How do you manage your finances as a couple?

bssjs1

Both have separate accounts - I pay the mortgage, and hubby pays all bills, expenses, going out stuff, car tax, insurance, etc. - works fine. Whatever is left goes into a high interest savings account- we both have one each.

Have a joint account as well, never got round to using it.

glossgal

The 'old fashioned' way for me eg fella pays me x amount each month and I do all the donkey work! We take turns paying for shoppping, OH pays for the petrol. BUT all the bills are in my name so this may account for that, may do it more evenly otherwise.

I have to say the idea of two non-married people without kids pooling all their money in one account horrifies me! I have no interest in what OH does with his cash and vice versa, Im not his mum!

Penny-Pincher!!

All the money goes into 1 bank account, then all dd's came out and bills paid. All shopping and petrol money comes out but we have set budgets for everything. We have a little pocket money each month, then the rest into savings or things bought that we need.

HTH

PP
xx

lostinrates

Savings in my name (I don't work he is in higher tax bracket). I have a personal account, he has a personal account which is more a moving things account (where pay goes into and then divisions are made to the various other things...but we are shortly to make this a joint account so I can manage it. Accounts that are not joint or in my name are from before our relationship and are really mainly open because they haven't been closed!

straddie

We operate on a 'whats yours is mine' basis ie we would never owe each other anything, although we do have quite a structured setup to our finances to ensure everything is budgetted for. Basically:

- Joint account for DDs etc.
- Joint account for non-essential expenses (CDs, days out etc).
- Plethora of other accounts (mainly e-savings) to cover key expenses eg car maintenance, petrol, food, savings (treated as an expense to guarentee we have something to save each month).
- A spreadsheet tracks every last expense and works out what needs paying into each account each month based on our incomes (mostly proportional but some accounts we split differently eg petrol as I do more driving than her).
- Spreadsheet includes a buffer for each expense so we're sheltered from price rises to a certain extent - if a large buffer builds in an account we'll move some of it off into savings.
- When I get a payrise or we take on a new commitment I update the spreadsheet and it recalculates what we need to pay into each account accordingly (used to update it for wife's rises too but have stopped doing that as we are trying to reduce our dependency on her income so she's free to stop work when we're ready to start a family).
- Whenever we pay for something we use a joint credit card managed by a separate spreadsheet that allocates each payment to the relevant e-savings account. This is then paid off in full each month from these various accounts.

Sounds a bit overly complicated (and it felt a bit like that at first!), but it's proved extremely effective - because we separate expenses out into different accounts we know the money for petrol, food etc is always ringfenced and won't get accidentally spent on other things. We know that as long as we transfer the right amounts into the right accounts each month according to the spreadsheet, everything will be dealt with and we're not left having to shuffle responsibilities around from month to month (ie 'you pay this, I'll pay that'). It also means we're free to spend what's in the non-essentials account on whatever we want each month as it's not needed to cover any essentials (surprisingly!).

redmel1621

Before we were married or had children we had our own full time salaries paid into our own accounts and split the bills 50/50 whatever was left was our own money, although we were always spending it on each other anyway or on joint purchases ie new tv's etc...
However our circumstances are very different now, we have 2 joint accounts (mainly so we can both access any money in an emergency) I control all budgeting food, bills, clothes, everything really...but dh is about to start full time uni so he will use one of the joint acounts as his 'spending money' We have never done this before so not sure how it will work out....I will then use the other joint account to continue paying bills, food etc.

Mel x

*Louise*

OH is the main earner, I'm a SAHM. WeOnce we moved in together we got a joint account but I deal with all the household expenditure. (He used to, but tbh he's a spender, not a saver, plus he got all stressed out over it) he has a budgeted amount every week so he has money in his pocket.

I have 2 savings accounts in my name, one for christmas, the other for emergencies. Not because I'm shuffling money away for myself (haha) but because if he knew what was there he would want to go on a spending spree. (Just this weekend he wanted a computer...and a boat) :rolleyes: It's hard to say no to him, because he works so hard.:o But you can see why I'm in charge of the money.:D

Softstuff

With my OH, our money is *OUR* money, but we don't have joint accounts, we just have separate accounts. Here in Australia they charge account keeping fees, so we were paying $5 a month to have an extra joint account. What we do instead, is when I'm paid, which is fortnightly, I transfer the bulk ($1000) to him, and from that he pays all the bills, the mortgage, any extra on the mortgage and everything car related. I'm left with about $250 (around 100 quid) for 2 weeks, I also keep any gift money that comes to me or any additional earnings over that. Out of this comes food, clothing, entertainment, my travel (a flight a year to the UK to see mum), most gifts etc. We find that in the main this works very well, it's tight for me sometimes but it does mean we can get a bit of extra money on the mortgage as and when.

LittleMissMoneySaver1986

Hi

I would like to say thankyou to all of you that have posted so far. I have been reading them all as they have come in but not had the chance to respond to any individuals hence the collective hige THANKYOU to everyone! It has really helped to see what works for others and I have gotten a few ideas from you all!

glossgal wrote: »

I have to say the idea of two non-married people without kids pooling all their money in one account horrifies me! I have no interest in what OH does with his cash and vice versa, Im not his mum!

Just to clarify on this, I am not trying to be his mum, I dont care what he spends money on as long as our bills are paid and he has done a very good job of supporting us for almost a year now by himself . I am (we both are) simply trying to find an easy, convenient way to pool our finances and organise bill paying/budgeting/trying to save for a deposit in a way thats fair. And whilst we are not married, we have been together for a long time and plan to get married in the future but would rather focus on buying a house at the moment than spending all of our money on a wedding. I really dont see what not-being married or having children would have to do with whether or not to have a joint bank account! Its possible to have a commitment to each other without having to have a piece of paper that says so!

rubydoiwannabee

for us it is everything joint. We have one joint account that both salaries get paid into, all ddms and so's come out of there and we withdraw cash each week to live on. We have been together for 21 years and it has always worked well for us. I think we are quite unusual amongst our circle of friends.