You will be able to design the transfers that move money from salaries to shared and personal accounts.
Picture the end of the month in a two-income household without a plan. Daniel's salary lands, and he pays the utilities because he remembers. Hui Min's lands a few days later, and she buys the groceries for the week, plus the next week, and a gift for his mother's birthday. Somebody pays the town council. Nobody is sure who paid the internet. By the third month, each of them privately suspects they are paying more than their share.
An account model only works if money moves through it on its own. This lesson is about designing that movement: which account each salary lands in, what moves where on payday, and what each of you keeps for yourself. If you took The Singapore personal finance system, this is lesson 2.3 of that course, Automate payday so saving happens first, built for two people instead of one.
Start with the account each salary is paid into. Usually that is an account in the earner's own name, because employers pay salaries to a named employee's account. Some couples ask for a salary to go straight into a joint account, and some banks allow it, but check with both the employer and the bank first.
Then look at whether the salary account earns bonus interest. Many accounts pay a higher rate only in months when a salary is credited, as lesson 1.2 of How money works, How a bank earns the interest it pays you, explains. That condition can decide where each salary should land. Moving a salary to a joint account could mean losing a bonus one of you currently earns, while a joint account at a bank that counts salary credits from either holder could mean gaining one. Read the conditions on each bank's website and work out which arrangement leaves you better off. Do not assume a joint account qualifies in the same way.
Once both salaries have landed, the flow has three parts.
The first is a transfer from each salary account into the shared account, for each person's agreed contribution. Module 3 covers how to set that amount fairly. For now, any sensible starting figure will do, and you will update it later.
The second is the shared costs coming out of the shared account. The flat's mortgage or rent, conservancy charges, utilities, internet, the groceries and any joint savings goal all leave from there. Put as many as you can on GIRO or a standing instruction, so they leave without either of you remembering. A debit card on the shared account works for groceries and household shopping.
The third is what remains in each personal account. Each 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 is personal, come out of their own money.
Date every transfer for a day or two after the later of the two salaries usually arrives. If one salary sometimes lands late because of a weekend or public holiday, allow for that, or a transfer will fail or leave an account short.
Leave each partner a personal amount that is theirs. They should be able to spend it on anything, from bubble tea to a new phone to a gift for the other person, without asking, explaining or justifying it later.
This is the part of a money flow that keeps the peace. Without it, a saver ends up auditing a spender's lunches, and a spender ends up hiding purchases. With it, the shared account carries the shared life and the personal accounts carry everything else.
The personal amounts do not have to be equal, and in a hybrid model they usually are not, because the contributions to the shared account are not equal either. What matters is that both of you know the figure and agree it.
All figures here are examples. Daniel's salary lands on the last working day of the month and Hui Min's on the 25th. They decide to keep both salaries where they are, 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. That covers about S$3,000 of shared costs while they work out the fairer split in module 3. Rent on their current place goes out by standing instruction on the 3rd. Utilities, internet and their joint savings for the BTO flat go by GIRO and standing instruction later in the week. Daniel keeps his card repayment, his phone bill and his S$400 for his parents in his own account. Hui Min keeps her loan repayment, phone bill and S$500 for her parents in hers.
Drawn on paper, the flow is two boxes on the left for the salaries, one box in the middle for the joint account, and arrows out to every bill. The draft makes one thing clear to both of them: Hui Min, on the lower salary, has much less left than Daniel after an equal transfer. They write a question mark beside it for module 3.
Your own drawing needs every account you use, every amount that moves, and the date it moves. Use a single sheet of paper for it.
Draw your payday money flow on one page, with every account, the amount and the day it moves.
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