Plan the transfers that move money from your salaries into shared and personal accounts.
When two people earn and share a home, bills tend to get paid as they come up. Whoever remembers pays, and whoever is at the supermarket buys the groceries. After a few months neither of you can say who paid for what. Each of you may start to suspect you pay more than your share, even though nobody has kept count.
Daniel and Hui Min are a two-income couple with no plan. Daniel's salary lands and he pays the utilities because he remembers. Hui Min's salary arrives a few days later. She buys groceries for this week and next, plus a gift for Daniel's mother's birthday. One of them pays the town council. Nobody is sure who paid the internet. By the third month, each of them privately suspects they pay more than their share.
Choosing a set of accounts won't fix this by itself. An account model only works if money moves through it on its own. The setup below takes The Singapore personal finance system, lesson 2.3, "Automate payday so saving happens first", and rebuilds it for two people instead of one.
Start with the account each salary is paid into. This is usually an account in the earner's own name, because employers pay salaries into a named employee's account. Some couples ask for a salary to go straight into a joint account. Some banks allow this, but check with both the employer and the bank before you ask for the change.
Bonus interest can decide where each salary should land. Many accounts pay a higher rate only in months when a salary is credited. How money works, lesson 1.2, "How a bank earns the interest it pays you", explains how this works. If one of you earns that bonus today, moving the salary into a joint account could lose it. A joint account at a bank that counts salary credits from either holder could gain a bonus instead. Read the conditions on each bank's website and work out which arrangement leaves the two of you better off. Do not assume a joint account qualifies for bonus interest the same way an individual account does.
The payday flow is how money moves each month once the salaries arrive. It has three parts:
Contributions in: a transfer from each salary account into the shared account for that person's agreed contribution. Module 3 covers how to set the contribution fairly. For now any sensible starting figure is fine, and you will update it later. Shared costs out: mortgage or rent, conservancy charges, utilities, internet, groceries and any joint savings goal leave from the shared account. Put as many of these as you can on GIRO or a standing instruction so they leave without anyone needing to remember. A debit card on the shared account works for groceries and household shopping. Personal bills from what remains: each personal account pays that person's own bills, such as a phone plan, their own insurance premiums, a study loan, or an allowance to their own parents if you have agreed that allowance is personal.
Date every transfer a day or two after the later of the two salaries usually arrives. If a salary sometimes lands late because of a weekend or public holiday, allow for that as well, or a transfer may fail or leave an account short.
Each of you needs a personal amount, which is money you can spend on anything without asking, explaining or justifying it later. Bubble tea, a new phone and a gift for your partner all count. The personal amount is what keeps the peace between you. Without it, a saver ends up auditing a spender's lunches and a spender ends up hiding purchases. With personal amounts in place, the shared account carries your shared life and the personal accounts carry everything else.
The two amounts do not have to be equal. In a hybrid model they usually aren't, because contributions to the shared account aren't equal either. What matters is that both of you know each personal figure and agree to it.
When Daniel and Hui Min sit down to plan, they start with the dates. Daniel's salary lands on the last working day of the month and Hui Min's lands on the 25th (example dates, and every figure in this section is an example too). They keep both salaries in their current accounts, because each account earns bonus interest on salary credits. They open a joint "either to sign" account for the flat and the household.
On the 2nd of each month, each of them sends S$1,500 to the joint account. Together that covers about S$3,000 of shared costs while they work out a fairer split in module 3. Rent on their current place leaves by standing instruction on the 3rd. Utilities, internet and joint savings for their BTO flat leave by GIRO and standing instruction later in the week.
Daniel keeps his card repayment, his phone bill and S$400 for his parents in his own account. Hui Min keeps her loan repayment, her phone bill and S$500 for her parents in hers.
They draw the flow on paper, with two salary boxes on the left, the joint account box in the middle, and arrows out to every bill. The drawing shows that Hui Min, on the lower salary, has much less left than Daniel after an equal transfer. They write a question mark beside it to come back to in module 3.
Now draw your own flow. On a single sheet of paper, put every account you use, every amount that moves and the date it moves.
Draw your payday money flow on one page. Show every account, each amount and the day it moves.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).