Combining finances

LizD_2

I recently got married and up til now, Hubbie and I have always had separate finances (although we lived together). We bought our own food and I gave him money towards the bills. Whilst I don't think we should have all our money in a joint account, it would make sense to combine bills, housekeeping etc. What I'd like to know is how you manage to budget for everything. Our main issue is with food: I'm vegetarian, he's not. I'm quite happy to cook for us both (I will put meat in the oven/grill for him), but he works long hours and eats different things. I'm keen to cook from scratch, but he's happy to just eat meat and veg when he gets in and i'd rather not be cooking at 9pm.

Any tips on this?

mr218

i think you are talking about two separate issues. first regarding food. i am vegetarian and my husband became vegetarian as well. i have friends who are vegetarian (due to religious reasons) and have husbands who are not vegetarian. i think you are think more about conveniece reasons while cooking. how about you agree with your husband to say have two non-vegetarian days a week, say in the weekends when you cook non-veg food. other days the food is vegetarian and you only have to cook once. he can still have meats in in sandwiches etc but cooking is vegetarian.

regarding finances, depends on what you want and how comfortable you are with sharing and accessign each others bank statements, salary slips etc. we have never had a problem with each others finances and i know my husbands finances inside out. we made a joint account after we married but we dont use it as such. we both have access to each others accounts and it is our money. there is no concept of your and my money.

this is not just for trust and intimacy, it is practical and more efficient. why not ask your husband to think what he wants with finances and you have a long think as well. then come together for a meeting where you put your points, your feelings, your insecurities and issues across. basically if trust and openess is fine, then you should think about the best way to use your combined money the best possible way.

that works well if you decide to have a budget for the year. put in essential groceries, insurance, mortgage, car expenses, council tax , utilities and any other essential and mandatory expenses in it. see how much money is left over in a year.

what do you want to do with this money. does he have hobbies he wants to pursue and you have hobbies as well. how would you like to spend the money left over. do you both want to save some of it, invest some of it, maybe save for a holiday. etc etc

ideally both of you should have a good idea of what is happennning to your money and how it is being used. neither of you should feel resentful that the money you are earning is not there for you to use. neither should feel that you are 'contributing more'. as long as you are open with each other and can work through all these issues, it should be fine

good luck

looneyleo

My OH and I have totally joint finances. We have one account for eveything and don't have any seperate speding money accounts etc. It works because we are both working together on keeping to the budget and neither of us is extravagant in anyway. We discuss large expenditure in advance. I do the day to day stuff and manage the account and just let him know how we are doing. It works for us but I know it isn't everyone's cup of tea! It can make it hard for buying pressies as we both know what has come out of the account so there are no surprises, but we don't have the money for surprises so that's OK!

Hubby also works shifts and I have two kids to feed too so cooking can be difficult for us too. There are a number of options: you could either cook a meal, put it to one side and then re-heat in the microwave when he gets home, or part cook the meal (i.e. veg and potatoes/rice etc) and grill the meat when he gets home; or do some batch cooking of your types of meals and his types of meals and then defrost and heat when required, or you do your own cooking and let OH do his when he gets in (my OH is fine with that as he enjoys cooking, again not for everyone though). Hope that helps.

Welshlassie

Since we got married 2 and a bit years ago we have had complete joint finances. DH lets me sort all the money out. We have a joint current account, a joint savings account and then a couple of personal savings accounts, but these are more left overs from when we we not married and we just use them for various savings pots, eg holidays, baby fund etc. I have access to all these account through the internet and to be fair to him if he tried to sort the money out he wouldn't know where to start because it is split over so many providers. We do discuss finances regularly and have both been making a concerted effort of late to cut back, I then keep him updated with how we are doing on a weekly basis.

Iit works for us and the only awkward thing is as someone else said birthday presents. But we get around this by him using cash to buy presents (he doesn't really bother with the internet and if he does its ebay and he has his own Paypal account), I just use my cashback credit cards and pay the bill off immediately, he never looks at the statements.

You have to decide what works for you and what you are both comfortable with.

Js_Other_Half

We have a joint account for everything except 'play money' - ie the money that we each have for ourselves - eg occasional hairdresser, etc for me. We have equal amounts of play money, regardless of the difference in incomes.

As for food, could your DH batch cook things like chilli and freeze it into portions - then all it takes is to defrost one portion and serve with a baked potato etc? This would work for casseroles and stews too.
Oh, and congratulations on your recent marriage.

pinkshoes

I live with my OH, and we have separate accounts which our wages go into, but we both pay £900/month each into a joint account, which covers our mortgage, bills, council tax, food, meals out and enough left over for a holiday. The money in our individual accounts we can do what we want with (i.e. petrol to get to work, clothes, car tax, shampoo etc...).

As for the food, could you not cook dinner earlier from scratch, then eat yours and leave his in the microwave? I don't eat meat very often, but my OH loves meat, so we eat late at 8pm (my compromise), and we only eat meat a couple of times a week (his compromise). which works quite well.

Justie

it's something only you can decide as a couple, every couple I know does finances differently. You may want to talk about what would happen if you have children too.

We do it that household things come out of the joint account as this helps us to budget - the only nonfixed amount is food but this is roughly the same each week. The rest of the money is in individual accounts but is very much 'our money' and gets moved as it's needed. This works less well now I'm not earning as I have to remind OH that he needs to move money into my account every now and then but it does mean that I don't feel I have to account for every penny that I spend and can buy things like his birthday presents without him knowing.

I have friends who have everything in a joint account and this works well for them but it does mean that all finaces are known by both and my friend finds that she spends less on things for herself than she otherwise would as she feels it's household money not hers IYSWIM whereas her OH is happy to buy what he thinks he needs without worrying too much about it.

I have other friends who keep everything seperate and who split all bills 50:50 - fine until she goes on maternity leave...

fay144

We have sperate accounts which our wages get paid into, and a joint account which all our bills come out of. The day after pay day, we both have standing orders to move enough money to cover our half of all direct debits for the month, bills, and a little bit extra for emergencies into the joint account. We also have a joint savings account we both pay into at the start of the month.

What we each have left is our own to spend or save seperately as we want. This works really well for us, as I'd hate to have to work out how much I'd spent that month in comparission to my fiance every time I wanted to buy something for myself. Our wages are pretty much even, which also helps.

Friends how have totally joint accounts always seem to be bickering at each other about her spending money on shoes, or him on on-line poker. I'd hate that.

As regards food, sorry, not much help with the veg/non veg thing. One thing I can't recommend enough is a slow cooker though. You just dump some meat, veg etc into it in the morning, and come home to a lovely dinner after work. If your husband did that for himself, it would free you up to just worry about your own?

LizD_2

We do have a slow-cooker, although it doesn't really get used in the summer. Maybe I need some summer recipies for it?

Elsiesgirl

My OH and I have always had separate current accounts. We've always known everything about each other's accounts and each had our own responsibilities in the budgeting. You do need to trust the other person but it works for us. We don't row about money and have been married for 41 years.

margaretclare

We're a couple of retired wrinklies, got together 10 years ago, been married for 5 years. We have separate personal accounts but we also have a joint account which is just for household bills. We both put money into it monthly, and every month the household expenses go out between the 1st and 10th of the month, that way nothing gets forgotten.

DH was very reluctant to have a joint account at all because of bad experiences in a previous marriage, but he could see the sense of us having one and just keeping it for household bills. It's peace of mind, nothing gets forgotten, it all happens automatically.

Margaret