How do you manage your joint income?

anntics · 18 January 2017 at 2:13PM

Pengi904 wrote: »

I have a great deal. Hubby pays for all the boring stuff like mortgage, bills and council tax and I get food, everything for the kids and holidays. We have separate accounts but that's only because we already had them when we met and have had no need for a joint account.

As someone far greater than me once said "fail to plan - plan to fail". (Who was that? I can never remember)

I sincerely hope that you are not paying for the 'fun things' without having a contingency plan for the mortgage etc. if, and I hope it never does, the situation changes.

SkintTeacher · 18 January 2017 at 9:46PM

How interesting. My OH and I have completely separate finances, no joint accounts whatsoever. I transfer money to him each month for the groceries as he does the shopping. I pay the mortgage and a fair few of the household bills out of my account as I am the main wage-earner whilst he is a stay-at-home dad with a part time job. I have to admit I do think of the money in my current account as 'mine' but once it hits the savings accounts, it's 'ours'. I also save for my son and think of that as 'his'. I am pretty sure that this state of affairs doesn't reflect badly on our relationship; we have never, ever fought about money in 12 years. I ask him every so often if he is short on money for the groceries and I really enjoy using 'my' money for treats and to book holidays etc. Our financial situation started off this way because of a past bankruptcy on his side - I didn't want to be linked to that when buying our house (which is completely in my name). Some interesting comments here about the implications of an unexpected event though, worth thinking about creating a safety net in his name so he could deal with funeral costs etc until my money was released.

alianza · 20 January 2017 at 2:54PM

Nice to see how many people trust their partner and have a joint account. I had been married for 14 years and had a joint account with my now ex wife with a modest £500 overdraft in case of emergencies. Imagine my surprise when after she walked out I looked at the bank statement and saw that in the weeks before she left the overdraft limit had been increased to £5000 and she had bought a car and paid a travel agency for a holiday that she went on with her boyfriend......