Who pays for what?

74jax

laurenjs88 wrote: »

Were going to get a joint account account and pool everythign into it as for presents and stuff we'll just transfer the money to normal accounts and then spend it from there

I thought of this too, but I'd have an idea then of how much he was spending or vice versa. I think we might just have a joint account for bills and our own seperate accounts for everything else. I love my surprises :j but am terrible for trying to find out about them.

balletshoes

McKneff wrote: »

If he gets £200 a month to spend for himself, how much do you get to spend for yourself. It seems your 'spends' are going on family things. seems a bit unfair.

lol isn't that the way it goes when you have kids? ie just because he has £200 for his spends, doesn't mean he'll not spend it on the kids - like when i go shopping for me, very often i'll come home with stuff for my DD, and nowt for me :rotfl:.

balletshoes

74jax wrote: »

I thought of this too, but I'd have an idea then of how much he was spending or vice versa. I think we might just have a joint account for bills and our own seperate accounts for everything else. I love my surprises :j but am terrible for trying to find out about them.

that sounds like it would work fine for you .

pupsicola

When I was married we had joint accounts. Both our incomes which were pretty much the same were paid into an account. We then had 2 other accounts. One for all the direct debits, we didn't have bank cards for this so we couldn't dip into it. The other was for spending throughout the month, food, petrol, haircuts, going out etc etc.

One of the things we did do once all the monthly expenditures and bills were met was to have some pocket money each. About £150 per person to do what we liked with. I tended to invest mine in an ISA. He dabbled in shares and did quite well from it for a while.

I wouldn't have a joint bank account again though. Have become to independant and am a bit fanatical about managing my own finances without having to consider someone else now.

globetraveller

we do the same as popsicola. We have 2 accounts- one for direct debits and one for everything else. We each take out £300 for ourselves. To be honest, he often uses his money for holiday extras and I often put any money I haven't spent that month into joint savings.

GobbledyGook

74jax wrote: »

If you have JUST a joint account, how do you buy each other presents and surprises? My Oh and I are looking into a joint account and this is one thing that I don't think will work. I check my accounts all the time and so i would notice what he was spending and where at, for instance I got him a trip to Rome for Xmas and so Jet2 would show up as would the name of the hotel. Any ideads how to overcome this?

To get round that we had a joint account plus an account each when I was married.

All wages went into the joint acc, all bills came out of the joint acc and it was used for shopping, kids, unexpected expenses etc. Each month we transferred a set amount (we each had the same) of spends into our own accounts. From that I furthered my shoe collection and bought his presents and from his he spent it on random rubbish mostly.

He earned very considerably more than me (him FT on high wage - me PT on rubbish wage), but we had exactly the same amount of spends each month which we both felt was fair as a percentage would have seen him with a lot more than me.

Gloomendoom

My wife and I earn roughly the amount and we have separate accounts. I pay all the bills, mortgage etc. My wife buys the food and all the stuff men generally can't be relied on to remember... cleaning products, underpants, children's presents and the like.

However, we have a "What's mine is hers, and what's hers is mine relationship", so it doesn't really matter who pays what. If one of us is short we just transfer money between our accounts.

Fang_3

I will always, always, always follow the example of my parents which is - if you're not married keep everything separate and if you own the house pay for it all yourself, and only split bills. If you are married then split everything 50/50 and pay that amount, plus a little extra each month into a joint account to pay the bills. I'm far too independent to ever to become so intertwined with someone that I wouldn't know what I was earning. That said - I don't think I could ever be seriously involved with someone who was either way more successful than me, or much less.

Forris

cavework wrote: »

We are married and we are a partnership .. if we are in credit we both are in credit , if we are in debt then we both are in debt..
Joint account .. joint kids .. joint mortgage and joint life.

Brilliantly put! To be honest, I don't understand why people in a committed, long-term relationship feel the need to keep separate finances.

We've always pooled our finances. I have always earned more than my wife. Neither of us are very good at saving up and budgeting but since things went pear-shaped a couple of years ago, we review our finances at least once a week (thank heavens for online banking).

I earn around 3 times what my wife does. She works part-time and I am self-employed (so my pay can be a little irregular), and our son will start school in September. We have 3 main accounts - my business, wife's personal, and joint bills. The income from my business account is split 2 ways - a fixed amount goes into the bills account each month and a fixed percentage goes into an account for paying my tax bills (this account is with a different bank so that it is harder for us to dip into). Any excess is left in the business account as a buffer.

My wife's pay is used for all regular household purchases - groceries, presents, clothes. What little personal money that she spends comes from this account too. She gives me £10 per week 'pocket-money' from this account.

Any spending decisions for luxury or non-regular purchases are made together. We also have a savings account that we put extra money into as a contingency fund. This account is also with a different bank, making it slightly less easy to access, on purpose).

So, basically, while it may look like I pay all the bills and my wife buys all the groceries, this is just to make it easier to move money around. Her income is just the right amount to cover household purchases and she physically does most of the shopping.

I would like to say that it took me ages to convince my wife that because I earned much more than her, I should contribute more. She used to feel that she didn't have a right to spend anything because she didn't earn much.

amancalledmartin

Interesting responses - thanks guys. It's nice to see how many people do genuinely view their marriage as a pooled resource which, of course, it should be.

For my situation, I currently pay all the household bills bar occasional one-off payments for heating servicing, etc. and DH buys most of the food. We have a joint account but the thought of transferring 20 odd direct debits from my account to that fills me with administrative dread! It's not been a problem to date, but several bills have gone up a lot and I now find that I'm only left with £70 in my account after all bills are paid to cover car costs (excluding petrol), hair cuts, clothes, socialising, etc. DH runs his own business which is why I took on everything to give him chance to build it up. Sadly, I'm getting to the stage where I wonder how much longer I can give him! We don't have kids so there's no problem there.

It's a toughie, but really good to see how other couples work things out. I think I will have to start using our joint account for bills, etc. In fairness, I don't think he really has any idea what anything costs. But if anything happened to me he'd be screwed!