Relationships are mysterious enough. Your shared finances can be, too.

The idea of combining your stuff and hers is…complicated. Every guy who’s moved in with his girl knows that the Chinese term feng shui roughly translates to, “All your stuff is going in the basement.” Just like a relationship, your financial life takes work. Combing your finances with your significant other, who doesn’t necessarily have the same priorities as you, can be a real nightmare. If you approach the problem head-on, there really is nothing to be scared of.

The best method is pretty obvious: Talk about it with you partner. If you can freely discuss financial issues, there should be few problems you can’t solve. Both of you need to negotiate boundaries and acceptable spending habits. A sensible strategy is to set up a joint account and take an approach where, over time, you allow your financial lives to intermingle.

Trust is key in this approach, as a violation of preset boundaries, when you’re sharing resources, is often taken as an insult. It’s comparable, to a limited degree, to being in business with someone: If you make bad decisions or violate an agreement, they probably will no longer want to work with you.

Most couples don’t have it this easy when it comes to financial communication. Though some financial stuff is a breeze to discuss, most of it can be touchy. For starters, men and woman tend to spend differently. Splitting the utility bills down the middle is an obvious enough strategy, but it becomes muddier when it comes to valuing discretionary expenses. Both men and woman get sensitive about these types of expenditures, sometimes treating questions about their validity as an attack. If your partner tends to spend much more frivolously than you prefer (or, if you get the sense that your partner thinks this of you), it’s worth looking at some other options.

Option one is the far, other extreme, the complete opposite of combining finances: keeping finances completely separate. Couples adopting this approach make agreed-upon contributions to the partnership’s combined expenses, and keep their own books beyond that. This can work well enough, but it falls to both partners to do significant forward planning, always keeping future needs in mind. This means, asking some hard questions, and often needing to make up for financial gaps as the result of one partner’s arbitrary frivolousness.

All of this without even acknowledging income inequality. It can be tough to support another person; equally, it can be mentally stressful and even upsetting to feel like you need to be supported. If you’re the party with more money, be careful to not push your partner to finance things they can’t afford. Numerous poor financial decisions are made while under one kind of stress or another.

If you’re the one without the healthy income? Make sure you don’t give in to living beyond your means. Once again, the only real solution is to talk out the details and agree on boundaries; otherwise, misunderstandings are inevitable.

From a purely technical standpoint, it’s all-but impossible for your long-term financial lives to not intermingle. So, acknowledge it. Tackle the issue directly: you’ll have a better result than if you ignore things and hope the just work out. As a couple’s/family’s liabilities increase, it only becomes more vital for both partners to be involved and educated about their financial situation. Combined financial accounts can be set-up to provide various ancillary benefits, including coverage for fraud and other kinds of losses. Talk to your bank, broker, accountant or lawyer, who can help clarify your options so that you make the best choices. There is mystery enough in love, which can be romantic in its own way; mystery in mixed finances can only lead to trouble, which is eminently NO-mantic.

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Image courtesy of Ken Teegardin.