How do you organise your finances with partner?

hawk30

When DH and I first started living together we can separate accounts. DH would pay for most of the bills before working out how much I owed him. After about a year we moved to a joint account and pooled all of our money. It does depend on how much you trust your partner - both DH and I have very similar approaches to money and knew that neither of us would go on a wild spending spree.

Our money is now very much our money. My personal view is that this how it should be between married couples.

JethroUK

girl_withno_name wrote: »

I'll soon be purchasing a property with my partner of about 5 years (not married) and I'm just looking for advice/opinions/suggestions on how people in similar situations arrange their finances?

At the moment we rent together, each get paid into our own separate current accounts and subsequently pay a set amount paid into a joint account to cover rent and bills. Everything else is our own to do as we wish (e.g. paying for activities, meals out, haircuts, petrol, treats!) and we both have our own savings in our own names.

Sounds perfic to me - We have been married for 25+ years and always used the same system whereby we get paid into our private accounts and have one joint account we both contribute to and all the bills including food shopping come out of there - i earn bit more than my wife so i pay more into the shared account but the maths for that are easy enough

In our case we offset alllllllllll the accounts (joint and separate) against mortgage to save interest and we've paid it off now :j

LandyAndy

determined_new_ms wrote: »

we have a joint account for joint expenses and pay a proportion into it in relation to our incomes, the rest is ours individually. I earn more so put more in, but it also means I have more money. I would totally be up for us just having a joint account and pooling our money but my oh doesn't want that!

That is pretty much what we have done for the last 23 years and it has worked well.

With my first wife we only had a joint account and it was an occasional source of friction not to have at least some money to spend as one wished without referring it to the other.

mildred1978

We've been married 8 years and never had a joint account. Works for us.

(By the way, this subject has been done to death - a search will find you hundreds of viewpoints on this.)

JethroUK

mildred1978 wrote: »

We've been married 8 years and never had a joint account. Works for us.

(By the way, this subject has been done to death - a search will find you hundreds of viewpoints on this.)

I suppose it will keep working whilst ever you keep married - that system will only get messy if you decide to split

certainly wouldn't recommend it for the OP who is not married at all

bank accounts dont cost money so use that to make it easy to keep your finances sorted/seperate

sulkisu

girl_withno_name wrote: »

I'll soon be purchasing a property with my partner of about 5 years (not married) and I'm just looking for advice/opinions/suggestions on how people in similar situations arrange their finances?

At the moment we rent together, each get paid into our own separate current accounts and subsequently pay a set amount paid into a joint account to cover rent and bills. Everything else is our own to do as we wish (e.g. paying for activities, meals out, haircuts, petrol, treats!) and we both have our own savings in our own names.

We do this, it works for us. I earn more than OH so I pay more towards bills etc. Having separate money doesn't make us any less of a couple (IMHO, no doubt some will disagree) .

floss2

girl_withno_name wrote: »

Interestingly, we used having quite different salaries as an argument for pooling everything - so that one half doesn't have a much better lifestyle than the other, I imagined this could cause friction within the relationship...

Well, as I take home half of DH's take home, to pay the same amount into the joint account would create a situation where he had significantly more "disposable" income than me, which he wasn't happy with when we set this up.

floss2

sulkisu wrote: »

We do this, it works for us. I earn more than OH so I pay more towards bills etc. Having separate money doesn't make us any less of a couple (IMHO, no doubt some will disagree) .

I quite like the fact that I don't know exactly how much DH has spent on LFC tickets for Premiership / Carling Cup / FA Cup matches this season, and equally, he doesn't know exactly how much I spend on books / clothes

sulkisu

floss2 wrote: »

I quite like the fact that I don't know exactly how much DH has spent on LFC tickets for Premiership / Carling Cup / FA Cup matches this season, and equally, he doesn't know exactly how much I spend on books / clothes

Agreed. I also like the fact that when we buy each other presents or treats, we do so as individuals - i.e. I buy his birthday present out of my money, not our/his own money.

JethroUK

floss2 wrote: »

I quite like the fact that I don't know exactly how much DH has spent on LFC tickets for Premiership / Carling Cup / FA Cup matches this season, and equally, he doesn't know exactly how much I spend on books / clothes

And also it's nicer to buy your partner a present from your 'own' money not a joint account - i say keep some separate and keep some together