This is the financial model seen most often in today's new marriages, whether due to personal preference, economic necessity, or both. If the couple has children, usually the woman takes off time from her career to stay home. However, most of these women (60 percent) plan to return to part-time or full-time work when the child enters day care or school.

When two people in a marriage are working outside the home and co-managing a household (with children) they confront a host of money management challenges that test their teamwork and communications skills as well as their commitment to the marriage.

The key to managing this money model is coordination. In the next chapter there are specific recommendations for setting up both joint and separate bank accounts, budgeting, and how to monitor joint and separate spending.

For this money model to work there must be total honesty, deep self-knowledge by each person, and regular in-depth discussions between the two partners. Whereas in all three of these marital money models each partner makes himself vulnerable by allowing the other access to all his financial resources, his credit, and his future dreams, when both make and spend the money, the playing field of risks and opportunities to succeed is level.

Each trusts the other to hold up her end of the bargain, because the household's survival depends on both keeping their jobs, picking up the kids at day care, sharing the housework, and somehow having enough energy left at the end of the day to enjoy a marital relationship. This doesn't mean the partners can't and shouldn't divide up responsibilities between them, but there are more fault lines in this model, more balls in the air.