Great 'financial harmony in relationships' hunt

Ryco

Hi,

How my wife and I work our money is as follows:

We treat both of our incomes as one income for the household. All bills are split equally.

Both payments from jobs come into a joint account (monthly bills) , where all the bills come out of.

At the begining on the new month we make sure the balance in the monthly bills account is equal to our incomes and tranfer any excess into savings. We then start the new month with the following transfers.

1). Some into a joint savings account for the annual bills come around (car insuarnce, council tax etc)
2). Some into a joint holiday for when we take our holidays
3). A equal amount into her personnal current account and my personnal current account. From these we spend on fun stuff for the month, cloths shopping, going out, cinema etc for ourselves. We call this our entertainment money.

The key to our system is that we treat our money as just one big income and split all bills, savings, personal spending money equally.

If I want to withdraw £300 from the join savings account for a new TV, I have to agree it with her. Visa versa if she want to withdraw £300 for a new sofa she has to agree it with me. These things have to benift us both.

If I want some thing that only benifts me i.e playstation 3 I would have to save up for it from my entertainment money and buy it myself.

Thanks

Ryco

Dinah93

I have been reading this with interest. I feel that a lot of the split bills vs pool money comes down to trust. I wouldn't take on joint finances with a boyfriend, however I feel that it is essential to have faith in your marriage, and finances are just another issue that requires communication and work in the relationship. Couples who don't know one anothers salaries seem so distant, why is money a big, mythical secret? It is a sad fact that sometimes some of the most deserving jobs are on low pay, for example you may well find a nurse is getting up at 5.30 am in the cold to go do tasks many of us could never stomach doing, but is paid a fairly low wage. If someone is working hard at their job, that does not mean they are slacking by bringing in less money. My boyfriend is currently undergoing a bit of a dilema as to whether to return to become fully qualified as a solicitor, a well paid job he doesn't much want to be doing, or to do a PGCE come September, which is what he has always wanted to do. And I'm encouraging him towards the teaching, life is far too short to spend half of every day miserable just so you can keep up with the Jonses better. If he goes for the PGCE I will always earn more than him, but I don't value what he does any less, I couldn't teach, and I have respect for him for doing it, so I couldn't live with it if he was struggling to pay half the bills on a lower salary while I had money to spare each month. Marriage is a partnership in all senses, and if you hold any part of yourself back then you're going to be in for a bumpier ride.

Jet

When I was with my ex husband, finances seemed pretty easy to me, we shared everything and we both came to the relationship with similar amounts, I dealt with the finances (because he didn't want to) and it was "our" money, "our house" "our cars" and "our children" etc. etc.

What happens with new "blended families" where there are children from previous relationships, assets from previous relationships and maintenance coming in (or not!) and maintenance going out and where both parties have probably both been damaged in someways with regards to trusting someone new?

I think that's when it can get complicated and I'd been interested to hear how people deal with their finances in this type of relationship.

tirlittan

I think one of the things to think about is, what would you do if you were in the other person’s shoes?I’ve been going out with my bf for nearly a year. We’re not ready to move in together due to variety of reasons, hopefully in another year’s time. He’s better off than me and earns at least 10k more than me. I’ve raised general talks about how much we earn, my debts, moving in together etc and he’s willing to talk, but would never take the lead. I guess it’s more important to me as I have debt and need to be able to plan things. He’s got a mortgage and had to pay his ex out of the house, but I’d say he’s comfortably off. I house share with 4 other people. I don’t know exactly how much he earns, neither does he how much I owe, but I think both of us have a ball park figure. He knows I struggle to do everything and treats me to things (cinema, meals out, takeaways, concert tickets etc.). He knows I’d prefer to pay my way, but also I don’t mind being treated now and again, it’s nice.When we discussed moving in together (at some future point) he said we would have to live somewhere else than his house, because he would always think of it as his. I agreed. What worries me is would he expect me to pay 50/50. I like the idea of paying % of income as otherwise the better off party will have proportionately more disposable income and the other will probably resent it. But if I don’t get a better paid job, I’ll still be debt till 2013 and this worries me. I can’t see myself being able to buy a house anytime soon and I do at some point want to live with my partner. But it’s not that important yet. And I’m sure we’ll talk more as the time passes and we get to know each other even better.Sorry for long post, but I think this is really interesting thread.

RainproofMissCharlee

Dinah93 wrote: »

I have been reading this with interest. I feel that a lot of the split bills vs pool money comes down to trust. I wouldn't take on joint finances with a boyfriend, however I feel that it is essential to have faith in your marriage, and finances are just another issue that requires communication and work in the relationship.

I actually don't think it's always down to trust issues with your partner. While it's true that my OH has been burned before (and is still paying off an old girlfriend's debts), he can see that I am working really, really hard and trusts me completely to even up the payment arrangement if/when I do earn as much as him. Our joint account arrangements are in fact more about trusting ourselves - I know I can be frivolous with money and I wouldn't want to screw up our finances for him as well, even though he trusts me not to. Let's say that he's probably got a bit more faith in my frugality than I have (and I suspect that works both ways around!)

A lot of people here seem to think that you can't have a "proper" marriage unless you share everything, and particularly finances. I think that's a bit of a generalisation and not true in the slightest. In my opinion, it's being open, honest and willing to compromise that make your marriage work as a partnership, and keeping some parts of your lives separate is really important in maintaining a healthy sense of self (not just as one half of a single entity).

I do have another theory though. We're both Only Children, and although our parents could NOT have been more different in their approach to money, we've ended up with very similar spending habits. I'm certain that not having siblings makes you fiercely independent, and I wonder if it also is part of the reason we don't like to share our hard-earned as much as some others

I definitely agree that you should know what your partner earns. Surely that's part of the basic openness of a successful relationship?

PS. Ryco, the PS3 will benefit you both, I promise! We fight over ours all the time

David_Mee

strangel wrote: »

I understand what people are saying but I find it hard to ask OH to give me more money as he is paying out almost half of what he has coming in at the minute. When there is a vast difference in monies coming in (mine - £1200, OH - £300) I find it difficult to work out how much he should contribute.

What we did was sit down and worked out a rough budget and tried to include everything in it - even down to pocket money for kids and guesstimates on food bills etc (use Martin's spreadsheet)

We then also worked out the split on our incomes (in your case 4/5 you 1/5 OH) and we split the bill by this amount whats left is our money to do with as we like.

Depends then whether you want to set a "reasonable" amount of spends - i.e leaving OH with £20 a month may not seem "fair"

Another way would be for you to do the above calculation and then work out whats left in the pot and split this 50/50??

frivolous_fay

When O/H and I first lived together in a rented flat, he was studying a PhD and getting a part time wage, and I had a full time job - not amazing money, but enough for us to get by. Otherwise, I paid the rent and household bills, and he paid smaller costs - we basically both chipped in as and when needed.

When O/H finished studying, he got a job that far surpassed my salary :j It was his idea to get a joint account, which I was a bit worried about at the time as it felt I hadn't earned most of the monthly wage (weird really, considering the previous 3 years the other way around ) but it worked out fine - all bills came out of the main account. I juggled savings account and 0% cards (alas, no more, I refuse to pay transfer fees) but we didn't have debts to maintain. O/H was constantly getting locked out of the online banking, so he pretty much ended up leaving the maintenance to me - which allowed me to set aside funds into appropriate accounts until we had a deposit saved for a house, which came as a nice surprise to him We then bought just before the prices crashed :rolleyes:

Most of the ISAs, savings etc we have are in my name, but I consider them 'ours'. The only reason he doesn't have more accounts is the hassle of getting him to go into town on a Saturday with his ID :rolleyes:

I keep an eye on things and let him know if he needs to worry about anything... or if I think we ought to put money into the mortgage because the savings are performing poorly. (yes they are, and yes, we just have)

My vague thoughts about a successful attitude are:

- Don't sweat the small stuff
- Work as a team
- Discuss large purchases in advance, and don't automatically panic and say no... unless of course you need to!

But then I am lucky enough to have an O/H with few bad spending habits, and we are fortunate not to have debts to argue about.

starbump

We share everything - what's yours is mine, etc. Moreover, we have done this from day one - before we married and had children. To us, it is all about trust. We discuss "big" purchases because it is nice to share your opinion and know that your input is valued - even if I have zero knowledge of cars and he has little interest in investment funds, we still manage to talk or at least listen. We have been together for 10 years and are still very happy.

Still, one man's meat is another man's poison, as the saying goes. So, I guess you should do whatever makes you both happy.

jodyapple

My Husband is SHOCKING with money and he knows it, which is why he doesn't have access to our finances by choice. I've worked really hard over the past 4 years so we are debt free and have just bought our first home. He would rather just get a cash amount every month after all the bills etc are paid (I do too) and not have to think about managing all our outgoings. Some of our friends tease us about this set up, make out I wear the trousers. This hurts my feelings a bit, because his spending has nearly split us up twice and this is the one way we have found to eliminate arguing over cash and getting into debt. He still has equal share in financial decisions and I don't tell him what or how to spend the money he gets every month as naturally that's his business and choice.

salj1980

OH and I have a joint account into which we each pay (from our own current accounts, where we receive our salaries) an equal amount that covers our joint monthly spend - rent, council tax, utilities, groceries, etc.

Any extra left in the joint account after everything has been paid will go into a savings account - it's my account but I keep a record of how much of it is 'our' money as opposed to mine - to go towards a holiday, Christmas, or emergencies etc.

All other money in our current accounts is then our own to do what we will with, after the joint monthly spend has come out. If we go to the pub then we will take it turns to get the drinks in, similarly if we go out to the cinema or for dinner one of us will pay and the other will make a mental note that it's our turn next time.

I do earn a bit more than he does (though neither of us are on a huge pay) but we pay 50/50 into the joint account - we've never discussed any percentage-based options and to be honest even if we did discuss them I think he would still opt to pay half. We are both very open and honest with each other about our money, and if he is a bit short occasionally I will always help out - I'd far rather he owed me than the bank. I know he will pay me back when he can and he's never failed yet.

This works perfectly well for us, and we are very happy!