Funny how these always go the same way.
Separate finances people: This is how we do it, and it works for us.
Joint finances people: This is how we do it, it works for us. Oh, and those separate-finances people are WRONG, don't understand marriage, have serious relationship issues, aren't a "team", and need to do things our way if they want any chance of a lasting marriage.
Like seriously, what's up with that? It happens like clockwork in these threads.
This has been my observation here over the past 3 years as well.
We are in the separate finances camp. When we moved into together, she was a student and I was an entry level retail employee. Over the past 7 years we have both made choices that have lead to our respective incomes. I make ~2X as much over that time due to aggressive career advancement and a lot of personal time spent learning professional career skills and industries to do so. I am also more frugal, as well as more conservative with my investments.
We split fixed expenses such as rent/utilities/groceries 50/50. Pay our own car insurance, cell, personal expenses from our own accounts. For join entertainment, travel, etc I pick up more of the tab because I want to. We are both happy with this system.
In terms of unemployment or sickness, we each have at least 12 months of living expenses in an EF, and if things were so bad that that was not enough, I would happily pick up the slack and vica versa.
Me being the more frugal one, my SO never feels the need to spend money to do things together. She's able to max out a Roth IRA, do 30% of salary to 401k, and still have enough leftover to spend $20k/yr. I can see how she would be in a place of tremendous disadvantage if I wanted to live in a big house, take expensive vacations, split expensive meals out, etc 50/50.
We also don't have kids, so it's not like she earns less money because she is doing more chores or raising the family, in turn allowing me to earn more.
I can see both sides of the argument, but to me it sounds like the "one pot is the only way" crowd is MUCH more narrow minded.