couples and money

con1888

I am interested to know how you and your other half work your money out?

Ie, joint account-pay 50/50-one pays bills and one spending money etc.

Partner and I are reviewing our financial situation at the end of the month and I am interested in different methods, pros and cons .

Legion90

What works for us is to har a joint account for bills and for joint shopping trips that we do and we just put 50/50 into the account. The joint account can be used for spending such as cinema or takeaways. We have our own seperate account for our own wage and stuff we buy ourselves.

Everyone has their preferred way but this has worked well for us so far,

mummybearx

Me and my DH have seperate bank accounts. We used to agree on what to pay, he would pay rent and council tax, I would get food shopping, car insurance etc.

Then he got a bit messy with money, late payments/missed payments etc.

So then he got his wages paid into my bank account, and I pay for everything. I have a second account that I transfer money into every month, so we each have access to an account with money if we need it. So not a joint account, I would never do this as I really don't want any financial ties to him til he gets his credit rating sorted. But we both have access to all our money.

x

bratz81

at the moment we live together. but my fianc! is on an apprenticeship until September so on very little money. How we're working it right now is I pay all the bills, rent, food, etc and he's saving and paying for the wedding.

After we're married and he's out of his apprenticeship we're going to split bills, but I'm ruling out a joint account for a while as my credit rating is a bit poo and I don't want to drag him down.

Once it's a better we're thinking a joint account for bills and a joint savings account. Then individual accounts for our 'own' money and individual savings account if we fancy it too.

emsbet

We have separate accounts. We do have a joint account but that was opened because when we got married people gave us cheques in both our names and it's now used to hold money that we plan on spending on jobs around the house.

With regards to the household bills, they are all in DH's name as he lived here before me and there didn't seem much point moving some of the DD to my account. I then give him a % of the monthly total. He earns approximately 2.5 times my salary so he pays 2.5 times more than I do towards the bills. The food shopping is then split 50:50, we put it all on DH's 0% credit card and then I give him half at the end of the month.

xx

VfM4meplse

con1888 wrote: »

Partner and I are reviewing our financial situation at the end of the month and I am interested in different methods, pros and cons .

Pros and cons? This phrase suggests to me that you see your finances as being separate. It's not a problem, as long as you agree how joint money should be spent.

Having witnessed couples that have let money come between them I can say it causes a lot of misery. It's just not worth it.

HappyMJ

You would do whatever works for you and how much you trust the other person to not gamble or waste the household money on rubbish but also allowing them freedom to do so with a small amount.

As both my partner and I worked we split the household bills according to our income split...i.e 60/40 and put that much and a bit more (it started at a third and ended up as half our take home wages) into an account from which all the direct debits were taken or standing orders were sent. We put in an excess so that DD's would not bounce and took a holiday with the money when it got up enough. We split the shopping by me doing it one week with my own money and buying whatever I want for 2 weeks then my partner did the shopping the next week using her money and buying whatever she wanted for 2 weeks. We used our own money for our own personal expenses such as a car, any pre-existing loans and any expenses which were not joint.

ciderwithrosie_2

both our wages, child benefit etc gets paid into one account, has been that way since before we got married. I manage all the finances, he has no interest in it. I update on a spreadsheet every few days to keep a track of things. If he wants to buy something he'll ask if we can afford it at present, but to be honest he doesn't really spend much on clothes/gadgets for himself.

room512

We just have a joint account and everything comes out of that. I earn more than my husband but he works just as hard as I do and as far as I'm concerned what's mine is his!

marywooyeah

my husband earns a lot more than me and pays the rent and council tax then we take it in turns alternative weeks to do the food shopping spending between £35 and £40 a time, I pay for everything else and we have separate accounts. We both work hard to earn our wages so it didn't seem right to me that we should have a joint account as then we'd lose track of whose money was whose which could lead to inequality if he spent some of mine and vice versa, so I have found seperate accounts works best for us.

the_cat

Every single penny that comes in is jointly owned by us both equally. At different times we have both been the rich/poor one and neither of us have ever cared about individual worth

Probably very old fashioned (but I'm only early 40's) but it works for us. What you bring to a financial relationship cannot always be measured by the money you bring in.

What about the SAHM who does everything that would otherwise need paying for? Or the hard working husband whose job just happens to pay less? Do they bring less to the partnership??