How do you manage your joint income?

enthusiasticsaver

Nevermind309 wrote: »

She is better off working from home than the money she receives in from the salon she is employed at to be honest. Food budget is £240 a month which we each put £120 into a jar in the cupboard.
Going out we tend to take it in turns who pays for things and it to my knowledge works out pretty much equal so no problem there.

The second part i have made bold is a bit of an offensive assumption isn't it?! She certainly won't be ''scratching around'', we have never worked it out but i imagine if we did she would actually earn more than me over the year with all her work from home she does/wedding hair etc and that includes any bonuses i get, and that doesn't bother me just like it doesn't bother her

Well it obviously works for you and if your wife is happy too then you don't have a problem obviously. In our situation though if we organised our finances the way you did I would have been stretched financially as I worked in banking (not a profession you can engage in from home) and my husband had an annual bonus equivalent usually to 2 months salary which was dependent on company and personal performance. Luckily for me he always recognised we started on an even economical footing and due to the job he did (not 9-5 and involving lots of travel) I had to sacrifice a well paid job to care for children which obviously I was happy to do.

I think the main thing is if both parties are happy with the arrangements and it helps if you both have the same attitudes to money as someone above mentioned. Both of us are reasonably careful with money and quite averse to debt - hangover to me being a debt counsellor in the 90s. If one of us were less careful it would be a different story but the only arguments we ever had about money was recording where it was spent when my OH was less concerned about budgeting. Now he has retired he is just as bad as me.

theshed

For me it depends on your attitude to money.
I always like to keep cash in reserve, my Wife budgets to spend every penny !
When we first married we had a joint account and where continually overdrawn.
Now, both wages are paid into my account, I pay all bills and transfer £100/week to my Wife's account.
When she does a 'big' shop she takes my card, there is usually one or two 'extra's' but I can live with that.
It has worked for us for many years, not perfect but better than the alternative we had.
Good Luck

Nevermind309

theshed wrote: »

For me it depends on your attitude to money.
I always like to keep cash in reserve, my Wife budgets to spend every penny !
When we first married we had a joint account and where continually overdrawn.
Now, both wages are paid into my account, I pay all bills and transfer £100/week to my Wife's account.
When she does a 'big' shop she takes my card, there is usually one or two 'extra's' but I can live with that.
It has worked for us for many years, not perfect but better than the alternative we had.
Good Luck

Amen.......

hohum

We are not married and own a house together, we have no kids. We each have a main personal account, and a joint account that was set up to manage bills. We also each have a credit card, paypal and other accounts.

Two years ago we started using a joint budget through YNAB. It was a brilliant thing for our relationship, and for the household finances which until then had been suffering from the impact of irregular and low income. We had co-habited for four years prior to that doing the splitting/ separate accounts thing. It was made more possible for me to start thinking of 'us' when my partner covered my share of the rent for a couple of months as I set up a business. Shortly after we started joint budgeting. I'd be burnt by a previous partner who was a freeloading oaf (as one of my friends put it!) and consequently was nervous of pooling income. I needed those four years to build up trust

Budgeting together wasn't always easy - we had some humdingers early in the process and it bought up a lot of other 'stuff'. But it also bought us closer as a team, we talked about stuff (amazing I know) and understand each other and our respective attitudes to money much better. After 6 months of begrudingly going along with the idea, my partner now recommends the program to his friends. He loves the peace of mind we have, and so do I. No more seesaw feast/ famine which was the biggest plus for us in pooling our resources. Using a proper spending plan that takes into account all true costs, including those pesky annual bills. It also helped us as we prepared to buy a house, which is probably the biggest financial commitment I'll ever take on with someone so I'm happy we got our joint finances sorted first.

It doesn't matter which account we spend out of now, as it's all just part of our communal funds. I appreciate it's not for everyone, but if you are wondering whether to take the plunge I highly recommend it. Just be prepared for a potentially rough ride, but stick with it. The financial and relationship benefits are really valuable.
I don't think we could have done it without ynab, but there are other budgeting apps available.

EssexHebridean

Nevermind309 wrote: »

I am sure she would work it out...

This was in answer to my "if you drop down dead" question. I'll respond generally rather than specifically as it's become apparent from this thread as a whole that a LOT of folk don't understand quite how many problems this situation can cause...

Quite aside from the fact that presumably a partner or spouse cares sufficiently for their "significant other" that if they DID drop down dead, the spouse would be extremely shocked and upset - when you die your bank account is frozen until such time as the legalities can be sorted. Never mind that your partner doesn't have any clear grasp of what is paid when, and to whom, they also, in their state of presumed shock, has to deal with the fact that they don't have access to money that will pay bills for the remaining members of the household. It can be short sighted to assume (particularly if a couple are not married) that banks etc will be "understanding" in this situation - many just are not - we've seen the results of this on here.

At the very least, any joint emergency fund should be accessible by both parties. Bear in mind that simply knowing the other person's banking login is not sufficient - once the accounts get locked down that won't help - and in some circumstances accessing an account after a person's death to obtain funds can be seen as fraudulent. Am emergency fund in joint names means that at very least there is SOME additional money available to plug some of the gaps until such time as the deceased's funds can be freed up.

If you are an unmarried couple, living together, with finances run separately, a will is a bit of a must - particularly if for whatever reason your home isn't registered in both names.

As I think we all understand, the death of a spouse or life-partner is one of the most traumatic things anyone will ever go through - in my opinion if we love someone,l we owe it to them to ensure that if anything unforeseen happens to us, they're left in the best position possible.

Nevermind309

Yes I see your point

Bumblebear

An on-topic question for the ladies and gents who have one partner earning significantly less than the other, mostly due to part time working/child care arrangements... How do you feel about making personal purchases if you've pooled your income? If one half of the couple takes a career break/much reduced hours leaving them with little or no personal income (to bring up a family) - what happens when they need something? I don't just mean £1 for a pack of soap - but when bottoms fall off their winter boots, run out of a toiletry or cosmetic product (I'm not overly vain but I will not even let my kettle see me in the mornings without BB cream and mascara), hair needs a cut? Would you/have you asked for permission, mention it in passing before/after the purchase, or when the bank statement comes in? If you're the main earner, would you ever gawp at the cost of an item or service for the other partner?


I ask because I had a decade of living by myself (and with an ex, but separate finances) before I bought my house with DH, so I've had quite a period of managing my own way. We have a joint account now and retain our individual accounts for personal spending and bills. We now want a family; I read something written by a "previous career woman in her 30s and now a mother of two toddlers" who said she found asking her husband for money for personal items one of the harder things to get her head around!


No right or wrong answers - just curious as to how that element of 'everyday' spending works for those with different arrangements to my own.

hohum

An on-topic question for the ladies and gents who have one partner earning significantly less than the other, mostly due to part time working/child care arrangements... How do you feel about making personal purchases if you've pooled your income? If one half of the couple takes a career break/much reduced hours leaving them with little or no personal income (to bring up a family) - what happens when they need something? I don't just mean £1 for a pack of soap - but when bottoms fall off their winter boots, run out of a toiletry or cosmetic product (I'm not overly vain but I will not even let my kettle see me in the mornings without BB cream and mascara), hair needs a cut? Would you/have you asked for permission, mention it in passing before/after the purchase, or when the bank statement comes in? If you're the main earner, would you ever gawp at the cost of an item or service for the other partner?

Some months the bulk of the income comes from my earnings. We agree what we put in each category, and a very important line for both of us is the 'spending money' category, which is ours to use with no quibbles from the other partner. We have joint categories for hair and beauty, clothes, etc. I don't really quibble over any of that. If it's a big purchase we'll give each other a heads up or ask if we can make it work in the budget that month. We don't just go ahead and spend if it's not our spending money, or it will send the category to be overbudgeted. So I'd be annoyed if my partner went out and purchased a large item without consulting me or the budget. But I don't really care whether if he's bying out of his spends, thats his to do with as he sees fit. His income doesn't really come into it, we are an economic unit and our roles are equally valuable, whether they are income generating or not.

This can cause some negotiation. I requested that smoking came out of his spending money because it made me too annoyed to look at the category. I have requested that if he wants to do his annual boys weekend away, we start equally funding a similar away weekend for me. I sometimes take facecream out of my spending money because I feel like a ridiculous human being for spending as much as I did last time on it...stuff like that!

trailingspouse

OH and I have a joint account - anything that either of us earn from any source goes in to that account, and all our expenditure comes out of that account. We've done that during periods when he was earning more than me, when I was earning more than him, and now, when we actually earn exactly the same.

This works perfectly for us, but we were both in relationships previously where we had separate accounts. In his case, his first wife saw his income as joint income, but saw her own income as her own. In my case, my first husband didn't like me spending anything that he didn't know about beforehand (even, in one memorable case, when I bought the perfect skirt for work - I needed a skirt for work - which I'd found considerably reduced in the sales. Now that was an argument). I think their attitudes to money were one of the many reasons why our previous relationships ended.

We also don't argue about money. We discuss big purchases - well, we discuss pretty much everything anyway, so it's no great hardship - but we trust each other and we both know that neither of us would buy something we couldn't afford.

We've never bothered with the whole 'I pay for this, you pay for that' scenario - it all needs paying for, one way or another.

anntics

Hi all, I am an avid follower of MSE but rarely post. I have read the various opinions with interest. When me and hubby got married, we've been together over 45 years and married 39, I managed the finances as he had no real interest in them. No plan, one joint account and wherever it came from it was 'our money'. One pot, all money paid in, all money paid out of, carefully managed by me.

Over the years it became clear that this was a sensible way to do it. Sometimes hubby earned more, sometimes I did. I stopped working altogether for a while to look after my new young family. Hubby lost his job through ill health and didn't work for a few years, so I went full-time and earned a good salary. Hubby improved and got a job, but it paid MUCH less than his previous career. For a while we did very well both working and managed quite comfortably. Then out of the blue in my 40's I became very ill and had to leave work permanently and our income fell dramatically again because I get no benefits.

In the morning I was at work, a well-paid, healthy professional, in the afternoon I was in hospital with a life-threatening condition. One thing I did know for sure was that if I survived my hubby would support me in every way, including financially.

The point is not how you organise your finances, that is clearly a personal thing for each couple. But you do need to be sure that you both understand that circumstances can change dramatically in a very short time and know how you will deal with the fallout if it happens.