My wife being a stay at home mom obviously does not have any earned income. My question is, if we are married filing jointly can my income be used to fund a Roth IRA for her? I understand I could set up a spousal IRA but it would be much nicer if we could try to max out two Roth IRA's instead.

Yes, she can have her own Roth.

http://www.fairmark.com/rothira/spousal.htm.

Ok, we're also in this boat. So we can both have a Roth even though income only comes in through me. Now what would you do in this situation:

Let's say you don't have quite enough money to fully fund both accounts on a yearly basis. You could fund one account totally per year or you could split your money between the two. So in the first example, you could max out the Roth with $4000 per year or you could put $2000 in each for the year.

Which would you do?

I would split it. But it also depends on if you have a 401k you're participating in. If you do, then I'd do the entire $4k for your spouse so you are both building as equally as possible.

Yeah, I have a company 401k that I'm using up to the match point. With trying to save for a house and a car, we're going to be tight on the money we can do for Roth's. But we know we really should start up. So since I've got a 401k going, you think maxing out a Roth for her (she's 26) would be best and then maybe in a few years starting one up for me (I'm 30).

Man, there's always so much to do!!

There is always something. But just think...by having your goals in place you can pretty much just put things on auto-pilot with automatic transfers and not have to worry about it.

Consider also the fees that might be incurred if you decided to split it. You might fall below the minimum investment level for either the account or your investment of choice.

Let's also assume that you'll stay married for the rest of your lives, in which case splitting it up or even putting it all in one name or the other won't matter.