Splitting the bills 50/50, my money, your money - Please your married !!!!

[Deleted User]

kbleigh wrote: »

I am not married, but have been with my partrner for just over 5 years. We have recently bought a house together.

My partner earns over £26,000 a year, I earn £14,600. But he insists that everything - bills mortgage etc is split 50/50, even petrol money when we go on a journey together - even if the journey is less than 5 miles, we split the petrol.

As you can probably tell I do not neccessarily agree with this, but when I question it I feel like I am being mean, and not wanting to pay my way. However I completely understand where many of you are coming from as it is a big issue in our relationship, and often makes me question our future together.

Seriously? What does he do stick out his hand when you get in the car?

Hope your not planning on marrying this fella.

Do you live together at the mo? Hasd he got his own food cupboard with a lock on it?

The_Banker_5

[quote=[Deleted User];24176229]Seriously? What does he do stick out his hand when you get in the car?

Hope your not planning on marrying this fella.

Do you live together at the mo? Hasd he got his own food cupboard with a lock on it?[/QUOTE]


I dont know how people can live like this.

That isnt a 50/50 relationship.

Dinah93

kbleigh wrote: »

I am not married, but have been with my partrner for just over 5 years. We have recently bought a house together.

My partner earns over £26,000 a year, I earn £14,600. But he insists that everything - bills mortgage etc is split 50/50, even petrol money when we go on a journey together - even if the journey is less than 5 miles, we split the petrol.

As you can probably tell I do not neccessarily agree with this, but when I question it I feel like I am being mean, and not wanting to pay my way. However I completely understand where many of you are coming from as it is a big issue in our relationship, and often makes me question our future together.

Wow, I'm sorry I know some people have a whats mine is mine and I worked hard for it attitude, but this just says someone is greedy to me. And if someone is greedy with their money, they are often going to be the same with their time and effort in my experience. I earn £27.5k, my OH earns £14k. All the money goes into a big pot and we have a joint amount for spending, bills etc. He couldn't live our lifestyle on just his salary, he couldn't afford to go on holiday for example. I want to go on holiday, have weekends away and whatnot, so this just makes perfect sense to me rather than me having loads of money to spend on whatever I like and him counting the pennies at the end of every month because his wages only allow him a tiny spending pot. Equally he moved from Ireland to England for me, so going home to see his family regularly is important to me as he made this big sacrifice for me and I don't want him to suffer for that. I love him completely, so why should I penalise him because he qualified at the wrong time and his sector was badly hit by the credit crunch? One day we hope to have children, he'll be the breadwinner then so its swings and roundabouts.

Katie-Kat-Kins

jsaver wrote: »

The way we have always gone about this is as follows:

My OH and I have a huge number of joint commitments (house, feeding the family, getting to work, paying for insurance, holidays, utilities, nights out together - the list goes on and on). We also have our own individual wants i.e. beers down the pub, CDs for me; clothes, flowers etc for her. While my earnings have totalled 3-4 times hers over the last 5 years (2 maternities!), I have always believed that we should have the same amount of money to spend on our individual wants, but only when there is enough money left over after catering for our joint needs.

So, all of our incomings get totalled up every month (salaries, benefits etc), and all of our outgoings totalled. OH and I both then get an agreed identical amount from whatever is left, and anything extra goes into savings. If there is less left over, then we get a smaller amount each, and nothing goes into savings. If outgoings exceed incomings, then we agree on an amount that we can draw down from savings.

Guess what we have a spreadsheet, and it works very well. But we do have to exercise discipline in noting down ALL outgoings and incomings. All expenditure comes out of a single account, which happens to be mine but needn't be. Anything non-personal that my OH pays for in cash she gets back at the end of the month.

It works for us and always has done, and is fair. Why should my wife be penalised financially in any way for our mutual decision to have children, and her not earning much money for a period of time?

I confess our incomings/savings have been sufficient to cover outgoings in the long run including the 2 maternities, which makes life a lot easier. But I have certainly never begrudged being the major breadwinner; being a SAHP is not straightforward.....

Now you see I completely understand this approach, BUT all this totalling it up each month would drive me insane, we used to split the cost of stuff before we got our joint account and it was soooooooo time consuming. Can't you sort something similar with a couple of standing orders and just make some additional transfers if you have higher than expected outgoings one month???

We did a budget that worked out our annual expenses divided it by 12 (added a bit for contingencies and a nice round sum) and did a standing order each month so that the right amount was in the right account. There is an overdraft "just in case" and we can always make additional transfers in or out as necessary.

MissSearles

OH and I opened up a joint account together around about a month and a bit after getting together as we wanted to save to move out, we both paid in what we could afford to ( he was earning a hell of a lot more than me at that point-were talking 30K versus 4K! but now he earns probably just over double what i earn)
And now that we've moved in we pay in a set amount into the joint account each month, he pays around £540 every 2 weeks and i pay in £750 once a month.
Everything comes out of that account, including savings for wedding and holiday. any money left from our wages after we have paid into the joint account is our own money (by paying the amounts we do into the joint acc every month it covers all outgoing s and savings)
He always has more money per month than I do but thats because he earns more, it doesnt bother me as long as he's paying in what he needs to into the joint account.

I'm 21 and some of my friends dont believe that it should all go into one joint account (these are generally the friends who have had ex's steal money out of their accounts funnily enough!)
I trust him to be careful with the money he's left with and not have to dip into the joint account and he trusts me too
He leaves all the bill paying and DD sorting out to me because he says i have a better handel on that side of things.

At the end of the day as long as you can afford to live the life your living and your both happy with the set-up I dont think there is a right or wrong way to do it :cool:

lfckerry

I'm in a long term relationship with my partner. we have our own accounts and put so much each into a joint account each month to cover bills. the only thing that annoys me is that he earns twice as much as me but does not put more than i do into the joint account. he says its because i use half of everything so why should he pay more,i suppose he may have a point but i wouldnt be so skint each month if i could put slightly less in for bills!

zippychick

Question - I own my own house. If i (currently single) , if I ended up falling for someone who didnt own their own house, and had debts, would i then be expected to hand over half ownership of my house, and take on his debts?

just reading this it made me think out loud.

carolineb23

Both salaries just go into the joint account, all the bills and money for savings comes out and whatever is left is spent. It's just all "our money" and has been since we moved in together. I have to say though, neither of us had lived with anyone before or anything, I can see how it would be a bit different at the beginning if one of you owned a house and the other didn't.
I control the finances though I earn less than my husband, and our spending habits are pretty similar, but he has an expensive hobby (archery) but then I have an extensive handbag collection which probably makes up for that!

The_Banker_5

lfckerry wrote: »

I'm in a long term relationship with my partner. we have our own accounts and put so much each into a joint account each month to cover bills. the only thing that annoys me is that he earns twice as much as me but does not put more than i do into the joint account. he says its because i use half of everything so why should he pay more,i suppose he may have a point but i wouldnt be so skint each month if i could put slightly less in for bills!

The term .............'Long term relationship' in my eyes means 'Does not want to commit';)

Or I'll stay with this one till the right one comes along.;)

strawberry_laces

A percentage of the money DP earns - In an account in my name (it's our account though) pays all the bills and most of the food shopping.

what is left goes into and account in DP's name to cover his car insurance any lunch he needs for work and extras for him.

My earnings each month goes into an ISA for us, a percentage into the childrens accounts for when they are older and 'treat' money this is for us or the family for treats, this could be a day out, romatic meal out and night at the pictures, or from now until december christmas money.:D.

I get to keep the Child benefit and CTC for any extra shopping or anything else needed.

so although we don't have a joint named bank account they are seperate, it's our money