In the ten years I’ve written about personal finance, one of the most common questions I get is about the best way for couples to budget and manage their money together. There are plenty of tech-powered tools for individuals who want to get their finances in order, but fewer for couples. That’s especially the case for younger people, who often want track shared finances while preserving separate accounts.
Now, Origin, a budgeting and personal finance platform, is rolling out an update that will allow users to link their partner’s financial accounts to theirs, giving couples a more encompassing view of their finances than many other apps offer. After walking through the new features myself, it might be the most useful interface I’ve come across for couples looking for an easy to use but comprehensive budgeting solution, especially since Intuit shut down budgeting powerhouse Mint last year.
I joined Origin in January, eager to find a budgeting app that would give me an overview of my spending and assets, and let me easily catalogue expenses. You Need a Budget, a popular app and budgeting philosophy, proved a little too time-consuming for me (though others swear by it), and the Excel spreadsheet I created to track my net worth left much to be desired. Since using Origin, I haven’t been disappointed. The app connects to most of my financial accounts (though I have some trouble with some smaller financial institutions), and adding and editing expenses is simple and intuitive. I appreciate the charts and graphs the app provides of my spending, net worth, and investments, and it’s been especially helpful to track wedding-related expenses over the past few months. I even used Origin to file my tax returns this past year for free (granted I had an extremely simple tax situation and didn’t need add-ons).
The only thing the app was missing was a way for my fiancé to add his accounts and credit cards, so that we could use it as our joint budgeting and financial planning app. As we approach our wedding day, we’ve been looking for a simple way to get on the same page and have a better understanding of our household finances. Origin’s newest update, available to users starting Wednesday, is a promising fix.
Called Partner Mode, a user can invite their partner to join the app for free, and then each partner can connect and view all of their financial accounts in a single, shared dashboard. Users don’t have to share everything—only the accounts they feel comfortable linking.
Origin allows users to connect checking accounts, savings accounts, credit cards, loans, mortgage payments, retirement accounts, and other investments, meaning couples will be able to check their total net worth and track spending. Couples can also create shared budgets and establish spending goals.
But the feature I’m most excited about is the personalized toggles, displayed in the upper lefthand corner of the photo above, for “yours, theirs, and ours,” where each user can easily move between viewing their own individual finances, their partner’s accounts, or a combined view. I’m primarily interested in my own spending patterns, but it’s nice to be able to view our joint status with the touch of a finger.
Origin can also run reports, analyzing spending patterns over months of use, for example, that can give you an idea of places to cut back if needed. And as both partners have access, it can start demystifying the household finances if one tends to be more hands off.
How couples manage their money
The features came out of Origin’s team responding to what their users desired, Matt Watson, Origin’s CEO, told me earlier this year. Though there are plenty of books, articles, and videos out there giving advice on how to budget as a couple, it’s still something people struggle with, as every household’s finances—and feelings about those finances—is different. No two couples will take exactly the same approach.
But whether you merge all financial accounts or keep them separate—or take some other approach—Watson says it’s important for each partner to have an idea of their shared financial picture, which is what Origin aims to offer.
“If you don’t completely merge, I think it’s helpful to understand where you sit as a family, what the spending looks like, what your goals are,” he says. “Ultimately, those are all shared, even if every single detail of the finances aren’t.”
In practice, this means some couples will only share joint credit cards while keeping their personal cards off the app for privacy. Ultimately, each couple can decide on their own what their expectations are.
But Watson says his goal is to help modern day couples dealing with all of the complexities of finances in 2025: as couples get married later, each spouse is more likely to have multiple jobs with different retirement accounts, brokerage accounts, individual checking and savings, a mortgage, potentially rental income, and so on. Having everything linked in one place that each partner can easily review can give households peace of mind that they are making progress on their financial goals, whether that’s saving for retirement, buying a home, or going on a trip.
It can also open up conversations about spending and savings trends. Amazon is by far the most popular merchant for Origin users, says Watson, and it is easy to overspend on a retailer that has taken much of the friction out of making purchases. But couples can review how much they are spending at each retailer, have periodic check ins with each other, and make adjustments as needed.
“There’s just a lot of complexity, and this is the easiest way just to get a full picture of what’s coming in and what’s going out, and where’s it going,” says Watson. “Just getting on the same page and being aligned on achieving our goals as a family is, very, very helpful for us.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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