, while keeping other money separate, is what most of the women I interviewed suggested—for your honeymoon, and in the years of marriage that follow. It can be hard to totally separate your money when your lives are intertwined, and there can be benefits to some shared assets (even for the most independent of us). 

“Creating a team mindset is the most important reason to consider combining finances,” says Malani. “When couples keep finances separate, we often find that it places an emphasis on the differences more than the similarities. It makes it more obvious who has more debt, who has a bigger income, etc., and ultimately it can lead to a couple nickel and dime-ing one another—which helps you go nowhere fast. It's much more efficient to drive towards [financial goals] together, as opposed to one of you in a Tesla and the other on a moped."

What really varies, however, is how much you choose to merge. Malani says she generally encourages couples to combine their finances, while keeping a “side stash"—a checking account that each of you keep money in, which you're able to spend on whatever you want, judgement-free. 

Perhach adds that you can divvy up your money in more than two ways, if that feels more appropriate for you. “I did not realize this as a younger person, but you can have multiple bank accounts.” Maybe you have a joint account that, in addition to paying for your honeymoon, pays for all those things you will always be Venmoing each other for—whether that is just the big ticket items, like rent or a mortgage, shared car payments, or routine expenses like date nights together, groceries, and the Netflix account you both watch. But the card you throw down at the nail salon, or on a round of drinks for your friends on a weekend trip? That's your personal spending account. (Which shouldn't be, for the record, the F*ck Off Fund Perhach also encourages women to have—that's your safety net, should you ever want to leave your job or even your relationship.)

It may take more than one conversation to find what works for you two. Glenn says that “your honeymoon will probably set the tone for how you vacation in the future as well,” and having transparency around money is a great foot to start on. That doesn't mean you can't experiment, though. Perhaps you try something on this trip, like a joint account just for the honeymoon, and you see how it feels. Or maybe you decide it just isn't time to change what you're doing, and that's okay, too. Like your relationship, your finances—and how you manage them, together—will always be evolving. 

—Women Who Travel