living together - how to budget

debtmuncher

Woodsylou wrote: »

31

and god yeah, i couldn't justify spending fortunes on a wedding!! we've booked our annual holiday and have the wedding package thrown in for free! wahoo! married on the beach

well done!!!! pleased about that!!

and 31 is young!!! dont stress yourself out on your age for having babies!

Woodsylou

yeah maybe. i'll see how i feel in a few years

debtmuncher

babies dont follow a timetable :rotfl:

dosent work believe me :eek::D

Malky

Everything me and my wife pay for has always been split 50/50 except her car. As she gets paid a monthly allowance from her work to subsidise this, there's no need for me to pay anything towards it. It does help that we have no personal debts (thankfully as we're far from loaded lol)

bluekp

When my now husband and I moved in together, we had pretty much the same discussion.

Initially he thought we should each pay enough of our salaries into a joint account to cover all our bills, then keep the remainder of our money in our own separate accounts.

My concern was that I knew it would be me hasseling him every month to move the money over - which would end up irritating both him and me.

I proposed what several people on here have suggested in that both our salaries were paid into the joint account, all bills were paid from here (including the debt he brought with him), and equal amounts of spending money were transferred into our own accounts for us to spend as we liked.

He ended up agreeing with me and that is what we have done for the last 4 years. In fact recently he said he was glad I had suggested/insisted we did it that way :rolleyes:

As an aside, at the time we both earned approximately the same, now he earns considerably more but that has never been an issue.

matiz1

My BF and I moved in together about 2 years ago. I earn more than him, but he has more disposable income because the house is mine and I pay the full mortgage. We are both paid weekly so we contribute a set amount every week into the budget envelopes - elec, gas, food, booze, internet, petrol, lotto, holidays... Any other once-off bills are halved (car repairs, applicance replacement).

How long before your BF's debts are paid off? Is he using the snowball method? It's great.

Woodsylou

what is the snowball method?

he's a head burier, but i've spoken to a lovely lady on here and im getting all the details together and she's going to tell me the best way to do things.

debtmuncher

its where you input all your details for balances and payments then tells you how long it would take to pay them off. when you pay one off, that amount gets transferred to the next creditor and so on thus the snowballing effect. should be link somewhere to it.

found the link

Woodsylou

thank you, i've never seen that before! i'll have a look into it (and make H2B too! haha!) x

matiz1

Basically, you make a list of all your debts from smallest to largest.

So, for example:-

Credit card €1,000
Car loan €5,000
Personal Loan €7,000
Student loan €10,000

You pay minimum payments on all loans, but pay extra off the smallest debt. Every spare penny should go to paying off the smallest loan. When that one is cleared, you move onto the next smallest debt and pay everything onto the next smallest, and so on until they're all cleared. It worked wonders for me.
There's lots on the internet about it, just do a search, you'll find tons of stuff.