Should we use a Bank or Credit Union for a joint account?
For context: we aren’t married, but have lived together for several years now. In that process our finances began to overlap a lot and It’s harder to get a clear picture of how much money we have throughout the month and budget while we’re sending money back and forth between each other and using multiple cards. We also both want to be able to keep autonomy over our respective disposable income at the end of the month.
The initial solution we came up with was to keep our individual personal checking and savings accounts and each contribute 1/2 of the total amount budgeted for rent, bills, and shared household expenses into a shared checking. We usually buy things like groceries with a rewards credit card, so that account would be used to pay that off each month as well. We live in a pretty walkable city, but are trying to save for the down payment on a car as well.
She does her primary banking through a national credit union, and I use a traditional bank. We’ve considered a couple pros/cons of each for our lifestyles and financial plans together.
TLDR: My partner and I want to open a joint checking/savings account while still maintaining our personal accounts mainly for paying necessary monthly expenses, saving for emergencies, and major shared purchases but can’t decide which would make the most sense between a credit union or traditional bank.
Any thoughts or advice are appreciated as we’re fairly new to this but want to start making wiser financial decisions together.