It is the estate of both, and should be so considered, even if he has earned outside and she saved and earned and helped him earn from within the household only.
=What Shall be the Accepted Standard of Living ?=--The final question that must be considered by the two who are to marry and set up housekeeping is the scale of living they shall aim to attain.

It has been well said that "the standard of living is what we desire; the scale of living what we can achieve." What is desired often, and what seems to the young only reasonable for all to have, is the scale of living the parents' households have attained after a life of hard work.

It is a matter for profound ethical thinking to decide what measure of increase in expense of home upkeep should follow upon increase of income where there are children to be affected by changes.
It may sometime be seen to be a social duty to keep much farther within bounds the natural desire to expand expense as income increases; both for the reason that income may decrease with advancing years for the parents and retrenchment be necessary when it is hardest, and also for the more important reason that children naturally make standards at the height of parental expenditure and may find it thereby the more difficult to "begin at the bottom" when they marry.

At any rate, the young couple starting out must keep within their means or suffer from the worst of fortunes, the dread of arriving bills and the shame of inability to pay them.

That means some agreement before housekeeping begins as to what is involved in that adventure.
A witty woman said, "I love to travel with my friend Mary, for her economies and mine are the same." Some uniformity of temperamental reaction both to regular economies and to occasional extravagances is, if not an essential, a valuable basis for happy marriage.