Money Moral Dilemma: Should my partner pay more towards bills as they earn more?

norsefox

If it should help, this is our experience.

My gross earnings are around 2.3x my wife's.  For our joint account, I pay in £2k per month, and she pays in £1k.  With overall net earnings, the alignment is approximately 2:1.

I also pay for her car (an EV) through my SS, and our energy bills are paid jointly.  I also pay for all childcare out of my earnings.

I earn a lot whilst being less qualified than my wife.  I am fortunate to have the job I do, and luck (or lack of it) has a huge impact on most people's place in life, whether we want to admit it or not.

Neither of us has unique spending habits, and we don't really have 'mine' or 'her' money, despite us both having our own savings, ISA, and current accounts.  Ultimately, no matter how you categorise it, it's jointly "our" money.  We prefer to have our own current accounts because it allows for some degree of 'freedom' or 'control', which effectively doesn't exist in practice but it avoids complications that might otherwise exist.

For me, there is no question that bills/outgoings should be shared proportionately to earnings.  It doesn't need to be exact or counted, but that should be the objective.  However, that is my personal view and of course many others will have perfectly suitable arrangements that differ and work well.

Silverbullet036

We have been married 35 years and from day one everything we earned went into a joint pot. All bills and expenses are paid from there because quite simply we are a couple. Any other way of doing it will surely bring on resentment and jealousy of one having more than the other. I dont need to hide any spending from her and she feels the same , we both have whatever we want.

If you dont do it this way then imo the only other way is proportional , work out an equal percentage of each others net income and pay whatever is fair for both. Could be something like 35% of income goes into shared pot , the rest is yours

Knew a couple who were coming to retirement and she was moaning that she didnt have a pension and he told her she wasnt getting any of his and how was she going to pay him her 'rent' as the house was his

Littledaler

To "comeandgo" - very chauvinistic!  Maybe you've been stung in the past and this has tainted your logic?This is not two people sharing a house, it's a couple in a relationship.  The simplest way is to have one joint bank account into which each pays the same percentage of their income which is used for all household bills.  The remainder is their own to use as personal expenses e.g. clothes, gifts, treats etc.  Paying 50/50 in this situation is nonsense.

Rich1976

I’m married and we’ve tried various systems over the years including one joint account and 2 separate sole accounts.
what we find works for us now is to pool everything. So we have one joint current account , one joint savings account and a ‘joint’ credit card and that’s it. Neither of us have any individual accounts anymore with the exception of our individual pensions that we both pay the same amount into every month.

we treat our incomes as the household income and it doesn’t matter who earns what. It goes into one account , all the direct debits are paid including our individual things and a set amount goes into savings on the 1st of the month. 

All of our day to day spending goes on the credit card and as the ‘Accounts Manager’ for our house I keep an eye on what is being spent and track it to make sure it doesn’t go over a certain amount each month. Like one of the earlier posters I sometimes have to say can it wait a few days if I would prefer it to go onto the next credit card cycle.

by and large this has worked successfully for us for over 3 years.

when you’re with someone it is important I feel as you need to have shared goals. We were finding previously when we had our own accounts there was a disconnect and led to more disagreements as we could never agree how much to allocate to each other as spending money and how much each of us should save and this sometimes led to one of us being short if something needed paying for.

it helps to trust each other and if they are generally fine with money then there is no reason not to pool everything together .

Danien

As a compromise how about a joint account where all money goes in and all bills are paid from this account including any childcare, travel costs, savings etc.

Then with what is left over you separate it proportional to earnings. So in this case the OP would get a third of what's left for personal spending and the partner would get two thirds.

Though I don't understand this separate finances thing. When my husband and I first moved in together we both said 'we're a joint enterprise, what's mine is yours'. He was earning more at the the time, but for the majority of the relationship I earned a bit more than him. Neither of us put importance on money, as long as we have enough to pay for everything and have a good life together. We prioritise our relationship and and family. We have never had an argument about money.

I see it as a red flag to have one partner insisting on holding on to 'their money' and not caring enough about their so called partner to compromise to make the life of the person they love easier. I wouldn't have moved in with the person in the first place as their values would be too different to mine.

I've seen women facing extreme poverty when their husband/partner is so tight fisted about money.

phillw

Silverbullet036 said:

Knew a couple who were coming to retirement and she was moaning that she didnt have a pension and he told her she wasnt getting any of his and how was she going to pay him her 'rent' as the house was his

Presumably she knew all along that the guy was like this though. Or maybe he was sick of her treating him like staff, it's difficult to know.

ZeroSum

When my OH first moved in, we went 50/50 on the bills. Mortgage & any capital & associated house costs I paid for so that there wasn't any interest in the house should things not work out.

When we decided to get married, we then put a salary based proportional contribution into the joint account which I do the admin, but maintaining our own sole accounts

Those who query having sole accounts, it's not very MSE is it? Given you can effectively double up on perks from multiple accounts 

ZeroSum

I've seen women facing extreme poverty when their husband/partner is so tight fisted about money.

Conversely, my BiL is upto his eyes in debt because his ex didn't know how to stop spending.

If you're not on the same page financially, it makes more sense to maintain some independence.

Rob5342

Danien said:

Though I don't understand this separate finances thing. When my husband and I first moved in together we both said 'we're a joint enterprise, what's mine is yours'. He was earning more at the the time, but for the majority of the relationship I earned a bit more than him. Neither of us put importance on money, as long as we have enough to pay for everything and have a good life together. We prioritise our relationship and and family. We have never had an argument about money.

That's the way we see it. Most of what we have is for our joint benefit, house, car, holidays, eating out etc, so we just treat money as a joint resource. We spend money on ourselves sometimes but don't keep track of how much. We have friends that are the complete opposite, the tv is his, the table is hers etc because they bought it, it seems bizarre to me.

ZeroSum

Rob5342 said:

Danien said:

Though I don't understand this separate finances thing. When my husband and I first moved in together we both said 'we're a joint enterprise, what's mine is yours'. He was earning more at the the time, but for the majority of the relationship I earned a bit more than him. Neither of us put importance on money, as long as we have enough to pay for everything and have a good life together. We prioritise our relationship and and family. We have never had an argument about money.

That's the way we see it. Most of what we have is for our joint benefit, house, car, holidays, eating out etc, so we just treat money as a joint resource. We spend money on ourselves sometimes but don't keep track of how much. We have friends that are the complete opposite, the tv is his, the table is hers etc because they bought it, it seems bizarre to me.

There of course is the middle ground where you're neither all in jointly nor completely separate. Joint accounts for joint spend & sole accounts for hobbies etc.

I find the idea of having only joint accounts & no sole accounts bizarre as what do you about gift buying? You're just effectively buying your own presents from each other.