Combining finances

(source)

Mr. Spaniel and I aren't planning on fully combining our resources right away, but a few weeks before we moved in together this past July, we decided open a joint checking account for mutual expenses like rent, utilities, and groceries. This should have been easy, but between the two of us, we have accounts at six different financial institutions (and that doesn't include our student loans). His direct deposit goes into one account, which he then writes himself a check to transfer to a different bank, and anything he can save moves into an online savings account... and none of those are with banks that I use! (I know this all sounds ridiculous and like a really easy problem to remedy, but we each use the banks that we use for a reason—or many reasons—and it just isn't that simple to change!)

I already have an Electric Orange checking account and Orange Savings with ING Direct, and I think this would be a good bank to open our joint account with because you can link your account to external accounts, which would solve the problem Mr. Spaniel has of having to write himself a check every month. It would also make it easy to transfer our monthly throwaway cash to our individual accounts at whichever banks we like. The problem is that we are limited to one checking account there per customer, and I am not getting rid of my personal account there to set up a joint one! The search goes on!

Ultimately, we'd like to have joint savings and checking accounts, with smaller individual checking accounts for individual purchases that would be healthier for us each not to account to each other for ;).