Great 'financial harmony in relationships' hunt

Ishtar

When we first started living together we had our salaries paid into our own accounts. Bills were shared equally, but we 'owned' our own money.

Once we stopped renting and bought a house, this changed. We set up a joint account for the household bills and mortgage and as OHs salary increased more quickly than mine, he started contributing more. All running repairs and the food bill were met from our 'own' money as the household account held just enough to cover the bills.

As we had different attitudes towards spending this worked well - there were no arguments about OHs expenditure, or my alleged tight-fistedness.

Once I gave up paid work in order to look after DD, we moved to what I'd call a more traditional approach. OHs salary goes into our joint account and we then get our 'allowance' out of this - neither of us ever wanted to have to justify our expenditure to each other. The rest of the money goes towards the mortgage, bills, running repairs on the house, big purchases, food, savings, etc, etc. Most of DDs clothing and other bits and pieces also comes out of the joint account.

Car running costs are a grey area; I tend to use my own money to keep mine on the road, but he occasionally dips into the joint account to keep his going.

Of course, our attitudes towards spending have changed considerably over the past 17 years and we now meet somewhere in the middle. Of the three approaches, I much prefer the one we're using now (and not only because I get my hands on his money...we'd do it this way even if I were in paid work!) but in fairness, neither of us had the maturity to run with this when we first got together.

Caz3121

We are also in the own accounts and joint for house
Both married before with children and no children together
Both earn similar salary
Me: savings and no debt (have cards but pay off every month)
Him: child maintenance and loads of debt (mostly accrued with expenses related to children, ex and contact costs - another story all together!) anyway 2 teens and cm will come to an end within next 3 years and debts probably the year after. - I helped with a bit of the debt but still loads left.
We both pay the same into a joint "house" account this is used for all the bills, food etc.
I have more left over so I tend to buy bits and pieces on top (eg birthday presents, non-essentials for the house etc)
Works for us...

Katie-Kat-Kins

parristim wrote: »

Hiya,

I'm very interested to hear what other Moneysavers have to say about the issue of different salaries... Until I moved in with my OH ~18mths ago I'd been a financial mess for years, saddling myself with ~£20k unsecured debt (now ~£15k, I should post my debt free wannabe date/progress at the bottom eh?)

The OH is, and always has been, extremely frugal and whilst I pay my half of the mortgage and bills she has pretty much solely funded the purchase of our house (deposit, costs, furniture, plumbing/electrical work, etc. etc.) My 'wilderness years' have drilled a very strong sense of financial responsibility into me - I believe in paying my way, so have listed my half of everything spent on a massive IOU chart. It works both ways: if I buy something (e.g. cavity wall insulation, £198 through Tesco and very happy with it! Cornish, send your feller to some kind of science evening class!) it gets knocked off the total owing.

The trouble is, the running IOU total (including my half of the house deposit which I was unable to stump up at the time) is round about £10k at the moment, that's on top of the other £15k I still owe various banks (mostly on 0% plastic - here's hoping that that gravy train doesn't end anytime soon!)

The double trouble is that the OH's salary is ~150% x mine, and likely always will be (because of our particular lines of work - and because she's a dilligent, motivated and highly skilled dilligent professional and I'm, well, getting away with typing this!) So, like Cornish, our bolier's also on the way out and likely the OH will have to fund the replacement. I'll put my half of the cost on the chart, but will I ever be able to pay it back? Even if I ever get caught up, there'll always be other home-improvement projects to fund, hopefully a wedding, hopefully kids. Should I give up my aspiration of always paying my half of everything? Or would that make me a free-loader, albeit a partial one?

As I say - would be very interested to hear other perspectives on unequal salary situations. Cheers,

TP

EDIT: Above message posted whilst I was composing this - NB I'm not Bednarska's OH!

I think there are a couple of ways to handle this, I love the fact that you want to pay half but if your salaries are that different it is likely that you will never catch up and that she will want a lifestyle that you can't afford.

Why not suggest that you pay a percentage equivalent to your salary, so if she earns twice as much as you she pays two thirds of all the expenses and you pay one third.

Alternatively you could set up a joint account for joint expenses going forward and each pay into it a percentage of your salaries sufficient to cover the expenses plus a bit to make up a contingency fund. All the expenses should be met from this.

Although it may seem a bit unfair for one to pay more than the other if she has a demanding job it is likely that you pay your way in non-financial ways by doing more housework perhaps.

belfastgirl23

For me the most important things for financial stability in a relationship are

1. CLARITY over who has responsiblity for what, what money needs to go where and when, who oversees particular types of expenditure. And if responsibility is delegated to one partner, NO WHINGING from the other as to how they handle it - if you want a say, have it BEFORE things are done

2. COMMUNICATION about what each partner expects from the other. These are tough discussions to have in new relationships but are crucial.

Strategies for communication are also important.

It is a boring truism but it does take two to have a row. You need to set the tone for a money discussion, be reasonable and calm. Accept blame where it's fair. Don't make it about two sides and who's at fault, make it about the future and how to fix things. It takes patience and time, especially if this has been an issue in the relationship. But I can tell you it does work eventually if you are persistent.

It's also important to recognise that money can't be seperated off from other elements of the relationship. So if you're cross with your OH about money, often it's about a bigger underlying issue. EG the question about the boiler above seems to me to be as much about not planning for the future as about money per se. Sometimes reframing the debate can help a bit and can make it easier to talk about. So it's about actually saying 'I feel unsupported' or 'I feel worried about our future financially' and unpicking what is going on in your own head rather than putting it on someone else's behaviour. You have to bear in mind that to someone else, your OH's behaviour might be perfectly reasonable and that it's your own experiences that have made it unreasonable to you. You can't automatically expect him to agree. (obviously doesn't work if there are eg alcohol or gambling problems etc)

I think this might be particularly true for women in relationships if you present your man with a problem and are honest about what the problem is, sometimes it's better than immediately going to a solution. The other thing I find sometimes works is to offer three options to deal with something, two of which I know he will never go for and the third which is my preferred solution. Sneaky yes but it does leave him feeling he has made the choice, and of course if he wants to come up with alternative solutions that's fine

It took us years but we have finally decided that I am the boss of joint money since I worry about it more and handle it better. DH is in charge of his money which is sometimes disastrous (late credit card payments!) but I have to accept it's his problem and have made a cast iron decision not to interfere...this suits us, but might sound mad to others

Emmenelle

We've always had a joint account, which was a HUGE mistake at the beginning as DH is an absolute nightmare with money (I got a call once saying "come home now, I've just bought some puppies!!" - they were £900..). For years, I earnt around £10k more and I personally never got any benefit from it :rolleyes:

Now, I'm a SAHM, and we have to be very strict with our income. I have a spreadsheet that runs to the end of 2009 detailing everything that comes in and goes out so I know exactly where I am at any one point. DH gets £50 'pocket money' a week to do what he wants with and he is happy with this.

I have a budget of £70 a week for food and I have savings account that run off our joint account, and I give them different names i.e 'Clothes' and 'Day Out' and I put money aside every week. DH tells me a few months in advance if he would like to go sea fishing or something and how much he will need, so I start putting money away for him.

alpajamas

Before we started having babies, I used to earn more than my partner but knew that that situation would likely change dramatically when the wee'uns started arriving. So we decided to see our respective salaries as our joint family revenue, put it into one account from where bills and savings and holidays and joint expenses came from and then had separate personal accounts for the amount we jointly decided would be our individual but equal spending money every month. Despite big changes in our income since the start of our family's expansion, the tactic works - we might get tetchy about having to discuss how to budget even more effectively as prices have risen and we have moved to a more expensive city - that's because it is hard and requires forethought and self control which no one likes, but we remain part of the same team in terms of viewing the family's GDP as a joint venture and not one relatively big earner against a minnow.

Interestingly the reason we opted for this method of organising our family's finances was down to a super depressing article I read about other couples' financial disjoints occurring post-baby. It seemed everything was cool when the woman was either earning as much or more than the man before having kids but once her salary dropped, she was expected to make do on the leftovers from whatever amount had been set aside for household budgeting. Which quite obviously sucks.

Bean_Counter

One of the first things I did after getting married was open a joint account. I was earning a lot more than the current Mrs Counter (even more so now she is a SAHM) and I wanted to think of everything as 'our' money.

I work out a weekly budget based on monthly income, direct debits, allowance for annual costs such as car tax & MOT, allowance for saving (in theory!) etc. From this weekly budget, we take this out as cash, try to put some aside for say clothes purchases etc. Our spending week starts on a Friday when my wife does the food shop, so at least we have food for the week, and when the money is gone its gone. This works fine most of the time and if we overspend it is a conscious decision to do.

This works well for us because we are also open about the financial position and clear about who has responsibility for what areas of our finances. We then just use common sense about splitting who spends what on 'personal' things such as hobbies, going out etc.

jollybrown

See I struggle with this too. I moved in with my OH about a year ago. We decided that I would pay half to the bills as they stood at that point in time and as much to the mortgage as I could afford (which was about a quarter of it). I don't know how much he earns and he doens't know how much I earn, however, I know he earns considerably more than me.

I pay around 80% of the cost towards food bills and to be honest I'm starting to feel like something needs to change.

I was thinking the best idea would be to set up a joint account where we each put an equal amount in for bills and food with me still paying x amount per month to the mortgage. Problem is, I'm not sure he agrees.

Does anyone else do anything like this or have any ideas what could work?

belfastgirl23

Emmenelle wrote: »

I got a call once saying "come home now, I've just bought some puppies!!" - they were £900..

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

I would love to get a call like that

Although admittedly not more than once and not about anything other than puppies!

michael-m_3

strangel wrote: »

I have a slightly different problem and hope that some one can help!!!

I work full time bringing home approx £1200 pm, my partner is on Incapacity Benefit of £75.40 pw. My partner gives me £5 pw fuel money, £22.50 pw towards a loan I took out for him (payments £156 pm), he pays £5 pw maintenance and £1.25 pw tax credits overpayment. I pay everything else ie rent, council tax, shopping, running of the car, maintenance for my child, basically you name it and I pay it.

I have tried to talk to him about giving me more money each week but this only ends up in a blazing row and me getting very frustrated as I have no money left at the end of the month.

Any ideas how this can be done a bit more diplimatically???

Mrs M will tell you I'm not much of a diplomat, but when we decided to sort out our financial mess (actually, I took the initiative to fix it), I wrote out on one page what was wrong (1 short paragraph) and suggested ways to fix it (I think there were 3 or 4 different options). The underlying message was not 'you're awful with money', but 'how can we sort this to prevent it distorting/damaging our relationship'. I spent several days writing this until I was happy with it. Then, I proposed we set aside a couple of hours to discuss it, and when that time came I gave her the paper I had written and we had a discussion which managed to sort it all out, more or less. I suggested a time that would be good for her (which meant not early morning, not after evening meal), and because I was psyched up for that time, it was good for me too.

Above all, I'd say don't make it about the other person's supposed faults: say things like 'the way this is working has this effect on me' rather than 'when you do this, I...'

If all this is too daunting, then get outside help. Citizen's Advice Bureau or a counseller will help you to sort this too. Of course, both of you need to agree to do this, so if you can't do that, I'm not sure what to suggest..........

For most of us, money is a misplaced part of our lives. It should be there to enable us to live life to the full, not dominate it!

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