Splitting the bills? Is anything other than 50/50 unfair?

Any

Ska lover "what is stopping her to earn more" is not THAT simple...
I married someone 20 years my senior, with public school I wasn't sent to and high professional job.
While I am also highly qualified (self funded, weekend college, whilst working full time AND looking after HIM), I cannot magic 20 extra years of experience out of thin air.
That is an example.
Now he earns more/he pays more.
When he retires I will earn more/pay more.

Other women/men have to put their career on hold to be parents.
Other have very sick child.
Very sick parents.. etc etc

This is a long term relationship, with long term view.
And if you don't have one with that person, do not buy house with them, or have kids with them!!

PasturesNew

Gloomendoom wrote: »

My wife and I do the same job. We get paid the same salary.

One anecdote isn't data... as they say.

But, there's more to pay inequality than pay for the job. If there was one position for advancement and a higher salary, statistically the bloke in the couple would most likely get it.

Or, if you both lost your jobs today .... and tried to get new ones, the fella is more likely to be offered that higher salary sooner.... and the woman's left to either wait longer, or give up and take the next/first job as you need the money and she won't sit on her high horse saying "I'm worth more".

DUTR

JCP wrote: »

How on earth do you work that out?
They each pay 50% of their net income into the joint account means that the higher earner *is* paying more. Possibly significantly more.
If one has £2000 and the other £1000, the former will pay £1000 and the latter £500 into the account - seems pretty fair to me.

Could that not be the case in this thread?

JCP

Person_one wrote: »

The higher earner will always have more left after the bills. In your scenario, one of them has twice the disposable income of the other!

I think you are missing my point.
They are not splitting the bills 50/50, they are each putting 50% of their net income into the pot. In the scenario I gave above, that gives a 66.66/33.33% split. It's basic arithmetic.
I agree that a 50:50 split of bills would be unfair, but that wasn't what the other poster had proposed.

Person_one

JCP wrote: »

I think you are missing my point.
They are not splitting the bills 50/50, they are each putting 50% of their net income into the pot. In the scenario I gave above, that gives a 66.66/33.33% split. It's basic arithmetic.
I agree that a 50:50 split of bills would be unfair, but that wasn't what the other poster had proposed.

No, I understand, my point remains. One ends up with much more disposable income than the other and that's not conducive to a truly equal relationship of real partners.

JCP

Person_one wrote: »

No, I understand, my point remains. One ends up with much more disposable income than the other and that's not conducive to a truly equal relationship of real partners.

By definition, if you split the bills based upon relative earnings, that will *always* be the case. It is unavoidable.
eg
one earns £2k net, and one earns £1k net per month.
Bills total £1k.
Partner one pays 2/3 £667; Disposable income £1333
Partner two pays 1/3 £333; Disposable income £667

If Bills totalled £2k
Partner one would have a disposable income of £667 and Partner two £333

The only way to avoid this would be to pool both wages to a joint account of £3k, paying the bills out of that, and then splitting the remainder equally between the two partners.
Personally, for people just moving in together, I don't think completely joining their finances is a good idea.
I know I don't explain myself well, but hopefully that does it.

ska_lover

skintchick wrote: »

Do you really think that people usually have the choice of picking and choosing their employer, even if they know they are being paid less than a man in the same job? How naive.

You ask a question, then jump to a conclusion and an insult in the next sentence without awaiting a response? Says more about you, than it does about me.

I am not sure why a stranger having a difference of opinion upsets you so much that you need to hurl insults. Why does it upset you, that others think differently? Interesting stuff

It is just the the way the world works - not everyone will always agree with you. You are not correct, your opinion is not a fact...it's an opinion - same as mine.

GobbledyGook

JCP wrote: »

The only way to avoid this would be to pool both wages to a joint account of £3k, paying the bills out of that, and then splitting the remainder equally between the two partners.
Personally, for people just moving in together, I don't think completely joining their finances is a good idea.
I know I don't explain myself well, but hopefully that does it.

That's exactly what we did from day 1 of moving in together. The mortgage is the biggest financial tie you can have with someone so why put off anything else? That said however, we discussed all of that before moving.

Our case may have been slightly different in that to move with him I gave up university which was always then going to have an impact on my earning potential. In saying that, no matter how many qualifications I ever earned I was never going to be able to match him salary wise.

Also it has to balance up the whole life overall. If the OP is going to be doing all the housework (in my case it was pretty much all the housework, all the boring dinners and meetings, organising social events for other partners and generally being available at the click of fingers if a client brought their partner unexpectedly). There was also an endless stream of clean shirts, dry cleaned suits and food which meant if he worked until 2am because of whatever was on at that time then he could go straight to bed and then not have to panic in the morning because everything was ready.

Alongside my part-time job in learning support (which OH says should make me the higher earner as it's more important than his job) that all meant I easily 'worked' just as hard as he did so why shouldn't we pool resources and have equal finances? It's what we were both working for.

Although admittedly in our case the salary difference wasn't just two or three times - it was massive. I had no hope of matching him ever :rotfl:

Person_one

JCP wrote: »

By definition, if you split the bills based upon relative earnings, that will *always* be the case. It is unavoidable.
eg
one earns £2k net, and one earns £1k net per month.
Bills total £1k.
Partner one pays 2/3 £667; Disposable income £1333
Partner two pays 1/3 £333; Disposable income £667

If Bills totalled £2k
Partner one would have a disposable income of £667 and Partner two £333

The only way to avoid this would be to pool both wages to a joint account of £3k, paying the bills out of that, and then splitting the remainder equally between the two partners.
Personally, for people just moving in together, I don't think completely joining their finances is a good idea.
I know I don't explain myself well, but hopefully that does it.

I agree, that for people just starting out going in all in is not a good idea, but I do think it should be the goal for the future if things go well. The bolded is the setup I would prefer should I ever be brave/stupid enough to get seriously involved again.

Emmylou_2

Until recently, I had more income than hubs (DLA plus PHI/sick pay from work vs CA), so I paid the majority of the bills. He just paid the Sky TV/phone/BB and the occasional grocery shop, plus we put things like the car insurance on his credit card.

He's now got a job and our incomes are about the same, so I've worked out a proper budget and we're putting 50% of the outgoings into our joint account to cover everything.

We did discuss the future (hopefully there'll be children at some point, or a promotion or two for him) and I said that while our incomes remain about the same, I'm happy to stay with a 50:50 split of bills, but if there's a big change then we'll reassess and probably go to a "pay in proportion to income" system. He agreed that this is fair.