Managing our finances - husband and wife

SHAKERMAKER

Hoping for some input here.

Husband and I are overhauling our finances. We just aren't sure of the best way of managing our incomings and outgoings.

We currently have 2 joint accounts: my wages paid into one account (just over £1k), and his paid into the other (£2.5k-£2.9k) monthly.
My wages pay for food and fuel.
Everything else is from his wage.

We want to have 'separate' money. We can't buy each other presents (Christmas or Birthday) without knowing how much it cost and where from as it shows on the statements. We have no independence financially.

How do other couples manage it where two people have different earnings but want to contribute towards the home etc?

Thank you!

Robin9

Why not simply open individual accounts for both of you and give yourselves a personal allowance of say £200 a month.

SHAKERMAKER

Thank you Robin9.
I like that idea.
Do you think £200 is a reasonable figure?

Sky_

We have one joint account where all income goes and all bills are paid from.
We also have several savings accounts and each have an individual 'spending' account for our personal spending allowances, which are purely for fun spends, presents etc. These have ranged from £80 to £200 each, at different times in our marriage.



Money comes into the joint account and after allowing enough for bills/direct debits/groceries etc, a fixed amount goes into our personal accounts and the remainder goes into savings. It's worked for us for a couple of decades--currently we each have £150 personal monthly spends because I've recently reduced my working hours, so our overall income is less.

SHAKERMAKER

Thank you Sky_
I think we'd have to do some calculations about personal expenditure.

Terry_Towelling

We have our own accounts and all of our individual incomes are paid into those. We also have one joint account for bills and expenses. We worked out our total annual outgoings for literally everything (including holidays, birthday gifts etc) and divided that by 12 to get a monthly average and split that equally between the pair of us and paid that into the joint account by standing order on payday each month. Any money left in our own individual accounts is our own to save/spend as we each wish.

To make sure there were no issues caused by irregular spending patterns we also put in some extra to start it off and to cover those times.

When one of us retired, the differential between our incomes caused us to rethink and we then 'weighted' our contributions to a certain extent. We are now both retired and paying in equally again. Works perfectly if you are in the right relationship.

Rich1976

We do virtually the same thing as Sky

Both incomes paid into a joint account which all the Bills are paid from by Direct Debit.

We have a joint fun money allowance for meals out, cinema trips, coffees etc

Food and Petrol is put onto a 'joint' credit card and this is paid in full from the joint account.

Then we have standing orders to various savings accounts for holidays, Car Expenses and Home repairs

the balance left is transferred to our individual accounts as spending money for ourselves

I find it helps to keeps a spreadsheet each month which has the incomes less all the expenses and whatever is left is divided equally between the 2 of us. It also helps to treat the income as one Household income instead of mine and yours. I dont understand married couples who still treat the incomes and expenditure as my responsibility or your responsibility. Everything is a shared responsibility.

SHAKERMAKER

I have a spreadsheet, just needs major updating.
Thank you.
Really glad of everyone's input, its helping to make sense of it all.

xylophone

You might each open a TSB sole account and each have your salaries paid in to your own account.

https://www.tsb.co.uk/personal/

You might then open a Santander 123 Lite joint account and move all DDs for Council Tax, utilities/ phone/ insurance etc to it.

https://www.santander.co.uk/personal/current-accounts/123-lite-current-account

You would each set up a monthly standing order from your sole account to the joint account.

You might open a joint savings account to hold your emergency fund and each set up a SO to it each month.

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/article-1583859/Best-savings-rates-General-savings-Internet-branch.html

What remains in your sole account is your spending money.

trailingspouse

Until recently we had a joint account, and absolutely everything went into it, and came out of it. Worked fine until he left...

robatwork

trailingspouse wrote: »

Until recently we had a joint account, and absolutely everything went into it, and came out of it. Worked fine until he left...

Well that's how it should be in marriage. All in or not at all.

Presumably once he left you setup your own account and set all your DDs and income to there?

Sorry of course about your marriage breakdown, but at least you won't be trailing any longer....